As Atahualpa entered the square of Cajamarca, and as he saw no Christians he asked the Inca lord who had been with us: ‘What has become of these bearded ones?’ And the Inca lord replied: ‘They are hidden.’ And he asked him to climb down from his throne litter on which he sat, but he refused. And then the Friar Vicente de Valverde made himself seen and attempted to inform him of the reason why we had come on the orders of the Pope and one of his sons, a Christian leader who was the emperor, our lord.
And speaking of his words of the Holy Gospel Atahualpa said to him: ‘Whose words are these?’ And he replied: ‘The words of God.’ And Atahualpa said to him: ‘How is this possible?’ And the Friar Vicente told him: ‘See, here it is written.’ And he showed him a breviary which he opened, and Atahualpa demanded to be given it and took it, and after looking at it he threw it on the ground and ordered: ‘Let none of them escape!’ And the Indians gave a great cry, shouting: ‘Inca, let it be so!’ And the shouting made us very frightened. And the Friar Vicente returned and climbed to the wall where the Governor was and said to him: ‘Your Excellency, what will you do? Atahualpa is like Lucifer!’
And then the Governor climbed down and armed himself with a shield and sword and put on his helmet, and with the twenty-four men who were with him, and I [Trujillo] among them, we went directly to Atahualpa’s litter, pushing our way through the crowd of Indians, and as we tried to pull him off his litter the horsemen charged to the great sound that was made from their bridle bells, and there in the square fell so many people, one on top of the other, that many were suffocated, and of the eight thousand Indians who died, over half died in this manner. The killing of those who fled continued for half a league and into the night.20
Native accounts set down by missionaries and Crown officials almost half a century later offered an even more damning insight into the massacre. The Indian Sebastián Yacobilca recalled that twenty thousand warriors were killed and their treasures looted, for he claimed that he personally witnessed Pizarro and his brother Hernando ‘and his other brothers, and various Spaniards, who were with them, take from Atahualpa’s encampment to their lodgings in the town all treasures of gold, silver and jewels, which he kept for his use and for that of his women and children’.21
The stench of death hung over the town for days, and the only sound was the wailing of the Indian women, many of whom had witnessed the dreadful end of their Inca lords. To the last man the escort had held aloft the litter of their emperor; some of them had lost their arms, and used instead the bleeding and mutilated stumps of their shoulders to support him. Others had stood by in silent disbelief, mesmerised by the sight of their living god, naked and chained like an animal, pleading with his captors for his life.
In less than two hours, as the horseman Juan Ruiz de Arce recalled, and without the loss of a single man, the bedraggled contingent of Pizarro’s conquistadores, their faces and hands darkened by the blood of their butchery, changed the course of world history and laid the foundations of South America’s Hispanic heritage.
THREE
The Capture of the Sun God
Atahualpa was a man of some thirty years of age, of fine appearance and disposition, somewhat stocky, his face imposing, beautiful and ferocious, his eyes bloodshot.
Francisco López de Jerez, Pizarro’s scrivener
The morning after the massacre Pizarro addressed the entire company of his men. Their victory, he told them, had been the Almighty’s reward to them for all they had suffered in their long and arduous march, and he promised that he too would reward each one of them for their loyalty and courage. His men were exhausted, having spent the night fully armed, most of the horsemen mounted in the square. Even the Greek Candía’s two small cannon had been placed in a defensive position to the north and south of the town’s walls, one of which had been partly destroyed by the multitude of Indians attempting to flee. Nor had the fear that had gripped the Spaniards when they had first seen Atahualpa’s retinue enter the town, and when many of them had urinated in their armour, entirely subsided, for they knew themselves to be relatively few and isolated in a mountain valley some 8,000 feet above sea level in the heartland of an unknown country. For the majority of Pizarro’s volunteers it had been the first time they had ever fought in their lives. Their victory and the slaughter that ensued they owed to the terror their cannon and horses had inflicted on their mainly unarmed victims. No explanation, however, is given by either conquistadore or Indian as to why Atahualpa had not been accompanied by his squadrons of warriors when he had entered the town. What is apparent was his desire to demonstrate to both the Spaniards and his own people his sovereignty and courage, which some of his warriors had lacked when challenged by Hernando de Soto’s horsemanship.
The capture of the emperor, the living deity of the Inca Sun God, would virtually paralyse his empire, denigrating him in the eyes of his subjects to the level of his brother the Emperor Huáscar, whose public humiliation and torture had been witnessed at Cuzco. The great imperial panacas of Cuzco and their lords, divided by their rivalries, were soon to find themselves not only facing the open desertion of many of their subject tribesmen, but the retribution of Atahualpa’s northern warrior chiefs, men of neither Quéchua nor Inca royal blood, but who had risen from the ranks of the imperial armies and who had little regard for the princely order. The almost total breakdown of Inca rule, and what was becoming the virtual dismemberment of their sovereignty, was demonstrated by the disloyalty of the caciques who are recorded to have entered the encampment soon after to offer the Spaniards their allegiance, something which was possibly most instrumental in influencing Pizarro’s later decision to execute Atahualpa.
Manacled and kept prisoner in one of the town’s stone lodgings, Atahualpa offered tribute for his release, an act common in the tribal wars of the Andes and which in itself would have been regarded by his people as a symbol of his vassalage. The tribute would also have included the lordship of the subject tribes, their herds of llamas and their women.
The horseman Juan Ruiz de Arce recalled that Atahualpa had been imprisoned in a chamber ‘twenty feet in length and fifteen feet wide’.1 An Indian witness, who had been present when Pizarro had first visited his prisoner, testified that he had demanded gold and silver from him, and that ‘Atahualpa, fearing he would be killed, called for an interpreter and told him: “tell the Christians that if they do not kill me I will give them this entire chamber filled with gold.”’2 Diego de Trujillo recorded that Atahualpa then promised ‘to fill two entire chambers, and with a white line he marked the height of almost two persons, and he ordered that this be carried out with much care as his life depended on it, and so his messengers departed to all the regions’.3
The Inca emperor had been well informed about his captors and there is no evidence to suggest he believed in their divinity, as is often asserted. From the outset his scouts had appraised him of every aspect of the Spaniards and of their mortality and of their obsessive search for gold, which was all they inquired about. He would also have been told about their treatment of the native women, and of the mass rape of the mamacona that had taken place at Cajas. His intention, as he later informed the horseman Miguel de Estete, had been to ‘take their horses and mares, which was what impressed him most, for breeding, and to castrate some of us for his service to guard his women, as was their custom, the rest he would sacrifice to the sun’.4
Pizarro was under no illusion as to the danger his men now faced. Three separate armies of Atahualpa’s warrior chiefs were encamped within anything between days’ and weeks’ march from Cajamarca: the warrior chief Rumiñavi to the north, guarding Quito; Chalcuchima to the south, defending the town of Jauja; and Quisquis further south, defending Cuzco. The warriors they commanded numbered in all possibility over a hundred thousand. Pizarro knew it would take several months for Almagro’s reinforcements to reach him from Panama. No more than two hundred and fifty men, some of them defending the small settlement of San Miguel on the equat
orial coast, were all that stood between the success or failure of his conquest.
Under the circumstances, Pizarro’s treatment of Atahualpa was considerate, for he had him freed of his chains and placed under guard in a far larger lodging which had a small courtyard, where he allowed him to be accompanied by his women, who cooked for him and prepared his food. Pedro Pizarro recorded that the women ‘were carried in litters or in hammocks, which were blankets tied at each end to thick poles, the thickness of one’s arm, and finely designed, their bodies shaded and hidden by canopies. They were attended by a multitude of servants who treated them with great reverence, and they were of a very fine appearance, their robes of a very delicate and soft cloth, their hair, which was black, they wore long, over their shoulders.’5 The trumpeter Pedro de Alconchel recalled that ‘some of the women were just Atahualpa’s servants, while others were women with whom he had carnal relations, and these women I saw were greatly respected and were kept apart from the rest, for they were well known for being his concubines; and with great honour they were held and served, and none of the principal caciques or Inca lords were allowed to touch them or speak with them, neither could they look them in the face’.6
Pedro Pizarro, who was one of Atahualpa’s guards towards the end of his imprisonment, has left the most graphic account of the Inca emperor’s captivity:
He was an Indian of good disposition and fine character, of medium height and not overtly thickset; his features were beautiful and with a sombre aspect about them, his eyes bloodshot, and he was much feared by his people. I recall when the lord of Huayllas asked him for his permission to go to his lands, which he granted him: indicating to him the time of his journey and of his return; but he was absent much longer, and when he returned he brought with him some gifts of fruit from his land, and being present, I watched him approach and tremble in such a manner that he could hardly stand. Atahualpa raised his head slightly and smiling, dismissed him. When they took him out to kill him all the Indians who were in the square prostrated themselves on the ground before him like drunken men, such was their fear and reverence for him.
He was served by his women, each of his sisters spending eight or ten days with him, and who were also served by a great number of the other women, daughters of his lords, and who were always in attendance on him, making sure that no Indian entered to see him without his permission. He also had a number of caciques with him, who remained outside in the courtyard: and if any one of them were called by him he entered barefoot and in homage carrying a burden on his back …
On his head he wore a llautu, which are braids of coloured wool, half a finger thick and a finger in width, in the manner of a crown. On his forehead he wore a fringe attached to the llautu, made of fine scarlet wool, evenly cut and adorned with small gold strings. His hair, like that of his lords, he wore cut short. The clothes he wore were very thin and fine. Over his head he wore a mantle which partly covered his neck: so as to hide the wound to his ear he had suffered …
One day when he was eating the food his women had brought him, and which they placed on fine green leaves on the floor, seated on a wooden stool, a foot in height, and made of reddish and very pretty wood, he pointed as was his custom at what ever food he wished and it was brought to him by his women, and from whose hand he ate. On one occasion, as he was being fed by his sisters, when he raised some food to his mouth, a particle fell on his clothing, and giving his hand to one of the women to lick clean, he stood up and went into his chamber to put on new clothing, and when he came back he wore a shirt and dark brown mantle. I felt the mantle which was smoother than silk, and I said to him: ‘Inca, of what is this cloth made?’ And he said to me: ‘It is made of birds who fly at night in Puerto Viejo and Túmbez and who bite my people.’ And when I asked him how so much cloth can be gathered he said: ‘Those dogs from Túmbez and Puerto Viejo, what else can they do other than make clothes for their father?’ And it is the case that in those regions the bats bite Indians, Spaniards and horses alike at night, and they draw so much blood that it is a mystery. And one day when an Indian complained that a Spaniard had stolen one of these mantles, the Governor asked me what they were made of, and he told me to summon the Spaniard so as to punish him. And the Indian showed me one of the chests from where the garment had been stolen. And they contained everything Atahualpa had touched with his hands; in some were the reed mats they placed under his feet when he ate; in another were the bones of the fowl he had eaten, and which he had touched with his hands; in others, the corn storks he had also eaten and touched, and everything that had touched his skin. And when I asked him ‘For what purpose do you have these things here?’ He answered that it was in order to burn them, for what had been touched by the sons of the Sun must be burnt to ashes, which none was allowed to handle, and scattered to the wind. These lords slept on the floor on large mattresses made of cotton and covered themselves with woollen blankets.
Never in all Peru did I see an Indian such as Atahualpa, nor anyone so ferocious or with so much authority. And before he died he told his sisters and his other women that if his body was not burnt he would return to this world. And when various of his servants and one of his sisters killed themselves so that they could serve him in the next life, two of his sister-wives led the wailing for his death, singing and weeping, and recalling his great deeds; and they waited until the Governor came out of his lodging, and following him to where their brother had been imprisoned they begged me to allow them to enter his lodging, and once inside they searched for his spirit in each corner of the chamber.7
The relationship between Pizarro and his prisoner was based on mutual necessity. As Pedro Pizarro’s account demonstrates, it was far from acrimonious. Pizarro not only allowed his prisoner considerable freedom but established a personal relationship with him that over the months came to border on friendship, visiting him almost daily and inviting him on occasion to his own chambers to share a meal with him. It is, however, revealing that among all the Spaniards at Cajamarca Atahualpa is recorded to have regarded only Hernando Pizarro as his equal. Possibly it was because of the arrogance he had demonstrated at their first meeting, and the fact that he could read and write, something the Inca emperor greatly admired and which he knew Pizarro was unable to do. The Andalucian Alonso de Guzmán recorded that Atahualpa ‘was very intelligent and in twenty days he understood Spanish and to play chess and cards’, and that he almost learnt to read and write.8 Hernando de Soto taught him to play chess and spent many a day in his company, impressed by the ability of his pupil not only to defeat him, but to outplay any other Spaniard.
Soon after Atahualpa’s capture, one of his young sisters was brought to the town by his lords, and the emperor gave her as a gift to Pizarro with the words, ‘take my sister, daughter of my father, whom I love greatly’.9 Quispe Sisa was a half-sister of the emperor, and possibly then only twelve years old. Pizarro installed her in the chamber that served for his lodging, facing the central square of the town. Several witnesses attest to the affection he showed the young girl, whom he openly called his ‘woman’, giving her the nickname ‘Pizpita’, the name of an Extremaduran song bird, because of her liveliness.
For eight months Atahualpa remained a prisoner at Cajamarca, and for eight months his armies remained stationed beyond the mountains awaiting his order to attack. The unease of Pizarro’s men was, however, partly quelled by the appearance in the first few weeks of several thousand warriors and their women from the Emperor Huáscar’s defeated armies, among them Cañari and Huanca tribesmen, many of whom had renounced their allegiance to their Inca lords. Their arrival also brought Pizarro confirmation of the Emperor Huáscar’s existence and of his killing on the orders of Atahualpa. Though Atahualpa denied any involvement in his brother’s killing, and wept openly about his death, it gave Pizarro the excuse he needed to charge him many months later with his murder.
Atahualpa’s cruelty was in every sense equal to that of Pizarro and his conquistadores, and is we
ll documented. In his evidence to the viceroy Toledo’s inquiry at Cuzco, one of Atahualpa’s guards and the youngest conquistadore at Cajamarca, Alonso de Mesa, stated that when some four to five thousand warriors in their squadrons arrived in the valley to seek refuge there, ‘many of them carrying their children and accompanied by their women’, Atahualpa told Pizarro that when he was free he would kill them in Quito in order to guarantee the loyalty of that province. ‘I also saw him order some ten or twelve caciques from Chachapoyas be brought to Cajamarca,’ Mesa recalled, ‘and he instructed his servants to put them in a stockade, where he had them stoned to death. And on hearing of this the Governor threatened to have him burnt if he repeated such killings.’ Mesa also added that one day he found in Atahualpa’s chamber ‘a shrunken head mounted in gold, and which had a drinking funnel attached to it, also of gold, and I took this head to show to the Governor who at the time was eating; and he had Atahualpa brought to him and asked him to explain what this was, and he told him it was the head of one of his brothers who had fought against him, and who had boasted he would drink from his skull, and it was he who killed him and who now drank from his head, and taking the skull he drank the chicha that was inside in front of us all.’10
Although Atahualpa had promised to furnish his ransom tribute within two months, its delayed arrival at Cajamarca prompted Hernando Pizarro to ask his brother for permission to take a hand in the gathering of the booty from one of the principal Inca temples. The delay had greatly affected the morale of his men and he ordered Atahualpa to supply his brother with guides and a safe conduct through his lands.
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