by Marie Arana
PART 1: SILVER
Epigraph; “Once upon a time, my little dove”: Antonio Dominguez Hidalgo, Mitos, Fabulas, y Leyendas del Antiguo México (México, DF: Editorial Umbral, 1987), 215.
CHAPTER 2: VEINS OF A MOUNTAIN GOD
Epigraph; “Descend to the mineral depths”: Pablo Neruda, “The Heights of Machu Picchu,” from Canto General, trans. Jack Schmitt, in The Poetry of Pablo Neruda, ed. Ilan Stavans (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003), 207.
a region of sparkling lakes: Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, El Primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno, ed. John Murra, Rolena Adorno, and Jorge Urioste, vol. 1, figs. 49–78; El Inca Garcilaso, Royal Commentaries of Peru, 1:330; Monografía de Bolivia (La Paz: Biblioteca del Sesquicentenario de la República, 1975), 3:27.
a barrens that beggars the imagination: For evidence of the environmental degradation in this area, see W. H. Strosnider, F. Llanos, and R. W. Nairn, “A Legacy of Nearly 500 Years of Mining in Potosí, Bolivia,” a paper presented at the 2008 National Meeting of the American Society of Mining and Reclamation, Richmond, VA, www.asmr.us/Publications/Conference%20Proceedings/2008/1232-Strosnider-OK.pdf. See also Nicholas A. Robins, Mercury, Mining, and Empire: The Human and Ecological Cost of Colonial Silver Mining in the Andes, 184–86. The terrain is very similar to Mount Ananea, which I describe in my article “Dreaming of El Dorado,” Virginia Quarterly Review online, last modified September 17, 2012, www.vqronline.org/essay/dreaming-el-dorado.
as populous and vibrant as Paris or London: Tertius Chandler, Four Thousand Years of Urban Growth: An Historical Census (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1987), 483, 529.
a fragile grid on the verge of collapse: William Neuman, “For Miners, Increasing Risk on a Mountain at the Heart of Bolivia’s Identity,” New York Times online, September 16, 2014.
slaves scrabbled for silver with deer antlers: Kendall Brown, A History of Mining in Latin America: From the Colonial Era to the Present, digital version, loc. 328, 6%.
they had only one use and only one consumer: Crónica franciscana de las provincias del Perú (1651) (Washington, DC: American Academy of Franciscan History, 1957), 1:16; Pedro de Cieza de León, Crónica del Perú, 39.
Huayna Capac . . . loved gold and silver with an abandon: Garcilaso, Royal Commentaries, 1:314.
chambers’ walls lined with silver: Francisco de Xerez, quoted in Horatio H. Urteaga, Biblioteca de Cultura Peruana: Los cronistas de la Conquista, 55.
This Lord Inca wanted to eat and drink from them: José de Acosta, Historia Natural y Moral de las Indias, vol. 4, ch. 4.
brought on a covetousness and oppression: Garcilaso, Royal Commentaries, 1:314.
Handsome, well built, a warrior king: Guaman Poma, 1:93.
Bigger than China’s Ming dynasty: Charles C. Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, 74.
Pointing to it, he opined: Garcilaso, Royal Commentaries, 1:314.
because the promontory was considered sacred: Fray Diego de Ocaña, Un viaje fascinante por la América Hispana del siglo 16, 184; Teresa Gisbert, Iconografía y mitos indígenas en el arte, 19.
Epigraph; “On the fourth day, the All Powerful”: Bartolomé Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela, Historia de la Villa Imperial de Potosí, 3 vols. 1715. Repr., edited by Lewis Hanke and Gunnar Mendoza. Rhode Island: Brown University Press, 1965. This eighteenth-century manuscript purchased by the Church from a Parisian book dealer in 1905 is one of the most important items in any collection about the history of the conquest.
letter to the celebrated explorer Alexander von Humboldt: Alexander von Humboldt, Ueber die geographischen und geognostischen Arbeiten des Herrn Pentland im sudlichen Peru: Hertha, Zeitschr. f. Erd-Volker-und Staatenkunde Ano 5, 1–29, Stuttgart, Ger., 1829. See also Georg Petersen, Mining and Metallurgy in Ancient Peru, 44.
after a grueling two-thousand-mile mule ride: Joanne Pillsbury, ed., Guide to Documentary Sources for Andean Studies, vol. 2, 1530–1900, 506.
gold nuggets as large as a human skull: Garcilaso, Los mejores comentarios reales, ed. Domingo Miliani (Ayacucho, Peru: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1992), 202. Also Herbert Guillaume, The Amazon Provinces of Peru as a Field for European Emigration (Southampton, UK: self-pub., 1894), 300–1.
El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Huayna Capac’s great-nephew: Garcilaso, Los mejores comentarios reales, 202; Guillaume, Amazon Provinces of Peru, 300–1.
The Spanish, too, eventually abandoned their mines: Guillaume, Amazon Provinces of Peru, 302.
bored deeper into the glacial rock: Joseph B. Pentland, Report on Bolivia, 1827, 73–74; Petersen, 26.
Bolivian geologists revived Pentland’s work: Carlos Serrano Bravo, Historia de la minería andina boliviana (Siglos 16–20). Paper published online, December 2004, www2.congreso.gob.pe/sicr/cendocbib/con4_uibd.nsf/6EF6AA797C1749E905257EFF005C493F/$FILE/Historia_de_Miner%C3%ADa_Andina_Boliviana.pdf.
After his meager breakfast: This account of Juan Sixto Ochochoque’s mining routine is from interviews with Leonor Gonzáles and her family, cited earlier.
strong constraints against forcing slaves: Nicholas Tripcevich and Kevin J. Vaughn, eds., Mining and Quarrying in the Ancient Andes: Sociopolitical Economic, and Symbolic Dimensions, 217.
mining in the time of the Incas: Petersen, 44.
plunging a three-hundred-meter hole into its flank: This is an estimation, based on interviews with fellow miners in La Rinconada, who cited 250 to 300 meters from shaft entrance to end.
would have represented a flagrant violation: P. Gose, quoted in Tripcevich and Vaughn, 278.
lion’s share of gold that the indigenous extracted: Bernabé Cobo, Historia del Nuevo mundo 1:300; Acosta, vol. 4, ch. 4.
said to have been so laden with gold: William H. Prescott, History of the Conquest of Peru: With a Preliminary View of the Civilization of the Incas, 56.
for them, it consisted of different cycles: María Rostworowski, Historia del Tawantinsuyu, 25, 28; Ronald Wright, Stolen Continents: The Americas Through Indian Eyes, 30–33.
Aztec world view, too, was deeply binary: Wright, 33.
work was interchangeable, rotational: Rostworowski, Historia del Tawantinsuyu, 227. What follows here on Inca culture is informed largely by Rostworowski.
The walls of Coricancha, the “golden realm”: Prescott, Conquest of Peru, 218–19.
every utensil in his house: Garcilaso, Royal Commentaries, 3:192.
Gold was the “sweat of the sun”: Cruz Martínez de la Torre, “El sudor del Sol y las lágrimas de la Luna: La metalurgia del oro y de la plata en el Antiguo Perú,” Espacio, Tiempo y Forma, Serie VII, Historia del Arte, t.12, 1999, 11.
to the Inca, gold was light’s refuge: Fundación ICO, Oro y la plata de las Indias en la época de los Austrias, 33.
primogenitor, Christ, and king: Wright, 72.
His bowels were meticulously removed: Ibid.
chain of gold that reached from one end of Cuzco’s marketplace: El Inca Garcilaso put it at about seven hundred feet, which would be the length of two football fields. Royal Commentaries, 3:192.
These metals were not forged in the same way: Heather Lechtman, “Cloth and Metal: The Culture of Technology,” in Andean Art at Dumbarton Oaks, vol. 1, ed. Elizabeth Hill Boone (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks), 1996, 33–43; Charles C. Mann, 94.
news of their love for them: Miguel León Portilla. De Teotihuacán a los aztecas: antología de fuentes e interpretaciones históricas, (México, DF: UNAM, 1971), 21. Also, in many chronicles written by the conquistadors, it is clear that the indigenous of Mexico and Panama were aware that gold could be found in cultures to the south.
began producing exquisite gold for its chieftains: Jose Pérez de Barradas, Orfebrería prehispánica de Colombia, 93–98, 339–41.
the legend of El Dorado took hold: This was an exaggeration of other accounts in which the gold dust ritual was undertaken by a prince (psihipqua) upon the death of the ruling cacique (zipa) and before taking up the reins of power. Juan Rodríguez
Freyle. Conquista y Descubrimiento del Nuevo Reino de Granada (Bogotá: Círculo de Lectores, 1985), 28–29.
Epigraph; “There was no sin then”: “No había entonces pecado. No había entonces enfermedad. No había dolor de huesos. No había fiebre por el oro.” Chilám Balám de Chumayel, quoted in Miguel León-Portilla, El Reverso de la Conquista: Relaciones aztecas, mayas e incas, 22.
brought metallurgy to Mesoamerica: León-Portilla, Reverso de la Conquista, 23.
as a mark of nobility; as a way to distinguish class: Fray Diego Durán, The Aztecs: The History of the Indies of New Spain, trans. Doris Heyden and Fernando Horcasitas, 132.
began fashioning copper spears: León-Portilla, Reverso de la Conquista, 417.
face-to-face with an original world, entirely distinct: Rostworowski, Historia del Tawantinsuyu, 28.
“great island, afloat in a primordial sea”: Wright, 32.
there were one hundred million of them: William H. Denevan, The Population of the Americas in 1492 (Milwaukee: University of Wisconsin, 1992), 1; Wright, 4. To be fair, this figure has fluctuated from as high as 112 million to as low as 10 million.
home to a quarter million residents: Wright, 11.
quadruple the population of London: The Aztec population was five million in 1500; London’s was approximately fifty thousand; the United Kingdom’s, four million. “Population of the British Isles,” Tacitus.nu, accessed January 29, 2019, www.tacitus.nu/historical-atlas/population/british.htm; Boris Urlanis, Rost naseleniya v Evrope [Population growth in Europe] (Moscow: OGIZ-Gospolitizdam, 1941).
Aztecs governed twenty-five million more: Charles C. Mann, 107.
The Inca capital, Cuzco, too, was a humming metropolis: “Inca People,” Encyclopædia Britannica online, www.britannica.com/topic/Inca.
two hundred thousand citizens, with as many as thirty-seven million: Gordon F. McEwan, in After Collapse: The Regeneration of Complex Societies, ed. Glenn Schwartz and John Nichols (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2010), 98.
emeralds, amethysts, jade, turquoise: George Folsom, intro., in Hernán Cortés, The Despatches of Hernando Cortés (New York: Wiley & Putnam, 1843), 35.
“the excrement of the gods”: The Aztec word for gold or silver is teocuitlatl, which literally means “excrement of the gods” (Classical Nahuatl-English Dictionary, Glosbe, https://en.glosbe.com/nci/en/teocuitlatl).
“What can be grander than a barbarian lord”: Hernán Cortés, “Segunda Carta,” Caretas de Relación. See also Hernán Cortés: Letters from Mexico, trans. and ed. Anthony R. Pagden, 108.
part of a vast family of languages: Uto-Aztecan languages: Nahuatl, Chemehuevi, Paiute, O’odham, Hopi, Tübatulabal, Comanche. See Nahuatl: Nahuatl Dialects, Classical Nahuatl Grammar (Memphis: General Books: 2010), 44; Germán Vázquez Chamorro, Moctezuma, 2006, 17.
a territory the size of Britain: The Aztec Empire was roughly 80,000 square miles; England is 50,346. World Atlas, accessed January 29, 2019, www.worldatlas.com.
Montezuma II had been elected democratically: Durán, 220.
He was deliberate, serious: Francisco Cervantes de Salazar, Crónica de la Nueva España, bk. 4, ch. 3, in cervantesvirtual.com. Also Durán, 220.
sweeping the temple floors: Vázquez, Moctezuma, 1987, 6–7.
Charismatic, dignified, tall: Details about Montezuma are from Cortés, Cartas de Relación, or Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España, ch. 91; Cervantes de Salazar, Crónica, bk. 4, ch. 3; Bernal Díaz del Castillo, in Enrique de Vedia, Historiadores primitivos de Indias, 2:86.
special potions to boost his virility: Cervantes de Salazar, Crónica, 8.
strong, nimble, and an excellent archer: Ibid., 3.
Once the initiation rituals were done: Vázquez, Moctezuma, 1987, 7; Durán, 178, 222.
describe Montezuma II as a weak and anxious ruler: The Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain, vol. 8, bk. 12, trans. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble, 13–26.
as the Nahuatl name Montezuma actually means: Vázquez, Moctezuma, 1987, 13.
Tenochtitlán’s military now commandeered every aspect: Ibid., 14.
serving as guard for a burgeoning class of powerful merchants: Ibid.
The central plaza of Tenochtitlán: Cervantes de Salazar, Crónica, bk. 4, 18:356. The Mixtecs, during the time of Moctezuma I, also had extremely wealthy merchants and a lively marketplace of gold, silver, and precious stones. These practices may have been adopted from them.
paid tributes to the state in bracelets: Enrique Canudas Sandoval, Venas de la plata en la historia de México 1:182.
A wealthy protobourgeoisie: Vázquez, Moctezuma, 1987, 14.
His government would clamp down: Durán, 222–23.
dressing down the plebeian soldiers: Ibid., 223; Vázquez, Moctezuma, 2006, 104.
a nobleman’s bastard children: Durán, 223; Vázquez, Moctezuma, 2006, 105.
slay all the tutors and handmaids: Durán, 227; Vázquez, Moctezuma, 2006, 106.
reduce the power of the wealthy merchants: Durán, 227–28; Vázquez, Moctezuma, 2006, 109–111.
rule was eventually visited by all three: Frances Berdan, Aztec Archaeology and Ethnohistory (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 170.
Evil omens began to be reported: Florentine Codex, vol. 8, bk. 12, 1–3. It’s worth mentioning here that the Florentine Codex reveals a distinct pro-Tlatelolco and anti-Tenochtitlán bent.
Epigraph; “With the Pacific to the west and the Amazon to the east”: John Hemming, Conquest of the Incas, 29.
The marriage he finally consummated: Gamboa, 177.
paraded the seven-hundred-foot cable: Agustin de Zárate, Historia del descubrimiento y conquista del Perú, vol. 1, ch. 14; Garcilaso, Royal Commentaries, vol. 1, bk. 9, ch. 1.
Cruel, cowardly, and vain: Rostworowski, Historia del Tawantinsuyu, 159.
Tupac Inca Yupanqui, one of the most aggressive: Guaman Poma, 1:91.
metal making in full swing: Tripcevich and Vaughn, 255.
he was delighted to find: Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, History of the Incas (2007), 160.
booty of dark-skinned slaves, gold: Ibid., 152.
weighed down with gold, silver, emeralds: Raúl Porras Barrenechea, ed., “Oro y leyenda del Perú,” in Indagaciones peruanos, available at the National University of San Marcos Library System online, sisbib.unmsm.edu.pe/bibvirtual/libros/linguistica/legado_quechua/oro.htm.
Near Tumbes and Quito, where rivers glittered with gold: Petersen, 49.
his governors had been found with their throats slit: Rostworowski, Historia del Tawantinsuyu, 122.
the magnificent Royal Road, the Capac Ñan: El Inca Garcilaso tells us that this stretch of the road was built expressly for Huayna Capac’s campaign to pacify Quito. Royal Commentaries, 8:370.
Not least on Huayna Capac’s mind . . . with a retinue: Rostworowski, Historia del Tawantinsuyu, 123.
Enamored of his father’s glittering spoils: Garcilaso, Royal Commentaries, 8:314.
vast army of hundreds of thousands: Juan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamayhua says that there were more than a million of these soldiers. Clements R. Markham, Narratives of the Rites and Laws of the Yncas, 109.
naked, wild men of the Quillacingas: Garcilaso, Royal Commentaries, 8:315; Cobo, Historia, 1:157–59.
ordered his armies to decapitate: Cobo, Historia, 1:300; Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas, Historia de las Indias Occidentales, 148.
Yahuarcocha: “pool of blood”: Cobo, Historia, 1:159.
grisly process that took more than a decade: Ibid. The struggle may have taken as long as seventeen years; see the current archeological evidence in Owen Jarus, “Ancient War Revealed in Discovery of Incan Fortresses,” LiveScience, last modified May 31, 2011.
hardly a Quiteño male left over the age of twelve: José Echeverria Almeida, “Archeology of a Battle: The Lagoon of Yahuarcocha,” Revista Arqueología Ecuatoriana, last modified June 12, 2007
, http://revistas.arqueo-ecuatoriana.ec/es/apachita/apachita-9/88-arqueologia-de-una-batalla-la-laguna-de-yahuarcocha.
“You are all children now”: Frederick A. Kirkpatrick, 134.
transferring his court from Cuzco: Cobo, Historia, 1:161.
creating a new capital in Quito, a rift: Cieza de León, Cronica del Perú, 1:226.
One Spanish friar recounted: Fray Buenaventura de Salinas y Cordova, Memorial de las Historias del nuevo mundo: Pirú, 58–59.
the Andean chronicler Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala depicts: Guaman Poma, 2:343.
A plague of epic proportions: Juan B. Lastres, La Salud Pública y la Prevención de la Viruela en el Perú, intro; Noble David Cook, Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492–1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 13; Cook, Demographic Collapse: Indian Peru, 1520–1620 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004), 114, 116, 143–44, 252–54. Some historians have noted that the reports of the spread of smallpox do not conform with what scientists know about the way the disease works. For example: “Almost every element of this received account is false, epidemiologically improbable, historiographically suspect, or logically dubious.” Francis J. Brooks, “Revising the Conquest of Mexico: Smallpox, Sources, and Populations,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 24, no. 1 (Summer 1993), 1–29.
aided by random vectors: James B. Kiracofe and John S. Marr, “Marching to Disaster: The Catastrophic Convergence of Inca Imperial Policy, Sand Flies, and El Niño in the 1524 Andean Epidemic,” paper, presented at the Inter-American Institute for Advanced Studies in Cultural History, Dumbarton Oaks Pre-Columbian Symposium, Washington, DC, February 14, 2003, published in El Niño, Catastrophism, and Cultural Change in Ancient America, ed. Daniel H. Sandweiss and Jeffrey Quilter (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009); Juan B. Lastres, Las Neuro-bartonelosis, 10–11.
wiped out countless members of the royal family: Sarmiento de Gamboa, History of the Incas, 164.
Eventually Huayna Capac . . . infected with the disease: There is some debate about the exact nature of Huayna Capac’s disease. Nevertheless, many sixteenth-century chroniclers identify his sickness as smallpox. One of the most dependable is Juan de Betanzos, who was married to Huayna Capac’s niece and describes the Inca’s death as due to “una sarna y lepra” (a kind of scabies and leprosy). More recent historians and anthropologists have accepted that smallpox swept the hemisphere on numerous vectors after the conquistadors arrived in the late fifteenth century. For a good debate against this, see Robert McCaa, Aleta Nimlos, and Teodoro Hampe Martínez, “Why Blame Smallpox? The Death of the Inca Huayna Capac and the Demographic Destruction of Tawantinsuyu (Ancient Peru)” (paper, Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota, 2004), http://users.pop.umn.edu/~rmccaa/aha2004/why_blame_smallpox.pdf. Chroniclers who mention the plague in Peru and/or identify it as smallpox are numerous, but here is a short list: Cieza de León, Crónica del Perú, 1:199–200; Guaman Poma, 2:93; Marcos Jiménez de la Espada, ed., Una Antigualla peruana, 21; Lastres, Historia de la Viruela, 25; Pedro Pizarro, “Relación del descubrimiento y conquista de los reinos del Perú,” in Biblioteca de autores españoles desde la formación del lenguaje hasta nuestros días: Crónicas del Perú [Narrative of the discovery and conquest of the kingdoms of Peru], vol. 5 (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1965), 181.