because shamanic performance conflicted with the codification of Inca state
religion. At a local level, however, and at shaman-directed oracular sites, notably
Chuquipalta (also known as Yurac Rumi; see Vilcabamba), Vilcanota, and
Vilcacunga, hallucinogens were used to dispense answers to questions while
under the influence. To facilitate access to seeds and the fine wood elaborately
carved to make mortars (vilcanas), vilca may have been cultivated in
ecologically suitable places where it did not occur naturally. The word vilca also
signifies “sacred” in Quechua, raising the question of whether the tree gave rise
to the value of the sacred emotion or the reverse.
After the Spanish conquest, the psychoactive use of vilca underwent sustained
attack from the Catholic clergy. Shamanic behavior and the performances that
hallucinogens triggered were viewed as intolerable competition with Christian
belief in transubstantiation. A campaign led by the Jesuits, equating vilca use
with devil worship, succeeded in marginalizing and then suppressing vilca use.
As a result, public knowledge of the hallucinogenic use of vilca was largely lost
in the Andes before the end of the Colonial period. Some medical use of the
seed, which in low dosage acts as a purgative, continued into the twentieth
century.
Further Reading
Knobloch, Patricia J. “Wari Ritual Power at Conchopata: An Interpretation of Anadenanthera Colubrina
Iconography.” Latin American Antiquity 11, no. 4: 387–402, 2000.
Torres, Constantino Manuel, and David B. Repke. Anadenanthera: Visionary Plant of Ancient South
America. New York: The Haworth Herbal Press, 2006.
■DANIEL W. GADE
VILCABAMBA
Vilcabamba is both a province northwest of Cuzco and the name of two towns,
one established by the Spaniards and the other, Vilcabamba “La Vieja” or “the
old,” founded by Manco Inca, Huayna Capac’s son, in the aftermath of the Incas’
unsuccessful attempt to oust the Spaniards from Tahuantinsuyu, the Inca Empire,
in 1536–1537. After the failed siege of Cuzco, Manco Inca and his followers
fled into the province of Vilcabamba, initially settling in Vitcos, said to have
been founded by Manco’s great-grandfather, Pachacuti, a century or so earlier.
Vitcos, however, was vulnerable to Spanish attack, and so in early 1539, with the
Spaniards in pursuit, Manco and his followers fled into deepest Vilcabamba, a
two-day march from Vitcos.