Châu Đốc--the Diamond of the Delta

                                          by Jim Goodman

the fish statue at Châu Đốc

    As a border town 244 km west of Hồ Chí Minh City, Châu Đốc is a convenient stopover for travel to and from Cambodia.  But in addition, from here to the sea, no other area offers so many facets of the life and culture of the Mekong Delta—its ethnic composition, typical river activities and scenic attractions, including a bird sanctuary.  Châu Đốc lies on the Hậu Giang River, one of the major components of the Delta’s system, a waterway busy with cargo boats, fishing pirogues and floating houses.  At a riverside park a tall sculpture of a fish marks local appreciation of the town’s most important resource.

fishing around the pie

    From the fish statue the tip of the long, narrow Con Tiên Island is visible.  Just downriver is a covered market.  Further on lie riverside restaurants, where one can observe the variety of boat traffic.  Small pirogues, some pulled with oars, others fitted with a motor at the back end, ferry passengers across to the island shore, lined with houses on tall stilts.  Seeing these in the dry season gives a hint of how much the river swells during the rains.  Other pirogues hold one or two fishermen, who cast nets into the river.  Some of them will row right up to the piers and riverside balconies to catch fish around the supporting posts.

early morning floating market

   Upriver from the fish statue is the scene for another distinctive feature of Mekong Delta life—the early morning floating market.  Like the one near Cần Thơ, activity starts at dawn, peaks an hour after sunrise and dies down by mid-morning.  From the top end of each boat’s mast hangs a sample of the merchandise—bananas, coconuts, etc.—for sale on board.  Smaller boats carrying customers ply around and in between the market boats, as do pirogues hawking cooked food and refreshments.
   

floating houses on the Hầu Giang Riv

    Individual fishermen can usually count on decent results from their nets and traps, but the bulk of Châu Đốc’s fish comes from catfish farms managed by families living in houses floating on empty oil drums just off the eastern shore of Con Tiên Island.  Some of these are small, comprising one big room and a porch, but they can be quite pretty, painted in bright colors and festooned with potted flowers.  Large dwellings have an attached open-air balcony, where the residents lay out the fish to dry, while they keep the live ones in cages underneath.  Small dugouts convey people around the area.  For the motorized vessels a floating petrol station lies just downriver.

Vietnamese students ferried across theriver

    Most of Châu Đốc’s inhabitants are Vietnamese, largely descendants of immigrants during the 18th century, with a few Chinese Hoa neighborhoods near the markets.  Khmer and Chăm people still make up part of the city’s population and have their own villages near the town as well as further out in An Giang province. 
    The Chăm also settled here rather recently, like the Vietnamese.  They migrated from the east after the annexation by Minh Mạng of Panduranga, the last Chăm state in south-central Vietnam, and an unsuccessful revolt in the mid-19th century. The towering minarets and domed roofs of mosques identify the Chăm villages that lie on both sides of the river.  Unlike

Chăm girl near Châu Đốc

most of the Muslim Chăm who remained in the original homeland, the Chăm who moved into the Mekong Delta, and further on into Cambodia, follow a more orthodox version of Islam, heavily influenced by Sunni Islamic practice in Malaysia and Indonesia.  But they are a matrilineal society and thus the women are not so secluded as in other conservative Sunni societies. They keep their hair covered, but do not wear veils and are quite active in local commercial life.
    The small boats moored near the fish statue that take visitors on tours to the floating houses usually continue to a riverside Chăm village a few kilometers further.  The houses near the river stand on stilts that are at least two meters in length and long, narrow bamboo walkways connect neighborhoods.  During the dry season the space beneath the house is usually occupied by weavers, who work on handlooms to produce the distinctive brocaded pillowcases, scarves, towels and bedcovers characteristic of the Chăm textile tradition.
    Most of the village straddles the main road to the town.  Wooden houses with tiled roofs stand on tall stilts.  New mosques in the Arabian style, one white, one light green, lie on the other side of the road.  No market places exist here, but vendors sell vegetables, fruits and spices out of curbside wagons and Chăm women make and sell snacks at roadside stalls.

Chăm weaver

    Besides its own variety of attractions, Châu Đốc is also the starting point for short excursions to other sites in An Giang province.  The nearest and most popular, particularly for religious-minded Vietnamese, is Núi Sam, a temple-studded, 300 meter-high hill just five km outside of town next to the village of Vĩnh Tế.  The road from Châu Đốc terminates at the foot of the hill and the entrance to the grandest temple at Núi Sam—Chùa Tây An.
    The main building blends Chinese and Indian architectural motifs, featuring both angled roofs with upturned corners, as well as minaret-like towers with a dome at the top.  A rich, dark orange color dominates the walls, columns and roofs, with green trimming around the roof edges.  Statues of a broad range of Buddhist deities and guardian gods stand or sit at several interior altars, all lavishly decorated.

Chùa Tây An, Nús Sam

    On the other side of the road, a little further down, stands the more austere temple to Bà Chúa Xứ, a recent structure with gray concrete walls, tiered roofs of green tile and little exterior decoration.  But more devotees come here to honor this goddess, said to be able to tell one’s fortune, who is dressed in a red gown and peacock feathers.  According to one local legend, the stone image, a Khmer sculpture from the pre-Angkor period, originally stood at the summit of Núi Sam until the late 18th century, when Thai invaders tried to take it away.  But the image is said to have grown heavier and heavier and the plunderers had to abandon their efforts halfway down the hill.
    After their retreat an apparition claiming to be the spirit of Bà Chúa Xứ appeared to villagers and told them to summon nine virgins to move the statue.  That they did, but when they reached the foot of the hill the image once again became too heavy to move.  So they built the temple on that spot and housed it there.
    The origin and even the ethnic identity of Bà Chúa Xứ are still somewhat unclear.  To some she is a form of the Chăm goddess Po Nagar.  To others she is an incarnation of the Chinese Mazu, Goddess of the Sea and protector of sailors and fishermen.  Still others claim she was originally the wife of a late 18th century Vietnamese general, or one of Nguyễn Ánh’s Thai supporters during his war with the Tây Sơn regime.  Her name means Lady of the Realm and she has been invoked as a guardian of the border since the early Nguyễn Dynasty.

temple to the popular Bà Chúa Xứ

    In the popular view she is a goddess of prosperity, health, business success, fertility, domestic harmony, scholastic achievement and the secrets of the future.  Bà Chúa Xứ is the most popular goddess in the western part of the Delta, especially among female entrepreneurs, who form a large portion of the devotees who make pilgrimages to her temple.  Beginning on the 20th day of the 4th lunar month, the temple hosts a week-long festival in her honor, featuring pig sacrifices, rituals, operas, martial arts demonstrations, magic acts and stage performances, drawing hundreds of thousands of devotees and spectators.
    From her temple, continuing past smaller, rather gaudy temples, at the end of the one km-long road lies the lovely communal house Đình Vĩnh Tế, a classic Vietnamese building, with wide, tiered and tiled roofs, yellow walls and columns.  A path from here leads to the summit, passing various small temples and cave shrines on the way.  Sculptures of deities riding one sort of winged beast or another seem to dominate the sites.  At various points on the summit one can have a broad view of the plains, as well as Cambodia to the west and Núi Cấm to the south.  The latter is one of the Seven Mountains of An Giang province, the only part of the Mekong Delta between the Cambodian border and the river’s mouth that is not completely flat.

Trà Sư Bird Sanctuary

    Road 948, turning south just past Nhà Bàn village, runs past Núi Cấm, which is much higher than Núi Sam and offers a broader view.  On the way, the Trà Sư Bird Sanctuary lies a few kilometers off to the east.  A large, rectangular swamp with neat rows of tall trees, the sanctuary is dominated by egrets that cluster on the trees near the park entrance and nest deep inside the forest.  It’s possible to take a boat ride through the swamp, to view the nests high up in the trees.  Early morning and dusk are the most active times of day.
    Khmer villages also lie along the road to Núi Cấm.  They were the aboriginal inhabitants of the province, whose settlement perhaps dates back to the Funan Period, from the 3rd to 6th centuries.  The area was sparsely populated, and Châu Đốc hardly more than a small fishing village, until Vietnamese migration commenced in the early 18th century.  Cambodia was that century continuously convulsed by succession struggles among the royal family members.  Contending princes were never strong enough to win on their own, so sought outside assistance from their Thai or Vietnamese neighbors.  In the course of one such struggle, the victorious Khmer prince, to reward his Vietnamese allies, ceded Châu Đốc in 1757.  Vietnamese migrants did not displace the Khmer, but simply cleared land and established new villages in places not occupied by them.  Eventually they became the majority community and now comprise over 90% of the province’s population.

Khmer Buddhist temple near Núi Cấ

   Châu Đốc’s importance rose from 1815, when the Nguyễn Emperor Gia Long ordered the construction of a fort in the city and placed Thoại Ngọc Hầu in charge.  He oversaw the construction of the Vĩnh Tế Canal, connecting Châu Đốc with Hà Tiên on the coast.  The work took six years, employed 80,000 workers in harsh, often deadly conditions.  Upon completion the canal ran 91 km, was 25 meters wide and three meters deep.  Still in use today, it also ran right along the Vietnam-Cambodia border, fixing the frontier boundaries here once and for all.

unusual Khmer temple carving

    While few Khmer live in Châu Đốc or other provincial towns, their villages dominate the area around the Seven Mountains.  Khmer houses do not differ from those of their Vietnamese neighbors, but occasionally the village entrance features a gate in the style of the Angkor Wat monuments.  Fancy gates also stand at the entrance to the village temples, built in the Cambodian style, but differing somewhat from Khmer Theravada Buddhist temples in the coastal provinces of Trà Vinh and Sóc Trăng, the home of 70% of Vietnam’s Khmer community.  They feature taller columns around the building, supporting angled roofs with cone-shaped brick towers mounted on the top. A few ornate chedis stand in the temple courtyard.  Carved nagas—the giant serpents of Buddhist mythology—and the occasional odd image, such as a headless man with his face on his chest, adorn the compound buildings.
    Thus, in just a few days in and around Châu Đốc, a traveler can appreciate just about every facet of the Mekong Delta’s material and cultural life.  Here are floating fish farms and centuries-old rice fields, traditional religions like Buddhism, both Mahayana and Theravada, as well as Islam and Christianity, esoteric sects (Hòa Hảo, for example, has many followers in the area) and popular divinities like Bà Chúa Xứ, mountain views and flocks of birds, Vietnamese rural and river life, Khmer, Châm and Chinese communities.  No other destination in the Delta offers so much.                      

casting a net on the Hầu Giang River

                                                                      * * *

Learning to Use a Crossbow

                                                        by Jim Goodman

    I saw my first crossbow on the shoulder of a middle-aged Akha man in Saen Charoen Mai, northern Thailand, way back in 1988, as he sauntered down a trail into the thick jungle above the village.  I didn’t pay him much mind.  Everybody I knew there then used traps and long-barreled rifles to hunt, which was anyway already much less often than when they were all boys.  Many men still had crossbows, but mounted them on the interior walls and didn’t use them anymore.  And as I never again witnessed somebody carrying a crossbow into the forest, I lost interest.
    After a few years even the traps disappeared from the jungle, at least the ones for medium-sized mammals, which were also former crossbow targets.  Rare was the Akha hunter successful enough to bring home a wildcat, bamboo gopher, civet, pangolin or even squirrel, much less a boar or a barking deer.  The animals are now so rare that Akha men don’t even go looking for them anymore.  In fact, the hunting tradition everywhere has been largely reduced to trapping or shooting small birds and an occasional squirrel.

en route to the market, Lisu man with his crossbow

    But in Yunnan Province, China, from where most of Thailand’s hill people originated, the hunting tradition lasted until the government proscribed it in 1998.  Until then the Akha (in Yunnan called Aini) in Xishuangbanna and Pu’er Prefectures, as well as their neighbors the Lahu and Jinuo, were renowned hunters and crossbow users.  Now they’ve stopped.  But crossbows are still in use in Nujiang Prefecture in the far west.  Men carry them to the field and to the forests above their villages, make them at home and sell them in the markets.  Crossbows are still an integral part of life with the Lisu and Nu in the mountains along the river.

crossbow seller in Liuku making bolts

    I bought one myself in Liuku, the prefecture capital, on a trip in November 2001 with the assistance of a local Lisu friend.  Not knowing anything about them myself, I thought it better to have a native choose my first.  The bow part, or prod, was made from mulberry wood and the stock from mahogany.  My purchase included the bowstring, made of 4-ply hemp thread, 3 mm thick, plus an extra string, a small knife for sharpening the bolts, a bearskin quiver and about 60 bolts, in three bamboo tubes inside the quiver.  The bolts were 25 cm long, 6 mm thick and fletched near the end with a triangular piece of dried bamboo leaf. 
    Nujiang crossbows resemble those in other parts of Yunnan and work the same way, but the stock shape differs.  Those made by the Yi, Wa and Lahu have a bulge hanging down on the stock where the prod goes through.  Hani crossbows have a double bulge and the Jinuo model is straight, but has an angled section, like a rifle stock, at the end.  Nu and Lisu crossbow stocks are relatively straight, with only a slight bulge where the prod goes through the stock.
    The top of the crossbow stock had a groove 3 mm wide and 3 mm deep, about as long as the bolt.  The trigger, about halfway down the stock, was made of ivory (others are made of bone).  The user draws back the bowstring to a notch just above the trigger, then lays a bolt in the groove, aims and pulls the trigger.  This pushes up the bowstring and the force released propels the bolt.  I never did try it out while I was there that month and when it was time to return to Thailand I had a new focus.  I had to put up some sort of target

firing a bolt

in my yard, put the bowstring back on and try out my crossbow.  I had a specific reason for wanting to learn how to use it.  I intended to research Nujiang for the next few years for a book project, so it was good to become familiar with something so much a part of Nujiang culture.  I might even be invited on a hunting trip with my new friends in the mountains there.  But I didn’t really intend to become a skilled hunter and firing at targets in my yard has a limited run of excitement.  The real goal was to become proficient enough to one day take part in a certain crossbow demonstration during the Lisu Kuoshi Festival in late December.
    In the event, the young Lisu women, in their beaded headdresses and long skirts, stand in a row, each with a bowl of rice on her head.  A 15-cm bamboo tube inserted upright in the rice holds an egg perched on its top.  Their boyfriends stand opposite them about twenty meters away, level their crossbows and shoot the eggs off the girls’ heads.  I’d seen photos of this in books and quick shots of it in television documentaries about Nujiang, so I was well motivated to start becoming proficient.  My fantasy was to get so good at it that when Kuoshi came around and someone invited me to try firing his crossbow, I would fire it so accurately that a beautiful young Lisu woman would volunteer to be my partner in the local version of the William Tell act.

Lisu girl in her ethnic style

Lisu girl in Fugong  

     I should have gotten a lesson first while I was there in Nujiang, except I didn’t think my Chinese vocabulary was good enough to understand the instructions.  It’s easy enough to figure out how to fire it, but I had immediate problems, like how tautly should I twist the bowstring when I put it back on.  I had an old door in my shed, left behind by a previous tenant.  So I erected it in my yard, put some tape over the wood for something to aim at, cocked the crossbow, laid a bolt in the groove, aimed down the end of it like a shotgun and pulled the trigger.  In the blink of an eye the bolt shot forward and penetrated the door right up to the fletching at the end of the bolt.  It was quite wide of the tape, though, and when I tried a second shot I heard a loud twang, the bolt missed the whole door and the string flew off.
    So I re-tightened the bowstring, hooked the ends onto the bow, loaded up and tried again.  This time I hit the door, but still far from the target tape.  I continued to practice, sometimes getting close to the tape, usually not.  Neighbor children came to watch, to hand me a bolt after I had cocked the crossbow and help me fetch the bolts after I’d fired a few shots.  This got to be an almost regular 5 o’clock routine for the next couple weeks.  Eventually I hit the bulls-eye a few times, but several dozen tines I did not, nor did I ever get the bowstring taut enough not to fly off every now and then.  It was time to return to Nujiang for the Kuoshi Festival and I was nowhere near proficiency, but maybe I could meet someone at the crossbow event who could give me a proper lesson.

crossbow competition at the Lisu Kuoshi Festival

    Unfortunately, the Kuoshi schedule near Fugong, where I chose to see the festival, did not include the event that inspired me to take up the crossbow.  Rather than girls with eggs on top of their heads the men fired from about 50 meters at small, dangling, woven bamboo targets strung between two posts on the knoll.  And some of them weren’t much better than me.  As an experienced beginner, I knew what that loud twang meant, and whenever I heard it I didn’t look to see where the bolt had gone, but instead how far off the bowstring flew.  I asked folks where the traditional crossbow event took place, but no one seemed to know, though they all seemed pretty sure some place or other staged it.
    It was an enjoyable festival even without that particular show and I returned home feeling I had a whole year in which to both improve my skill and find out exactly where to go next Kuoshi.  But four days after I got back, when showing a friend how a crossbow works, I pulled the trigger and with an ear-splitting crack the stock broke, snapping apart right at the point where the prod goes through.  I then took out my magnifying glass to look at all the photos I had taken of crossbows in Nujiang to see what was different from mine.  I soon discovered why mine had broken.  The hole in the stock was too close to the top, with only a very thin bit of wood between the top of the hole and that of the stock.  That was precisely where it snapped.  Crossbows in my photographs had the same thickness of wood on either side of the hole.  Obviously my Lisu friend who had selected the crossbow was not a hinter himself.

hunters examining crossbows in Fugong

    Hoping to replace it with a local crossbow, I checked out the ones in the Night Bazaar, but they were not as well made, nor as long, nor were they sold with a set of bolts.  Like those in the villages themselves, these crossbows looked purely ornamental.  Until I could get back to Nujiang I had to satisfy my new passion by researching about crossbows instead of firing them.  I soon found out these Yunnanese crossbows were very different from those used in Europe in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.  And very unsophisticated compared to modern pistol-crossbows.
    The old European ones were heavier and used a thick rope for the bowstring.  Unlike the Nujiang crossbows, they couldn’t be cocked easily by hand.  Men had to use a geared winding apparatus called a rannequin to draw the bowstring back to the notch.  The stocks were sometimes decorated with carved figures and symbols, while scenes of hunting with crossbows were sometimes engraved on furniture.  Even after the introduction of rifles some hunters preferred crossbows because they were silent, did not require extensive cleaning or maintenance to use and had reusable ammunition.
    The high-tech crossbows sold nowadays use metal bolts.  They can be particularly lethal-looking, like the pistol-crossbows, or the one modeled on a 15th century Venetian style and called “the assassin’s crossbow.”  Seems like a perfect terrorist weapon, with an effective range of 2000 meters, though the advertiser does issue the disclaimer “not to be used in re-enactment.”  Other pistol-crossbow dealers, however, seem less concerned about the customer’s intentions.  One states that with the purchase you get “a starter kit that includes everything you need to begin target practice, or whatever you have in mind.”  

crossbow quarries--flying squirrels in Gongshan

Lisu hunter takes aim

    What I had in mind, of course, didn’t require a pistol-crossbow but a good, local Nujiang crossbow.  On my next trip to Fugong I waited for market day, carefully examined the crossbows on offer, selected one with the prod hole exactly in the center of the stock, and a whole bunch of new bolts, plus a deerskin quiver. It came with one of those poisonous aconite roots that Nujiang people sometimes use on their bolts.  They cut grooves near the tip and rub the juice from the root into the grooves.  In the past they did this when hunting big game and going to war.

testing my crossbow in Bingzhongluo

    I took my new crossbow up to Bingzhongluo, 45 km north of Gongshan, where I intended to see a Nu festival.  Because it had been raining all the time I was in Fugong County, I still hadn’t tested my new purchase.  So I decided to look for a spot near the town and when anyone asked me where I was going I told them I was going to look for flying squirrels.  The real reason would be a little problematic for me to explain in Chinese.
    I found a big tree just behind the town, inserted a square piece of paper in a loose piece of the bark, stood 30 meters away, cocked, loaded and fired.  I hit the tree a little bit left of the paper.  I aimed again, fired and got closer.  I made one more adjustment in my aim, fired again and pierced the paper exactly in the center.  So my new crossbow worked, shot straighter than the old one, had better bolts and I fancied I could get good at using it.  Maybe no Lisu shoot eggs off their girlfriends’ heads anymore at Kuoshi, but I could still get invited on a hunt with Lisu friends.  Perhaps we’d spot a flying squirrel and all go for it.  It would be wonderful to see the expression on their faces if I turned out to be the one who shot it down.  And they all missed.

painting in a Gongshan park pavilion

                                                                       * * *

Dance of the Swords—the Jingpo Munao Festival

                                                            by Jim Goodman

Jingpo girls at a Longchuan County fair

    Dehong Dai and Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture lies in the southwest corner of Yunnan Province, surrounded on three sides by Myanmar.  Besides the Dai who dominate the plains and the Jingpo,  Dehong is also home to Hua Lisu in the western hills and two smaller minority nationalities—the De’ang and the Achang.  Both of these peoples show heavy influence by their Dai neighbors in domestic architecture, agriculture and religion. The De’ang number close to 18,000, are dispersed in southern Dehong and reside in parts of Lincang Prefecture as well.  The Achang are more numerous, about 33,000, 90% of whom live in Lianghe and Longchuan Counties.  They have historically been more culturally important to Dehong because in Husa, their main cultural center, they produce the swords used by everybody in the prefecture.

    All but a few of Yunnan's 120,000 Jingpo live in the southwestern prefecture of Dehong, mostly in the mountains at 1500 meters or higher.  Across the border in Myanmar the Jingpo are the largest of six ethnic groups (including Lisu) that are classified as Kachin, a Burmese word.  They originated in the mountains along the eastern edge of the Tibet-Qinghai Plateau and migrated south to northern Myanmar and western Yunnan.  By the early 15th century they were numerous enough in Dehong that the Ming government created two autonomous Jingpo districts and appointed one Jingpo chieftain in each as hereditary headman (tusi).

elderly Jingpo wo

    The following century witnessed a great migration of Jingpo to Dehong's mountains.  They became the largest ethnic group in the hills and today comprise one-eighth of the prefecture's population.  Around that time they learned to use iron ploughs and grow rice, a major transition from their previous economy of hunting and gathering.  Living in the mountains where the soil is less fertile they generally resorted to the slash-and-burn style of farming.  Contemporary governments have been weaning them away from this form of agriculture by introducing terracing, fruit orchards and crop substitution--tea and sugarcane instead of rice.
     Most Jingpo settlements are ensconced in the forest or within bamboo groves and all but hidden from view.  Traditional houses were made of wood and bamboo with thatched roofs.  The walls were of plaited bamboo and a square hearth occupied the centre of the main room.  The house stood on stilts or had one end against the higher part of the slope.  This is still the norm in most areas, but brick housing, with tile roofs, like the Dai, are the current choice for any Jingpo family that can afford it.  These rest on the ground, while separate sheds house the animals.
    Jingpo men have a reputation as great drinkers, though not, it must be pointed out, as drunken revelers.  But alcohol is part of a social encounter and men often carry wine flasks and cups with them.  Both men and women chew tobacco, claiming it as an aid to digestion.  Women like to chew catechu and betel nut, too, which darkens their teeth.  In the old days this was considered a sign of beauty.  The younger generation prefers sparkling white teeth though, and that particular Jingpo custom seems destined for desuetude.

Jingpo female clothing style

decorative rattan hoops

    The Jingpo still like their ethnic style of clothing, even if most reserve it for special occasions. Women make or weave the components, though nowadays the woman's wraparound skirt is more likely to be made on a knitting machine, if woolen, or a power loom, if cotton or silk. In the past during dry season they sat in the yard or on the porch with a back-strap loom hooked on to a house post.  Older women usually wear dark sarongs and jackets, while younger women wear red, with yellow trim and inlaid patterns, or a multi-colored piece with many intricate, inlaid patterns.
    The side-fastened, long-sleeved velvet jacket is plain black, but on special occasions- a Jingpo woman wears one covered with silver ornaments:  three rows of big half-globes, stitched around the collar, shoulders and back.  At the bottom of these rows hang many thin, flat pendants on chains.  These drop down to the midriff in front and below the shoulder blades in back.  A few round, embossed discs may also be attached to the bottom of the front of the jacket.  To complete her outfit the Jingpo woman wears a red woolen tubular hat and a dozen or more lacquered rattan waist hoops.

Jingpo monument in Yingjiang

    The men don't dress up so colorfully, even on festival days.  The older men tend to wear the older styles of Han clothes, the younger ones contemporary urban fashions.  On special occasions they will don a black vest and a white turban, the ends colored with many small, attached pompoms.  They also carry the Jingpo shoulder bag, of red wool, black strap, and covered in front with silver bulbs and pendants on chains just like the woman's jacket.  A sword, with a straight edge and no pointed end, in a decorated scabbard (more than likely made in Husa) is the final item. Traditionally, Jingpo men carried the sword at all times, for use in defense (rarely necessary) and as a cutting tool for chopping everything from trees to sugar cane.
    Besides these uses, the sword was and still is an essential part of the men’s outfit during the annual Munao Festival.  Groups of men wield their swords in stylized, synchronized patterns as part of a ritual dance.  Because of this Jingpo custom the people of Dehong have a saying, “The Achang make the swords; the Lisu climb the swords; the Jingpo dance the swords.”  Munao is a celebration of being Jingpo and the sword’s very prominent visibility in the event reflects its importance to the Jingpo cultural identity.   

"dancing the swords"

    In Jingpo mythology Munao is something people staged in gratitude for some favor or another.  Its origin is as old as that of the people themselves.  When the divine parents of Ning Gawn Na, the mythical Jingpo progenitor, lay in their deathbed, they instructed their son to give them a good sending off ceremony for their souls.  Then they would metamorphose into Heaven and Earth and Ning Gawn Na would become fully human and father the Jingpo race.  A proper send-off could only be a Munao Zongge, Jingpo words for "let's dance together."  But Ning Gawn Na did not know the dance, for the only performers were the children in the Kingdom of the Sun.
    One day, however, Grandfather Sun invited a representative of the bird community to the dance.  A sparrow attended and when he returned home he taught the other birds.  The peacock took on the lead singing role and the hornbill organized the choreography.  Ning Gawn Na and his wife happened to be watching and they took the dance home and taught others.  A wild boar cleansed the corral for them and two Han brothers sent a dragon robe for the dance leader to wear.  The Munao performance made the Jingpo more united, courageous and intelligent and so they have continued to stage it ever since, for four days beginning the full moon of the first lunar month.

the Munao dance

     Munao symbolizes the solidarity of the Jingpo people, so many separate villages join to celebrate it at one of the major festival sites such as the hills of Laying township, near Zhangfeng, and the knoll beside the Yunyan Pagoda on the outskirts of Yingjiang.  The latter keeps the Munao poles up all year, plus a wooden hall with a buffalo skull mounted over the front door.  Nearby, a white statue of a Jingpo man using his crossbow stands on a tall pedestal beside the pond.  Since it is beyond the urban area, and even the adjacent Dai village, the Yingjiang Munao grounds has a very rural atmosphere.
    Because it is the prefecture capital, Luxi (also known as Mangshi) hosts Munao in a big way, converting the athletic stadium into the staging grounds.  A large corral is constructed, with gates at two sides and viewing platforms for the spirits at the other two sides.  In the center the Jingpo erect four tall poles, painted with designs symbolizing aspects of their history and economic life.  Small paintings at the top of mountains, for example, represent their mythical Himalayan origin.  The crossed swords separating the two middle pillars remind them of their past battles, both against wild animals and human enemies.

Jingpo type of woodwind

    At the base of the pillars in front stands a large drum, beaten during the dance to signal the pace and rhythm.  To either side of this are gongs mounted in racks.  Behind the pillars sits an orchestra, mostly of horns and woodwinds.  Its members dress in fancy white coats with epaulets, black trousers and Jingpo headscarves.  When the dance begins they play, sometimes with a singer accompanying them, sometimes without.  Occasionally they pause and let an a cappella singer take the microphone or allow a long solo performance.  Usually the soloist plays the flute or a specifically Jingpo instrument comprising a buffalo horn attached to a bamboo flute, which makes a sound similar to the woodwind instrument played in funeral processions.
    Munao lasts four days, with one 90-minute dance in the morning and one in mid-afternoon.  On the third night the bigger host venues like Luxi will present a stage show of songs and dances of both Jingpo and Dai, young troupes and middle-aged ones.  A Lisu dance and the Wa Hair Dance may be included for good

preparing refreshments

Munao dance leader

measure. A great number of Dai attend Munao, dressed in their best brocaded sarongs, their jackets pinned together with filigreed gold butterflies.  A few Dai and Jingpo women take advantage of the event to open stalls by the stadium entrance, selling sarongs, silver ornaments, shoulder bags and Husa swords.  Only a few Dai participate in the dance, though, preferring to watch from the grandstand or outside the corral.
    Explosions and strings of firecrackers announce the beginning of the dance.  The corral is empty, save for the orchestra, which strikes up its first tune.  Then, slowly rocking in a two-step as they advance, the long line of dancers enters through the gate, led by four men in red or gold silk "dragon robes," like the ones presented by the Han brothers at the first Munao.  They hold their swords upright in front of them.  On their heads they wear painted, split-bamboo helmets that symbolize the origin of Munao.  On the sides wild boar tusks are attached, to remind them that the boar cleansed the first festival corral.  Affixed to the top of the helmet is a hornbill beak, in honor of the organizer of the Birds' Munao, from which the Jingpo learned the dance.  As a plume, the helmet uses feathers of the peacock and the hornbill, the singer and emcee at the Birds' Munao.

Munao at Luxi, the prefecture capital

    The line keeps to the corral railing until it has gone all the way around, then begins a more sinuous route in the open space around the poles. Eventually this fills up, too, and near the end of the dance the robed priests simply march back and forth in front of the drum. 
    Hundreds of Jingpo are by now in line, a group of women, then a group of men, with women slightly more in number.  Every variation of the Jingpo sarong is on display, including the tight, red woolen miniskirt version.  Men hold their swords aloft and sling the silver-laden bag over their shoulders.  Women wave fans or kerchiefs as they dance.  Outside the line, women attendants pour cups of rice-beer from bamboo containers to refresh the dancers.  And when the dance concludes, much of the crowd stays in the corral, snapping photos of each other now that they're dressed in their Jingpo best.  This is, after all, a festival that glorifies their ethnic identity, that reminds them no matter how much or how little they have assimilated into the modern world, this is who they all really are.

posts and priests of the Jingpo Munao

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Trujillo—the Culture Capital of Peru

 
                                               by Jim Goodman

colonial architecture in central Trujillo

    Peruvians call the northern coastal metropolis of Trujillo “City of Eternal Spring” for its fine weather and balmy temperatures all year round.  They also consider it the Capital of Peru’s Culture.  It is the center of the elegant, traditional courtship dance known as the marinera.   It is the birthplace of the breed of Peruvian horse called Paso, with its distinctive ambling gait, the breed overseers preferred on the big sugarcane and cotton plantations of days past.  Several of the country’s famous writers and artists hailed from Trujillo and the city plays host to various cultural events and festivals each year.  The city center features many fine churches, government buildings and mansions from the colonial era.  In addition, it is close to the impressive ruins of important pre-Inca civilizations—the Moche and the Chimú.

totora boats on the sea

    With about 800,000 inhabitants, Trujillo is Peru’s third largest city.  It lies along the Moche River about four kilometers from the sea.  The beaches here are renowned as top-grade surfing venues.  But even when the waves are too slight for surfboards the beaches are still interesting for the caballitos de totora—“little horses of the bulrush reeds.”  Long and narrow, with upturned prow, the paddler and passenger seated near the back, these reed boats have supposedly been in use about three thousand years and reflect the basic geographical fact of seacoast settlements:  they
are a long distance from the wood of any forests, which are only in the mountains.    

totora boats on the shore

    Trujillo also lays claim to being the first new city established by the Spanish after their conquest of the Inca Empire and seizure of Cusco.  Pedro de Amalgro established the town in late 1534, a few months before the founding of Lima.  He named it Trujillo of New Spain, after the birthplace of his boss, Francisco Pizarro, the conquistador-in-chief.  Three years later Trujillo became the first city granted official recognition by King Charles I, who also bestowed a coat-of-arms, another first in colonial Peru.  In the early 19th century Trujillo became a major hotbed of anti-colonial sentiment and was the first city to declare independence from Spain.  It was also briefly the first capital of the Republic of Peru.
    Amalgro chose a site along the Moche River, one of those rivers that tumble down from the Andes and punctuate the coast of northern Peru, providing a strip of fertile land through a landscape that is otherwise desert.  Previous settlers, like the Moche and the Chimú, had extended this land with irrigation systems and the Spanish did the same.  In time, large plantations appeared, raising cotton and sugarcane.  In recent times this has included rice and asparagus and Trujillo is one of the world’s leading asparagus exporters.
    But the city’s history is not one of continued growth and success.  Geo-physically, northern Peru is a volatile place.  The weather may continue dependably for a long time and then suddenly undergo a spell of violent alterations, like severe drought and high winds that create monstrous sand dunes. Moreover, the entire Pacific Coast is on a major tectonic fault line and no place is completely safe from the threat of earthquakes. In 1619 Trujillo suffered near-total destruction from an earthquake, which also killed nearly half the city’s population.
    In the late 17th century drought and pestilence caused a steep decline in agricultural production.  Meanwhile, the city was vulnerable to pirate raids until a defensive wall went up, with a 5.5 km-long perimeter.  It remained until the end of the 19th century, when it was removed to make way for the city’s expansion.  Problems with the weather returned next century.  Flash floods afflicted Trujillo in 1701, 1720, 1728 and 1814, as well as two more earthquakes, in 1725 and 1759.

Huaca del Sol--Pyramid of the Sun

    What the frustrated conquerors and colonists didn’t realize at the time was that such disasters were a common thread to the history of the area since long before the Spanish arrived.  The periodic weather phenomenon known as el Niño drastically altered living conditions throughout the history of the settlement of northern Peru, sometimes destroying whole civilizations.  This was probably the case with cultures in the area that rose and fell prior to the beginnings of the more durable Moche culture (also known as Mochica), which began around 100 C. E.

Moche warriors, Pyramid of the Moon mural

    There was never a true Moche empire, but rather a common culture shared by a number of autonomous states.  The largest and most important of these was in the Moche River valley, but Moche cultural influence extended for 400 kilometers along Peru’s northern coast and up to 80 km inland.  Fishing was important to the local economy, but the society was basically an agricultural one, dependent on extensive use of irrigation.  This reliance led to a highly stratified society of an elite class able to direct the irrigation work and organize the defense of the state and the rites of religion designed to keep the entire system going.
    Scholars reckon Moche culture flourished from the 4th to mid-6th centuries, characterized by monumental construction projects and outstanding achievements in ceramics, textiles and mural painting.  The most impressive monument was the Huaca del Sol, or Pyramid of the Sun, 50 meters high and 340m by 160 m at the base. It stood beside the biggest Moche urban center, a few km from present-day Trujillo, next to the volcanic peak of Cerro Blanco..  Erected in the mid-5th century, it was the largest adobe structure in all of pre-Columbian America, utilizing over 130 million bricks made in over 100 communities.  Moche rulers conducted state rituals here, lived and were buried here, while the smaller Huaca de la Luna, Pyramid of the Moon, saw service as a religious center and burial site for the religious elite.

Moche god Aiapaec--the Decapitator

    The exteriors of both temples originally featured brightly colored murals, only traces of which remain, due to the effects of the weather over the many centuries after they were abandoned.  The Pyramid of the Sun suffered from vandalism, especially by the Spanish, but the Pyramid of the Moon is better preserved.  Interior walls, platforms and even brick staircases feature mural paintings and low-relief sculptures, brightly painted, depicting gods, warriors, mythic tales, serpents, spiders and other animals, real and mythological.  One of the most common, and striking portraits is that of the chief Moche deity Aiapaec.  He was their Creator god, provider of food and water, but also the Punisher.  Usually artists only painted his fierce face, but sometimes they showed his whole body, a sword in one hand and a severed head in the other.  Archaeologists later nicknamed him the Decapitator. 

Moche mural, Huaca de la Luna

    Moche religious practice could be pretty brutal.  Excavators at Moche ruins have found plenty of evidence of human sacrifice, even torture, with severed heads offered to Aiapaec.  Apparently Moche religion included the belief that because the flow of irrigated water was so important to the life of the nation, it had to be magically aided by the flow of human blood.  As for the victims, some scholars argue they were members of the local elite who lost in ritual battles, while others postulate they were warriors captured from rival tribes, like the Aztecs’ victims. 
    The masses of simple farmers and fishers who made up the non-elite were probably not affected by these ritual slaughters.  They carried on their daily chores and at the same time developed the arts of weaving and pottery to unprecedented levels.  With simple back-strap looms that are still in use today, Moche weavers created cloth made from vicuña and alpaca wool that, in the few extant samples, display intricate inlaid patterns and fine pictorial representation.  But it’s the ceramic work that is the Moche culture’s finest achievement.
    Much more of Moche pottery has survived than its textiles or murals.  And most of it was found intact in burial sites.  Go to a museum anywhere in Europe or the Far East to see ancient ceramics and you see pieces that are patched together from several dozen shards.  But Peruvian ceramics are in such good

Moche ceramics--fishing motif

condition it’s like they just came out of the artisan’s shop.  While the Moche and others apparently created molds to reproduce a particular piece, those that wound up in common people’s houses are all lost, while those interred with corpses never broke or shattered.  Or perhaps they created unique pieces for burials, for when visiting all the museums in Peru you won’t find two pieces exactly alike.
    Moche potters used few colors, mainly rich red and creamy yellow, but the range of their subject matter was extremely broad.  Virtually every activity of daily life found expression in their ceramics, as well as the plants and animals of their environment.  Besides farming, fishing and fighting, this included sexual acts like masturbation, fellatio and anal sex.  But even more impressive is Moche portraiture pottery, featuring faces based on real people, even those born with deformities.   
    In the mid-6th century Moche country suffered from severe climatic changes that included thirty years of heavy rains and floods, followed by thirty years of drought.  This not only destroyed much of the elaborate irrigation system but also undermined the religious belief that sacrifices assured the stability of the weather.  Moche culture survived for more than two more centuries, but in an attenuated form, while the days of building gigantic temple structures was over.  Much of their material culture, in agricultural techniques, arts and crafts, passed on to their successors, the Chimú, who set up their state of Chimor in the late 9th century. 

porno pottery

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ceramic Moche portrait

    This eventually became a much more sophisticated and organized state than anything the Moche had experienced.  The Chimú expanded agriculture by linking valleys with great hydraulic projects.  They built large cities and elaborate defensive works, carried on maritime trade with areas beyond their realm on the Pacific Coast, inherited and developed the Moche traditions in ceramics, weaving and metal-working, and eventually expanded to rule an empire that encompassed the former Moche realm as well as south all the way to Lima.
    The Chimú imperial capital was Chan Chan, 5 km west of modern Trujillo, in a well-watered part of the Moche Valley.  Founded around 850, it grew to cover an area of 20 square kilometers and was the largest adobe city in the world, housing at least 30,000 residents.  As Chimor expanded, developed an administrative bureaucracy and its capital became a major trading center, Chan Chan’s original core of palaces, citadels, temples and burial chambers added marketplaces, storehouses for goods and new neighborhoods for the merchants and crafts workers who came to live there.  Walls featured decorations like carved fish, crabs, birds and other animals and reservoirs were built adjacent to its southern walls.

the ruins of Chan Chan

    The peak of Chimor’s power came in the late 14th century, but in the 1460s it suffered defeat and conquest by the Incas, less than three generations before the Spanish came and started conquering everybody.  Chan Chan was already a deserted city by then.  But after the Spanish got over their initial sense of wonder they did not try to resurrect it as a city but built their own nearby at Trujillo.  Of course, anything so impressive as a former royal capital meant it was probably sure to hold lots of buried treasure like gold ornaments.  So the Spanish systematically looted it.  They also diverted the Moche River to flood the base of the Moche Pyramid of the Sun to loot its tombs more easily.
    There’s a limit to how long an economy can subsist on the plunder of ancient valuables, for eventually the search stops yielding.  Trujillo’s ultimate success lay in its development of agriculture, fishing and coastal maritime trade, just like Chimor.  And to ensure that success, the Spanish copied the hydraulic engineering and irrigation systems first put into place by their Moche and Chimú predecessors. 
    Nowadays Trujillo’s economy has developed beyond fishing and farming.  Shoes and leather goods are an important sector.  But even more important is the burgeoning tourist business, which always promotes visits to the Moche and Chimú ruins, for it was the achievements of these ancient peoples that provided the model for Trujillo’s establishment and success.  Centuries after their demise, the legacies of the Moche and Chimú are still major components of the culture of Trujillo.

Chimú gold funerary mask

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The Living Inca Town of Ollantaytambo

                                                                   by Jim Goodman

Ollantaytambo and Pinkuylluna Mountain

    North of Cusco, the pre-colonial capital of the Inca Empire, the Urubamba River flows through a stretch of the Andes Mountains, from Machu Picchu to Pisac, that once constituted the Sacred Valley of the Incas.  Today it is one of the major tourist attractions in Peru, featuring magnificent scenery, the ruins of ancient fortresses and temples and spectacular terraces clinging to the sides of steep mountain slopes.  The most popular site in this valley, embodying all these characteristics, is of course the World Heritage Site of Machu Picchu.  The rest of the valley tourists usually cover in a separate day’s excursion.

mother and child, Ollantaytambo

    For all its stunning beauty and intrinsic interest, though, Machu Picchu is a ruin, a vestige of history, uninhabited for centuries.  About 45 km downriver, however, lies the vibrant town of Ollantaytambo, home to over 10,000 residents, most of them Quechua-speaking descendants of the people who founded the town hundreds of years ago.  At an altitude of 2800 meters, it lies along the Patacancha River near its confluence with the Urubamba, in between the two mountains Tamboqhasa and Pinkuylluna.  The original checkerboard grid of straight streets in between these mountains is intact and many of the houses are a few hundred years old.  Their occupants no longer celebrate the old Inca festivals, for they converted to Christianity after the Spanish conquest, but in most aspects, their material life differs little from the days of the Inca Empire.  They also still dress in traditional style, with colorful skirts, hats and ponchos that enhance the atmosphere of any stroll around the vicinity.
    The town was an important Inca religious center and boasts several archaeological attractions.  Besides its collection of temple and fortress ruins, ancient terraces and stone streets, Ollantaytambo is the site of a sculpture unique to the Inca realm—a carved head of the god Wiracocha, 140 meters high, on the cliffs of Pinkuylluna Mountain.

taking a break in the town square

  In Inca mythology Wiracocha is both the Creator God and a Culture Hero who introduced the people to language, songs and seeds, taught them which plants were edible, which medicinal and which poisonous, as well as how to make clothing and other useful knowledge.  At Ollantaytambo he gave the people his staff, on which was inscribed all this knowledge.  In return, the people carved his image high up the cliff of Pinkuylluna.
    Only the head is really sculpted.   But the shape of the mound above it suggests the burden the god always carried with him on his travels around the world.  The brow is wrinkled in a way that suggests both admonishment and

the face of Wiracocha

watchfulness.  The eye stays in shadow even as the sunrays hit the rest of the face until about 2:30 in the afternoon, when the light hits the eye and Wiracocha “wakes up.”  He has a long nose and ears and a full beard.  On the top of his head he wears the hat of an Inca astronomer-priest—round with a cylindrical protrusion at each corner.  Equally high up on another slope behind this image is Wiracocha’s temple.   On the summer solstice day the first light to peep through the mountains strikes first the hat and then the temple.
     On Tamboqhasa, the other mountain flanking the Patacancha River, ancient stone terraces climb up from the base to a spur housing temple ruins and a former fortress.  In a landscape dominated by mountains and little relatively flat, alluvial land for farming, stone terraces extended the area for cultivation and kept the valleys free from the danger of landslides.  Builders cut stones of different sizes and angles and fitted them together to produce the best possible structures for both water retention and drainage systems. 
    In the beds of these terraces they first laid a layer of pounded gravel, then a layer of sand and afterwards filled it with topsoil carried up from the valley.  This prevented waterlogged soil from expanding and bursting the retaining walls.  The stones in these retaining walls heated up during the day and then, during the cool nights, transmitted this heat to the soil.  This kept the plant roots warm even when the temperatures plunged to frosty levels.  Farmers generally used them to grow corn, potatoes and quinoa, a cereal grain.

terraces of the Astral Llama on Tamboqhasa Mountain

    But if the terraces didn’t yield the expected amount of these crops then the farmers first planted some corn.  When the corn stalks started getting tall they planted beans, which grew around the stalks.  The bean plants also enriched the soil by adding nitrogen to it.  Finally, in the open spaces left, they planted squash, which kept the soil moist and more or less weed-free.  The Inca stone terraces (other fine examples are at Machu Picchu and Pisac) enabled the Urubamba Valley to become a major food producer for the Inca Empire.
    They also had cosmological significance.  Terraces were not just built wherever it was physically feasible.  Probably under the direction of the local priest-astronomers, farmers constructed terraces and laid out their cities on that part of the terrain that resembled a certain animal or constellation.  In Ollantaytambo’s case, the terraced area of the lower slope of Tamboqhasa represents the Astral Llama.  Viewed across the valley from the slope of Pinkuylluna, it does have that shape, with the head of the animal to the left, where the ruins of the Astral Llama’s shrine stand. 

the main residential area

    This practice of ordering the terraces along lines resembling sacred concepts extended to the residential area as well.  With its parallel streets spaced evenly apart, urban Ollantaytambo was to resemble an ear of corn, the area’s most important crop.  The town itself, along with its farms on the alluvial fan between the bases of the two mountains and the Urubamba River, is laid out like the constellation of the Tree of Life, with the trunk being the narrow part between the two mountains.  This was also the case with Pisac, where the terraces, temples and fortress were on a mountain supposedly resembling the condor, and of Machu Picchu, where the settled part was shaped like a caiman, a South American alligator, and the mountain behind it was a crouching puma.

the House of Dawn--Pacaritampu pyramid

    Not all Inca terraces were the big and sturdy, highly visible, stone staircase types that climbed up the flanks of mountains.  A much more subtle arrangement characterized the terraces that made up the pyramid of Pacaritampu--the House of Dawn—on the western part of the fan of alluvial land in front of Ollantaytambo.  It’s not a pyramid in the Egyptian style, or even like the temple-pyramids of the Aztecs and Maya.  In fact, it is only 32 meters high, occupying an area of 150 hectares.   Even when standing on the flat, trapezoidal top of it one would not realize it was a pyramid at all, for its sides appear to be but faintly declining slopes.

the "windows" of Pacaritampu

    The only way to see the entire pyramid and appreciate its design is by ascending high up Yanaqaqa Mountain across the stream south of the pyramid.  Near the summit of Yanaqaqa, where the apus, or mountain spirits, make their abode, where the Andean snow peaks are visible just across the valley, is the observation point known as the Gate of the Sun.  From here the pyramid, lost in the landscape from points further below, seems to dominate its environment.  It was from way up above it here that the original designers planned and supervised its construction. 

the abode of the mountain spirits

   The Incas called the pyramid the House of Dawn because of the special effects of the first light of dawn on certain key days of the year.  Each ridge of the pyramid is aligned with the position of the sun at dawn on the summer and winter solstices and the spring and autumn equinoxes.  Along the base on the southern side are two recessed, rectangular niches that represent the “windows” of the temple.  According to Inca religious belief, these symbolized passageways to the secret, the sacred and the spiritual and thus to the very heart of knowledge.  On the winter solstice the first beam of light falls across the southern side of the pyramid and lights up one of these windows, while the rest of the pyramid, and the valley as well, are still swathed in shadow.  On the summer solstice the first beam of sunlight hits the truncated top of Pacaritampu and runs right down the center of the western side.
    The Incas built the House of Dawn here because the site was associated with the mythical founding of the Inca nation.  Thus the ‘dawn’ of the temple’s name also implied the birth of the Inca empire and the “dawn’ of a new era.  The first emperor, Manco Capac, was supposed to have been standing at one of the windows at dawn when he was unexpectedly illuminated by the first sunrays.  He did not establish his capital here, though, but instead moved over the mountains 85 km away and founded the royal city of Cusco.

ruins of the fortress above the town

    For a century or so the Inca realm was limited to the area around Cusco.  In 1440 they won a great victory over the Chanca, their main local rival, and from then on embarked on a course of rapid expansion that in less than a hundred years gave them control over an empire from Quito down the coast halfway into modern Chile.  The Spanish began invading and conquering this territory in the 1530s.  Having captured and killed the Inca emperor the year before, the conquistadores occupied Cusco in 1533 and installed a puppet emperor there, who died soon and was succeeded by the young Manco Inca.  He was initially cooperative, but in a short time soured on the Spanish, fled Cusco and from his new home base in Ollantaytambo in 1536 raised the banner of revolt. 
    Assembling a large army Manco Inca laid siege to Cusco, but could not capture the city.  The Spanish counter-attacked the Inca stronghold above the city and forced Manco Inca to retreat.  But other Inca generals occupied neighboring highland areas and annihilated Spanish relief forces.  Though they failed to capture Lima they were still a formidable force and a grave threat to Spanish control.  So the Spanish decided to try to end the deadlock with a direct assault on Ollantaytambo.  Commanded by Hernando Pizarro, the force comprised 30,000 Indian warriors and 100 Europeans, 30 of them infantry and 70 cavalry.  Manco Inca had about the same number in his army, manly made up of conscript local farmers and a large number of recruits from the Amazon rain forests.

Manco Inca

    He had prepared his defenses well, fortifying the eastern approaches and rechanneling the Urubamba to crisscross the valley and provide extra lines of defense.  The Spanish-led forces thus had to cross streams several times, encountering fierce resistance at each point.  The bulk of Manco Inca’s army confronted the enemy on the terraces of Tamboqhasa.  To hinder the cavalry, the Inca commanders released water from hidden channels to flood the plain.  When the horses got bogged down in the rising water the Inca warriors counter-attacked.  Realizing the peril his forces were now in, Pizarro called off the attack and retreated to Cusco.
    Encouraged by his victory, Mano Inca launched another expedition against Cusco.  But the Spanish ambushed his forces at night.  Shortly after, a large Spanish contingent returned to Cusco from campaigns in Chile and Manco Inca decided Ollantaytambo was too close to Cusco in the new situation and moved west to Vitcos.  Pursued by a Spanish army, he escaped to the even more remote location of Vilacabamba and died shortly afterwards.
    The Spanish took possession of Ollantaytambo and put the entire population to work in the mines.  They did not force them out of the town, nor replace their houses with colonial villas.  But they did not let them farm and so the people stopped using the terraces.  Centuries later, when Peru became independent and the people of Ollantaytambo could go back to agriculture, they did not revive the use of the ancient terraces, but made new farms on valley lands.  The stone terraces still perform their other function, that of preventing landslides.  They also provide a constantly visible reminder of Ollantaytambo’s days of glory, when it was one of the famous jewels of the Sacred Valley of the Incas. 

the main battleground in the Spanish assault on Ollantaytambo

                                                                            
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