Jones and Marcus Brody, curator of the National Museum, believed that hitherto undiscovered Chachapoyan temples had been located and were being plundered.

Evidence pointed to one of Jones's competitors, a Princeton archaeologist named Forrestal (another fictional character), who had embarked on an expedition to Peru a year earlier and never returned.

With help from the journal of a 19th-century explorer and contacts in South America, Jones follows in Forrestal's footsteps, determined to acquire the real prize: a golden representation of the Chachapoyan goddess of fertility and childbirth, said to be secreted in the heart of the Temple of Warriors.

After escaping the many traps set by the Chachapoyans including a giant boulder, he finds rival archaeologist Rene Belloq waiting outside with a group of Hovitos, the local natives.

The two want to use the idol to unite Amazonian tribes and disrupt wartime rubber production in South America, as well as lure Jones to his death.

[5] The Chachapoya culture was a genuine subject of interest for scientists under the Nazi government, particularly Jacques de Mahieu, who like the fictional Belloq was a French collaborator.

Based on quotations from Spanish colonists (many of them fabricated), and on his interpretations of since-refuted archaeological digs, he argued that descendants of Vikings had once ruled Peru.