Later in his chronicle, Guaman Poma de Ayala presents a fourth description of the social hierarchy in the Cuzco area within a model of Inca kinship.11 In this description, he expands on the social divisions that he presented earlier, stating that the Auqui Capac Churi (Powerful Royal Children), were the “princes” of the kingdom. These included the sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons of the ruling Inca. Below this social strata were the Incacona (Inca people), who included the high-status individuals of Hanan and Hurin Cuzco who were symbolically called the great-great-grandchildren and cousins of the Inca. The lowest stratum was composed of a large number of Inca who Guaman Poma de Ayala calls haua (outside) or uaccha (poor) Inca. These ethnic groups represented the tribute-paying citizens of the state who lived in regions surrounding the city of Cuzco. They are listed by Guaman Poma de Ayala (1980: 690 [1615: 740]) in relation to the four great suyu divisions that surrounded the imperial capital:
Auqui capac churi, princes of this kingdom, sons and grandsons and great-grandsons of the Inca Kings of these kingdoms, Don Melchor Carlos Paullo Topa Ynca, Don Cristóbal Suna, Don Juan Ninancuro, Don Felepe Cari Topa . . . They are caste and generation and royal blood of this kingdom.
Incaconas gentlemen lords Hanan Cuzco, Hurin Cuzco Incas, great-great-grandsons and cousins, ñustas, princesses of royal caste of this kingdom.
Haua Inca, Uaccha Inca, Chinchay Suyo Inca, Anta Inca, Sacsa Uana Inca, Quilis Cachi Inca, Mayu Inca, Quichiua Inca, and their wives, palla (noblewomen), aui (common women): are tribute-paying Indians.
Anti Suyo Inca, Tambo Inca, Lare Inca and their wives, palla, aui: are tribute-paying Indians.
Colla Suyo Inca, Queuar Inca, Uaroc Inca, Cauina Inca, Masca Inca, Tambo Inca, Acos Inca, Chillque Inca, Papri Inca, and their wives, palla, aui: are tribute-paying Indians.12
Conde Suyo Inca, Yanahuara Inca, and their wives they call ynaca aui and are tribute-paying Indians.13 (Translation by author)
These four discussions by Guaman Poma de Ayala stress different essential aspects of Inca social hierarchy. The first discussion, set in the context of the Pacariqtambo origin myth, suggests that the social hierarchy of the Cuzco region was determined in a distant time, when the mythical Manco Capac emerged from the cave of Tamputoco and journeyed to Cuzco. The ethnic groups of the Cuzco region followed Manco Capac. As such, the hierarchical social order for the Cuzco region is presented as both divinely sanctified and unchangeable, since the events that determined the various social ranks took place in a primordial setting and involved the operation of powers outside the normal realm of human experience. The second passage describes the subservient, tribute-paying status that the Inca of Privilege held in relation to the royal inhabitants in Cuzco. The third discussion, which focuses on the earspools of the Inca, emphasizes the importance of symbolic emblems in the representation of Inca cultural identity as well as the physically distinguished internal ranks in that same identity. The origin of the earspools, like the social hierarchy of the region, is linked to the Pacariqtambo origin myth and the migration of the first, mythical Inca to the Cuzco Valley. The fourth discussion depicts the social hierarchy for the Cuzco region in terms of a descent system. This system begins with the ruling monarch, symbolically located in the center of Cuzco, and radiates from the imperial capital into the four suyus of the Cuzco region. The ethnic groups located farther from the sacred capital, were given the ambiguous title by Guaman Poma de Ayala of “poor” or “outside” Inca.
GARCILASO DE LA VEGA AND THE SOCIAL HIERARCHY OF THE CUZCO REGION
Inca Garcilaso de la Vega was the son of a Spanish captain and a noble Inca woman. He was born in Cuzco in 1539 and lived there until he departed for Spain in 1560. In his old age, he finished an immense work titled Comentarios reales de los incas, which has become the best-known description of the Inca and of the Spanish invasion of the Andes. Within this work, Garcilaso de la Vega presents a detailed description of the social hierarchy of the Cuzco region and lists the major ethnic groups of the area. Like Guaman Poma de Ayala, Garcilaso de la Vega associates the social structure of the Cuzco region with the mythical acts of Manco Capac. However, this Cuzco-born chronicler presents a different version of the Pacariqtambo origin myth and the founding of the imperial city of Cuzco from that of the chronicler from Huánuco. In Garcilaso’s version, Manco Capac and his sister/wife leave Lake Titicaca and travel to Pacariqtambo. From Pacariqtambo they walk to the mountain of Huanacauri and then descend into the Cuzco Valley. After founding the city and organizing its inhabitants, Manco Capac walks through the four suyus (divisions) of the Cuzco region organizing the ethnic groups who are later called Inca of Privilege:
Thus to the east of the city, with the people he [Manco Capac] brought from that direction, in the region that stretches to the side of the river called Paucartampu, he ordered thirteen towns to be settled on either side of the royal road of Antisuyu. We omit their names to avoid prolixity; they are all or almost all of the tribe called Poques. To the west of the city, in an area eight leagues long by nine or ten broad, he ordered thirty towns to be established scattered on either side of the royal road of Cuntisuyu. These were peoples of three tribes with different names: Masca, Chillqui, and Pap’ri. To the north of the city he settled twenty towns with four names: Mayu, Cancu, Chinchapucyu, Rimactampu . . . The remotest of these towns is seven leagues from the city, and the rest are scattered on both sides of the royal road of Chinchasuyu. South of the city thirty-eight to forty towns were set up, eighteen of the Ayarmaca tribe, which are scattered on both sides of the royal road of Collasuyu for a distance of three leagues beginning from the place called Las Salinas, a short league from the city . . . The remaining towns are of people with five or six names; Quespicancha, Muina, Urcos, Quéhuar, Huáruc, Caviña . . .
Now in our own times, during the last twenty years or so, the villages founded by the Inca Manco Capac and almost all the others in Peru are not in their ancient sites, but in completely different ones, because one of the viceroys, as we shall relate in its place, had them reduced to large towns, bringing together five or six at one place and seven or eight in another, the number varying according to the size of the villages that were concentrated . . . (Garcilaso de la Vega 1966: 52–53 [1609: Pt. 1, Bk. 1, Ch. 20])14
Garcilaso de la Vega’s version of the Pacariqtambo origin myth and the founding of Cuzco implies that the Inca of Privilege were non-noble indigenous occupants of the region. Garcilaso de la Vega does not suggest, as does Guaman Poma de Ayala, that the Inca of Privilege originated with Manco Capac at Pacariqtambo and traveled with him to Cuzco. Instead, Garcilaso de la Vega’s depiction asserts that the Inca of Privilege were genealogically and geographically outsiders to Cuzco and at the same time subservient to it.
Garcilaso de la Vega describes a hierarchy of genealogy and of space that mythically determines the social divisions in the Cuzco region. According to Garcilaso de la Vega, Manco Capac traveled from Lake Titicaca to Cuzco via Pacariqtambo. The descendants of this mythical founder became the Inca of Royal Blood, and the descendants of the inhabitants of Cuzco became the Incacuna (Inca people) of Hanan and Hurin Cuzco. Manco Capac then recognizes the ethnic groups of the Cuzco region. According to Garcilaso de la Vega’s mythology, these groups were not present at the founding of the imperial capital and could therefore not be called Inca.
Later in his chronicle, Garcilaso de la Vega describes how Manco Capac gradually began to give privileges to the inhabitants of Cuzco and the surrounding region. The first privilege awarded to these loyal subjects was the right to wear certain clothes. The second was the right to have their hair cut short, like the Inca of Royal Blood. The third, and apparently the most important, was the privilege to pierce their ears and to wear earspools:
There was however, a limitation as to the size of the hole, which was to be less than half that of the Inca’s, and they were to wear different objects as earplugs according to their various names and provinces. Some were given as a token a splinter o
f wood as thick as the little finger, as were the tribe called Mayu and Çancu. Others were to have a little tuft of white wool which stuck out of the ear on both sides the length of the top of the thumb: these were of the tribe called Poques. The Muina, Huáruc, and Chillqui tribes were to have earplugs of the common reed the Indians called tutura. The Rimactampu tribe and their neighbors had them made of a plant called maguey in the Windward Islands and chuchau in the general tongue of Peru. When the bark is removed, the pitch is quite light, soft and spongy. The three tribes bearing the name Urcos, Y’úcay, and Tampu, all dwelling down the river Y’úcay, were given special privilege and favor of wearing larger holes in their ears than the rest, though they were still to be less than half as large as those of the Inca. (Garcilaso de la Vega 1966: 56–57 (1609: Pt. 1, Bk. 1, Ch. 23])15
In this description Garcilaso de la Vega supports Guaman Poma de Ayala’s observations that the hierarchical ranking of various ethnic groups of the Cuzco region was determined by their genealogical and spatial relationship to the Cuzco elite. Nevertheless, the ascribed social status of the various ethnic groups in the Cuzco region appears to have differed with the perspective of the observer. Guaman Poma de Ayala (1980: 66, 117–118, 310, 690), born in the Huánuco region and thus an outsider to the Cuzco area, is very specific in his description of the ethnic groups that surrounded the Cuzco Valley as Inca. On the other hand, Garcilaso de la Vega, the great-grandson of the last undisputed Inca ruler, Huayna Capac, saw the Inca of Privilege as outsiders to Cuzco. Garcilaso de la Vega (1966: 58 [1609: Pt. 1, Bk. 1, Cp. 23]), as an “Inca of Royal Blood,” perceived the Inca of Privilege as non-Inca who were given special privileges and a minor ceremonial status only because of their proximity to the imperial capital.
SANTA CRUZ PACHACUTI YAMQUI SALCAMAYHUA AND THE SOCIAL HIERARCHY OF THE CUZCO REGION
A third possible description of the social order for the Cuzco region is briefly presented by the indigenous chronicler Juan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamayhua as he describes the departure of Atahualpa from Cuzco (also see Zuidema 1977: 278). In this chronicle, the inhabitants of the Cuzco region loyal to the Cuzco-born Atahualpa in the civil war against his half brother Huascar are portrayed as leaving Cuzco in specific ranks, which may have served as symbolic expressions of their social order. Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamayhua (1950: 273 [ca. 1613]) writes:
And in this way Atahualpa left Cuzco, taking with him in his company all the apocuracas16 and auquiconas for his soldier(s), and to support him, all the (pierced-) ear (people) of mancopchurincuzco,17 who are gentlemen, and acacacuzcos18 and aylloncuzcos,19 who are special gentlemen; and as front runners he brings the Quiguares and Collasuyos, and Tambos, Mascas, Chillques, Papres, and Quicchguas, Mayos Tancos, Quilliscches, and as personal guards he brings the Chachapoyas and Cañares in the position of vanguard or rearguard, all in good order.20 (Translation by author)
Although the terminology is slightly different, the relative order and composition of the social categories presented by Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamayhua are consistent with those presented in the other indigenous chronicles. Like Guaman Poma de Ayala and Garcilaso de la Vega, Pachacuti Yamqui places the Inca of Royal Blood first, the Nobles of Cuzco second, the Citizens of Cuzco third, and the Inca of Privilege fourth.
BALTASAR DE OCAMPO CONEJEROS AND THE BAPTISM OF MELCHOR INCA
The fourth description that helps us to define the Inca heartland comes from an unlikely source. Some time after 1607, Baltasar de Ocampo Conejeros, an aging Spaniard who had fallen on hard times, petitioned the Viceroy of Peru, Juan de Medoza y Luna, for financial support. In his request letter, Ocampo Conejeros describes an elaborate baptism that he witnessed in Cuzco. In 1571, shortly after Viceroy Toledo arrived in Cuzco, Mari de Esquivel, the wife of the Spanish-supported Inca “ruler” Carlos Inca, gave birth to a son. As this was their first child and his birth provided a legitimate heir to the royal line of Inca kings, there was a great celebration in the city. Carlos Inca, who was the grandson of Huayna Capac, requested that the newly arrived viceroy baptize the child.21 Titu Cusi Yupanqui and his young brother Tupac Amaru, both contenders to kingship, attended, as did many members of nearby parishes. From the list that Ocampo Conejeros presents, it is clear that all the major groups within the Cuzco region sent representatives:
Invitations were sent out over all the land for more than forty leagues round Cuzco, and there assembled for the occasion all the Incas of the following parishes: Accha, Anta, Antahuayllas, Araypalpa, Ataras, Chinchero, Colcha, Concacalla, Cucharaypampa, Equequo, Cuzco, Huanuquiti, Huayhuacunca, Marco, Paccaritambu, Pacopata, Palpa, Pampacuchu, Parcos, Paruro, Pilpinto Pisaq, Pocoray, Puquiura, Quiquisana, Rimactampu, San Salvador, San Gerónimo de Corama, Surite, Urcos, Urupampa, Xaquizahuana, Yaurisca, Yucay.
All these are places where Incas reside. Canas, Canchis, and Collas were also invited, and men of all other nations that could be got together. Among the rest there came to the christening Titu Cusi Yupanqui Inca and his young brother Tupac Amaru Inca, who came from the province of Vilcapampa. (Baltasar de Ocampo Conejeros 1907: 208–209 [1610])
As a Spaniard involved in a baptism, Ocampo Conejeros presents the participants in terms of recently established parishes. Nevertheless, the area covered by these churches is very similar to the area covered by the indigenous lists of Inca of Privilege. They were, after all, in the words of Ocampo Conejeros, the “places where Incas reside.”
Summary and Discussion
Although the details of the classificatory systems presented by Guaman Poma de Ayala, Garcilaso de la Vega, and Juan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamayhua may vary in detail, it is important to note that the categories of hierarchically ranked genealogical sets that result from these chroniclers are nearly identical. Of utmost importance in these classificatory systems is the Royal Inca and his divine ancestors in Cuzco. The lowest tier of the Cuzco social hierarchy is held by the Inca of Privilege, who are genealogically and geographically distant from the emperor and the capital. Thus, although the system is grounded on genealogy, the actual territorial relationships that existed among the various hierarchically ranked groups reaffirm the prevailing Cuzco-centric social hierarchy. The social hierarchy of the Cuzco region is also legitimated through references to the mythical actions of Manco Capac, who is said to have established the regional ranking during the primordial creation of human existence.
After the formation of the Inca state, the Inca of Privilege continued to play important roles in the organization of the empire. For example, it appears that the Inca of Privilege held a wide range of administrative positions throughout the newly conquered territories of the empire. Guaman Poma de Ayala (1980: 318–335 [1615 f. 346–363]) presents a detailed discussion of administrative functions held by Inca of Privilege. Although his list should not be interpreted literally as a description of state organization based on a series of highly specialized ethnic groups, it does emphasize the wide range of administrative positions the various members of the Inca of Privilege groups could hold, including regional and provincial governors, judges, messengers, surveyors, administrators of the royal roads and bridges, and inspectors.
Inca of Privilege also played a critical role within Inca policies of colonization. After the conquest of a new region, the Inca frequently transferred part of the indigenous population of the region to a different area and brought colonists of differing ethnic backgrounds into the newly conquered province. Although the Inca institution of mitmaes (colonist) is still little understood and demands an extensive study, it has become evident that the Inca of Privilege were frequently resettled in recently incorporated areas. Closely affiliated with the ruling social hierarchy in Cuzco and loyal to the Inca state, the Inca of Privilege were ideal colonists.
The area that was once covered by the Inca of Privilege will be used in this study to define the Inca heartland. It is a region that covers approximately 60 kilometers in radius from Cuzco. Within the heartland are seve
ral discrete geographical areas, such as the Cuzco Basin, the Lucre Basin, the Huaro Basin, and the Plain of Anta, that supported very large populations in late prehistoric times. Groups from these areas, such as the Inca (Cuzco), Xaquixaguana (Anta), Ayarmaca (Anta and Chinchero), Mohina (Lucre), Pinahua (Lucre), and Huaro (Huaro), played different but critical roles in the final formation of the Inca state. Other groups such as those of Chit’apampa and the Cuyo located north of Cuzco in the Vilcanota River Valley, and even smaller groups such as the Tambo, Chillque, and Masca of the regions to the south of Cuzco, also played notable roles. Nevertheless, these various groups only become archaeologically recognizable relatively late in prehistory during the Killke Period (AD 1000–1400). The full story of Cuzco and the development of complex societies in the south-central Andes begins much earlier, with the arrival of the first bands of hunter-gatherers in the region soon after the end of the last Ice Age. Before we examine their lives, however, it is necessary to understand the general climatic conditions for the region in which the cultures developed.
CHAPTER 3
Human Impact and Environmental History of the Cuzco Region
Alex Chepstow-Lusty, Brian S. Bauer, and Michael Frogley
THE CLIMATE of the central Andes has varied throughout prehistory. Recent research indicates that substantial fluctuations in rainfall and temperature have occurred over the past several millennia that greatly affected the plant and animal resources available to the people occupying various regions and altitudes. Although studies of past climate change in the central Andes are just beginning, some data are already available that can be used to assess the broad climatic conditions that have existed in the Cuzco region since the end of the last glaciation.
To understand the subtleties of past climatic change and its effects on societies, we must compare our archaeological data with climatic models developed using a variety of different Holocene records. In this chapter, we provide a summary of our current understanding of climate change in the Cuzco region since the end of the Pleistocene. Although changes in climatic conditions should not necessarily be seen as the direct cause of cultural change in the region, they did present limitations and, in a few cases of severe drought, considerable challenges to the existing societies.
Ancient Cuzco Page 4