Pizarro saw the arrangement with the two slavers as the last opportunity he would have to comply with his warrant of conquest. Past insults and hurt pride were also put aside by the two former partners, and once more the contract they had originally made between themselves and Luque was revived. So too were honoured the provisos Pizarro had secured at Toledo. In the eyes of some of Panama’s officials the agreement made between the two elderly slavers appeared almost comical, as they distributed honours, natives and lands between them, without ever contemplating the possible failure of their expedition. It was an opinion held generally among the traders of Panama, most of whom, other than Gaspar de Espinosa, had refused to invest in the expedition. Some are recorded as having sold horses and even armour and swords to the volunteers at exorbitant rates of interest, which in the event of their deaths would be collected from the few sureties they were able to muster.
Almagro and Luque secured the basic provisions for the expedition and for the transportation of the artillery, horses and African slaves who had been sent by the Crown’s officials from Jamaica and Cuba to Nombre de Dios. A third and much smaller group of volunteers under the command of another Nicaraguan slaver Sebastián de Belalcázar was also contracted by the use of Almagro and Luque’s gold. However, having been ill for some time, Almagro decided to remain behind in Panama to recruit a second armada of reinforcements to serve under his own command. Of these men Almagro would later enlist many in the neighbouring provinces of Nicaragua and Veragua, accompanied by Nicolás de Ribera. Luque was to die almost two years later, shortly after Almagro’s departure from Panama with his army of reinforcements and ignorant of the outcome of their venture.
In the last week of 1530 the first of the three caravels that would transport the 180 men and horses of Pizarro’s expeditionary force shed its mooring and sailed out of Panama’s small harbour, calling to mind the words of one of its volunteers: ‘When in ancient or modern times has so great an enterprise been undertaken by so few against so many odds, and to so varied a climate and seas, and at such distances, to conquer the unknown?’20
TWO
The Conquest of Paradise
Those who had accompanied Francisco Pizarro on his first expedition to the coast refused to come, claiming that it was a god-forsaken land.
The foot soldier Diego de Trujillo
At first Pizarro had imagined the Inca realm of Tahuantinsuyo to be a small mountain kingdom, trading in gold; in fact, it was part of a vast empire and civilisation of some 12 million subject peoples, stretching from north of the equator across the cordillera of the Andes as far south as the Pacific littoral of Chile, and as far east as the rain forests of the Amazon. Its frontiers had been established by military conquest in less than a hundred years by a hereditary nobility of the Quéchua tribe of Cuzco, known as Inca, who by force of arms had come to dominate the central Andean cordillera, imposing on the conquered tribes a cult of sun worship, a deity from whom they claimed to derive their divine origin.
The civilisations whose surviving vestiges the Quéchua had inherited had left only the remnants of their monuments and artwork to mark their existence: the Chavín of the central Andes (1200–400 bc), the image of whose puma god adorned their pottery and stone structures; the Nazca of the mid-Pacific coast lands (ad 400–1000), whose religious iconography was depicted in the giant linear earth carvings of sacred animals, insects and birds; and the Tiahuanacu of the highland plateau on the southern shores of Lake Titicaca from the same period, whose monolithic buildings and monuments had been erected some thousand years before the advent of the Quéchua. Of all the ancient Andean cultures the Tiahuanacu, a military religious community, exerted the greatest influence on the evolution of their people. All that remains of Tiahuanacu’s former lake city, part of which lies under the colonial township of that name, near the modern-day Bolivian city of La Paz, are its ruined wall enclosures, giant stone figures and Gateway of the Sun.
The lake of Titicaca, situated 12,725 feet above sea level and covering an area of some 3,500 square miles, bordering Peru and Bolivia, had been the spiritual epicentre of Tiahuanacu and was held sacred by the Quéchua as the birthplace of the progenitors of their dynasty, Manco Cápac and Mama Ocllo, children of the sun and of the moon. Pedro Pizarro recalled that ‘these Indians claim that the first of their lords came from an island of Titicaca … and where they kept an idol of a woman, life-size and of medium height, and which from the waist upwards was of solid gold, and from the waist down, of pure silver, and which I saw when it was brought [to Cuzco]’.1
It was also the region from where the Quéchua bards whom the conquistadores interviewed recorded the existence in their legends of white-bearded gods, known to them as Viracocha, and it was because of these that the Quéchua had at first believed the conquistadores to have themselves been gods. The chronicler Pedro de Cieza de León recorded that when he visited the ruins at Tiahuanacu he had asked the Indians there whether the lake city had been built during the time of the Incas, ‘but that they had laughed at him, saying they had been told by their forebears it had been constructed overnight from one day to the other, and that they had seen bearded white men on one of the islands of Titicaca … and that its buildings were the oldest in antiquity in all Peru … for I had heard it said by many Indians that the Incas constructed their palaces in Cuzco in their form and manner, and it was where they first held court, here at Tiahuanacu.’2
The Spanish missionaries were to capitalise on the legend by equating Viracocha, also known as Thunupa, with a bearded Andean Christ, and even St Thomas, the apostle of India: an iconography still visible in the colonial mestizo church carvings and paintings of the Cuzco and Titicaca region. The myth of the white man was also evident in the northern Andean region of the Chachapoyas, whose tribesmen were noted by various chroniclers to be as white as any Spaniard, a phenomenon which may prove a far earlier connection between Andean America and the Caucasian world.
Archaeology has established the traces of Inca government in the Huatanay valley at Cuzco in the central Andes c. ad 1200. The Inca would subsequently extend their control across the southern and northern cordillera, introducing to their subject tribes a totalitarian system of government and a social structure based on communal wealth. Though possessing neither the wheel nor the written word, through their skill as masons and their grasp of engineering, their road building and collective system of farming, their craftsmanship of exquisite metalwork, textiles and pottery, their understanding of astronomy and medicine, and in the oral traditions of their poetry, they created one of the greatest civilisations in the Americas.
It was a regime as enlightened in its social welfare as it was despotic in its adherence to the totalitarian rule of its Inca nobility and emperor. It also shared with other Amerindian civilisations, such as the Maya of Central America and the Aztec of Mexico, the practice of human sacrifice, to which a few of Pizarro’s surviving conquistadores would attest at an inquiry held in Cuzco almost half a century after the Conquest:
[The Incas] instructed them [their subject tribes] in the veneration of their idols of the sun and of the stars, teaching them how to make sacrifices in the mountains and holy places of each province … forcing them to kill their sons and daughters to this effect … and to sacrifice their women and servants, so that they could serve them in the afterlife …3
As in pre-Christian Europe, the Inca practice of human sacrifice was in effect a ritual worship of nature and part of a code of religious conduct pervading every aspect of their lives, and of the laws by which they lived. The Jesuit mestizo chronicler Blas Valera’s record ranges from the detailed instructions given for each province to supply artisans and agricultural workers for its sustenance, to how its land was to be distributed, to the punishments to be meted out to adulterers, rapists and thieves – in most cases sentence of death. It was a society whose practices and organisation were integrally linked to the spiritual life of its people and their belief in the supernatural: a wo
rld with which they communicated in their worship of nature and venerated in their huacas, holy places, of their mountains and valleys, and which brought them into communion with an invisible world.
The mystical pre-eminence of their capital at Cuzco, cocooned in a valley 10,500 feet above sea level, was reflected in the person of their emperor, and maintained in the afterlife by the panacas, houses of the dead, of each emperor, the living shrine to his immortality. Each emperor in his lifetime established his panaca in one of the city’s palaces, numbering some thousand of his relatives and attendants, who after his death would oversee his personal wealth and lands. At the time of the Conquest there were eleven panacas venerated at Cuzco, to which all the princes and higher nobility belonged through their maternal or paternal descent. Membership entitled them to privileges and a prestige among the Quéchua and their subject tribes which the conquistadore Mansio Serra de Leguizamón compared to the status enjoyed by the nobility of his homeland:
They were people of great importance, great lords and sons of kings, who governed this realm. And as such they ruled at the time I entered in the discovery of this kingdom and witnessed the Incas command and govern this land … for the term Inca is what we would call in Spain lords of vassals, dukes and counts, and other such gentlemen of that kind … and being as they were absolute rulers they ordered and received tribute, and this is known and is publicly held, and which this witness himself knows, for it is what I saw with my own eyes … for they were persons of great knowledge and by the government they held, though possessing no written word, they ruled like the Romans in ancient times.4
The subject tribes and communities possessed a similar form of government through their ayllus, clans, and in the veneration of their ancestors: spirits whom they believed would appear as sparks in the fires of their hearths, or in their huacas, guarded by the spirits of mountains, trees, water and stones. Even in death it was a society governed by order and contained within an earthly structure that bound the supernatural to the world of the living.
The Inca lords, whom the conquistadores would call orejones because of the gold ear ornaments they wore, were trained as governors of the provinces or as commanders of the imperial army, their function either to expand the borders of the empire or to suppress the various tribal rebellions that would continue unabated even after the arrival of the Spaniards. The lesser blood tie of Inca lords, among them tribal leaders from other nations, who were granted the privilege and status of Incas, were the administrators of their government, supervising the maintenance of the empire’s roads which covered an area of some 14,000 square miles. They were also responsible for overseeing the tambos, rest houses, fortresses and toll bridges, and the distribution of the empire’s tribute: the crops, minerals, materials and clothing stored in the warehouses, and accounted for by the quipucamayoc, recorders, on their quipu, coloured string chords, which were used for numeration and to record astronomical and magical formulae. The conquistadores recalled that their knowledge of how to use this device had been passed down from father to son for some three hundred years, and that the quipu also chronicled Inca genealogies and historical events, the quantity of crops and every article that was transported or stored in the warehouses, and even the measurements of the construction of buildings, ‘something that merits great admiration and is difficult to believe for those who have not examined them, or witnessed their usage …’5
Trains of llamas transported the empire’s produce on the four principal stone paved roads that led to and from Cuzco: the Chinchasuyo to the north, the Cuntisuyo to the west, the Antisuyo to the east, and the Collasuyo to the south. All told, some two hundred thousand people contained in an area of some 40 square miles helped sustain the life of the Inca capital and the administration of its provinces; in the words of an anonymous conquistadore who had settled in the Collasuyo region of Bolivia:
In each of their provinces the Incas had governors, ruling with great account and order … there were others of lesser rank who were known as sayapayas: inspectors who gathered the ordinances of the Inca and of the realm, visiting the storehouses and herds [of llamas] that belonged to the sun and to Inca. And they would also inspect the mamacona [virgins of the sun] and the veneration and sacrifices they would offer the sun and to the huacas, which were the idols they worshipped. In each village were located storehouses of every item and produce … for laziness and vagabondage was severely punished, and all laboured in the produce of these goods; and in the lands where maize was unable to grow, storehouses of chuño [dehydrated potatoes] were kept, as were other produce from each region, none of which were consumed unless in times of war or need: then they would be distributed with great order … the Inca [lords] who would visit the governors of the provinces would be received with great honour, as if they were the Inca [emperor] himself, and they would be informed of all the labour commanded of the people … and those [caciques] who had served the Incas well would be rewarded with women and servants, livestock and fine clothing, and be granted the privilege of being carried in litters or hammocks, and be given yanaconas [servants] for that purpose; they would also be given the right to use parasols and be served with bowls and plates of gold and silver: something no one could make use of without the authority of the Inca … these privileges would also be granted them when they came to Cuzco each year with their tribute from as far as Chile or the Charcas … in the month and moon of May, which was known as Aymorayquilla, all the principal caciques from the different suyos would assemble before the emperor in the great square of Cuzco with their tribute of gold, silver, clothing, livestock … and also their tribute of women … after which they would hold their feasting and perform their ceremonies and sacrifices …6
The chronology and accounts of the reign of the Emperor Huayna Cápac, whose death probably occurred in 1527,7 and of the subsequent wars of succession to his empire are full of ambiguity and contradiction in the Spanish chronicles, none of whose authors were witness to the events they recorded. All their accounts were dependent on the testimony of the amauta, bards, and quipucamayoc they each interviewed in turn over the years at Cuzco. God and man to his people, Huayna Cápac had brought his dynasty to the pinnacle of its power. Though raised in Cuzco he had been born at Tumibamba, the future site of the Ecuadorian city of Cuenca, and had spent much of his life campaigning to expand and secure the frontiers of his empire. Only in the latter part of his reign did he move his court from Cuzco to Quito, north of his retreat of Tumibamba, which he had named in honour of his panaca. Most chroniclers record that the succession to his throne remained in dispute. Though neither primogeniture (the right of the first born) nor legitimacy in the European sense of the word was an established prerequisite for imperial station among the Quéchua, the purity of the emperor’s blood line and a tradition of royal incest established by Huayna Cápac’s parents, favoured the succession of the son of a sister-queen.
It was a succession that depended too on the sanction of the Inca High Priest of the Sun, known as the Villaoma, and on the allegiance of the imperial panacas of Cuzco. On the death of his sister-queen the Coya Cusi Rimay, who was probably the mother of his son Ninancuyochi, the emperor married their younger sister the Coya Rahua Ocllo, already for many years his concubine. (Coya was the title of the sister-queen of the emperor, or of their daughter.) Held in awe by reason of her exceptional beauty and the magnificence of the court over which she presided, she was said to have been accompanied by a thousand musicians during her travels across the empire. The eldest of their sons was Topa Cusi Huallpa, known as Huáscar, whom the emperor had appointed governor of Cuzco and of his southern domains.
Among the hundreds of other sons and daughters born to the emperor was Atahualpa, whose mother was the emperor’s cousin, and who was regarded as his favourite son. Three other sons, all by different women, whose names would feature in the history of the conquest, were the Incas Túpac Huallpa, Manco and Paullu. The chroniclers are unanimous in stating that in the last yea
rs of Huayna Cápac’s life his empire was devastated by a plague, probably smallpox, which had spread from the northern borders of his realms to as far south as Cuzco. They further record that the epidemic was believed by his shaman to be the retribution of the god Viracocha, and for whose appeasement the human sacrifice of thousands of children was ordered throughout the empire. The Jesuit Bernabé Cobo wrote that in an act of penitence the emperor had gone into seclusion and had fasted in order to bring an end to the suffering of his people, and that during his fast he had seen the ghosts of three dwarfs enter his chamber which he interpreted as a sign of his impending death. The historian Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa also describes in some detail how the emperor then summoned his diviners to guide him in his choice of successor. The carcass of a young llama was brought into his presence and its entrails were read by the High Priest, the Villaoma, who informed him that the auspices for the succession of his son Ninancuyochi were unfavourable. The carcass of a second llama was brought to him, and again the auguries were deemed unfavourable for the succession of his son Huáscar. It was a divination that would never be repeated.
At the emperor’s death a thousand of his household servants were sacrificed so that they might serve him in the afterlife, and for ten days the tribes of Quito mourned his passing with the traditional weeping before his body was taken to Tumibamba to be mummified, where the Cañari people who worshipped the moon deity would mourn their sovereign for the length of an entire moon. At Tumibamba the Villaoma offered the throne to Ninancuyochi, but within a few days he too was dead, either poisoned or stricken by smallpox. The little that can be surmised from all the conflicting accounts is that the widowed Coya Rahua Ocllo was instrumental in the Villaoma’s subsequent proclamation of her son Huáscar as emperor: an election welcomed by the panacas of Cuzco who over the years, and to their detriment, had witnessed the growing pre-eminence of their northern empire. Among the dead emperor’s sons only Atahualpa, who had the support of his father’s northern warrior armies, and who was then possibly twenty-seven years old, five years older than Huáscar, would excuse himself from travelling south to Cuzco to render his brother homage.
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