So far as I know, there is no place in Peru where the ruins consist of anything like a “masonry wall with three windows” of such a ceremonial character as is here referred to, except at Machu Picchu.  It would certainly seem as though the Temple of the Three Windows, the most significant structure within the citadel, is the building referred to by Pachacuti Yamqui Saleamayhua.

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Figure

The Masonry Wall with Three Windows, Machu Picchu
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The principal difficulty with this theory is that while the first meaning of tocco in Holguin’s standard Quichua dictionary is “ventana” or “window,” and while “window” is the only meaning given this important word in Markham’s revised Quichua dictionary (1908), a dictionary compiled from many sources, the second meaning of tocco given by Holguin is “alacena,” “a cupboard set in a wall.”  Undoubtedly this means what we call, in the ruins of the houses of the Incas, a niche.  Now the drawings, crude as they are, in Sir Clements Markham’s translation of the Salcamayhua manuscript, do give the impression of niches rather than of windows.  Does Tampu-tocco mean a tampu remarkable for its niches?  At Paccaritampu there do not appear to be any particularly fine niches; while at Machu Picchu, on the other hand, there are many very beautiful niches, especially in the cave which has been referred to as a “Royal Mausoleum.”  As a matter of fact, nearly all the finest ruins of the Incas have excellent niches.  Since niches were so common a feature of Inca architecture, the chances are that Sir Clements is right in translating Salcamayhua as he did and in calling Tampu-tocco “the hill with the three openings or windows.”  In any case Machu Picchu fits the story far better than does Paccaritampu.  However, in view of the fact that the early writers all repeat the story that Tampu-tocco was at Paccaritampu, it would be absurd to say that they did not know what they were talking about, even though the actual remains at or near Paccaritampu do not fit the requirements.

It would be easier to adopt Paccaritampu as the site of Tampu-tocco were it not for the legal records of an inquiry made by Toledo at the time when he put the last Inca to death.  Fifteen Indians, descended from those who used to live near Las Salinas, the important salt works near Cuzco, on being questioned, agreed that they had heard their fathers and grandfathers repeat the tradition that when the first Inca, Manco Ccapac, captured their lands, he came from Tampu-tocco.  They did not say that the first Inca came from Paccaritampu, which, it seems to me, would have been a most natural thing for them to have said if this were the general belief of the natives.  In addition there is the still older testimony of some Indians born before the arrival of the first Spaniards, who were examined at a legal investigation in 1570.  A chief, aged ninety-two, testified that Manco Ccapac came out of a cave called Tocco, and that he was lord of the town