The Rod of Gold

Author: Traditional Inca

Time Period: 1001 CE–1500 CE

Country or Culture: South America

Genre: Myth

PLOT SUMMARY

In a time before the Inca Empire, the people live as beasts in the wild. They do not wear clothes but are clad in fur or bark or go nude. They do not have houses but live in caves and crags where they can find temporary shelter. They do not know of marriage, instead mating opportunistically like other animals. They do not live in towns but are scattered about the land in groups of two or three. They have no knowledge of agriculture or animal husbandry, instead foraging for food. Some even practice cannibalism.

The sun god, known as Inti by the Incas, takes pity on the savage human beings. He wants them to live in a civilized manner and worship him correctly. He sends his two children, Manco Cápac and Mama Ocllo, who are also husband and wife, to emerge from an island (in some versions, from a boat) in Lake Titicaca. He tells the pair to rule justly and be warm and benevolent to all people, just as he is. Their mission is to civilize the people, teaching them to practice agriculture and making subjects of them. Inti gives his children a golden rod half the length of a person’s arm and two fingers thick to use to test the ground as they journey north. Where the rod goes in all the way with a single thrust, Inti tells them, they should establish the seat of their empire.

Manco Cápac and Mama Ocllo plant the rod in many places, to no avail. Then they rest at a sheltered place called Pacaritambo (“the House of Dawn”). From there they go into the untamed wilderness that is destined to be the city of Cuzco. They stop at an overlook called Huanacauri (“Rainbow”) and successfully plant the golden rod in the ground, realizing that this is the place to build their capital city.

Manco Cápac goes north, and Mama Ocllo goes south, telling all the people they meet that a new era is upon them. They say that the sun has sent them to be the people’s new rulers. The people are mightily impressed by the fine clothes the two wear, as well as their stretched-out earlobes, and willingly join their cause.

Manco Cápac and Mama Ocllo teach the people to built proper houses, and they thereby construct upper and lower Cuzco. Manco Cápac shows the men how to grow crops such as corn and quinoa, to herd llamas, and to make shoes. Mama Ocllo instructs the women in the textile arts, and they are soon weaving cotton and wool into clothing.

Manco Cápac and Mama Ocllo’s reputation for benevolent leadership soon causes many people to join their cohort. Within seven years, the children of the sun have enough followers to form a formidable army. Manco Cápac teaches his followers to fight with bows and arrows, spears, and clubs. They are able to defend themselves against external aggression and rapidly expand their empire through conquest.

Once their empire is well established, Manco Cápac and Mama Ocllo choose to leave. They tell their followers that the sun will adopt all of them as his children. The people are overjoyed to be accepted by this supernatural power. The Incas build holy shrines to Inti, the sun, and dedicate many maidens to their upkeep.

SIGNIFICANCE

“The Rod of Gold” is one of the best-known myths from precolonial Peru. Though it is the main origin myth that survives from the Inca culture, it does not describe the beginning of the Inca people as an ethnic identity, as is typical of origin myths from other cultures. Rather, it provides a legendary account of how the Incas forged an empire in the fifteenth century CE. Although this form of origin myth is somewhat unusual, it is not unprecedented, and the Aztec Empire left behind a similar tale.

There are two main versions of the myth. The one rendered here, in which the main protagonists are Manco Cápac and his sister and wife, Mama Ocllo, is typically ascribed to Garcilaso de la Vega (1539–1616), who was the son of a Spanish conquistador and an Inca noblewoman. In the other version, Manco Cápac and Mama Ocllo are joined by three other sibling-spouse pairs, often called the Ayar siblings. These are Ayar Cachi and Mama Cora, Ayar Auca and Mama Huaco, and Ayar Uchu and Mama Rahua. In this myth, the four pairs originate from Pacaritambo. This variant describes Ayar Cachi as very prone to violence and states that he has a slingshot that he uses to destroy mountains. The other siblings are afraid of Ayar Cachi, so they trick him into going back into a cave, supposedly to retrieve a golden trinket they accidentally left behind, and trap him there by collapsing the cave’s entrance. When the remaining siblings reach Huanacauri, Ayar Uchu is turned to stone. The siblings first glimpse Cuzco from Huanacauri, where Ayar Uchu is to dwell for eternity. When they reach the site of the settlement, Ayar Auca also turns to stone, leaving Manco Cápac and the sisters to found the city. This version is more widely attested than de la Vega’s version and was first recorded in slightly different forms by Pedro Cieza de León (ca. 1520–54), a conquistador, and Juan de Betanzos (ca. 1510–76), who was married to the former wife of the Inca leader Atahualpa (1497–1533).

To fully appreciate the historical and cultural significance of “The Rod of Gold,” it is necessary to know that the supremely powerful creator god in the Inca pantheon is not the sun but a being called Viracocha. Although there is a small canon of stories in which Viracocha takes the form of a beggar or herder to inspect his creation, he was typically considered to be without form and was removed from the affairs of the world. Viracocha first created a world that was wholly dark. To bring light to his creation, he formed the sun and the moon. At first, these two celestial bodies were equally bright, but the sun became jealous and threw soot in the moon’s face.

Scholars believe that sun worship was widespread among the ancient peoples of Peru, particularly in the highland region. Sun worship was also a traditional part of Inca religion, and they certainly revered the solar god Inti since before their imperial period. However, Inti worship became much more important as the Inca Empire expanded and engulfed neighboring cultures.

The Inca sphere of influence was dramatically expanded by the great leader Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui (ca. 1438–71). He began an ongoing war of conquest that resulted in the Incas defeating tribal rivals and becoming the undisputed lords of the region. In building this empire, Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui and his successors had to rely on complicated diplomatic relationships to hold onto a large and diverse body of more than ten million subjects.

Many scholars contend that “The Rod of Gold” was a form of mythical propaganda, a religious justification of their right to rule. By repeating the story that they were the direct descendents of Manco Cápac and Mama Ocllo, these Inca rulers could claim to have divine status themselves. This assertion was especially likely to have helped them gain acceptance from the non-Inca peoples living in the area of Lake Titicaca, who traditionally worshipped the sun as their most important god.

Clearly, Inti worship became the central state cult during the imperial era. Beginning during Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui’s reign, the Incas established several important temples to Inti, including ones on the so-called Island of the Sun in Lake Titicaca and the Coricancha (Golden Enclosure) in Cuzco. These temples were staffed by hundreds of maidens consecrated to Inti’s glory. The temple-building activity is mentioned in the myth as taking place when the children of the sun left the world, but it actually started generations after the legendary rule of Manco Cápac, as the Inca Empire was expanding under Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui.

Further evidence that the myth emerged during Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui’s reign comes from a contemporaneous shift in marriage patterns. At this point, brother-sister marriages became the preferred form of marriage within the Inca royal family, a way of asserting that the Inca nobility were categorically different from other, more common people. It bolstered the belief that they were descended from the sun via the sibling-spouses Manco Cápac and Mama Ocllo and that they therefore must take measures to ensure the purity of their divine bloodline.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Baur, Brian. Ancient Cuzco. Austin: U of Texas P, 2004. Print.

Bierhorst, John. Black Rainbow: Legends of the Incas and Myths of Ancient Peru. New York: Farrar, 1976. Print.

Brundage, Burr Cartwright. Empire of the Inca. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1963. Print.

Cobo, Bernabé. Inca Religion and Customs. Trans. Roland Hamilton. Austin: U of Texas P, 1990. Print.

D’Altroy, Terence. The Incas. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002. Print.

Jones, David. The Myths and Religion of the Incas. London: Anness, 2008. Print.

Julien, Catherine. Reading Inca History. Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 2000. Print.

Keatinge, Richard W. Peruvian Prehistory. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988. Print.

Malpass, Michael. Daily Life in the Inca Empire. Westport: Greenwood, 1996. Print.

Markham, Clements. The Incas of Peru. New York: Dutton, 1910. Print.

Moseley, Michael. The Incas and Their Ancestors. Rev. ed. New York: Thames, 2001. Print.

Urton, Gary. The History of a Myth. Austin: U of Texas P, 1990. Print.