Encyclopedia of the Incas

until they eventually reached the Inca king. On special occasions the Inca king
joined the dance. Another dance involved the Inca ruler flanked by two noble
women, performing intricate turns and loops with continuously joined hands.
The dancers moved rhythmically toward and away from the same place. The
accompanying songs were festive praise of the Inca and his past exploits.
Funeral rites for an Inca king or curaca (ethnic lord) involved dirges
accompanied by lamenting dances and days-long processions accompanied by
drums, flutes, and sad singing that lauded the heroic deeds of the deceased. The
death of an Inca king heralded particularly majestic, solemn dances performed
by his elegantly adorned men and women servants. After vigorously dancing and
drinking, the servants were strangled in order to accompany and tend to the soul
of the Inca ruler in the afterlife. The songs relayed this continued servitude.
Similarly, great dances and songs were performed to celebrate human sacrifices
on occasions other than the death of a king.
Dances were staged during offerings and sacrifices to huacas (sacred places or
objects). The priest Cristóbal de Molina describes the offerings to the huaca
Anaguarque, two leagues (about 10 kilometers [6 miles]) south of Cuzco, with
warriors standing still and holding their staffs (yauri), while the people
performed the taqui called huarita with huayliaquipas (shell trumpets). When
the taqui performances subsided, both women and men raced to nearby huacas,
in representation of how the huaca Anaguarque had flown as fast as the hawk in
the flood during the life of Manco Capac when all people perished (see Myths,
Origin).
The chroniclers Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, Pedro de Cieza de León,
Cristóbal de Molina, and Bernabé Cobo all write of a dance performed with a
rope that took place at public festivities throughout the year. Molina describes it
as having occurred during the Camay Quilla celebration in December in which
men and women took opposite ends of a black, white, red, and tan rope and
danced in homage to various huacas and deceased Inca kings. The dancers
encircled Cuzco’s main plaza with the rope and by joining both ends made
various movements that coiled the rope into the form of a snail or snake. When
the rope was finally dropped to the ground, it resembled a coiled snake, hence
the dance was named moro orco. Sarmiento also describes the dance, although
he called it moroy urcu, noting that a many-colored, 275-meter-long (900-foot-
long) rope made by the Inca king Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui was taken out at four
festivities throughout the year. The magnificently dressed dancers sang and
completely encircled Cuzco’s main square, the Aucaypata, with the rope. Cobo