Sovereign Failures and New Miracles

This chapter describes the growing factionalism among the Spaniards in Peru, as well as the collapse of Pizarro’s alliance with Manco Inca. In the face of Spanish brutality, Manco organized a widespread war of reconquest, which failed because the Spanish alliances with other Andean lords held firm, including those with Inca noblewomen and the prince Paullu Inca. When the threat of Inca war lessened, the Spaniards turned to fight one another, leading to a series of battles and assassinations that divided the conquistadores and devastated Andean populations. Charles V attempted to rein in the leading factions, but his inspector, Cristóbal Vaca de Castro, declared himself the new governor of Peru, a claim he reinforced on the battlefield.

Two Roads to Cajamarca

This chapter follows the Inca warlord Atahuallpa from the last days of his victory in the Inca civil war to the fateful encounter with Francisco Pizarro at Cajamarca in 1532. As Atahuallpa made his way to Cajamarca, he acted to destroy the old Inca capital of Cuzco and to show his subjects that they should fear his military power, which was capable of devastating even the most powerful sacred forces in the Andes. The arrival of Pizarro and his Spaniards occurred as the old Inca order was challenged, raising questions about the identity and motivations of the newcomers. Pizarro and his men made their way into Inca territory, where they abandoned their colonizing mission to seek out Atahuallpa, even though they knew he was not the legitimate Inca. The Spaniards told the Inca that they had come to serve Atahuallpa. Then they ambushed him at Cajamarca when he came to the Inca city to accept their fealty.

Building a Catholic Empire

This chapter begins with the Castilian conquest and colonization of the Canary Islands, which deployed a medieval model that had been carried over to the Americas by Columbus. When the Aragonese pope Alexander VI granted half the globe for Spanish missionary work and imperial expansion, Isabella and Ferdinand lacked the policies, institutions, and laws to rule over native peoples who did not live like European Catholics. They also struggled to maintain control over their Spanish colonists, who often abandoned the new settlements to explore, plunder, and raid for slaves in other places. The chapter follows one of these wayward colonists, Francisco Pizarro, from Hispaniola to Panama and on to the exploration of the Pacific coast of South America. As Charles V attempted to establish law and order in his American colonies—and to face the challenges of the Protestant Reformation—he granted Pizarro permission to colonize Peru, a rich, civilized realm that had been contacted during a rare moment of success in the conquistador’s otherwise disastrous expeditions on the Peruvian coast.

Postscript

The supernatural drama surrounding the 1650 earthquake brings the story of the Inca apocalypse in Cuzco to a close. The status of the Inca nobility in the city continued to fade over almost two more centuries of Spanish colonial rule, but they remained faithful subjects and good Christians to the very end. Cuzco stood with the Crown during the 1780 revolution led by the ...

Overturning Andean Landscapes

This chapter looks at the viceroy Francisco de Toledo’s efforts to ensure the flow of silver and tax revenue to the Spanish Crown. Although mining served as the backbone of the colonial economy—and its demand for labor shaped the discussion of race and human rights in the Andes—the introduction of Old World crops and herd animals also helped to transform Andean economies that produced commodities and provided tax revenues and labor for Spanish ventures. Toledo ordered the resettlement of dispersed native populations as a way to undermine Inca-era beliefs, economic practices, and social hierarchies. He matched his attempts to reduce the Inca world to Spanish-style communities with an assault on the “savage” people living beyond the southern frontier. Despite Toledo’s overhaul of Andean life, Philip II continued to be interested in the Incas and their way of ruling the Andes, and he ordered the large-scale collection of new geographic reports describing the Inca world and its development under Spanish rule. A decade later, Philip claimed absolute ownership over lands across the Inca world.

Conquering Andean Hearts and Minds

Complementing the military and political narrative already presented, this chapter discusses the lack of progress made toward the Christian conversion of native Andeans by the mid-1500s. The first Spaniards in Peru not only failed to promote their missionary project, but proved to be bad Christians themselves. Andean lords, including many Inca women and men, embraced Christianity as a way to protect their noble status, but rural populations remained largely ignorant of Catholic doctrine, living on a landscape that friars and priests saw under demonic control. Rural conversion gradually proceeded after Spanish civil wars died down, and those missionary efforts reflected the changing Catholic orthodoxy being defined by the Council of Trent. Many of the priests fighting Andean idolatry blamed the independent Incas living in Vilcabamba, despite the growing diplomatic contacts that were defusing the threat that the Vilcabamba Incas posed to Spanish Peru. Rather than the Incas, it was young Spaniards and men of mixed heritage whose plots against royal officials threatened royal rule during the 1560s.

Royal Conquests in the Poor Soldier’s Paradise

As the royal inspector Cristóbal Vaca de Castro attempted to build Spanish Peru by reviving Inca imperial practices, Charles V sent his first viceroy to the Andes to implement the New Laws, designed to reduce the power of the conquistadores and to protect the native population. Those laws sparked a new Spanish rebellion, under Gonzalo Pizarro, which was defeated when the Crown voided many of the new ordinances. The defeat of the original conquerors depended on large numbers of ordinary foot soldiers, who soon rebelled when royal officials were unable to grant them rich estates. As the Spanish civil wars unfolded, Andean lords converted to Christianity and increasingly showed themselves to be loyal Spanish subjects. Andean troops helped the royalists to suppress the last major Spanish uprising, in 1554, by which time the Incas of Cuzco were busy recounting their imperial histories and moving to preserve their noble status in the colonial world.

Beyond Cajamarca

This chapter traces the fallout from the capture of Atahuallpa in Cajamarca. The Spaniards held Atahuallpa prisoner while he assembled a ransom of gold and silver. They allowed him to reconstitute his royal court, command his armies, and to send and receive messages, which helped him to survive and reconstitute his power over the following months. After the Spaniards divided up the ransom, however, they killed Atahuallpa and replaced him with a half-brother who was loyal to them. Pizarro and his Inca allies then marched southward to Cuzco to drive Atahuallpa’s troops out of the city. After their Inca ally died suddenly, the Spaniards allied themselves with Manco Inca, who was crowned in Cuzco after the Inca-Spanish force retook the city. The chapter closes with a description of the destruction of Atahuallpa’s realm in Quito, and of the first Spanish publication of eyewitness accounts of the Pizarro expedition.

The Invention of Catholic Spain

This chapter provides a deep history for Iberia illustrating the apocalyptic worldview of Catholics during the later Middle Ages. Starting with a legendary account of the journey to Spain by the Catholic saint Santiago, the chapter describes how Catholic pilgrimage and crusading contributed to the belief in a centuries-long Christian reconquest of lost realms. A description of medieval history-writing reveals how supernatural features, miracles, and legends shaped the earliest attempts to produce a Christian history of Spain that could link biblical mythology to the dynastic histories of Christian dynasties. The chapter describes how those rulers extended their power beyond the Iberian Peninsula, and how Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragón embraced an identity as Catholic builders of a world empire.

Introduction

This introductory chapter traces the rediscovery of the story of the Inca Empire and the Spanish conquest of Peru from the early 1800s to the present. It shows how the work of natural historians and antiquarians developed into the scholarly disciplines of history and archaeology, and how key bodies, sites, and events came to carry the broader significance of the conquest. Moving past the triumphal tone that Western writers used at the time, this book develops the idea of apocalypse to show that people living in the Andean and Iberian worlds held beliefs about how the universe would end, values that shaped their actions and interpretations of the conquest of Peru.