Huascar’s suspicions eventually got the better of him, suspicions that were presumably only accentuated by the inefficiency of the many messages and counter-messages that had to be carried between the two brothers over a thousand miles each way by relay runners. The newly crowned emperor finally decided to wage a military campaign in order to settle the question of succession once and for all. His decision to launch a war was not well thought out however, for it immediately put Huascar at a disadvantage. Since Huascar’s father, Huayna Capac, had been carrying out extensive military campaigns in the north, his brother Atahualpa now had the advantage of being able to take command of the empire’s most seasoned and battle-hardened troops. The troops were led by the empire’s three finest generals, who immediately pledged their allegiance to Atahualpa. Huascar, by contrast, was forced to assemble an army of native conscripts who had little if any military experience. Where Huascar in the south led a largely untested army, Atahualpa commanded a seasoned imperial force. Nevertheless, Huascar quickly went on the offensive, sending an army north into what is now Ecuador, under the command of Atoq (“the Fox”).
The two Inca armies met on the plains of Mochacaxa, to the south of Quito. There the northern army, supervised by Atahualpa, scored the first victory in what was now a full-fledged civil war. Even in victory, however, Atahualpa’s severity with those who dared challenge him was evident when General Atoq was captured. Atoq was first tortured and eventually executed with darts and arrows. Atahualpa then ordered Atoq’s skull to be fashioned into a gilded drinking cup, which the Spaniards would note that Atahualpa was still using four years later.
With the momentum now on Atahualpa’s side, his generals began a long military advance down the spine of the Andes, gradually pushing Huascar’s forces further and further south. After a long series of victories on the part of Atahualpa’s forces and defeats on the part of Huascar’s, a final climactic engagement was fought outside Cuzco during which the Inca emperor himself was captured, as described by the sixteenth-century chronicler Juan de Betanzos:
Huascar was badly wounded and his clothing was ripped to shreds. Since the wounds were not life-threatening, [Atahualpa’s General] Chalcuchima did not allow him to be treated. When daylight came and it was found that none of Huascar’s men had escaped, Chalcuchima’s troops enjoyed Huascar’s loot. The tunic Huascar wore was removed and he was dressed in another from one of his Indians who was dead on the field. Huascar’s tunic, his gold halberd [axe] and helmet, also gold, with the shield that had gold trappings, his feathers, and the war insignias he had were sent to Atahualpa. This was done in Huascar’s presence, [as Generals] Chalcuchima and Quisquis wanted Atahualpa to have the honor, as their lord, of treading upon the things and ensigns of enemies who had been subjected.
Atahualpa’s northern Inca army now marched triumphantly into Cuzco. It was led by two of Atahualpa’s finest generals, Quisquis and Chalcuchima, who had successfully directed the four-year-long campaign. One can only imagine what the citizens of Cuzco thought, seeing their former emperor stripped of his insignias and royal clothing, wearing the bloodstained clothing of a mere commoner, bound and led down the streets on foot, while Atahualpa’s generals rode majestically in their decorated litters, surrounded by their victorious troops.
The aftermath of the civil war to determine who would inherit the vast Inca Empire—and all the peasants and fertile lands within it—was as predictable as it was brutal. Within a short while, Inca troops rounded up Huascar’s various wives and children and took them to a place called Quicpai, outside Cuzco. There the official in charge “ordered that each and every one learn the charges against him or her. Each and every one was told why they were to die.” As Huascar’s captors forced him to watch, native soldiers methodically began to slaughter his wives and daughters, one by one, leaving them to hang. Soldiers then ripped unborn babies from their mothers’ wombs, hanging them by their umbilical cords from their mothers’ legs. “The rest of the lords and ladies who were prisoners were tortured by a type of torture they call chacnac [whipping], before they were killed,” wrote the chronicler Betanzos. “After being tormented, they were killed by smashing their heads to pieces with battle-axes they call chambi, which are used in battle.”
Thus, in one final orgy of bloodletting, Atahualpa’s generals exterminated nearly the entire germ seed of Huascar’s familial line. Huascar was then forced to begin a long journey northward on foot to face the wrath of his brother.
Atahualpa, meanwhile, had traveled southward from Quito to the city of Cajamarca, located in what is now northern Peru, some six hundred miles to the north of Cuzco. There he waited for word of the outcome of his generals’ attack on the capital. Even via the Incas’ state-of-the-art messenger system, in which messages were carried by relay runners, or chaskis, news of the final battle and of Huascar’s dramatic capture had to pass between more than three hundred different runners. It would take at least five days to arrive. Only then would Atahualpa receive word that he was now the unchallenged lord of the Inca Empire, emperor of the known civilized world.
With all of his attention concentrated upon the steady, though delayed, stream of successful battle reports sent by his generals, Atahualpa was already busy making preparations for the coronation he envisioned in Cuzco, the city of his youth. There, he would preside over the usual massive festivities—the processions, feastings, sacrifices, the debauched drinking and copious urinations—and finally, over the majestic coronation itself. Afterward—as his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had done before him—Atahualpa would no doubt look forward to decades of uninterrupted rule, a monarch whose every action and pronouncement would be considered the divine acts of a god.
There was only one minor affair, however, that Atahualpa had yet to attend to before he began his triumphal march southward to claim his empire. Chaski reports of a relatively small band of unusual foreigners, who were now marching into the Andes in his direction, had been reaching him for the last several months. Some of the strangers, he was told, rode giant animals the Incas had no word for as none had ever before been seen. The men grew hair on their faces and had sticks from which issued thunder and clouds of smoke. Although few in number—the royal quipu knots carried by the messengers indicated that there were precisely 168—the foreigners behaved arrogantly and had already tortured and killed some provincial chiefs. Rather than immediately order their extermination, however, Atahualpa decided to allow the strangers to penetrate a short way further into his empire. Protected by his army, Atahualpa was curious to see these strange men and their even stranger beasts for himself.
It was November 1532, the season in which the Andes begins its slow transition into the Southern Hemisphere’s summer. And, as news of the final victory in Cuzco continued to race northward on foot along the often lonely and fantastic contours of the Andes, Atahualpa no doubt pondered for a moment this strange intrusion from the west. Who were these people? Why would they dare intrude into an empire where his armies could crush them if he so much as raised his little finger? As Atahualpa listened to the latest report about the bold yet obviously foolish invaders, intermixed with the much more interesting news arriving each day from the south, he lifted up the gilded skull of his former enemy, Atoq, the Fox, took a long cool drink from its rim of gold and bone, then turned his attention to the more pressing matters at hand.
4 WHEN EMPIRES COLLIDE
“For ourselves, we shall not trouble you with specious pretenses—either of how we have a right to our empire because we overthrew the Mede, or are now attacking you because of wrong that you have done us—and make a long speech that would not be believed…. You know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”
THUCYDIDES, THE HISTORY OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR, 5TH CENTURY B.C.
AMID THE RUINS OF TUMBEZ, PIZARRO HAD LEARNED THE general outlines of the current military si
tuation in Peru. He had landed on the outskirts of an empire, Pizarro was told, one that two royal brothers had been fighting over. The ruler whom Pizarro had heard about during his last voyage, Huayna Capac, was now dead. Tumbez lay in ruins because the inhabitants of that city—not ethnic Incas but citizens of the former Chimu Empire that the Incas had conquered—had sided with one of the brothers, Huascar. The city had thus been attacked and razed by the armies of Huascar’s brother, Atahualpa, who currently was with an army in the mountains only about two hundred miles, or about a two weeks’ march, to the southeast.
The grim news of native warfare, disease, and devastation could only have excited the conquistadors. Twelve years earlier in Mexico, Hernando Cortés had effectively exploited native political divisions to help bring down the powerful Aztec Empire. Here, by the sounds of it, Pizarro had arrived at the tail end of a full-fledged civil war. With any luck, he undoubtedly realized, he might ally himself with one side or the other—either with the victor or with the vanquished—with the goal of destroying both sides in the end. But first he would have to make contact with one of the warring factions.
The first meeting between an Inca emperor and a Spaniard: Hernando Pizarro and Atahualpa Inca. Atahualpa was actually seated on a small stool on the ground for the encounter while Hernando Pizarro was accompanied by Hernando de Soto, not by Sebastián de Benalcázar, as is depicted here.
Pizarro and his men now became the first group of Europeans to climb into the Andes, a mountain chain more than four thousand miles in length and with dozens of peaks puncturing the heights at over twenty thousand feet.* Marching and riding along a well-maintained Inca road, the Spaniards found innumerable dead natives in one town, strung up and left to hang by their feet. Apparently these were citizens of a community loyal to Huascar that had been razed by his brother. Informed that Atahualpa was aware of their presence and worried about what forces he might bring to bear against them, the Spaniards seized and then tortured a reluctant informant, hoping to pry information out of him. The Inca emperor, the man finally blurted out, awaited them with hostile intentions; Atahualpa had said he would kill the bearded strangers.
Alarmed, yet not knowing whether to believe their informant or not, the conquistadors nevertheless continued to ascend higher and higher. At night, they “rested in the cotton tents they brought with them, making fires to protect themselves from the great cold of the mountains. For on the plains of Castile [in Spain] it is not colder than in these mountains, which are devoid of trees but are covered with a grass like a short esparto. There are a few stunted trees and the water is so cold that it cannot be drunk without first warming it.”
The Spaniards numbered 168:106 on foot and sixty-two on horse. They did not know how many warriors Atahualpa commanded. But the natives they questioned and tortured told them that Atahualpa commanded a large army. Pizarro by now was fifty-four years old. Alongside him traveled his four half-brothers: thirty-one-year-old Hernando, who was one of his captains; twenty-one-year-old Juan; twenty-year-old Gonzalo; and his nineteen-year-old half-brother from his mother’s side, Francisco Martín. None of his four half-brothers had any previous experience in native conquests; what little they had had been gained on this trip.
Out in front of the group, on a handsome and energetic horse, rode one of the newest arrivals, the dashing Hernando de Soto, the future explorer of Florida and discoverer of the Mississippi River. Thirty-two years old and given to wearing rakish clothes and an assortment of earrings, Soto had arrived on a separate ship just before Pizarro’s departure from Tumbez. He had brought along his own, handpicked men and Pizarro had immediately made him a captain.
Also tagging along with the makeshift group of entrepreneurs—all armed, self-financed, and therefore entitled to a proportional slice of any future spoils—were a few black slaves, twelve notaries—four of whom would later write eyewitness accounts of the expedition—a Dominican friar, at least several moriscas (slave women of Muslim descent), native slaves from Nicaragua, and a handful of merchants. The latter had no interest in fighting but were there solely to sell their wares to the conquistadors on credit, hoping to be repaid if any gold or other treasure were found. The merchants, evidently, were banking on the old Spanish proverb, “el dinero llama al dinero” (“money attracts money”), hoping in the end to make large capital gains on their investments.
On Friday, November 15, the stage was finally set for the second major collision of two civilizations from completely different worlds. The first collision had been with the Aztecs, a fierce struggle that had lasted for three years, involved the capture of the Aztec emperor, and culminated with Hernando Cortés directing a mass slaughter and razing the Aztec capital. Now, as Pizarro and his fellow Spaniards climbed over a mountain pass and looked down for the first time upon the green valley of Cajamarca, located at an elevation of nine thousand feet, two empires were once again poised to collide. Here, just a few miles beyond the Inca town, Atahualpa and his army were encamped, spread out along a hillside beside a vast armada of tents. It was the Spaniards’ first glimpse of an Inca army. The notary Miguel de Estete wrote:
So many tents were visible that it truly frightened us. We never thought that Indians could maintain such a magnificent estate nor have so many tents…. Nothing like this had been seen in the Indies up till then. It filled all of us Spaniards with confusion and fear although it was not appropriate for us to show any fear nor to turn back. For had they sensed any weakness in us the very Indians [porters] we were bringing along would have killed us. Thus, with simulated good spirits and after having thoroughly observed the town and the tents … we descended into the valley and entered the town of Cajamarca.
The Spaniards rode and marched into town, three abreast and in military formation, with the hooves of their horses clacking against the stone-paved streets and with storm clouds gathering overhead. Like a scene from High Noon, the town appeared empty—most of the inhabitants had either hidden or fled. Described the notary Francisco de Xerez:
This town, which is the principal town in the valley, is situated on the skirts of a mountain and there is a league of open plain [in front of it]. Two rivers flow through the valley, which is level and well populated and is surrounded by mountains. The town has two thousand inhabitants … the plaza is larger than any in Spain and is completely enclosed [by a wall], and has two doorways that open upon the streets of the town. The houses are more than two hundred paces in length and very well made; they are surrounded by strong walls some fifteen feet high. The roofs are covered with straw and wood which rest on the walls … their walls are of very well cut blocks of stone.
Pizarro led his men directly to the main square, where they could assemble together and decide what to do. Surrounded by a wall with only two entrances, the square seemed the safest place available while they waited for word from the Inca lord. Hail now began to fall, the tiny balls of ice bouncing upon the stone paving of the courtyard and striking the Spaniards’ curved steel helmets and armor. The Spaniards took shelter in the buildings of cut stone flanking the plaza, which were built like a series of galleries with trapezoidal doors. When no messenger arrived from Atahualpa, the impatient Pizarro decided to send fifteen of his best horsemen, under the command of Captain Hernando de Soto, to invite the Inca emperor to a meeting.
The selection of Soto was a wise choice, for, other than Pizarro, he was perhaps the most experienced conquistador among them. Although small in size, Soto had arrived in Peru with an already well-established reputation. Impetuous, gallant, brave, and excellent with a lance, he was also a renowned rider, scout, and Indian fighter. Also an extremeño, Soto had arrived in the New World while still a teenager in 1513, the same year that Balboa and Pizarro had discovered the Pacific. Despite his youth, Soto’s rise had been meteoric. By the age of seventeen he and two partners had formed a corporation of plunder and by 1520, in his early twenties, he was already a captain.
By the time he was thirty, Hernando de Soto possesse
d large native estates in newly conquered Nicaragua and could have retired in comfort. Hugely ambitious, however, like Cortés and Pizarro, Soto wanted a governorship—a native realm to rule as his own. Thus in 1530 Soto and his partner—Hernan Ponce de León—negotiated an agreement with Pizarro: if Soto and his partner would provide two ships and a contingent of men, then Pizarro would give them partial command and some of the choicest fruits of the proposed conquest of Peru—whatever those fruits might prove to be. Two years later, and presently high up in Peru’s northern Andes, the now thirty-two-year-old Soto was leading an advance party on horseback along the paved stone road connecting Cajamarca and the camp of the most powerful native lord in the Americas. According to Xerez,
[The Incas’ camp] was formed on the flank of a small hill with the tents, which were of cotton, extending for three and a half miles and with Atahualpa’s in the center. All the warriors stood outside their tents with their weapons thrust into the ground, which are long lances that resemble pikes. There seemed to be more than thirty thousand warriors in the camp.
Soto and his men rode through the legions of motionless Inca infantry, who stared silently after them. The troops betrayed no emotion but no doubt must have been astonished to see bearded men, many of them wearing glinting metal and riding what looked to be some kind of giant llama. Avoiding a bridge, the Spaniards splashed their way on horses across a low river, sending up beads of water that glistened in the sunlight. At a second river Soto ordered most of his men to remain, taking only two along with him, as well as the interpreter Felipillo to meet the Inca emperor.
The Last Days of the Incas Page 7