|

PERU TRAVEL
PLANNER
| |
The Incas
With the Inca Empire (1200-1532) came the culmination of the
city-building phase and the beginnings of a kind of Peruvian unity, with the
Incas, although originally no more than a tribe of around forty thousand,
gradually taking over each of the separate coastal empires. One of the last to
go - almost bloodlessly, and just sixty years before the Spanish Conquest - were
the Chimu, who for much of this "Imperial Period" were a powerful rival.
Based in the valleys around Cusco, the Incas were for the first two centuries of
their existence much like any other of the larger mountain tribes. Fiercely
protective of their independence, they maintained a somewhat feudal society,
tightly controlled by rigid religious tenets, though often disrupted by
inter-tribal conflict. The founder of the dynasty - around 1200 - was Manco
Capac , who passed into Inca mythology as a cultural hero. Historically,
however, little definite is known about Inca developments or achievements until
the accession in 1438 of Pachacuti, and the onset of their great era of
expansion.
Pachacuti , most innovative of all the Inca emperors, was the first to expand
their traditional tribal territory. The beginnings of this were in fact not of
his making but the response to a threatened invasion by the powerful,
neighbouring Chanca Indians during the reign of his father, Viracocha .
Viracocha, feeling the odds to be overwhelming, left Cusco in Pachacuti's
control, withdrawing to the refuge of Calca along the Río Urubamba. Pachacuti,
however, won a legendary victory - Inca chronicles record that the very stones
of the battlefield rose up in his defence - and, having vanquished the most
powerful force in the region, shortly took the Inca crown for himself.
Within three decades Pachacuti had consolidated his power over the entire sierra
region from Cajamarca to Titicaca, defeating in the process all main imperial
rivals except for the Chimu. At the same time the capital at Cusco was
spectacularly developed, with the evacuation and destruction of all villages
within a ten-kilometre radius, a massive programme of agricultural terracing
(watched over by a skyline of agro-calendrical towers), and the construction of
unrivalled palaces and temples. Shrewdly, Pachacuti turned his forcible
evacuation of the Cusco villages into a positive plan, relocating the Incas in
newly colonized areas. He extended this practice too, towards his subjugated
allies, conscripting them into the Inca armies while their chiefs remained as
hostages and honoured guests at Cusco.
Inca territory expanded north into Ecuador, almost reaching Quito, under the
next emperor - Topac Yupanqui - who also took his troops down the coast,
overwhelming the Chimu and capturing the holy shrine of Pachacamac. Not
surprisingly the coastal cultures influenced the Incas perhaps as much as the
Incas influenced them, particularly in the sphere of craft industries. With
Pachacuti before him, Topac Yupanqui was nevertheless an outstandingly
imaginative and able ruler. During the 22 years of his reign (1471-93) he pushed
Inca control southwards as far as the Río Maule in Chile; instigated the first
proper census of the empire and set up the decimal-based administrative system;
introduced the division of labour and land between the state, the gods and the
local allyus; invented the concept of Chosen Women (Mamaconas); and inaugurated
a new class of respected individuals (the Yanaconas). An empire had been unified
not just physically but also administratively and ideologically.
At the end of the fifteenth century the Inca Empire was thriving, vital as any
civilization before or since. Its politico-religious authority was finely tuned,
extracting what it needed from its millions of subjects and giving what was
necessary to maintain the status quo - be it brute force, protection or food.
The only obvious problem inherent in the Inca system of unification and
domination was one of over-extension. When Huayna Capac continued Topac
Yupanqui's expansion to the north he created a new Inca city at Quito , one
which he personally preferred to Cusco and which laid the seed for a division of
loyalties within Inca society. At this point in history, the Inca Empire was
probably the largest in the world even though it had neither horse nor wheel
technology. The empire was over 5500km long stretching from southern Colombia
right down to northern Chile, with Inca highways covering distances of around
30,000km in all.
Almost as a natural progression from overextending the empire in this way, the
divisions in Inca society came to a head even before Huayna Capac's death.
Ruling the empire from Quito, along with his favourite son Atahualpa , Huayna
Capac installed another son, Huascar , at Cusco. In the last year of his life he
tried to formalize the division - ensuring an inheritance at Quito for Atahualpa
- but this was totally resisted by Huascar, legitimate heir to the title of Lord
Inca and the empire, and by many of the influential Cusco priests and nobles. In
1527, when Huayna Capac died of the white man's disease smallpox, which had
swept down overland from Mexico in the previous seven years killing over thirty
percent of the indigenous population, civil war broke out. Atahualpa, backed by
his father's army, was by far the stronger and immediately won a major victory
at the Río Bamba - a battle which, it was said, left the plain littered with
human bones for over a hundred years. A still bloodier battle, however, took
place along the Río Apurimac at Cotabamba in 1532. This was the decisive victory
for Atahualpa, and with his army he retired to relax at the hot baths near
Cajamarca. Here, informed of a strange-looking, alien band, successors of the
bearded adventurers whose presence had been noted during the reign of Huayna
Capac, they waited.
|