A Tambo was an Incan structure built for administrative and military purposes. Found along Incan roads, tambos typically carried supplies, served as lodging for itinerant state personnel, and were depositories of quipu

Quipu

Quipus or khipus were recording devices used in the Inca Empire and its predecessor societies in the Andean region. A quipu usually consisted of colored, spun, and plied thread or strings from llama or alpaca hair. It could also be made of cotton cords...

-based accounting records.

Different types of tambos existed; those that served to lodge the traveling Inca and his entourage (typically wives and state officials), and those that served as relay stations for the chasquis, who were state messengers who ran along state roads.

Tambos were also planned settlements. Architecture and documentary evidence suggest that the functional sizes of the settlements probably corresponded to their capacity to house a population.

Not all modern locations called "tambo" were necessarily formal state way stations, or Inca tampu. Ostensibly, tampu were about a single day's walk apart, with major installations about every five to six days walk.

Remains of tambos are scattered throughout modern-day Peru

Peru

Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....

, Bolivia

Bolivia

Bolivia officially known as Plurinational State of Bolivia , is a landlocked country in central South America. It is the poorest country in South America...

, Chile

Chile

Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...

, and Colombia

Colombia

Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...

. Pedro Cieza de León

Pedro Cieza de León

Pedro Cieza de León was a Spanish conquistador and chronicler of Peru. He is known primarily for his history and description of Peru, Crónicas del Perú...

 made numerous references to the tambos in his Crónicas de Peru; in the following passage, Cieza de León described the general uses for the tambos that he learned from native peoples:

And so there would be adequate supplies for their men, every four league

League (unit)

A league is a unit of length . It was long common in Europe and Latin America, but it is no longer an official unit in any nation. The league originally referred to the distance a person or a horse could walk in an hour...

s there were lodgings and storehouses, and the representatives or stewards who lived in the capital of the provinces took great care to see that the natives kept these inns or lodgings (tambos) well supplied. And so certain of them would not give more than others, and all should make their contribution, they kept the accounts by a method of knots, which they call quipus

Quipu

Quipus or khipus were recording devices used in the Inca Empire and its predecessor societies in the Andean region. A quipu usually consisted of colored, spun, and plied thread or strings from llama or alpaca hair. It could also be made of cotton cords...

, and in this way, after the troops had passed by, they could check and see that there had been no fraud.

See also

• Chasqui
• Cultural periods of Peru
  Cultural periods of Peru
  This is a chart of cultural periods of Peru and the Andean Region developed by Edward Lanning and used by some archaeologists studying the area...
  
  
• Peruvian Ancient Cultures
  Peruvian Ancient Cultures
  Peruvian territory was inhabited 14,000 years ago by hunters and gatherers. Subsequent developments include the appearance of sedentary communities that developed agriculture and irrigation, and the emergence of complex socio-political hierarchies that created sophisticated civilizations,...
  
  
• Ollantaytambo
  Ollantaytambo
  Ollantaytambo is a town and an Inca archaeological site in southern Peru some 60 kilometers northwest of the city of Cusco. It is located at an altitude of 2,792 meters above sea level in the district of Ollantaytambo, province of Urubamba, Cusco region...
  
  

Additional reading

• Adorno, Rolena. “The Depiction of Self and Other in Colonial Peru.” Art Journal, Summer 1990, Vol. 49 Issue 2, p110-19.
• Cieza de León, Pedro de, The Incas of Pedro de Cieza de León, translated by Harriet de Onis. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1959.
• Crow, John A. The Epic of Latin America (Fourth Edition). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992 (1946).
• Diffie, Bailey W. “A Markham Contribution to the Leyenda Negra.” The Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 16, No. 1 (Feb., 1936), 96-103.
• Diffie, Bailey W. Latin-American Civilization: Colonial Period. Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole and Sons, 1945.
• Dobyns, Henry F. and Doughty, Paul L. Peru: A Cultural History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976.
• Mancall, Peter C. (ed.). Travel Narratives from the Age of Discovery. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
• Marett, Sir Robert. Peru. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1969.
• Prescott, William H. History of the Conquest of Mexico & History of the Conquest of Peru. New York: Cooper Square Press, 2000.