CHACHAPOYAS - DESCENDANTS OF THE NEPHITES?

From Wikipedia:

The chronicler Pedro Cieza de León offers some picturesque notes about the Chachapoyas:

"They are the whitest and most handsome of all the people that I have seen in Indies, and their wives were so beautiful that because of their gentleness, many of them deserved to be the Incas' wives and to also be taken to the Sun Temple (...) The women and their husbands always dressed in woolen clothes and in their heads they wear their llautos, which are a sign they wear to be known everywhere."

Their high jungle capital city of Gran Vilaya covers approx 120 square miles (thats 10x12 miles on each side), which is no small berg. Very interesting people - I would love to learn more of their history:

Saturday June 3 6:19 PM ET
Explorer Discovers Peru Lost City
By RICK VECCHIO, Associated Press Writer
LIMA, Peru (AP) - An American explorer credited with discovering several
major Indian ruins in Peru's rain forests has pulled back the jungle curtain
to reveal another ancient city lost in time.
``I think it's Cajamarquilla, one of the fabulous lost cities of the
Chachapoyas people,'' said Gene Savoy, just returned from an 18-day
expedition into the high cloud forest in northern Peru.
Savoy on Friday described the Chachapoyas as tall, fierce, fair-skinned
warriors who were defeated in the late 15th century by Inca ruler Tupac
Yupanqui shortly before the Spanish conquest of Peru.
The Incas so respected their fighting prowess that they made the Chachapoyas
their bodyguards, he said.
``What we found is the vestiges of a lost jungle empire in the rain forest
of northeastern Peru,'' Savoy told The Associated Press.


Archaeologist Miguel Cornejo, one of 47 members of Savoy's expedition,
called the find ``a completely new discovery that constitutes a major
contribution to Peruvian archaeology and the world.''
The site, measuring 25 square miles, includes stone roads weaving through a
network of massive terraced cliffs and at least 36 burial towers, said
archaeologist Alberto Bueno. Both Bueno and Cornejo were assigned by the
Peruvian government to accompany Savoy.
``There were many more structures, at least 60 or 70, but they were obscured
by vegetation,'' Bueno said, adding that Savoy may have very well found the
legendary Cajamarquilla, mentioned by early Spanish colonial chroniclers.
The deeply set terraces, roads and ornate stone structures, many with
protruding carved faces, indicate a large concentration of people lived,
farmed and worshipped there, Bueno said.
The robust 73-year-old explorer, who lives most of the year in Reno, Nev.,
where he directs the Andean Explorers Foundation, has written three books
about his expeditions.
Savoy has discovered dozens of Peruvian ruins since the early 1960s. The
three most important were Vilcabamba, the last refuge of the Incas; Gran
Pajaten, a citadel city atop a jungle-shrouded peak; and Gran Vilaya, a
complex of more than 20,000 stone buildings in a damp, fogbound region of
the Andes that Peruvians call the ``jungle's eyebrow.''
He says Gran Vilaya, situated on a ridge 6,000 feet above the Maranon River,
was the capital of the Chachapoyas empire - one of seven legendary cities
strung like a necklace along the heights of the high jungle of northern
Peru.
Last September, Savoy reported that he had found evidence of another of the
lost cities, Conturmarca, in a valley along the Tepna River.
On May 10, he ventured back into the jungle, 340 miles north of Lima,
accompanied by the archaeologists, a representative from the National
Cultural Institute and an armed detail from the national police.
Savoy said the official entourage was required under new government
regulations put into place after a grave robber sacked several of the burial
towers he had publicly identified after last year's expedition.