[MSN] USA-Peru-Yale. How Bingham got Yale into trouble.

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Char Miller: How Bingham got Yale into trouble

01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, October 7, 2007

CHAR MILLER 

POMONA, Calif. 

POOR YALE. The university's past has come back to haunt it. The past in
question has a face - Hiram Bingham III - and a location - Machu Picchu, in
Peru. Although Bingham, the Yale historian-cum-explorer who "discovered" the
fabled Incan citadel in 1911, has been dead since 1956, not so the
controversy surrounding the 4,000 artifacts he plucked from a Peruvian
mountaintop.

For years, Peru has been demanding the return of its ancient material
culture, including human bones, pottery and ceramics and mummies stored at
Yale's Peabody Museum since Bingham shipped them to New Haven. In
mid-September, the university finally acceded to the return of Peru's
patrimony. "This understanding represents a new model of international
cooperation," Yale announced, "providing for the collaborative stewardship
of cultural and natural treasures." Collaboration came with a catch; Yale
retained control of some of the loot for "future study" - remnants that
number upwards of 3,700 objects. 

"If Yale wants to continue studying the pieces," fumed Luis Lumbreras,
former director of the National Institute of Culture in Lima, "they can come
to Peru."

Those fighting words suggest this controversy will not be quickly resolved.
Yet while unfortunate for its central combatants, that's not true for Hiram
Bingham: The only person who would have known how to take clear advantage of
this drama is the man who is responsible for it. He loved being the center
of attention; his eye was ever on the main chance. 

That trait worried his illustrious family.

Born in Honolulu in November 1875, Hiram III was the son and grandson of
influential, Pacific-based American Congregational missionaries; his
grandfather, Hiram Sr., was such a polarizing figure that James Michener
fictionalized his provocative persona in Hawaii (1960). Hiram III, however,
had no interest in the family business, couldn't wait to get off Oahu, and,
when sent to Phillips Andover Academy in 1892, never looked back. Later, as
a Yale undergraduate, he wooed Alfreda Mitchell, granddaughter of Charles
Tiffany, of the famous glass art; they married in 1899, and her financial
resources underwrote his academic studies in Latin American history at the
University of California at Berkeley and at Harvard, and facilitated his
Andean explorations.

Bingham's professional ambitions may have clashed with his parents' prayers
for him, but his secular career had a decidedly missionary cast; zealous and
tenacious, he was convinced of his own righteousness. Those qualities shaped
his actions in Peru. In 1911, hearing rumors of Incan ruins high above the
Urubamba River, he and his guide scaled a precipitous ridge, along whose
spine they stumbled on Machu Picchu's tree-choked magnificence. 

"Surprise followed surprise," a transfixed Bingham wrote; "it seemed like an
unbelievable dream." Making that dream come true required subsequent
explorations in 1912 and 1915 that Yale and the National Geographic Society
funded; Bingham's breathtaking photographs and breathless prose appeared in
National Geographic and other major publications, publicity that forged a
link between his dig's import and his swelling celebrity.

In The Discovery of Machu Picchu (1913) and Lost City of the Incas (1948),
whose best-selling status he hoped would gild his reputation, Bingham
asserted that the highland redoubt was the Holy Grail of Incan society. He
was wrong, as more careful excavations have revealed. But by hyping his
work's value he intensified Peruvian suspicions. In 1915, the Lima
government accused Bingham of smuggling gold and other contraband out of
Machu Picchu. Infuriated by what he considered an insult to his professional
mien and "the Anglo-Saxon mind," he left in a huff. 

Old grievances die hard, one reason why Yale and Peru continue to fight over
the Incan artifacts Bingham unearthed nearly a century ago. Like that
once-buried treasure, the legendary explorer has also been resurrected. He'd
be thrilled.

Char Miller is a visiting professor of history and environmental analysis at
Pomona College and author of Fathers and Sons: the Bingham Family and the
American Mission.

http://www.projo.com/