The Fake “White” Mummy of Peru: More Misrepresentation by Alternative Authors

Last week I wrote about Pierre Honoré’s falsified quotation form Pedro Pizarro, in which the author introduced non-existent references to the blond hair of “white” Peruvians. Another of Honoré’s claims, which immediately follows the falsified Pizarro quotation, also struck me as wrong, but I wasn’t able to track down an English translation of Garcilaso de la Vega to prove it. Well, now I have, so it’s time for another round of Alternative Authors’ Fake Quotations.

So let’s welcome today’s contestant, Pierre Honoré, the sometime archaeologist who became a white supremacist hero in 1963 with his In Quest of the White God, a book claiming a widespread ancient civilizing cult of technologically superior white people, which was recently republished by David Childress in 2007. Honoré makes the following claim about Garcilaso de la Vega, the sixteenth century Spanish-Inca author of the Royal Commentaries of Peru, who was taken to a vault containing the mummies of the Inca emperors:

Quite unconsciously, he stopped before one of them which had hair ‘white as snow,’ in contrast to all the other mummies. [Polo de] Ondegardo told him it was the mummy of the White Inca, eighth ruler of the Sun. As the White Inca was said to have died very young, this cannot have been the whiteness of old age. It must mean his hair was not black to start with, and got even lighter over the course of the centuries; whereas the other mummies originally had black hair, which did not fade to such a light color.

How much of this do you think is true? Let’s turn to an unimpeachable source, Garcilaso de la Vega, whose words Honoré claims to report.

At length the Inca Viracocha, in the Height of Majesty, and Zenith of his Prosperity, submitted to the common fate of Mankind; he was generally lamented, and bewailed by all the Empire, and adored afterwards as a Child of the Sun, to whom they offered Prayers and sacrifices. He left to Pachamec, his Eldest Son, the inheritance, besides whom he had many legitimate Sons and daughters of the Royal Blood, with others born to him by his Concubines: he conquered and reduced Eleven provinces, four of which were to the South of Cuzco, and seven towards the North. It is not certainly known to what age he lived, nor how long he reigned, though according to common report, he governed above fifty Years and so he seemed to me to have been an ancient man, when I saw his Body at Cuzco, about the beginning of the Year 1570, which was the time when I was upon my departure for Spain and then I remember, that going to take my leave of the Governour, or Chief Justice of the City, called Paul Ondegardo, a Native of Salamanca; amongst other Favours which he did me, he was pleased to lead me into an inward room, and there tell me, that before I departed it would be convenient for me to have a sight of some of my relations, that so I might have another Story to tell of them in Spain; with that he shewed me five Bodies of Incas, three of Men, and two of Women; one of which the Indians report to have been the Body of Viracocha, which seemed to be very aged, the hairs of the Head being as white as Snow: The second they say was the Great Tupac Yupancpi, who was great Grandson to Viracocha: The third was Huayna-Capac, the Son of Tupac Yupanqui; and Grandson of the Fourth Generation to Viracocha the two last were Men with Gray Hairs, yet did not seem so aged. (Source)

(The standard Livermore translation is substantively the same and does not contradict anything here.)

De la Vega goes on to state that the mummification process was so perfect that the dead looked exactly as they did in life, and that Inca Viracocha (the eighth Great Inca of Cuzco) appeared to him to be an exceedingly old man.

Honoré wants us to accept only some of de la Vega’s testimony—that which is convenient for Honoré—while discounting the most important parts. As is clear from de la Vega’s testimony, the corpse he saw was that of a very old Inca man, not a young, blond Caucasian. This accords with what history tells us of Inca Viracocha, who is believed to have reigned between 1410 and 1438 (and thus his corpse couldn’t have been “centuries” old in 1570). His 28-year reign, ascending the throne as an adult (he was leading men into battle while his father was still king), means that he must have been no younger than his 50s when he died, an old age for pre-Columbian America. According to standard accounts of Inca Viracocha, he was not “very young” at his death but in fact “very old,” as related in Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa’s sixteenth century History of the Incas, compiled from Inca histories on the Spanish Viceroy’s orders. 

Thus, on every count except for “snowy” hair, Honoré has distorted, fabricated, or lied about the contents of Garcilaso de la Vega’s account of Inca Viracocha’s corpse. Time and again Honoré distorts the historical record fractionally, just close enough to truth that unless the reader is highly familiar with the primary sources, the fraud is almost undetectable. This cannot be an accident.