The Men who Ate Gold ~ by Lesley Downer

Like a great cloud
The Wiraqochas [Whites]
Demanding gold
Have invaded us.         The Death of Atau Wallpa, Runasimi [Quechua] epic lament

                                           put into writing in the 18th century

Inca Emperor, Museo Inkaryi, Valle Sagrado

I was recently lucky enough to go to the enchanting country of Peru and was captivated by its extraordinary landscape and tragic history ...

The all-conquering Atahualpa
In November 1532 the emperor of all the Incas, Atahualpa, was marching south to his capital, Cusco, accompanied by an army of 80,000 men in a vast triumphal cavalcade. After a long civil war he had captured his half brother, the then Inca, and made himself emperor - Inca - of the whole vast land of Tawantinsuyu.

Deep in the mountains he ordered his men to pitch camp in a lush fertile valley outside the small city of Cajamarca. There were so many tents pitched across the hillside that it was like a city. Atahualpa and his women stayed in a beautifully-appointed residence a few kilometres away, at a hot spring where mineral waters hissed and bubbled out of the ground. There was a bathhouse, hot and cold running water and a garden. There he engaged in a ceremonial fast, took the waters and recuperated from a war wound.

Inca emperor and courtiers in a palace 
of Inca stonework, Museo Inkaryi

 Atahualpa was an incredibly impressive presence. His crown was a multi-coloured braid like a coronet from which hung the imperial fringe ‘of fine scarlet wool’ spreading across his forehead. When he travelled he was borne aloft in a gold litter with such majesty that people left the roads on which he passed and ascended the hills to worship and adore him. He was far too grand for his feet ever to touch the ground.

The Four Quarters of the World
His grandfather, the great emperor Thupa Inka, who died in 1493, had been an Alexander the Great, who expanded his territory across not just modern-day Peru but much of modern-day Ecuador and Chile, creating the empire of Tawantinsuyu, ‘The Four Quarters of the World’, which ran along most of the east coast of South America. 

This was an incredibly sophisticated empire with a network of roads built for llamas to walk on, carefully irrigated agricultural terraces, great monuments and

Performer depicting an Inca woman

public buildings of masonry, great blocks of perfectly smooth stonework that slotted together like pieces of jigsaw puzzle and were never toppled even by the most violent earthquake. The Incas were the last of a long line of peoples all of whom left their mark on Peru; the Inca themselves were only here for a hundred years.

After his grandfather’s and his father’s deaths, civil war broke out between various half brothers; the old man had had some sixty sons. Eventually Atahualpa proved victorious. Now the time had come to consolidate his empire and establish his rule.

He’d already had news of the extraordinary strangers who had landed on the coast.

The gold eaters
There are coming men who never sleep and who eat silver and gold, as do their beasts who wear sandals of silver. And every night each of these speaks with certain symbols; and they are all enshrouded from head to foot, with their faces completely covered in wool so that all that can be seen are their eyes.

Waman Puma, 16th century native chronicler 

Performer depicting an Inca 

The newcomers were pale and hairy. People soon realised that they were not half man and half beast, like centaurs, but sitting on enormous animals, the likes of which no one had ever seen before. Atahualpa also heard that they were pillaging the countryside and abusing the local people.

But there were not that many - 168. Atahualpa had bigger things to worry about. He was still tidying up pockets of resistance, issuing orders to his army, arranging the occupation of the newly-won empire, awaiting reports from his commanders in the south and planning his journey to Cusco. In fact one of his nobles on his way south had already met the newcomers and spent a couple of days with them. He had even given them stuffed ducks to eat and gifts of pottery.

 

Atahualpa, 14th Inca, 18th century portrait,
courtesy Brooklyn Museum/wiki commons

The Spanish sent representatives to Atahualpa, who agreed to meet their leader, the conquistador Francisco Pizarro, the following day in the central square of the town of Cajamarca. The town had been largely evacuated for the war. The barrack-like buildings that surrounded the square on three sides were empty. There Pizarro hid his men, horses and cannons. The 168 Spanish crouched in the shadows, awaiting the Inca, trembling with fear.

  
Showdown at Cajamarca

It was November 16th 1532.

Atahualpa arrived in a ceremonial parade. First came liveried men in chequered coats who sang as they cleared and swept the ground before him. Then came a troop of five or six thousand, almost all bearing only ornamental weapons. He left his main troops outside the town. He was not expecting an attack.

Gold and blue chequered cape
of feathers, Museo Larco, Lima

 
All the retainers wore large gold and silver discs like crowns. Eighty lords in rich blue livery carried Atahualpa’s litter on their shoulders. The timber ends were covered in silver and the litter was lined with multi-clouded parrot feathers and gleamed with plates of gold and silver. Atahualpa himself wore his imperial crown and a collar of large emeralds around his neck. A staff bearer carried Atahualpa’s royal standard with his personal coat-of-arms.

Perhaps Atahualpa was expecting this tiny contingent of men to be awestruck by the grandeur of his procession. He demanded that they return everything they had stolen since they had arrived in his kingdom.

Pizarro meets Atahualpa, by Waman Puma,
courtesy Wikimedia Commons

 But things did not go as expected. A Spanish friar stepped forward and started talking what must have sounded like nonsense to Atahualpa’s ears. He thrust a breviary - a service book - into the Inca’s hands. It must have been closed in some way. Atahualpa tried to open it and at first he couldn’t. He finally succeeded and stared at the pages, turning them over, not seeing the purpose of them. The Incas had no writing at this point. Then he tossed it impatiently onto the ground, looking furious.

 
‘By the grace of God’
It was the moment the Spanish had been waiting for. The Spanish Royal Council had issued a Requirement proclaiming that the newly discovered peoples should submit to God and the king of Spain and had declared that this Requirement had to be delivered before any bloodshed could take place. The friar screamed that Atahualpa had desecrated Holy Writ, giving the Spanish the excuse they needed to rush out and start killing.

What followed was a massacre. The Spanish, firing cannons, wearing armour and mounted on horses - none of which the Incas had ever seen - burst out of the barracks and into the square. The Inca troops were utterly panicked by the smoke and fire and steel and charging animals. Hundreds, trying to flee, trampled each other to death. The Spanish killed almost all the rest.

Portrait of Atahualpa, Museo Inka, Cusco

Atahualpa’s retainers gathered around him, protecting him and holding his litter high. When the Spanish sliced off their hands with their swords they heaved the litter up on their shoulders and when some were killed others rushed in to take their place. But eventually they were all slaughtered.

A Spanish soldier tried to kill Atahualpa but Pizarro parried the blow, shouting, ‘Do not kill him.’ Then he personally dragged the Inca emperor out of his litter by his hair.

As the Spanish records recount triumphantly, ‘And since the Indians were unarmed they were routed without any danger to any Christian.’ They later added, ‘It was by the grace of God, which is great.’

Gold, gold, gold!
Atahualpa was dragged off and imprisoned in a small room in Cajamarca. The Spanish were impressed with how very intelligent he was and what an able and resourceful man he was - obviously so if he’d won all these battles to make himself emperor. He was very curious about the Christian way of communicating by writing and spent his captivity learning Spanish, chess and cards.

Pizarro, Lima Cathedral

He quickly became aware of the Spanish obsession with gold. In fact he wondered whether they ate gold or were suffering from a disease for which gold was the only cure. To the Incas and the preceding peoples of Peru, gold and silver were beautiful materials from which to make marvellous objects. They were not interested in money, they had no money. They saw gold and silver as beautiful and even with religious significance.

 

Pachacuti, the great 9th Inca, Atahualpa's
great grandfather, in Cusco

Atahualpa offered to fill a large room, 22 feet long by 17 feet wide (6.7 by 5.17 metres), with gold objects and two equivalent rooms with silver in exchange for his freedom.

Even though he was imprisoned he was still emperor of his country. He ordered his general to strip Cusco of its gold and silver. He had never lived there - he’d grown up in the equatorial north - and had no attachment to it. Also it was the headquarters of one of his brothers who was of course his rival.

Between December 1532 and May 1553 caravans of precious objects crossed the mountains on llama-back to Cajamarca. When Atahualpa had fulfilled his part of the bargain and the rooms were full, Pizarro had it all melted down into ingots and shipped to Spain. Then he had Atahualpa garrotted and the Spanish marched on Cusco.

Cusco, Plaza de Armas

My sources are three wonderful books: The Conquest of the Incas by John Hemming; Cut Stones and Crossroads by Ronald Wright; and 1491: The Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann. Plus my own experiences of Peru.

All pictures except the Brooklyn Museum portrait of Atahualpa and Waman Puma's depiction of Atahualpa meeting Pizarro are mine.

Lesley Downer is a lover of all things Asian and an inveterate traveller. She is the author of many books on Japan, including The Shogun’s Queen, an epic tale of love and death, out now in paperback. And watch out for The Shortest History of Japan, out soon! For more see www.lesleydowner.com

Basketry by Janie Hampton

Bronislava and Jan Madejscy with their kablacok willow baskets, are part of the Slow Art in Poland movement, in Lucimia Village which is on UNESCO’s ‘intangible cultural heritage’ list. © Paulina Adamska, Serfenta Association, 2009.

Baskets have been part of our lives ever since humans first gathered fruit to eat. Since then, basketry skills have been used to make hats, water carriers, coffins, boats, furniture, lampshades and designer handbags.
Despite much speculation, the origin of the word ‘basket’ is obscure but is assumed to be from the early 13th C Anglo-French bascat. The Oxford English Dictionary’s earliest source is Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor published in 1602: ‘Look, here is a basket…. he may creep in here.’
Because baskets are used until they fall apart, and are then either burned or decay, they rarely feature in archeology. The earliest known baskets survived through chance – in fish-traps left behind in waterlogged ditches; in permafrost; or in desert caves.
Baskets have been found in Turkey from the neo-lithic period of 7500-5500 BC. They left only impressions in the mud after they were wrapped around the dead. In Fayum, near the Nile Valley in Egypt, there are no traces of dwellings left, but over 100 grain storage pits made between 5000 and 4200 BC reveal patterns from baskets made from wheat straw. One whole boat-shaped basket with colours and fine patterns was found in a grain pit in 1924. Its discovery raised the question: ‘Does its quality indicate that the value of grain was very high? Or was it first used for something of higher status, and then when it was half worn out, recycled as a grain scoop?’

Early 20thC basketmaker in Kent.  © Mary Butcher

Humans have always been good at adapting whatever they can find, to live more comfortably and safely. In the Peruvian Andes, the Spanish Conquistadors were astonished that the only way across deep gorges was by bridges made from rope. Designed over 500 years ago during the Inca Empire, the bridges were made entirely of grass. One keshwa chaca still survives, spanning the Apurimac River (‘The Great Speaker’). Only humans and llamas can cross it, but the tradition and skills are so important to the people that it is rebuilt every year using the same local qqoya grass and methods passed down to each generation. The grass has to be soaked and softened, then pounded by children, and spun into cords by women. Each household produces 40 arms-length of rope. Once about 7 kms of grass cord has been made, the men twist bunches of 24 cords into ropes. Old men then braid the cables, while the young ones stretch them across the channel. The bridge is completed with a deck of brushwood matting. The combination of grass - a material with little strength on its own, community effort, and the design of the keshwa chaca is a wonderful example of engineering friction, social cohesion and human ingenuity. As Ian Ewart writes, the process is ‘a nexus of social regeneration and reinforcement.’ 

Nassa fish traps from Gozo in the Mediterranean Sea,
made by the late Salvo ta Bertu from split Mediterranean cane
and a grass similar to esparto. © Geraldine Jones. 

Materials for baskets come from plants - trees, grasses, cacti, heathers – whatever grows near the maker. In the islands of northern Scotland, there are stones to build houses, but few trees to use as rafters to hold up the rooves. But there is plenty of heather, which can be twisted into ropes to hold the thatch, made of more heather. 

The first Girl Guide uniforms in 1910 included a wide brimmed hat woven from rush.
This was made by Jean Francis for Salt Cellar Workshops in Cornwall in 2019. 

During World War One, baskets were so important for transporting carrier-pigeons and medical supplies, and for observation-balloon baskets and even aeroplanes, that basket-making was a ‘reserved occupation’ and the War Office appointed a National Willow Officer. Mary Crabb relates that the artillery-shell basket had ‘a curious, slightly sinister cyclic quality about it. Woven to offer protection to objects of death and destruction – those injured by the shells were then taught to weave baskets as a means of therapy and rehabilitation.’ Basket making was found to be a therapeutic activity for shell-shock, requiring meditative repetition, hand-eye coordination and creating a sense of purpose with the finished product. The materials were cheap, and when imported cane ran out, wild roses and brambles were available in hedgerows. Also, it could be done in bed or a wheelchair. 

Basket weaving therapy at Seale Hayne Military Hospital, 1919.
Seale-Hayne Archives. © Margaret Rose Preston Estate. 

Angus MacPhee was a Gaelic speaker brought up on South Uist – a remote island on the Outer Hebrides. During the 1940s he developed schizophrenia and was sent to Craig Dunain Psychiatric Hospital in Inverness. An elective mute, he worked on the hospital farm where he invented his own therapy. He twisted and twined grass into yarn and then using only two pieces of broken fence wire, he looped, netted and stitched. He made coats, trousers, hats, boots and pouches, often interwoven with wild flowers and sheep’s wool from fences. Twice a year the hospital groundsmen tidied up his artefacts and burned them. He would watch apparently undisturbed, and make some more. A few pieces survived him, and basket-makers recognized the same looping techniques as used in 12th C socks found in a cave in Arizona, in Norse cultures, and by indigenous people of Australia today. 

A typical English fruit basket from the 1950s, designed for
occupational therapy and made of easily-manipulated cane. 

Basket making gained a bad name after the derogatory term ‘basket-case’ was coined in 1919, meaning someone who had lost both their legs in war and was now ‘useless’; and by the mid-20th century basketry’s association with the disabled and mentally ill meant its reputation declined. Recent research has shown the beneficial effects on brain injury and trauma that basketry can contribute to improving brain plasticity with sensory and motor signals, sequencing, recognition of mistakes and decision making.
Baskets have a protective role of containment and holding. ‘We are, after all, ’writes Hilary Burns, ‘nurtured in baskets from cradle to grave, literally from crib to coffin.’ 

Boks baskets from Vanuatu in South Pacific embody a rhythmic 
sequence of pandanus (pine palm) ribbons, passed down the generations. 

Whereas ’found materials’ or rubbish were originally used to make baskets for economic reasons, now basket makers use them to create political messages about sustainability. Lois Walpole used to buy rattan, until she realized the huge carbon footprint of transporting it across the world, and then dyeing it. Now she consciously uses only found materials such as disused packaging and ‘ghost gear’ – flotsam and jetsam from beaches- to make colourful, beautiful baskets and furniture. In the Shetland Isles she taught children to appreciate ‘ghost gear’ and not see it as ‘undesirable and untouchable but as something they could profit from as their forebears would have done [with grown materials]’. 

‘Ghost gear’ on Breckon beach, Isle of Yell. © Lois Walpole 

As more people buy plastic or factory-made baskets, the skills of different methods, knots, weaves and styles are dying out. In many places, only the oldest people still know how to make traditional baskets. A few basket historians, such as Geraldine Jones of Basketry & Beyond, have sought out these basket-makers in places like Malta, Cornwall, The Azores and Northern Spain.
We take basketry for granted but now historians, artists, anthropologists and mathematicians are revealing stories, structures and skills in basketwork. The Material Culture of Basketry: practice, skill and embodied knowledge is a beautifully produced book which will inspire anyone interested in the interdisciplinary history of crafts, knots, plants. The book’s 36 authors remind us that baskets are not just craftily-made containers, but also holders of knowledge, history and design; and the textures, patterns and geometric forms in basketwork express maths, art, culture and engineering. 

Geraldine Jones of Basketry & Beyond made this stainless-steel wire ball
following the mathematical pattern of a sepak raga football from Malaysia,
 usually made from split bamboo. © Geraldine Jones

The Material Culture of Basketry: Practice, Skill and Embodied Knowledge, Stephanie Bunn and Victoria Mitchell (Eds), Bloomsbury, 2020.

Unless otherwise stated, all photographs © Janie Hampton