Intrepid Dudettes of the Inca Empire Part 1

By Helen Pugh

Are you ready to embark on a journey?
Enter a world steeped in legend...
A moon rising from a shimmering lake,
A woman turned into corn by the sun,
A cave that gives birth to a civilisation,
A boy who cries tears of blood,
A girl whose icy body is preserved for hundreds of years,
A man who regularly asked his dead mother for advice
And Mother Nature, whose influence reaches over everyone...

'Intrepid Dudettes of the Inca Empire Part 1' is all about rescuing historical pre-Columbian women from obscurity. Well-researched historical reading that isn't heavy going, the book tells fascinating true stories and legends about Inca goddesses and indigenous South American women who lived before the Spanish Conquest, many of whom lived through challenging times.

This book includes a discussion guide.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Helen Pugh
• Release date: Jun 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463962985

Helen Pugh

Helen Pugh is the author of Intrepid Dudettes of the Inca Empire, an accessible non-fiction historical account of incredible Inca women who lived hundreds of years ago. She has also written Jungle-tastic Tales and Inca-tastic Tales, short story anthologies for children based on extensive research into the rainforest and Inca history, respectively, as well as Cuentos incatásticos for Spanish speakers and several shorter ebooks that are free of charge.Her interest in South America and the Incas began in 2006, when she first went to Ecuador. Then, from 2011 she lived there for 7 continuous years, 6 in the Amazon Region and 1 in Quito. Her children are half Ecuadorian, which was another driving force for exploring South American heritage. She experienced domestic violence and very long and traumatic legal battles in Ecuador so can relate to some of the Inca women in the book on that front.Helen studied Spanish and Italian at university and has a lifelong passion for history, especially that of historical women who made history, but have been sidelined.

Book preview

Intrepid Dudettes of the Inca Empire (Part 1)

By Helen Pugh

Distributed by Smashwords

Copyright 2020 Helen Pugh

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Introduction

Chapter 1: Pachamama, Goddess Extraordinaire

Chapter 2: Pachamama’s Divine Diva Mates

Chapter 3: Dudette Quick Fire Round 1

Chapter 4: Dudette Quick Fire Round 2

Chapter 5: Appendices (World Tour, Timeline, Glossary, Discussion Guide & Just For Fun)

Selected Bibliography

About the author

Foreword

History has mainly been written by rich, white men. History has also been written mainly about rich, white men.

Recently, more and more people have been reading and writing about influential people who don’t fit this category: poor people, LGBTQIA+ people, women, people of colour etc.

It's time to go back to history to find those people. In fact, it’s beyond time!

This book is a small contribution to finding some of them, namely Inca women, plus one intersex deity. It is my humble contribution to herstory- the history of women, the history of our foremothers, the women who made history but were then overlooked by history.

If it's hard to find the rich Inca women in the pages of history, trying to find specific poor women is like looking for needles in haystacks. Sometimes for both rich and poor Inca women, I end up chasing ghosts, whispers of women that are briefly mentioned by a few historical records but never again.

Hence, alongside a few poorer Inca women, I've had to focus mainly on wealthy but still totally INTREPID DUDETTES OF THE INCA EMPIRE who have been forgotten by history.

Documents from the time of the Spanish Conquest often didn't mention women, especially indigenous women, and when they do, women are often mentioned briefly in a legal or historical document but we get no overview of their lives as a whole. And it is even harder to gain insight into the Inca women who lived before the Conquest.

In the same way, I found a lot of sloppy and careless mistakes made by historians regarding the women. Some historians - even very well-known ones - get the women’s names wrong, others their cities of origin etc., whereas they don't make mistakes about the men of the time! #frustrating #CaseInPoint.

Anyway, hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. :)

NB: Dates of events before the Spanish invasion are approximate because the Incas didn’t keep written records. Also, if you’re reading this on an electronic device, you might find it useful to print the glossary before you begin so you can use it as references as you read. It is found in the appendices (chapter 5). I also recommend downloading the free e-book ‘Map Book for Intrepid Dudettes of the Inca Empire’ to help you visualise where places are.

To Mindal and Yutsu, that they know about the people who brought the Kichwa language and gods to their ancestors.

To Margaret Pugh, the intrepid dudette who crossed an ocean to rescue us.

To Tom, Dianne and Jake for continued support.

All photos are my own unless stated otherwise.

Are you ready to embark on a journey?

Enter a world steeped in legend...

A moon rising from a shimmering lake,

A woman turned into corn by the sun,

A cave that gives birth to a civilisation,

A boy who cries tears of blood,

A girl whose icy body is preserved for hundreds of years,

A man who regularly asked his dead mother for advice

And Mother Nature, whose influence reaches over everyone.

Welcome to the first part of Intrepid Dudettes of the Inca Empire.

- a view of Machu Picchu. Photo credit: Robyn Luck

Introduction: Inca Civilisation Fact File

Where: at the empire’s peak just before the Spanish conquest, it stretched from the tip of southern Colombia down to central Chile and western Argentina and was over 56,000 square miles. This made it the largest empire on the planet at the time, even bigger than the Roman Empire.

Population: estimated at 10 million at its peak.

Capital City: Cusco (or Cuzco), in modern Peru.

Language: Quechua but many other languages were spoken by different