Page:The Incas of Peru.djvu/336

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296
FUNERAL OF TUPAC AMARU

'Ccollanan Pachacamac ricuy auccacunac yahuarniy hichascancuta.'
'O righteous God! behold how my enemies shed my blood.'[1]

According to the picture by Huaman Poma, the Inca was then thrown on his back, his arms and legs were held by two men, and a third cut his throat. There was a great and bitter cry from the vast multitude. The head was cut off,and stuck on a pole. The Inca's body was carried to the house of his mother, the Queen Cusi Huarcay. All the bells in the city were tolled. Next day the body was interred in the high chapel of the cathedral, the service being performed by the chapter. Pontifical mass was said by the good Bishop of Popayan. Next day all the funeral honours were repeated, and the masses were sung with the organ.

The Inca's head remained on a pole in the great square. Mancio Serra de Leguisamo passed that night in a house to the right of the cathedral. He awoke just before dawn and thought he heard

  1. These were certainly the last words of Tupac Amaru, as they were handed down in the family. Two eye-witnesses have told the story—Captain Baltasar de Ocampo, and Friar Gabriel de Oviedo, Prior of the Dominicans at Cuzco. The latter could not have heard what was said, because he had gone with the others to intercede with the Viceroy. Ocampo gives a childish speech about his mother having once put a malediction on her son for some naughtiness, and how the curse was coming true. He may have told a tale of the kind, but not at such a moment. Oviedo makes him deliver an address on the false nature of idolatry. This might have come from a monk in a pulpit, but not from a young man preparing for death. He could not speak Spanish.