The population of the city, numbering possibly 10,000 people at the time, was divided into two distinct groups: Hanan Cuzco, the senior military and secular grouping, and Hurin Cuzco, its mystical and spiritual duality. Even some twenty years after the Conquest at a tribunal held in the city of Potosí the Indian witnesses referred to the Spanish Emperor Charles V as the ‘Hatun, [apu, lord] of Castile’, the term for the dominant Hanan grouping.17
Along the Huatanay River and its lower valley were housed several thousand of the servants of the Inca lords, known as yanacona, whose responsibilities included cleaning the city’s streets and the maintenance of its buildings. Also living in the lower valley were the mitimae, communities of subject tribes, who lived under the rule of their caciques, and who in their thousands were brought each year to Cuzco from their tribal lands for their service of labour. In a rotating system called mita, which the Spaniards would themselves later adopt, the tribesmen served as bonded workers in any one of the four regions of the empire, in either agriculture, mining or as warriors in the imperial armies. The conquistadore Pedro Alonso Carrasco recalled how ‘the Incas took their people from one region to another, those from Quito to Cuzco, and those of Cuzco to even more remote lands’.18 All told some two hundred thousand people, in an area of some 40 square miles, helped sustain the life of the Inca capital.
Laid out in the shape of a puma, the ancient deity of the Chavín civilisation of the central Andes, the city’s main square of Aucaypata was paved in stone and lined with sand brought from the beaches of the Pacific, and flanked by the thatch-roofed palaces of its living and dead emperors, their stone chambers hung with sheets of gold. An idea of the sheer size of the palace of Amarucancha can perhaps be gained by comparing it to an adjoining but lesser structure, known as the Acclahuasi, which served as the residence of the mamacona, who numbered some one and a half thousand women, chosen for their beauty from each of the suyos of the empire. The palace of Casana, which Pizarro requisitioned for himself and his two brothers, contained a hall enclosure that could hold 3,000 people. Each palace would have contained several courtyards and stockades of llamas, alpacas and vicuñas, most of which livestock had been taken by Quisquis’s warriors.
Pedro de Cieza de León left a description of the city’s great Temple of the Sun, known as Coricancha, based on the evidence given him by Cuzco’s surviving Inca princes and the few remaining veterans of Cajamarca:
Its circumference is some four hundred paces, surrounded by a high wall of the finest masonry and precision … in all Spain I have not seen anything to compare to these walls, nor the placement of their stones, other than the tower known as Calahorra, by the bridge of Córdoba, and another edifice I saw in Toledo when I went to present the first part of my chronicle to the Prince Don Felipe [the future King Philip II], which is the hospital the Archbishop Tavera commissioned to be built … The stone is somewhat black in colour, rough, yet excellently cut. There are many doors and their arches are of a fine construction; at mid height of the walls runs a band of gold, of some seventeen inches in width and two in depth. The doors and arches are also embossed with sheets of this metal. Within the enclosure are four houses, not very large but of similar construction, the interior and exterior walls of which are adorned with sheets of the same metal, and their ceilings are of thatch.
Built into the inner walls of these houses are two stone benches, illuminated by shafts of sunlight and decorated with precious stones and emeralds. On these benches sat the emperors, and if any person would have done the same he would have been condemned to death … at each of the entrances were porters who guarded the virgins, of whom there were many, being the daughters of the principal lords and chosen for their great beauty, and who would remain in the temple till old age; and if any would have had dealings with men they would have been killed or buried alive, as would also be the man’s punishment. These women were called mamacona, who knew no other role than to sew and to paint the woollen garments for service in the temple, and in the making of chicha, which is a [maize] wine they make, and of which containers were filled in ample quantity …
In one of these houses, the grandest of all, was the figure of the sun, of great size and made of gold, and encased with precious stones. There also were placed the mummies of the Incas who had reigned in Cuzco, each surrounded by a great quantity of treasure …
Around the temple house were a number of smaller buildings, which were the dwellings of the Indians who served in the temple, and an enclosure where they kept the white llamas and the children and men they would sacrifice. There was also a garden, the earth and grass of which was of fine gold and where artificial maize grew, also of gold, as were their stems and ears, and so well planted that even in a strong wind they would stand. As well, there were twenty llamas of gold with their lambs, and shepherds with their stone slings and staffs, all of the same metal.19
Within hours of their entry into the city the Spaniards began a systematic looting of its palaces and temple, which had already been partly denuded of treasures by the pillaging of Quisquis’s warriors and by what had already been removed for Atahualpa’s tribute. For days on end, in an orgy of vandalism and destruction, with their swords, poniards and lances, the conquistadores hacked and stripped from the walls and alcoves of Cuzco’s buildings every artefact they could find: sheets of gold and silver, emeralds and pearls, carvings and sculptures. Overnight the city was transformed into a hell-hole of marauding soldiers, their armour and helmets adorned with the jewels they so freely plundered, intoxicated by the euphoria of their victory and by the native maize wine they drank, which fuelled their ferocity and rape of the city’s women, old and young alike: a brutality only alluded to by the chroniclers. Even Pedro Pizarro, normally the most reliable of historians, and possibly to hide his own part in the mayhem, refused to acknowledge that there had been any looting in the city, referring only to Pizarro’s order restraining his soldiers, which was possibly given much later.
In an age that had witnessed the looting of Rome by the army of their emperor, and which within ten years would see the pillage of medieval England’s Catholic cathedrals and monasteries, the sacking of Cuzco needs to be seen in the context of the time, and the brutality that ensued as equal to any perpetrated in contemporary Europe. Both Spaniard and Inca had traditionally rewarded their soldiers and warriors with the booty of battle: gold, silver, women and male slaves. The sacking of Cuzco proved no exception. Pedro de Cieza de León wrote that Quisquis, who had taken with him most of the city’s mamacona as concubines for his warriors, had also looted a great quantity of treasure. For Pizarro and Almagro, as at Cajamarca, the treasure would be the means of repaying the loans made them by a number of the conquistadores who had supplied them with ships and arms, as in the case of Hernando de Soto, and also their investors in Panama, merchants and Crown officials.
It would, however, be several months before Pizarro would allow the official distribution of the treasure said to have been half the amount in gold and four times that in silver of the Cajamarca tribute, and which possibly represented almost three quarters of the entire artistic heritage of Inca civilisation; its gold and silver sculptures melted into ingots, which would one day be used to decorate the altars of Spain’s great cathedrals and transform its looters into the grandees of a new social order.
All the good gold that had been collected, most of which were artefacts, was smelted by the Indians who were knowledgeable in that task. And the amount in weight was some 580,000 pesos of pure gold. A fifth of which was set apart for His Majesty … and of the silver some 215,000 marks were smelted, more or less, of which 170,000 marks was of fine silver in clean bars, the rest was of a lesser quality, mixed with other metals taken from the mines. The building in which the smelting took place was a remarkable sight: stacked with bars of gold, each weighing eight or ten pounds; there also were pots and jars and diverse figurines used by these lords, all in gold; and among the most singular objects to be seen were four ve
ry large llamas, and some ten or twelve life-size figures of the native women, also of the finest gold, and so beautiful and so well sculptured that they appeared to be almost alive: they were held by the [Inca] lords in such reverence, as if they were the rulers of the entire world, for it had been their custom to dress them in the most splendid of clothing, and whom they worshipped as living goddesses, giving them food to eat, and speaking to them. These sculptures were to form part of the Royal Fifth of the Crown’s share, together with other similar sculptures that were made of silver.20
In the first days of his occupation Pizarro had feared an attack by Quisquis, who had left the city with some ten thousand men and sought shelter in the westerly Cuntisuyo mountains. As various of his men testify, Pizarro secured the defence of the city, ordering a squadron of his cavalry to remain saddled and mounted at all times. Most of the men were billeted within the safety of the large fortress tower of Atun Cancha, at the far end of the great square, and which according to Pedro Pizarro had only one entry gate.
After the initial and frenzied looting a semblance of discipline had been restored among the conquistadores. After hiding their own illicit hoards of loot, they had spent hours transporting the larger pieces and artefacts of gold, silver and jewels into the great chamber of the palace of Casana: carvings of men and women, phalluses, animals and plants, images of the moon and of the sun, baskets laden with emeralds and pearls, even sheets of gold, which because of their enormous size were strapped to ropes and dragged by their horses. Diego de Trujillo recorded that when they gained entry into the temple of Coricancha they were confronted by the Villaoma, who berated them with the words: ‘How dare you enter here? For only after a year of fasting and barefooted can any one of you enter! And taking no notice of him we entered.’21 One of the most celebrated looters of the Inca temple was the young Biscayan horseman Mansio Serra de Leguizamón, a descendant of the Cid, who had been born in the Castilian township of Pinto, south of Madrid.22
At the time the Spaniards first entered the city of Cuzco the gold Inca image of the sun from its temple was taken in booty by a nobleman and conquistadore by the name of Mansio Serra de Leguizamón, whom I knew and who was still alive when I came to Spain, which he lost in a night of gambling, and where, according to the Father Acosta, was born the refrain: ‘He gambled the sun before the dawn.’23
It was an act of such wanton abandon that it would be commemorated in the taverns of the Indies for years to come. In his will Serra de Leguizamón records the value of the disc: ‘… which was of gold and which the Incas kept in the house of the sun, which is now the convent of Santo Domingo, where they practised their idolatries, and which I believe was worth some two thousand pesos of gold.’24 It is more than probable that the gold image he referred to, if not only because of the relatively low value he placed upon it, was a smaller sun disc of the temple’s sanctuary, and one which he may have looted for himself or been given by Pizarro as a reward for his conduct at Vilcacogna, and not the Punchao, which is recorded to have adorned Coricancha’s main altar and which Quisquis would undoubtedly have looted because of its symbolic value and worth. Well might the young hidalgo some forty years later somewhat arrogantly remind his sovereign King Philip II of the wealth of the Indies, of which the Spanish Crown had been the principal beneficiary:
From these realms has been taken such an infinity of gold and silver and pearls and riches to the realms of Spain, and which are daily sent to Your Majesty and his kingdom; all of which has been made possible by the conquest, discovery and pacification of these realms by the Marqués Don Francisco Pizarro and those who accompanied him, and the greatest service ever recorded in either ancient or modern history any vassals have rendered their monarch; all at their own cost and endeavour and without any expenditure of the Majesty of the King Don Carlos, our emperor and lord, as is well known, and for which the crowns of Castile and León have been so greatly endowed.25
Other than the Punchao, the Spaniards failed to find the Inca war huaca, a square stone of great size encased in gold and jewels, and the Muru Urco, a giant gold chain in the shape of a snake with the head of an anaconda, which the Emperor Huayna Cápac had commissioned to mark the birth of his son Huáscar. The chain had been used during the religious festivals at Cuzco and had stretched the entire length of the city’s square. For years to come Peru’s colonists would attempt to discover its supposed location in the waters of the lake at Urcos, south-east of Cuzco. And like the great treasures from the Inca temple of Copacabana, at Lake Titicaca, not a trace has ever been found of the booty undoubtedly taken by Quisquis’s warriors.
Garcilaso de la Vega recorded that ‘during the seven or eight years that followed these events, when the Spaniards were in control of their empire, treasure was still being discovered in and around the city. When its buildings had been allocated to its conquistadores, it happened that in one of them – a former royal palace called Amarucancha – which [for a while and in part] became the property of Antonio Altamarino, a horseman was galloping in its courtyard, when his horse sank its hoof into a hole. When they went to inspect the hole, thinking it was the bed of a former stream running under the palace, they found that it was the mouth of a large gold vessel. These vessels are made in various sizes by the Indians to serve as vats for brewing. With it were many other silver and gold vessels to the value of 80,000 ducats. And in a part of the house of the mamacona [Aclla Huasi] which had been given to Pedro del Barco and was later owned by the apothecary Hernando de Segovia whom I knew, a treasure worth some 72,000 ducats was found. [Ducats: gold coin of 23¾ carats fine.] With this and more than 20,000 he had earned at his trade, he returned to Spain, and I saw him in Seville, where he died a few days after his arrival of sheer misery and grief at having left Cuzco.’26
The sacking of Cuzco took place without any opposition from its Inca lords, nor even from the young Inca Prince Manco, which illustrates the terror the city’s inhabitants must have felt for the conquistadores. The only disquiet recorded was that of the Villaoma, who would eventually abandon Manco’s court and take refuge in the Cuntisuyo mountains. One of the few other symbolic acts of defiance was made by the priestess guardian of the oracle shrine at the Apurímac River. On learning of the approach of Pizarro’s army on their march to Cuzco, she had plunged to her death from her mountain canyon into the river below. It was there a century later that a new reed bridge was constructed across the river canyon and named in honour of San Luis Rey, to be immortalised in Thornton Wilder’s novella of that name.
On 23 March 1534, and only after the distribution of the city’s treasure did Pizarro establish Cuzco as a Spanish municipality, in words which convey the mindset of men who publicly saw themselves as the spiritual heirs of those who had achieved the reconquest of Muslim Spain:
I, Francisco Pizarro, Knight of the Order of Santiago, servant and vassal of His Majesty the Emperor King Don Carlos, Our Lord and First Gentleman of Spain, Adelantado in his name, Captain-General and Governor of these kingdoms of New Castile, wishing to follow the custom of our ancestors and the order they possessed, and of those whom His Majesty commanded for such great service of God, Our Lord, to augment our Holy Catholic Faith and the good conversion of the natives we have defeated in these remote lands, separated from the knowledge of the Holy Faith, and whom by its word were deemed servitors and brothers of ours and descendants of our first father, I wish to continue the settlement of these kingdoms which I have already commenced, in the name of Their Majesties. And wishing to thus continue by founding in this great city, the headship of all the land and sovereignty of the people who there live, and where I am, and at present reside, a town settlement of Spaniards, of those who accompanied me in the conquest of all these lands and of this city, having risked great hardship to their persons and lives and loss of estate in the name of Your Majesty; and thus commend to the service of God, Our Lord, and distribute among them the lands they have won in compensation and satisfaction of their endeavours.27
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br /> Shortly after his proclamation Pizarro appointed eighty-eight encomenderos to his municipality. The repartamientos, distributions, of encomiendas were in effect primarily allocations of Indians from various subject tribes encamped in the Cuzco region as mitimae, tributary labourers, of the Inca lords. Each encomendero was awarded a cacique of a tribe, together with his subject people, men, women and children, and obliged to pay him tribute twice yearly in gold, livestock and food. The lands of the tribe would also revert to the encomendero and would form part of his feudal domain, where he could also exercise the right to use his tribesmen as warriors in his private armies, or as labourers and miners in other regions of the colony, imitating the Inca system of mita, tributary labour. Some encomenderos, among them Pizarro and his brothers, were awarded numerous caciques and several thousand tribesmen. It was a system mirrored in the encomiendas of reconquered Muslim Andalucía and Murcía, and which had been established in Spain’s colonies, and was little more than a form of slavery.
The palaces and buildings of Cuzco were also distributed by Pizarro to his men. Building by building the city witnessed the eviction of its lords and their families. In addition to his palace of Casana, which dominated the central square of Aucaypata, Pizarro was later to requisition the entire neighbouring valley of the Yucay, north of Cuzco, once the personal fiefdom of Emperor Huayna Cápac and known today as the ‘Sacred Valley of the Incas’. Almagro was awarded Emperor Huáscar’s palace of Colcampata, which overlooked the northern approach to the city. Pizarro’s brother Hernando and Hernando de Soto were given equal shares of the palace of Amarucancha, which had belonged to the Emperor Huáscar’s panaca of Túpac Yupanqui. Both of Pizarro’s younger brothers were allocated one of the principal palaces in the city.
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