[And the 'Forgotten Fortress´] Advance:I don't even know these people I talk about, I've seen the landscape they've lived on, rushed through, gritting their ivory teeth before they warred with the Inca's in the 16th century (this pre-Inca civilization).
But the more one studies this great civilization, the more one admires its fantastic powers of visualization, its psychic rulers, and wild bull like hearts, and the great fortress (labyrinth) they built in the middle of the Andean-jungles of Peru (walking through it one can only hold their breath in awe: breath in its life-death patriarchal society.
Today, the Chachapoya still carry on in this area, with its pottery, and tapestry, garments, all highly prized; at onetime they worked for the Incas, and like today, gave them high quality.
The Poem: In the Andean-jungle--the Chachapoya's (the tree-cloud people) Of the 'Forgotten Fortress,' of Kuelap (Amazonas de Peru) once lived here--twelve-hundred years ago--perhaps 2000- or more Lived in this straddled low-land jungle citadel --; bold and free: cadaverous war like people, spirit filled: more fierce than the Inca.
Here is where they lived--in Kuelap, in limestone houses: under conical thatched roofs--; Houses of limestone masonry, in mud mortar plaster like tombs: painted in rainbow colors; few if any windows.
The ravages of time have sadly, seen the looting of the detailed: elaborate funerary architecture of the Chachapoya race--; Once decorated in rainbow shades, zigzag friezes, in cliff like caves.
#1287 3/20/2006