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I find it hard to believe it was Europeans of any kind,
not only would they have had to cross the Atlantic but
also the continent of South America.

There are some stories about some white people settled in Northern Peru who build some interesting structures, intermarried with the Cloud People, I believe.

You run into this type of story occasionally when reading about the Moche and Chimu, I will look around and see if I can get a link.

This is an extract from a PDF article by Adriana Von Hagan, a Peruvian Archeologist's about the Cloud People. There are others but this was the easiest to find.

Among the scattered colonial descriptions of Chachapoyas, almost all thechroniclers commented on the beauty and white skin of the women. Even Father Calancha succumbed to their beauty, noting, “These are the whitest and most graceful Indians in all the Indies, and the women are the most beautiful.”

Cieza, a usually levelheaded observer, mentions the whiteness of Chachapoya women’s skin three times in his brief description of Chachapoyas. “These Chachapoyas Indians are the whitest and most attractive I have seen anywhere I have been in the Indies, and their women were so beautiful that many of them were chosen to be the wives of the Inkas and the vestals of the temples.”

Although he did not visit the region, Cieza saw Chachapoya people in Cusco,where, according to Calancha, they lived in the Karmenka district. Aside from the fact that sixteenth century Spaniards obviously regarded white skin as a sign of beauty, there is no evidence that the Chachapoya were descended from colonists who had sailed across the Atlantic and up the Amazon, as explorer Gene Savoy has suggested.

Studies of pre-Inka Chachapoya skeletal remains from Salsipuedes and other burial sites indicate that the Chachapoya were of Andean stock but, on average, taller than their contemporaries in other parts of ancient Peru (1.59 meters for men and 1.46 meters for women). Analysis of the skeletal remains from Los Pinchudos confirms the trend.