The Conquistadors (37 page)

He was succeeded by his son Huayna Capac, and Cieza de León goes on to give a very clear picture of this last of the great Inca-emperors:

Huayna Capac, according to many Indians who saw and knew him, was not large of stature, but strong and well built, of grave, goodly countenance, a man of few words and many deeds; he was stern, and unmerciful in his punishments. He wanted to be so feared that at night the Indians would dream of him. … Young men who succumbed to the temptations of the flesh, and slept with his wives or concubines or with the women of the temple of the sun, were given instant death, and the women, too. Those who had a part in riots or uprising were punished by being stripped of their property, which was given to others; for other crimes the punishment was only corporal. … The mother of Huayna Capac … loved him so much, she begged him not to go to Quito or Chile until after her death. And they tell that to please and obey her, he remained in Cuzco until she had died and was buried with great pomp, much treasure and fine clothing, some of her ladies and servitors being placed in the tomb with her. Most of the treasures of the dead Incas, and their lands, which are called
chacaras
(
huacas
), were kept intact from the very first one, and none ventured to touch or spend any part of them, for they had no wars or needs which required money. For this reason we believe that there are great treasures lost in the depths of the earth, and will remain there unless someone, building or doing some other thing, should by chance stumble on part of the much that there is.

Huayna Capac summoned to appear before him the principal native lords of the provinces, and when his court was teeming with them, he took to wife his sister, Chincha Occlo, with great festivities omitting the customary mourning for the death of Topa Inca. When these were concluded, he ordered some fifty thousand troops to accompany him in a progress throughout his kingdom. As he ordered it, so it was done; and he set out from Cuzco with more pomp and majesty than his father, for his litter was so rich, according to those who carried the Inca on their shoulders, that the many and large stones with which it was set were priceless, not to mention the gold of which
it was made. … From these regions he returned to Cuzco, where he occupied himself in making great sacrifices to the sun and to those they held as greater gods.

It was Huayna Capac who completed the huge fortress of Sacsahuamán that his father had begun. ‘A great cable of gold was put around the square of Cuzco, and great dances and drinking feasts took place …' Sacsahuamán was the greatest of all Inca architectural feats. The huge stones of the outer wall, weighing up to a hundred tons each, still stretch for a third of a mile; grey and glistening in the rain, their uneven-edged, tightly-fitted rampart of monolithic blocks constitute one of the most extraordinary sights in the world. Above it are two further walls enclosing the ruins of the whole massive fortress complex. Cuzco, at the time when Huayna Capac was building this gigantic monument to the stone-mason's craft, must have been a strange place, thousands of men quarrying and dragging stones on rollers, levering them into position, and inside the angled outer walls constructing reservoirs, towers, buildings. The city itself had already been completed, the extent of it still evident today in the long stretches of Inca walls that have been incorporated as the indestructible foundations of later Spanish buildings. These have crumbled to the battering of earthquakes, so that Cuzco now has a sad atmosphere, the ruins of superimposed Spanish colonial architecture combining with the solid Inca remains to give it the feel of a ghost city.

Huayna Capac's enthusiasm for architecture on the grand scale did not wane with the completion of Sacsahuamán, for he then toured the empire and ‘wherever he went he ordered lodgings and fortresses built, drawing up the designs with his own hand'. The triangular courtyard at Cajamarca, the only one of this shape ever built by the Incas, reveals his individual approach to architecture. But, like his grandfather, he was also a brilliant administrator. Cieza de León records that:

he revised the boundaries of many provinces so that they would not seek to better them by force of arms. His troops, despite their number, were so well disciplined that they did not set foot outside their camps; wherever they went the natives provided for their needs so fully that more was left over than they used. In certain places he built baths; in others he established hunting preserves, and in the deserts he had large houses built. Wherever the Inca passed, he left behind such noteworthy accomplishments that their mere relation arouses wonder.

It had been an orderly and obedient empire that Huayna Capac inherited from his father, and the system was so successful, the empire by then so firmly established, that the only real opposition to Inca rule seems to have come from the recently conquered north. The Quito people of Ecuador were fully as advanced and quite as warlike as the Incas; Prescott describes their incorporation into the empire as ‘the most important accession yet made to it since the foundation of the dynasty of Manco Capac'. In fact, though continuing to develop the organization he had inherited – particularly the introduction of Quechua as the dominant language, the improvement of agricultural methods and the completion of the Andean Highway from Quito to Cuzco – Huayna Capac spent much of the thirty-four years of his reign in the north. Thus at the time of his death in 1527 his two greatest generals, Quizquiz and Challcuchima, were with him in Quito, together with all the empire's most experienced and battle-trained warriors.

Prescott states that Huayna Capac had already divided the empire. Some chroniclers seem to take the view that he died without naming his successor. The results were the same in either case. The empire was split, Atahualpa taking the new territory in the north, Huáscar the old empire centred on Cuzco. ‘Huáscar was the son of Huayna Capac, as was Atahualpa. Huáscar was the younger, Atahualpa the elder. Huáscar was the son of the Coya, the sister of his father; Atahualpa was the son of a woman of Quilaca, by name Tapac Palla. Both of them were born in Cuzco, not in Quito, as some have said and even written, without knowing the facts.' Cieza de León goes on to say that ‘this is borne out by the fact that Huayna Capac was engaged in the conquest of Quito and those lands for some twelve years, and Atahualpa was over thirty when he died'. And he adds: ‘Huáscar was born in Cuzco, and Atahualpa was four or five years older than he. This is the truth, and so I believe it.' Nevertheless, the belief that Atahualpa was born in the north, possibly in Quito itself, still persists.

It was inevitable that Huáscar should succeed to the
borla,
the royal fringe, since he was unquestionably the lawful heir, and was in Cuzco at the time of his father's death, surrounded by all the bureaucratic hierarchy of empire. Atahualpa, on the other hand, was in Quito with his father when he died. ‘He was well set up for an Indian, of good presence, medium figure, not over stout, comely of countenance and serious withal …' In one succinct paragraph Cieza de Leon describes the inevitability of the struggle for power that was to open the door to the Spaniards: ‘Atahualpa was loved by the old captains of his father and the soldiers, because he went to the wars with him as a child, and because Huayna Capac had so loved him during his lifetime, allowing him to eat nothing except what he left on his plate. Huáscar was clement and pious; Atahualpa, ruthless and vengeful; both were generous, but Atahualpa was a man of greater determination and endeavour.'

It is impossible to know what was in Huayna Capac's mind when he either made this division of empire, or, by dying without actually naming his successor, allowed
it to happen. During the last few years of his life, raft traders and others must have given him some inkling of what was happening beyond his borders to the north. However inaccurate this intelligence, he cannot have been unaware of the threat posed by the Spanish thrust into Mexico and south into Darién. Vague reports would also have been brought to him of ships full of these bearded men sailing the seas. That the mood was one of foreboding, and that, like Moctezuma, he was faced with a series of ill omens, is evident from the writings of Garcilaso. His wise men were already prophesying evil because of the death of an eagle that fell out of the sky after being harassed by buzzards during the feast of the Sun.

There followed earthquakes and such unusual violence that great rocks were shattered in pieces and mountains collapsed. The sea became furious, overflowed its shores, invading the land, while numerous comets streaked the heavens, sowing terror in their wake. A curious, mysterious fear had seized upon all of Peru, when one unusually bright night the new moon appeared with a halo of three large rings; the first one was the colour of blood, the second a greenish black, and the third seemed to be made of smoke.

The soothsayers claimed that the blood-coloured ring foretold war between the Inca's descendants, and they added: ‘The black ring threatens our religion, our laws and the Empire, which will not survive these wars and the death of your people; and all you have done, and all your ancestors have done, will vanish in smoke, as is shown by the third ring.'

But, despite these forebodings, it is difficult to accept, as Prescott seems to, that Huayna Capac did, in fact, order his chieftains to submit to the bearded strangers, whose coming had been foretold by the Inca Viracocha. Though superstitious and fatalistic, he was, after all, absolute ruler of the entire Inca world, and that world had not yet been seriously threatened or even penetrated. His splitting of the empire, however, is much more understandable. Realizing that the threat would come from the north, he did what he could to ensure that it would be met by the full flower of his army under the only son on whose ability as a leader in time of war he could rely.

The year of Huayna Capac's death was the year Pizarro's tiny vessel called at Tumbes.

It is possible that Huayna Capac hoped Atahualpa would at once use the weapon of his battle-trained army and establish himself as Inca, supplanting Huáscar as Pachacuti had supplanted his brother Urco. But Atahualpa seems to have been uncertain of the support he could rely upon. He evidently felt he needed time to consolidate his position; and Huáscar was too easy-going to precipitate the clash by challenging his half-brother's hold on the north. It was not until five years after his father's death that Atahualpa finally felt himself strong enough to move.

Even then his ruthlessness reveals his sense of doubt at not being of the true Inca descent.

His first victory, early in 1532, was at Ambato, about sixty miles to the south of Quito. He then attacked the city of Tumebamba, slaughtered the inhabitants, and razed it to the ground. He went on to lay waste the whole province of Cañaris as an example to the rest of Huascar's adherents. He behaved, in fact, like a man who must command by force or lose all. Advancing by the coast road, he was checked by the Puná islanders, left them to be dealt with by the people of Tumbes, and took the lateral road up into the Andes. It was spring now, and Pizarro was already landing his troops behind the Indian line of march when Atahualpa sent his generals and the army forward to the final battle near Cuzco, holding himself in reserve at Cajamarca. The discipline of his seasoned warriors proved superior to Huascar's hastily conscripted levies. Nevertheless, the battle lasted all day. Thousands were killed. Huáscar himself was captured.

Spanish writers, seeking some justification for what their countrymen did later, claim that Atahualpa was so absolutely ruthless that he slaughtered the whole
ayllu
of the Inca. Garcilaso himself says that he ‘immolated his two hundred brothers, the sons of Huayna Capac', and that ‘some were massacred, some were hung, while others were thrown in the river or lakes with a stone tied round their necks, or hurled from high rocks or steep peaks'. He claims that the wretched Huáscar was forced to watch the massacre, but the account is a little confused here in that it says that Huáscar was forced to walk amongst his relatives, drawn up in two lines in the Sacsahuana valley, dressed ‘in mourning garb, his hands tied together and a rope round his neck. … This was the last opportunity they had to manifest their loyalty and their devotion to a lost cause, because they were immediately massacred with hatchets and swords.' Not content with this, Garcilaso adds that ‘when there was not a single adult man left of all Huáscar's line, or of his principal vassals, Atahualpa turned his vengeance upon the women and children of royal birth'. All who could be found were placed in a large enclosure on the Yahuarpampa plain. ‘They were first subjected to severe fasting. Then, all Huáscar's wives, sisters, aunts, nieces, cousins, mothers-in-law were hung, now to trees, now to gallows built for the occasion, some by their hair, others by both arms, or by one arm, or by the waist, or by still other ways that decency forbids me to relate. They were handed their small children whom they clasped tightly in their arms until the children crashed to the earth. The longer the torture lasted, the more delighted were the executioners, who would have considered it a favour to grant a rapid death to their innocent victims.'

As confirmation of Atahualpa's cruelties, Garcilaso quotes chapter five of the third book of the second part of the
History of Peru
by Diego Fernández, adding, ‘and it will be seen that I have not invented anything'. Not only does he make Atahualpa destroy the whole
ayllu
of the Inca, but he claims that ‘the porters, paymasters, cup-bearers, cooks and, in general, all those who, because of the
nature of their service, came in daily contact with the Inca, were pitilessly slaughtered with their entire families; in addition to which their houses were burned and their villages destroyed'. This is too much, since vengeance on this scale would have meant the destruction of the whole machinery of government. And if he was prepared to destroy the whole
ayllu
of the Inca, why did he not kill the Inca himself?