Note 265 — Chapter XXXVII

After the conquest of Quito by Huayna Ccapac, the cacique of Carangue was the first to submit to his authority, and, while he lulled the Ynca and his captains into security, he meditated their destruction by a sudden and secret blow. Suspecting nothing, they were encamped in his country, when his Indians made a furious attack upon them in the dead of night, many of the nobles of the guard were killed, and the Ynca himself narrowly escaped with his life. Huayna Ccapac resolved to give these people of Carangue a terrible and memorable lesson. He put every man in the province, who was capable of bearing arms, to death, and ordered their bodies to be thrown into the lake, which to this day is called “the lake of blood.” Garcilasso de la Vega considers that the number stated by Cieza de Leon to have been put to death on this occasion is an exaggeration, and that two thousand would be nearer the truth than twenty thousand. G. de la Vega, i, lib. ix, cap. ii; Velasco, i, p. 18.