Sarmiento’s Historia Indica was probably never seen nor read, until modern
times, beyond the confines of the Spanish Viceregal administration and the
royal court in Spain. The document was sent back to Spain in 1572 and
presented to Philip II. Its fate over the next couple of centuries is unknown. It
was not seen again until 1893, when it was discovered in the library of the
University of Göttingen, Germany.Further Reading
Clissold, Stephen. Conquistador: The Life of Don Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa. London: D.
Verschoyle, 1954.
Pease, Franklin. “Sarmiento de Gamboa, Pedro (1535–1592?).” In Guide to Documentary Sources for
Andean Studies, 1530–1900, edited by Joanne Pillsbury, vol. 3, 488–96. Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 2008.
Sarmiento de Gamboa, Pedro. History of the Incas. Translated by Sir Clements Markham (1907).
Cambridge, ON: In Parentheses Publications, 2000 [1572].
http://www.yorku.ca/inpar/sarmiento_markham.pdf.
———. The History of the Incas. Translated and edited by Brian S. Bauer and Vania Smith. Austin:
University of Texas Press, 2007 [1572].
Urton, Gary. The History of a Myth: Pacariqtambo and the Origin of the Incas. Austin: University of
Texas Press, 1990.
■GARY URTONSEAFARING
Even in their mountain fastness the Incas were always aware of the ocean. Their
intense interest in what we now call hydrology encompassed both the science of
water management and irrigation, and the intuitive knowledge that all rivers
would eventually flow to the sea. From their vantage atop the Andean watershed,
the Incas observed that all streams in the Cuzco valley fed into the Vilcanota
River. The river then turned eastward to join the waters plunging down the
Apurimac gorge to the Amazonian lowlands and thence to the distant, unseen
Atlantic beyond. On the other side of the continental divide, seasonal floods
coursed westward in narrow ribbons crossing the coastal desert to reach the
limitless expanse of the Pacific. It is no surprise then that Inca cosmology
embraced the notion of an interconnected watery underworld and that the
mythical birthplace of the Sun and the Moon was located on the sacred Islands
of the Sun and Moon surrounded by the blue depths of Lake Titicaca (see
Myths, Origin). Such was their ritual interest in the sea that Inca rulers ordered
many tons of beach sand to be brought up from the coast and laid in a deep layer