An Inca Account of the Conquest of Peru

by Ralph Bauer

  que cerraron una gran mella de más de media legua de box, todos muy bien adereçados, en orden de guerra.

  Por la parte de Collasuyu

  entraron Llicllic y otros muchos capitanes con grandísima suma de gente, la mayor cantidad

  que se halló en este çerco.

  Por la parte de Antisuyu

  entraron Antallca y Ronpa Yupangui y otros muchos, los quales

  acabaron de çercar el çerco que a los españoles les pusieron. (ff 167)

  Similarly, certain plot elements establishing causal connections are at times rendered as a sequence of three repetitions. Thus, the plot line leading up to Manco Inca’s rebellion is structured into the narration of him being taken captive and abused by the Spaniards three times. Although it is possible, of course, that this narrative sequence merely followed the actual course of historical events, I have not found any other sixteenth-century versions that present Manco Inca’s decision to rebel as the result of a distinctly three-partite sequence of captivities. Most likely, this three-fold repetition is a stylistic device that was, as Niles notes, common to Inca oral traditions and that “served as a formula which facilitated the remembrance of the narratives” (40).

  The narration of each of Manco Inca’s captivities culminates with him giving a speech. His speeches, as well as all the other speeches that appear in the text, are never summarized or reported indirectly but always represented as direct speech. This also was, as Niles notes, a formal feature typical of Inca oral tradition, as the Inca language had no way of indicating indirect discourse (32–37). A particularly frequent convention in Inca praise narratives was hereby the representation of deathbed orations that concluded the life history of a particular Inca. Titu Cusi’s narrative about his father also follows this convention. He presents not one but two deathbed orations, supposedly delivered after Manco Inca was mortally stabbed by his Spanish guests—one addressed to his subjects and one addressed specifically to his son Titu Cusi (Saire Topa is not mentioned here). Each appears as a separate chapter in the narrative with a distinct header. The highly stylized form in which he represents Manco Inca’s deathbed orations points toward the performative aspects of the oral traditions from which Titu Cusi drew.

  The hybrid character of this text as a history is manifest not only in its form, however, but also in its content. As exasperated modern historians have lamented when dealing with the subject of pre-Conquest Inca history generally, the colonial sources that were written based on Inca oral traditions are notoriously at odds with one another. One difficulty has been that the Inca traditions did not give dates for historical events or lifetimes of rulers, partially because their concept of history was cyclical (see MacCormack 1988). The result is that there is little consensus among modern historians about the facts and chronology of pre-Columbian Inca history. For example, although modern historians traditionally accepted a scheme developed in 1944 by John Rowe that subscribed to the idea of a chronological succession of eleven rulers beginning with the legendary founder of the dynasty Manco Capac and ended with Huayna Capac, the historicity of even this basic temporal sequence has been disputed.24 By standards of modern European epistemologies, which emerged not coincidentally during the sixteenth century in the context of the conquest of America, historiography must aspire to an “objective” truth by attempting to “get beyond” the individual text to the historical “facts” through cross-documentary corroboration (see Cañizares-Esguerra). By these standards, the chronology and substance of most oral narrations of Inca history are problematic, and Titu Cusi’s historical narrative is no exception here. Thus, the “facts” he mentions are frequently uncorroborated—even contradicted—by other surviving sixteenth-century sources.25 For example, Titu Cusi’s claim that his father Manco Inca became ruler by the explicit will of his father, Huayna Capac, and that Atahuallpa merely governed the empire until Manco Inca was old enough to assume the royal tassel is contradicted by virtually every other contemporary source and is, overall, highly unlikely to be factual (see later discussion). Even less plausible here is his claim that his father, Manco Inca, ruled Cuzco at the time when the Spaniards arrived in Peru (modern historians generally agree that Huascar ruled Cuzco before he was defeated and captured by Quisquis, who thereafter ruled Cuzco on behalf of his lord Atahuallpa). Finally, Titu Cusi’s claim that he was “the one legitimate son . . . among the many sons whom my father Manco Inca Yupanqui left behind” (p. 58–59) and that his dying father had explicitly determined him as his successor is disputed by modern historians, who generally agree that after Manco Inca’s death the royal tassel went to his brother Saire Topa. In fact, several contemporary chroniclers, such as the Spaniard Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, whose chronicle was almost contemporary with the creation of Titu Cusi’s text, claimed that Titu Cusi was “not a legitimate son of Manco Inca” at all but rather a “bastard and apostate.”26 Even some of the mestizo and “Indian” chroniclers apparently were not persuaded by Titu Cusi’s claim to legitimacy. Thus, he is not mentioned at all by the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, a mestizo who wrote during the early seventeenth century; nor is he portrayed in Guaman Poma de Ayala’s Nueva corónica y buen gobierno, also composed during the early seventeenth century, which portrays every other Inca ruler, including Manco Inca (see Illustration 6). As Luis Millones has noted,27 Titu Cusi’s account may thus have in part been produced precisely in order to affirm what he could not assume: that he was legitimate among the Inca nobility as supreme ruler. Other critics agree, identifying at least three interrelated objectives that Titu Cusi’s account was meant to serve: (a) to establish his father’s authority and legitimacy as Inca, despite the confusions of the pre-Conquest civil war and of the Conquest; (b) to establish the legitimacy of his own claim to the Inca throne; and (c) to expose the Spanish conquerors’ claim to lordship over Peru as illegitimate (Chang Rodríguez 1980, 88). Thus, it is possibly in this light that Titu Cusi begins his history of the Conquest by giving a rationale for his legitimacy as a natural ruler: “I am the one legitimate son, meaning the eldest and first-born” (p. 58–59).

  We will return to both Titu Cusi’s invocation of the concept of primogeniture and to Sarmiento de Gamboa’s invocation of the notion of bastardry in regard to the question of succession in a moment. Here, some general remarks about the cultural nexus of legitimacy and historiography in the pre-Hispanic Andes are first in order. Inca understanding of genealogy was based on norms of kinship that were quite different from those of Europeans. Although millions of people lived in the Tahuantinsuyu, only about 40,000 of those people were considered to be “Inca,” that is, identified as members of the ethnic group that had originated and expanded their culture from Cuzco some time during the early fifteenth century. The non-Inca subjects of this empire came from other ethnic groups who had been subjugated to Inca rule, owed tribute in labor, and were generally considered to be provincials. While the Inca rulers could be ruthless in dealing with ethnic groups who resisted their expansion or those who rebelled against their rule, they were generally liberal and diplomatic with those who submitted to their supremacy, granting local lords substantial privileges and offices in the hierarchy of imperial administration and incorporating provincial deities into their own pantheon. Frequently, Inca women were married off to local lords of such provincial groups to ensure their loyalty. The Native chronicler Guaman Poma de Ayala, for example, was the offspring of such a union. By Inca cultural norms, however, offspring such as Guaman Poma, as well as the offspring of an Inca man with a non-Inca woman, would not have been considered “legitimate” Inca nobility.

  Although those defined as “Inca” thus formed a privileged nobility in the empire—frequently called orejones (big ears) by the Spaniards because of their enlarged ears from wearing certain jewelry—not everyone in this nobility could make a legitimate claim to supreme rulership. As Catherine Julien has pointed out, legitimacy to rule was determined by an Inca noble’s closeness to the hereditary line of Manco Capac,
the legendary founder of the Inca dynasty. A claim to supreme rulership was thus determined by what she calls an individual’s “capac status” (23). Hereditary descent was reckoned in Inca culture, as in European culture, patrilineally. However, as the Incas, unlike the Europeans, practiced polygamy, each new Inca ruler established his own patrilineal royal descent or kinship group, called a panaca, that was distinct from that of his father.28 At a given ruler’s death, the members of his panaca were responsible for preserving his mummy, memory, and reputation. Each Inca oral history tradition was therefore not a general history of the Inca dynasty or realm, as was commonly aspired to by European chroniclers in sixteenth-century imperial Spain, but rather a partisan history particular to a specific panaca. Intent on exalting different founders and different descent groups that competed with one another for prestige, Inca oral traditions could thus be at great variance with one another. As Julien points out, the purpose of Inca historiography was not only to recall past glory, but also to “locate . . . members of the Inca descent group with relation to one another and to the other residents of Cuzco” (35). It is in this light that we must also see Titu Cusi’s historical narrative of the Conquest, which places his father at the center of events from the very beginning, even though most other histories are in agreement that Manco Inca, because of his young age, was a relatively insignificant figure at the time of the Spanish arrival. Titu Cusi’s historical account (relación) of the conquest is cast in the mold of his father’s “life history,” which Julien identifies as one of the two major genres of Inca oral history (91–165). By the same token, much of what Titu Cusi tells us about himself in his instrucción to Lope García de Castro revolves around his position in relation to that of Manco Inca—the primary purpose of the other major historical genre identified by Julien, which she calls the “genealogical narrative” (49–90).

  6. The newly reigning Manco Inca in his ceremonial throne in Cuzco. From Guaman Poma de Ayala, Nueva corónica y buen gobierno. By kind permission of the Royal Library at Copenhagen (GKS 2232 4to)

  How does Titu Cusi’s account as a genealogical narrative and life history aim to establish both his father’s and his own legitimacy as rulers? It is interesting here to consider, first, Titu Cusi’s claims about Atahuallpa and Huascar. In regard to Atahuallpa, Titu Cusi says that he was “older” than Manco Inca “but a bastard” (p. 60). Although it is not entirely clear here what he means by “bastard,” he later says that neither Atahuallpa nor his halfbrother Huascar were “legitimate heir[s]” because, despite being “sons of Huayna Capac,” their mothers were “commoners” whereas “my father had pure royal blood” (p. 61). The argument that Atahuallpa and Huascar were illegitimate because of the birth status of their mothers is significant. As Julien points out, despite the patrilineal order of reckoning descent in Inca culture, the mother’s panaca, or descent group, had an important role to play in the assessment of legitimacy for rulership. Beginning with Topa Inca, the father of Huayna Capac (and grandfather of Atahuallpa, Huascar, and Manco Inca), the Inca rulers had started (or resumed) a legendary ancient tradition (allegedly already initiated by Manco Capac) of marrying only full sisters, even though they continued to have children with other women, both Inca and non-Inca. As a result, the degree of legitimacy of a potential successor relative to his (half-) brothers came to depend not so much on the descent group of his father (which would have been a given) but rather on that of his mother. The least prestige would hereby be accorded to an Inca ruler’s offspring with a non-Inca mother; further up on the scale would be his offspring with a woman who was ethnically Inca (i.e., from a line originating in Cuzco) but without a claim to having descended from the line of Manco Capac; still more prestigious would be his offspring with a woman who was a coya; finally, most prestigious would be a ruler’s offspring with a woman who was both coya and his full sister. The status of coya identified a woman who could, through the line of her father, claim descent from one of the eleven rulers (and, thus, from Manco Capac). It is therefore not parallel to the European “queen,” who depended either on being the wedded wife of a king or on inheriting rule from a father (Julien, 35). Thus, by “commoners” Titu Cusi most likely meant that their mothers were ethnically Inca but not coya. In other words, their sons were “illegitimate” not in the European sense—that is, offspring produced with women other than a ruler’s wife—but in the Andean sense of offspring produced with women whose independent hereditary status was considered to be deficient for rulership.29

  In light of Titu Cusi’s claims about the illegitimacy of Atahuallpa and Huascar as rulers based on their mothers’ hereditary identity, it is significant that he provides no specifics about Manco Inca’s mother except that she was, supposedly, responsible for his “pure royal blood.” Nor does he tell us anything or make any claims about his own mother, except that she was in Cuzco with him while he was in Spanish custody and that she was brought to Vilcabamba with him after both had been abducted by Manco Inca’s messengers. Who was Manco Inca’s mother? And who was Titu Cusi’s mother?

  With regard to the former, Juan de Betanzos writes that “[a]lthough he [Manco Inca] was not the son of a mother who was of the ladies of Cuzco, he was the son of an important woman from the town of Anta [Jaquijahuana] which lies three leagues of the City of Cuzo” (278). The people of Anta were Incas but they had no claim to being descendants of Manco Capac. Although Manco Inca was a son of Huayna Capac, his pedigree was by Inca standards, as Julien points out, “less than ideal” (43). Yet, his pedigree was still the best among all of the living sons of Huayna Capac. Both Atahuallpa and Huascar were dead; and his brother Paullu’s mother was not Inca at all but a woman from the province of Huaylas. It is for this reason that Paullu was considered a “bastard” by Guaman Poma—based on the Andean understanding of the term (Julien, 43). Also, it is possibly for this reason that Pedro Cieza de León reports that the orejones of Cuzco reacted generally positively to Francisco Pizarro’s crowning of Manco Inca, replying that “they were content, and according to the ancient custom, Manco was received as Inca, and he took the fringe” (350).

  As far as Titu Cusi’s mother is concerned, we don’t know her identity for certain. Hemming writes that she was a wife of Manco Inca “other than his full coya” (300), meaning his sister wife. Apparently he hereby follows Sarmiento de Gamboa, who is the only sixteenth-century source I am aware of that is explicit on this question (although he, too, does not give any details beyond what’s already been quoted above). Sarmiento’s claims in these matters, however, must be taken with a grain of salt. He wrote in 1572 on commission of Viceroy Toledo, who had his own political agenda in trying to make a case not only that the Incas were usurping and tyrannical upstarts (and therefore not “natural lords” of Peru) but also that the last “legitimate” ruler of the dynasty had been Huascar—who had, conveniently, died on orders of his brother before ever meeting any Spaniard face-to-face. This claim implied, of course, that the Spaniards had not usurped rulership from a natural lord of Tahuantinsuyu but merely filled a void that already existed upon their arrival, hereby justifying Toledo’s order to have the last Inca ruler, Topa Amaru, executed. Along these lines, Sarmiento claimed that not only Titu Cusi but also his father, Manco Inca, and his uncle, Paullu, were “bastards.” All three were “the lowest of all,” he wrote, “for their lineage was on the side of their mothers which is what these people look at, in a question of birth” (193). Sarmiento’s statement that the “side of the mother” is what “these people look at, in a question of birth” suggests that he was well aware of women’s importance in Inca succession.30 Nevertheless, his claim that both Titu Cusi and his father, Manco Inca, were “bastards” and “illegitimate” rests on the Spanish paradigm of monogamy as the foundation for an offspring’s legitimacy—an idea alien to traditional Andean concepts of kinship.

  However unwarranted Sarmiento’s claim of Titu Cusi’s bastardry was by Andean cultural norms, Titu Cusi’s silence about the heredita
ry identity of his mother suggests that she was probably ethnically Inca but neither a coya nor Manco Inca’s full sister. We must therefore assume that Hemming’s inference that she had little to contribute to Titu Cusi’s claim to legitimacy is warranted (even though a status of coya would not necessarily have depended on her being either Manco Inca’s sister or wife). Thus, in light of the surviving information about Titu Cusi’s mother, his claim to be the legitimate (“natural”) ruler (based only on his patrilineal descent) appears indeed to have been rather weak by the traditional Inca succession rules. It is in this context that we must see Titu Cusi’s assertion that he was “the one legitimate son, meaning the eldest and first-born, among the many sons whom my father Manco Inca Yupanqui left behind.” His claim to rule on the principle of primogeniture is based on a Spanish, not an Inca, logic of succession.

  Interestingly, Titu Cusi invokes the traditional Inca logic of succession in order to establish the legitimacy of his father—who had “pure royal blood” whereas his older brothers Atahuallpa and Huascar did not because their mothers were commoners (even though Titu Cusi does not tell us who, exactly, Manco Inca’s mother was); by contrast, he invokes the Spanish logic of succession (primogeniture) to establish his own legitimacy. Ironically, his invocation of the primogeniture principle to establish his legitimacy would have been less than fully persuasive to his Spanish audience, who would have judged him (and indeed did judge him) as illegitimate, based on the European notion of bastardry. By European standards, legitimacy for succession depended on the identity of a mother only insofar as she was a ruler’s wedded wife, not on her independent patrilineal descent from previous rulers. Therefore, despite Titu Cusi’s and Sarmiento de Gamboa’s evident awareness of this cultural difference, neither one was entirely successful in the act of translation.