November 19th, Tuesday | Hiram Bingham's Big (re)Discovery

The date is November 19th, Tuesday, and today I’m coming to you from Port Vila, Vanuatu.

 

Today is the birthday of Hiram Bingham III, American professor and explorer. 

 

Born in Hawaii to arguably successful missionaries, Hiram Bingham III would hold on to his father’s work ethic and adventurous spirit, though he would not be quite so pious or humble.

 

In fact, It was Hiram Bingham III who felt that, “If a man were going to work that hard, someone ought to know about it.”

 

Hiram left Hawaii for the mainland as a teen, bound for the East Coast where he completed his education among Ivy-league colleges. He studied Latin American history and married Alfreda Mitchell, an heiress to the Tiffany & Co fortune in 1900 at age 24. The Tiffany side of Alfreda’s family looked down on Bingham who they felt had yet to prove himself worthy . 

 

Bingham then spent his next few years as a professor, first at Harvard, then at Princeton under Woodrow Wilson, and finally landing back at his alma mater Yale in 1907. 

 

Bingham had his first taste of exploration after attending a conference in 1908 in Santiago, Chile. Crossing through Peru on his way back, he was convinced by a local to check out the nearby Incan ruins of Choquequirao. Bingham published an account of his travels when he returned back to the states, which threw him unofficially into the ring of the last age of discovery. 

 

Wanting to prove himself to the world and his wife’s family, and inspired by tales of the Lost Incan City, Bingham had the audacious idea to go find it. An amateur archaeologist and explorer, Bingham was able to get funding from Yale and pull together a crew for the trek into the Andes to find the “Lost City.” After rediscovering the Incan ruins of Vilcabamba and Vitcos, finally, in July 1911, Hiram Bingham was led by a local villager up to Machu Picchu. Armed with a camera and plenty of carry on space, so to speak, Bingham carefully documented his findings and photographed what he could, with the intent to submit an article on his discover to National Geographic magazine. 

 

Bingham’s party packed up items from the city covered in vines and plants of all kinds. It unclear just how many artifacts Bingham took, and the return of the artifacts to the Peruvian government has been a cause for consternation between Peru and Yale for decades now. 

 

Bingham published an account of his journey to Machu Picchu in 1948 titled Lost City of the Incas and it was an instant bestseller. 

 

If you are thinking that Hiram Bingham’s story sounds familiar, you’ll likely be able to recognize many of his characteristics in movie character Indiana Jones - though Bingham had a much more wiry build compared to the muscle-y Jones depicted by Harrison Ford.

 

Upon the Heights

Yone Noguchi

 

And victor of life and silence,

I stood upon the Heights; triumphant,

With upturned eyes, I stood,

And smiled unto the sun, and sang

A beautifully sad farewell unto the dying day.

And my thoughts and the eve gathered

Their serpentine mysteries around me,

My thoughts like alien breezes,

The eve like a fragrant legend.

My feeling was that I stood as one

Serenely poised for flight, as a muse

Of golden melody and lofty grace.

Yea, I stood as one scorning the swords

And wanton menace of the cities.

The sun had heavily sunk into the seas beyond,

And left me a tempting sweet and twilight.

The eve with trailing shadows westward

Swept on, and the lengthened shadows of trees

Disappeared: how silently the songs of silence

Steal into my soul! And still I stood

Among the crickets, in the beauteous profundity

Sung by stars; and I saw me

Softly melted into the e