Manco Capac is the legendary founder of the
Incan empire that flourished in the Andean mountains
of South America and had its capital in what
is now Cuzco in modern-day Peru. Existing versions
of legends, which first were recorded in the
1200s, differ slightly in the details of Manco
Capac’s parentage. In some accounts, he is the son
ofMama Huaco, one of the Ayar siblings who,with
her four brothers and three sisters, came forth
from a cave called Pacauitambo in search of fertile
lands to settle and farm. Mama Huaco possessed
two golden shafts that she threw north, and where
one shaft sank into the ground, Manco Capac led
a group of people there to settle.
In other versions,Manco Capac was a son of the
sun, the Life-Giver and the chief deity in the pantheon
of Incan divinities, who sent Manco forth
to bring the gifts of civilization and culture into
the world. Along with his sister-wife,Mama Ocllo,
Manco Capac set forth from their dwelling in Lake
Titicaca and headed north in search of a place to
settle.Where Manco Capac’s golden divining rod
sank into the earth indicated that they had reached
a favorable place, and so the city of Cuzco was
founded.Manco Capac taught the settlers there the
art of agriculture, and Mama Ocllo taught them
how to weave and spin, laying the foundations for
Incan civilization and history.
In truth, Andean civilizations had existed for
centuries, and the Inca were no more than one of
several tribes flourishing in the region around
1200. The Inca, however, showed a talent for conquest,
and as they began to expand, they brought
neighboring tribes under their rule. At the peak of
expansion, achieved in the mid-15th century, the
Inca governed what they called Tahuantinsuyu, the
“Land of the Four Quarters,” with its center at
Cuzco, which they regarded as the center of the
earth. Calling themselves by a Quechua word
meaning “People of the Sun,” the Inca treated their
ruler or emperor (also called the Inca) as the
human embodiment of the sun on earth. Incan
government, represented by a well-organized system
of administration, penetrated every level of
society in a way meant to represent the breadth of
the sun’s rays. In this way, even as the Incan system
of worship evolved to regard the figure of Viracocha
as the ultimate creator,Manco Capac was referred
to as the Son of the Sun and acknowledged
as a divine figure. In their practice of sun worship,
the Inca were said to decorate lavishly with gold,
which is one reason the Spanish were eager to appropriate
their wealth.
During the reign of the Inca, Quechua was not
a written language, and history was communicated
in the form of verse narratives, paintings, and a
method of accounting involving knotted strands of
multicolored rope called quipu. The verse narratives
recording oral history might be revised by the
royal poet-historian to avoid offending the current
ruler, and therefore the accounts of Inca history
recorded by Spanish chroniclers are often confusing
and sometimes contradictory. The conquistador
Francisco Pizarro and his band of less than 200
men found the Incan Empire in a state of civil war
in 1532 and quickly exerted control. After imprisoning,
holding for ransom, and then executing the
reigning king, Pizarro made another Manco ruler
of the Inca in 1534. He was largely acknowledged
to be a puppet ruler and did not survive past 1544.
In this way,Manco Capac can be called the first
and last ruler of the Incan Empire. The Spanish
chroniclers, writing largely between 1533 and
1608, capture his story in conflicting versions. In
Commentary on the Inca (1609), Garcilaso de la
Vega (El Inca) gives the account of the origin in
Lake Titicaca and the aid of the golden divining
rod. Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa in History of the
Incas (1572) records Manco Capac,Mama Huaco,
Sinchi Roca, and Mango Sapaca as the four
founders of Cuzco, while other chroniclers such as
Cristóbal de Molina, in Myths and Rites of the Inca
(1575), give slightly differing accounts. The myth
of Manco Capac most likely preserves the memory
of an early migration of the Inca in search of
lands favorable for farming, and its later ornamentation
is as elaborate and fantastic as Incan civilization
itself.
English Versions of the Myth of
Manco Capac
Ferguson, Diana. Tales of the Plumed Serpent: Aztec,
Inca and Mayan Myths. London: Collins & Brown,
2000, 107–112, 148.
Urton, Gary. “Origin Myths of the Inca State” in Inca
Myths: Legendary Past. Austin: University of Texas
Press, 1999.
Works about the Myth of Manco Capac
Bierhorst, John, ed. and trans. Black Rainbow: Legends
of the Incas and Myths of Ancient Peru. New York:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1976.
Canseco,María Rostworowski de Deiz. History of the
Inca Realm. Translated by Harry B. Iceland. Cambridge,
U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1999,
8–15.
Hemming, John. The Conquest of the Incas. Fort Washington,
Pa.: Harvest Books, 2003, 52, 97, 132, 298.