An Inca Account of the Conquest of Peru (5 page)

In this historical context, the apparently radical critique of Spanish abuses in Titu Cusi/Marcos García's historical narrative becomes intelligible as a politically shrewd and rhetorically persuasive exercise. The unflattering portrayal of Gonzalo Pizarro lusting after gold and Manco Inca's
coya
(“queen,” although see later discussion), for example, lends specific testimony to the general arguments made by Las Casas and others about the insatiable greed, unbridled cruelty, and moral depravity of the Spanish conquerors. Similarly, the hardship and suffering imposed on the Andean communities by the Pizarro brothers' repeated attempts to extort gold and silver as ransom for captured Inca sovereigns corroborates political arguments that the unduly heavy burden in tribute and labor imposed by the conquerors on the Natives had degraded them to the status of personal slaves and was responsible for the catastrophic decimation of His Majesty's Native subjects in the Americas. Finally, the emphasis on the uncompromising loyalty of the various local leaders to Titu Cusi's father as well as on his own conversion to Christianity, reinforces the political ideal of him as a natural Christian prince
voluntarily
placing himself under the imperial protection of the king. If, admittedly, this political ideal seemed somewhat out of touch with historical reality—after all, the Vilcabamba Incas were in an official state of rebellion—the account takes pains to show that Manco Inca made the decision to remove to Vilcabamba only as a last resort, after Manco Inca's many attempts at accommodation had been frustrated and his boundless good intentions (
voluntad
) to coexist had been exhausted by Spanish treachery and greed. Titu Cusi's conversion to Christianity continues this gesture of
voluntad
for peaceful coexistence but his father's experiences and last words have understandably made him wary of the Spaniards' trustworthiness. For this reason, he requires legal assurances from
the monarch that his status as the legitimate Christian prince of Peru will be respected before he can reasonably be expected to consider giving up his refuge at Vilcabamba. Thus, it is in the spirit of the (belated) realization of this political ideal—of him relinquishing his refuge and assuming his place within the Spanish imperial order—that he “relates” his version of Peruvian history to the Augustinian Marcos García, “instructs” the returning governor Lope García de Castro to present his case before the monarch, and “empowers” him to act on his behalf in all the empire's legal affairs.

As mentioned before, however, it is entirely possible that Titu Cusi's gestures of his intentions to leave Vilcabamba, including the resulting text, were but a political smokescreen created in order to delay changes to the status quo. Indeed, Spanish culture of the letter and the law constitutes only part of the context in which to read Titu Cusi's account. It would be a mistake to assume that Titu Cusi merely provided the historical “facts” while Marcos García was entirely responsible for the form of this narrative. However pervasively the form of the text was shaped by its mediations through Spanish translation and transcription, it retains distinct traces of Andean conceptions of history and conventions of historiography. In order to excavate these aspects of the text, it is helpful to place this narrative in the context of recent ethnohistorical and anthropological scholarship that has provided much insight about other histories written in Spanish but drawing on native Andean traditions. In particular, the chronicles written by Juan de Betanzos as well as those written by Pedro Cieza de León, Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, and during the early seventeenth century the mestizo Inca Garcilaso de la Vega contain valuable comments about Inca historiographic practices that help us to reconstruct the traditions on which Titu Cusi would have drawn when telling his history of the conquest.

Because the Incas had no alphabetic writing system, their histories were recited orally on ritual occasions as songs—sometimes
described as
cantares
by Spanish observers—that were intended to celebrate the greatness of a specific ancestor and, thus, to legitimate certain claims made by his descendants. As Susan Niles has observed, these praise-narratives had narrative structures that depended heavily on mnemonic devices (xvii, 27). Such devices could include stimuli external to the narrative, such as music, war trophies especially kept for this purpose, or the Andean quipu. The quipu were strings of multicolored knotted cords arranged in particular patterns of color, texture, size, and form that encoded specific messages that could be read by persons initiated in this system, called the
quipucamayocs.
The quipu were typically used to store numerical information important for administrative purposes, such as recording tribute labor, taxes, and supplies but could also serve to assist the memories of oral historians (see Urton 1997 and 1998) (see Illustration 5). Another kind of mnemonic device was internal to the structure of the oral narrative itself, such as meter, formulaic repetition, and the performance of direct speech (Niles, 28–44). Although it is difficult to know with certainty how Titu Cusi conceived of the specific occasion when he himself performed his history before fray Marcos García, many of the events he related in his narrative were not witnessed by himself and therefore would only have been remembered by him in the form of the oral traditions about Manco Inca's life as they were being passed down by performances on such ritual occasions.

Despite the mediations through Marcos García's translation and Martín de Pando's transcription, several formal characteristics of Inca oral tradition on which Titu Cusi drew when relating his story still survive in the text. For example, narrative elements are frequently repeated ritualistically four times when they concern aspects of geography invoking the “fourness” of the Tahuantinsuyu and giving the narrative an “epic” character. The syntactical symmetry of the Spanish translation suggests that Titu Cusi's performance may have been metrical or at least followed a pattern of rhythmical symmetry over certain passages. For purposes of illustration we might represent such a passage here in stanza. It relates the convergence of the various lords and their armies from the four parts of the Tahuantinsuyu during Manco Inca's siege of Cuzco:

5. A quipucamayoc interpreting quipus. From Guaman Poma de Ayala,
Nueva corónica y buen gobierno
. By kind permission of the Royal Library at Copenhagen (GKS 2232 4to)

From Carmenga, which lies in the direction of the Chinchaysuyu,

Came Coriatao, Cuillas, and Taipi, with many others

In order to close the city's exit in that direction with their hordes.

From the Contisuyu, which is the direction of Cachicachi,

Came Huaman Quilcana, Curi Huallpa, all superbly equipped and in battle formation,

closing a huge gap of more than half a league wide.

From the Collasuyu

Came Llicllic and many other generals with a huge number of men, which was in fact the largest contingent

That formed the besieging army,

From the Antisuyu,

Came Antallca and Ronpa Yupanqui and many others

in order to close the ring around the Spaniards (pp. 105–106)

Por la parte de Carmenga, que es hacia Chinchaysuyu,

entraron Coriatao y Cuillas y Taipi y otros muchos

que cerraron aquel postigo con la gente que traían.

Por la parte del Contisuyu que es hacia Cachicachi,

entraron Huaman Quilcana y Curi Huallpa y otros muchos

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).