“The change of site appeared convenient for the service of God our Lord and of his Majesty, and for the increase of his royal fifths, as well as beneficial to the inhabitants of the said city.  Having examined the capitulations and reasons, the said Don Luis de Velasco [the viceroy] granted the licence to move the city to where it is now founded, ordering that it should have the title and name of the city of San Francisco of the Victory of Uilcapampa, which was its first name.  By this change of site I, the said Baltasar de Ocampo, performed a great service to God our Lord and his Majesty.  Through my care, industry and solicitude, a very good church was built, with its principal chapel and great doors.”  We found the walls to be heavy, massive, and well buttressed, the doors to be unusually large and the whole to show considerable “industry and solicitude.”

The site was called “Onccoy, where the Spaniards who first discovered this land found the flocks and herds.”  Modern Vilcabamba is on grassy slopes, well suited for flocks and herds.  On the steeper slopes potatoes are still raised, although the valley itself is given up to-day almost entirely to pasture lands.  We saw horses, cattle, and sheep in abundance where the Incas must have pastured their llamas and alpacas.  In the rocky cliffs near by are remains of the mines begun in Ocampo’s day.  There is little doubt that this was Onccoy, although that name is now no longer used here.

We met at the gobernador’s an old Indian who admitted that an Inca had once lived on Rosaspata Hill.  Of all the scores of persons whom we interviewed through the courtesy of the intelligent planters of the region or through the customary assistance of government officials, this Indian was the only one to make such an admission.  Even he denied having heard of “Uiticos” or any of its variations.  If we were indeed in the country of Manco and his sons, why should no one be familiar with that name?

Perhaps, after all, it is not surprising.  The Indians of the highlands have now for so many generations been neglected by their rulers and brutalized by being allowed to drink all the alcohol they can purchase and to assimilate all the cocaine they can secure, through the constant chewing of coca leaves, that they have lost much if not all of their racial self-respect.  It is the educated mestizos of the principal modern cities of Peru who, tracing their descent not only from the Spanish soldiers of the Conquest, but also from the blood of the race which was conquered, take pride in the achievements of the Incas and are endeavoring to preserve the remains of the wonderful civilization of their native ancestors.  Until quite recently Vilcabamba was an unknown land to most of the Peruvians, even those who live in the city of Cuzco.  Had the capital of the last four Incas been in a region whose climate appealed to Europeans, whose natural resources were sufficient to support a large population, and whose roads made transportation no more difficult than in most parts of the Andes, it would have been occupied from the days of Captain Garcia to the present by Spanish-speaking mestizos, who might have been interested in preserving the name of the ancient Inca capital and the traditions connected with it.