Part 33

The rise of Inca domination had not been without serious opposition; there was a powerful coalition formed against them when their aggression became a menace to the neighboring tribes. The Inca chieftains were killed, and the situation was saved only by the appointment of a new leader, Huiracocha, who saw that more was to be won by conciliation than by aggression. This chieftain was one of the four to whom the consolidation of the Inca dominions was due. Under a later Inca chieftain Pachacutic (1435-1471), “the changer of the world,” the pueblo of Cuzco dominated the whole of central Peru, and a district 300 miles in length towards the northwest. To the southeast it had a sphere of influence over a district of about equal extent, which was converted into definite subjection by Pachacutic and his allies.

The next stage of conquest was towards the north, where no special obstacles were encountered. The population was sparse, and in a low condition. Here an Inca colony was founded, which, with its capital at Quito, still survives under the form of the republic of Ecuador. From this vantage ground in their northern colony the Incas seem to have been brought into direct connection with the sea coast, for, owing to the long overland journey between Cuzco and their northern possessions, the water route was easier, and owing to the penetration of the land by the gulf of Guayaquil would easily suggest itself to those who as residents of the interior were not familiar before with journeyings by water. The advance into the coast valleys met with stout resistance on the part of a powerful confederacy which had Chimu as its center. The place was of strategical value to the Incas because it commanded important roads leading from the coast plain to the sierras, and was also accessible to the newly acquired northern colony and its hereditary domains.

Because of the successive steps by which the power of the Incas was so rapidly extended, the name of Pachacutic was associated with the whole of the administration of the Inca state as a lawgiver, architect, engineer, economist, and chief priest. His successor Tupac-Yuparqui followed in his father’s steps by enlarging the state’s borders both on the south and north. Resistance was cruelly repressed, as one sees from the narrative of his war on the coast valley of Huarco, where the Inca’s warriors, brought together for three years in a permanent camp, wore out the natives by constant harryings, until they agreed to capitulate on the condition of being incorporated with the Inca nation. Tupac had no scruples in violating the compact by a general massacre of the vanquished. Even at the conquest immense heaps of bones were still pointed out, as relics of the methods by which Inca rule had been built up.

In 1493, Tupac died at Cuzco and was succeeded by his son Huaina Capac under whom the era of expansion came to an end; he occupied himself with temple building, with road construction, and with making punitive expeditions on the savage tribes who dwelt on the outskirts of his empire. Afterwards, in 1525, he fell a victim to an epidemic. There was a civil war due to a rebellion in the northern colony under Tupac-atahuallpa who assumed the government because of the incapacity of Huascar, the new chieftain at Cuzco. The revolt was successful; the warriors from the northern colony steadily advanced until they forced Huascar to leave Cuzco and finally to surrender himself and his family into the hands of the rival chieftain, after which he was taken to Lazamara, the fortified station midway between the northern colony and the original dominion.

The extent of the territory conquered by the Incas, as well as the rapidity with which the conquest was made, gives their annals a unique position in the history of tribal life at a comparatively low state of culture. As soon as they passed beyond the confines of middle Peru, their expansion as a conquering power met with no setback. The peoples who were threatened by their advance did not form a coalition against them, and when new areas were once conquered, new peoples were at once added, who supplied them with additional warriors. The structure of the empire was so simple, so loosely knit that it collapsed as soon as it was confronted by the serious internal difficulties that grew out of the disputed succession. The Spaniards came at an opportune moment and received without trouble the large landed inheritance of the Inca overlord, whose domains covered the territory now occupied by Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Chili.

In estimating the standard of civilization attained by the Incas their theology, which is certainly of an advanced type, is naturally taken into account. The worship of the sun was one of the strongest bonds that kept together their widely separated lands. In each pueblo there was an estate of the sun god that was worked exactly as if it belonged to a chieftain. This economic network of temple estates was primarily intended to provide the sun with such constant supplies of food that the god’s beneficent activity on the earth and to man could be sustained. The processes of tillage and the craft of weaving were all brought in this way in close relation to the religion of the dominant people. Portions of the finest woven stuffs, along with the offerings of the ground, were burned in sacrifice at each pueblo; the rest was carried on the backs of llamas belonging to the estates of the sun for the great festivals celebrated annually at Cuzco, where these beasts of burden and all they carried were sacrificed in honor of the god. An essential part of the ritual of sacrifice was the offering of human victims. These were not war captives as in Mexico; they were taken from the women serfs, attached to the estates of the sun, the weavers of the llama wool, who were called “the selected ones.” This name was given to them because from each family in the pueblo there was collected a regular tribute of girls, distinguished by their beauty and vigor, who were trained to become members of the communities dedicated to the sun’s service. After an education of eight years most of them were distributed among the various temples of the gods, the sun receiving the larger share, while some were given to the Ccapac Inca himself or to his officials.

These offerings of human victims took place at the prescribed sacrifices during the religious year, and also at extraordinary crises--for example, when the Inca chieftain was attacked by disease, when the country was endangered by wars, or when earthquakes and eclipses occurred. To symbolize the sun, images in the figure of a man were carved with an attire resembling that of the Inca chieftain, decorated with a headdress of darts, to resemble the solar rays.

As in Mexico the warrior class in Peru had a special ritual of sun worship not shared by outsiders. In this case the idol represented an infant molded of solid gold, with golden embroidery, shod with golden sandals, and with a headdress copied from that worn by the chiefs. For the purpose of popular worship, as these esoteric rites were not accessible to the common people, great sun dials covered with leaf of gold were set up, where they were exposed to the rays of the sun, and on them simple liquid offerings were made, that were visibly appropriated by the god through the processes of evaporation.

A great center of pilgrimage was the throne of the sun at Titicaca where, in the innermost shrine, there was a sacred rock the summit of which glittered with gold leaf. In the neighborhood of Cuzco and on the road to the rock of pilgrimage there were stations of sacrifice, where burnt-offerings of llamas, cocoa, and maize were made in order to inaugurate the new sun’s progress from his ancient birthplace in the south. Sunrise was the time selected for these offerings; a white llama, bearing fuel, maize, and cocoa leaves, was previously led up to the mountain top, fire was kindled, and the victim was slain and consumed in the flames. By the time the sun was about to rise above the horizon, the burning pile was in full blaze. As the sun rose, the Incas chanted the prayer for the protection of their god: “O Creator, Sun, and Thunder, be forever young! Multiply the people, let them ever be in peace.”

In the Peruvian religious system much attention was given to the service of dead chieftains by a class of special attendants organized like those who served the gods. There was, therefore, throughout the whole Inca domains, a large class of ecclesiastics well endowed with lands and serfs; at Cuzco at the time of the conquest most of the inhabitants of the pueblo were assigned to the service of some mummy. There was no hope for the living unless they could keep the good will of the dead; in all the affairs of life they had a part, food was set before the dead body at feasts and liquid refreshment was forced between the mummy’s lips.

Huascar, the rival of Atahuallpa for the chieftainship of the Incas, lost the support of the warrior class because he was reported to have said that all the dead ought to be buried and their property taken from them. He did not wish to rule over mummies, from less sentimental reasons than those once expressed on a celebrated occasion by the spirit of Achilles. There had undoubtedly originated in Peru a movement against the economic monopoly connected with the temple worship. An effort had been made to meet this difficulty on the part of the Inca chieftains, who apparently, in view of the multiplication of festivals and sacrifices, had adopted the policy of diminishing the worship of the minor divinities and of concentrating the sacrificial offerings as far as they could on the Creator, Sun, Thunder, Earth, and Moon.

Under Inca rule the simple tribal administration was retained throughout the group of districts which were added in rapid succession to the seat of the race at Cuzco. Each Inca pueblo had its local chief or curaca, to whom were assigned a certain number of llamas and those portions of the land that were worked for him by the peasantry, who did all the agricultural labor. Distributions of the same character were made in each pueblo for the use of the head chieftain who dwelt at Cuzco, the so-called Ccapac Inca, and for the service of the tribal chieftains. The products of these reservations were taken to Cuzco and deposited there in store-houses from whence the llama hair was given to the women of the chief pueblo and woven by them into cloth. The food and the cloth so prepared were either kept as stores for military expeditions or used for sacrificial purposes.

As the territory of the empire was enlarged, this original system was applied to it. In each central district there was the same arrangement of buildings secular and religious, the Inca-tampu and the Ccoricancha, to which the produce of the lands belonging to the overlord and the sun was brought at regular intervals. These stations are found generally throughout the Inca domains, except in the coast-valleys. Between them were minor stations where two messengers were kept to carry orders from one stage to the other. Where there were natural difficulties to be overcome, in the long line of communication between the capitals Quito and Cuzco, a distance of 1500 miles in extent, causeways were built, and over streams and torrents enduring bridges were stretched, made of timber laid in strong ropes of twisted grass. There was a second road along the coast of the same length, but here, where the country was sandy, nothing was to be found save direction marks to indicate the correct track to be followed. In Cuzco there are still standing massive, finely-executed foundation walls which attest the skill of Inca builders. The temple of the sun can still be traced in the edifices of the European occupation. On an elevation commanding the road which led to middle Peru, the coast-valleys, and the northern colony there stands an impressive mass of cyclopean masonry, the fortress of Sacsahuaman, which represents the great terraced fortress begun by the founder of the Inca dominion and apparently not yet finished at the time of the conquest.

Though the Incas preserved a systematic administration that worked with mechanical accuracy over the area of their empire, it was at best a despotism, and their chieftains were nothing better than crude and brutal tyrants. The mental capacity of the race seems to have been below that of the people of Mexico, and their culture was certainly lower, as is seen in the absence of artistic advance on their part along with their inability to invent picture-writing, to work out the divisions of time, or to elaborate a system of numbers, although they were acquainted with denary arithmetic, and regularly observed the solstices. As warriors, they seem to have been drilled efficiently but mechanically; they were unable to foresee changes or adapt themselves to them when they came. They were vanquished by the Europeans more easily than the Aztecs had been, and their downfall was brought about by the assistance rendered the Spaniards by hosts of native allies.

IV PIZARRO

The discovery of the Pacific Ocean and the foundation of the city of Panama on the narrow peninsula, led to the undertaking of voyages of exploration farther south, and this in turn to the entrance into Inca territory. In one of these enterprises progress was made as far as the Gulf of Guayaquil. The unanimous report was that the country for hundreds of miles was in a state of nature, unoccupied, unhealthful, covered with swamps, forests, and lofty mountains; but the voyagers had also heard that farther on to the south there was an empire, Bisu by name, civilized and notorious for its great wealth.

[Illustration: FRANCISCO PIZARRO

(From the original painting in the palace of the Viceroys at Lima.)]

Francis Pizarro had been associated with Balboa up to the time of that leader’s assassination; afterwards he planned to act on his own account, and his planning ended in the organization of an expedition to acquire this empire of the south. The natural son of a Spanish noble, Pizarro, who was born about 1471 at Truxillo, had had no such advantages of education as those enjoyed by Cortez; he lacked also that conqueror’s impetuosity and chivalrous traits. Of the bad sides of the earlier conquistador he had more than a double portion; he was cold, calculating, and inflexible, shrinking from no cruelty and without a trace of the emotionalism which made Cortez so popular among his men.

Before giving a concrete shape to his scheme of conquest, he formed a commercial arrangement with Almagro an adventurer, and Luque a priest and schoolmaster of Panama, for the purpose of getting a financial backing. The first essay made in 1524 ended without tangible results. The coast of Peru was seen, and the adventurers were long enough on shore at Tumbez to see a surprisingly large number of gold and silver ornaments. They were not sufficiently strong to carry them off, but they had seen enough to pay for the hardships of their three years’ trip south and back. Pizarro then betook himself to Spain to get further support, and before he returned to Panama he had made personal arrangements with the government with respect to the basis on which he would carry out his plan of conquest. Some jealousy arose because of Pizarro’s manifest intention to assume the place of senior partner; the proposed expedition was saved only by the diplomacy of Luque, who again drew together his two comrades.

Finally, in 1532, Pizarro sailed away from Panama with three ships carrying in all 120 men and 36 horses. According to the plan accepted, Almagro was to follow with reinforcements, while Don Luque remained in Panama to prevent outside interference with the combination. News had come, as we have mentioned, to the ears of Huaina Ccapac of the landing of white men at Tumbez in 1525. Between this date and the year of Pizarro’s second trip had intervened the period of civil war between the rival claimants, with the captivity of the legitimate son, Huascar, in the spring of 1532. By April, after a two months’ trip down the coast, Pizarro arrived off the pueblo of Tumbez. He found it abandoned and dismantled. Spending some time exploring the neighborhood, he founded the town of San Miguel, and was put in possession of the facts that gave him his opportunity for advance into the interior. Huascar, desiring to get the coöperation of the Spaniards in maintaining his hold on the country, sent messengers to Pizarro with such encouraging words that the plan of conquest could already be outlined. Pizarro knew how, by making use of the divisions of the natives, Cortez had taken Mexico; his own opportunity had come sooner than he had expected. “If the land had not been divided,” said Pedro Pizarro, “we should have been able neither to enter nor conquer it.” On September 24, 1532, only about 200 Europeans, all told, set out; but the number of natives in Pizarro’s army was considerable. All the partisans of Huascar in the neighborhood were expected to join the Spaniards, because before setting out Pizarro had announced his intention of supporting Huascar, the “natural lord of the country.”

The Spaniards had, however, not made much progress towards the pueblo of Caxamalca when word came from Atahuallpa, the other claimant, that he desired the friendship of Pizarro; to reinforce his friendly sentiments a present accompanied the message. Pizarro spoke, in reply, of his desire for the Inca chieftain to be his friend and brother, and explained that his chief purpose in coming was to teach the principles of the Christian religion. Shortly after this official description of his mission had been given Pizarro moved forward; no opposition was offered, although in one place a large river had to be crossed where resistance would have been easy.

In order to obtain information about Atahuallpa efforts were made, without success, to get some account of his intentions. An Indian chief was tortured; his information was that the Inca was preparing to make war, in three places, on the Christians; later on it was reported that Atahuallpa was near Caxamalca with over 50,000 warriors. Perplexed, Pizarro employed a native notable to go to Atahuallpa as a friendly envoy to make clear to him that the Spaniards were coming as allies. As Pizarro’s men began to fear that they would be exposed to attack on the last stage of the journey, they were comforted by their commander’s assurance that they were really nothing more than peaceful missionaries of God and representatives of their king to ignorant heathen to whom they wished no harm.

The fears of the adventurers were set at rest by discovering from the natives they passed on their march up the sierras, that Atahuallpa was not preparing to meet them in anything but a peaceful fashion. In the difficult region through which they were being led, their advance could have been checked by a slight display of force. But the friendly attitude of the Inca chieftain was proved on several occasions by the appearance of messengers with food; Pizarro promised, on his side, that he would help to put down any remaining disaffection. On the part of the inhabitants there was no reason to suspect that the orders given by their superiors to serve and obey the newcomers were not reasonable. The general impression among the natives was that the Europeans were children of their god, the sun. Naturally this belief tended to give them a sacred character. Up to the present, indeed, there had been no conflicts with the natives except at Tumbez and at Puna, where the opposition was confined to a few hundred Indians. On the arrival in Caxamalca, Pizarro still kept up the ruse of being an ingenuous tourist; he sent personally to Atahuallpa to beg for an interview, insisting on his willingness to help him, and promising, if enemies were pointed out, he would send his men to reduce them.

Pizarro had now no difficulty in applying the scheme of conquest so successfully illustrated by Cortez in Mexico, but common enough to the conquistadors everywhere. By getting possession of the chief, the Spaniards made sure of the people; like Montezuma in Mexico, Atahuallpa in Peru was adored as a god. To put the capture of the Inca into execution was not difficult. He was invited to be present at a feast given by Pizarro. Under cover of this hospitable act his person could be seized. The risk came from the fact that he had about him 30,000 men. The night before the plot was to be carried out the Spanish camp gave itself up to religious exercises, the captain Pizarro taking the lead in encouraging his men to face the coming danger. Much comfort was derived from the assurances of the ecclesiastics who accompanied the expedition that God was on their side and would aid them to put his enemies to confusion. Careful arrangements had been made that the Spanish men-at-arms should be held in readiness in their quarters, prepared to sally into the square of the town at a moment’s notice. The artillerymen were bidden to train their guns on the Inca camp, and fire on it when the command was given. Pizarro took with him twenty men to aid in the seizure of Atahuallpa. In the great square where the Spaniards were lodged no one was to leave quarters until the artillery fire began. Much help was expected from the horsemen in causing a panic among the Indians, and they were told to put little bells on the harness.

The square of the pueblo that Pizarro selected to carry out his plan seemed expressly constructed for the deed. Triangular in shape, there were but two means of egress from it--two doors which gave access to the streets of the town. When the time appointed came, as the Inca chief delayed, Pizarro sent word to him to be expeditious, as the meal was being delayed until he arrived. Atahuallpa, taking an escort of 6000, who were unarmed except for small cudgels and slings, came into the square. Here there was every appearance of festivity; some of the men were dancing and singing; some carried plates and crowns of gold and silver. In a litter, made of gold and silver, Atahuallpa was borne along through the files of his escort, who parted ranks when he appeared, all keeping absolute silence. He then listened to a harangue from a Spanish friar inviting him to obey the Pope and receive the faith of Christ, and also to become the friend and tributary of the King of Spain. Otherwise he was threatened with the fate of an enemy; the Spaniards told him they would abolish all idols, “so that you may leave the lying religion of your many and false gods.”