The rich land distributions Pizarro made to the few missionaries who had accompanied his expedition are also symbolic of the significant role they would play in the transformation of the conquered territories, for it was primarily to them that the conversion of the natives to Christianity was entrusted and to the encomenderos of the land. Some of them, such as the Friar Vicente de Valverde, and in flagrant disregard of their vows of poverty, received encomiendas which were eventually inherited by their relatives. However, only the priest Juan de Sosa is recorded to have been given a share of the Cajamarca treasure.
From the earliest days of the Conquest the religion the Spanish missionaries brought with them was regarded by the Incas simply as a form of magic and their priests as little more than magicians, comparable to their own yatiris, shaman, or priests of the sun. Some of the Christian rituals mystified them, such as the sacrament of communion, which, when explained to them they imagined was a form of cannibalism: a practice they had outlawed in their empire. Other sacraments they witnessed, such as confession and baptism were in effect similar to their own rites and practices, called upacuna. The Dominican Valverde, whose religious Order had inspired the Inquisition, and who would become Cuzco’s first bishop, personified the Church’s role, not only as evangelist but as exorcist. A fear of demons was shared by many of the conquistadores who compared the Inca religion and its human blood sacrifices to the witchcraft still practised in their homeland.
Though the conquistadores demonstrated their Catholic faith in their various observances and Masses, which were held publicly in front of the Inca lords, their personal devotion was probably less evident. Most had been brought up in the semi-feudal poverty of Spain’s villages, where the dominion of the clergy was paramount, and had been traumatised by the Inquisition’s moral crusade from which only the New World could offer a semblance of escape, and the opportunity for sexual freedom they valued as much as the very gold they so relentlessly sought to acquire.
Valverde, who was in his early thirties, was probably the only Spaniard in Cuzco at the time to have had a university education, having studied theology at Valladolid and at Salamanca; he presented the bizarre spectacle of a theologian in an encampment of men most of whom had no greater ambition than to fornicate, get drunk and acquire gold, and who had possibly shed more blood than any other men at so young an age. Pizarro was well aware of the importance the Crown attached to the evangelical role of his conquest and deferred to Valverde on a number of occasions, rewarding him with the palace of Suntur Huasi for his first church. The Temple of Coricancha was for a time left in the possession of Manco, and afterwards requisitioned by Pizarro’s brother Juan. It was eventually left in his will to Valverde’s Dominican Order which built their monastery church on its foundations.
Although Pizarro allowed Manco to retain an unidentified building for himself and his small court, he denied him any of the city’s palaces and lands, as Mansio Serra de Leguizamón recalled years later: ‘All the land, houses, cattle [llamas] of this city and valley, was divided and given to those who conquered this city and kingdom … and it is known to me that the Inca Manco was neither given nor awarded any lands of encomiendas of Indians so that he could maintain himself in accordance with his rank and lordship, for had anything been given him it would have been known to me.’28
Many of the city’s caciques from the subject tribes no longer recognised Manco’s claim to sovereignty, regarding the Spaniards as their liberators from bondage. Among them was Cariapasa, lord of the Lupaca nation from the north-westerly shores of Lake Titicaca, and possibly one of the greatest of all the caciques who had led his people in Huayna Cápac’s conquest of his northern empire. ‘When Don Francisco Pizarro entered Cuzco there came to the city the principal lord of the province of Chucuito called Cari [Cariapasa] an elderly Indian who was governor of that province, and he arrived at the village of Muina where his tribesmen were in bondage, and said to them: “My brothers, we are no longer living in the time of the Inca, for each and every one of you can go home to your lands”.’29
Pizarro knew he would need a united army of Indian auxiliaries under one single native command to confront the remnants of Atahualpa’s forces. And for this reason alone – as in the case of the unfortunate Túpac Huallpa – he had recognised Manco as emperor and authorised his coronation at Cuzco, which in effect would see the gathering of all the subject caciques from various parts of the empire, including the southern Collasuyo. The investiture of Manco with the mascapaicha, the traditional headdress and forehead tassel of an Inca sovereign, took place in the city’s great square. Pedro Pizarro records the macabre spectacle of the various mummies of the imperial panacas that were also assembled to witness the ceremony, carried in their throne chairs, and how they were fed and given chicha to drink, and that some of them through the speech of their mediums spoke to one another, offering each other drink and food. After receiving the homage of his Inca lords and the caciques, he himself knelt before Pizarro and once more swore him fealty.
Dressed in the splendour of the imperial panacas, their faces masked in beaten gold, his sister-wives and brothers accompanied him in their litters to make their final sacrifice to the sun outside the city’s walls. It was a ritual that a year later would be seen for the last time by the priest Cristóbal de Molina, and which would symbolise the last vestiges of Cuzco’s former grandeur:
In a plain on the outskirts of Cuzco where the sun rises, they would take all the mummies of the temple and of their rulers under richly adorned canopies, and would make of this encampment a pathway … along which would parade all the lords of Cuzco, who were orejones [Inca lords] and [were] richly dressed with shawls and shirts embroidered in gold or silver, wearing bracelets and patens in their head-wear of very fine gold that shone with a brilliance, comprising of two rows of persons, each of three hundred lords; in procession and in silence they awaited the sunrise and even before its appearance they began to chant in great unity, their voices rising in tone with the rising of the sun …
The Inca was seated on a mound near by, in a tent and on a throne of great splendour, and as the chanting increased he rose with much authority and walked towards the centre of the two rows of lords, and he himself began to chant, a chant that was imitated by all the lords … and by mid-day their voices had increased in strength, as had the sun, all during which time many sacrifices were made of llamas and of meat which was burnt. At eight of the afternoon more than two hundred young women came from Cuzco, each carrying a pitcher of chicha they offered to the sun, and also a plant they chew in their mouths which is called coca … and when the sun set they demonstrated great sorrow and in the darkness adored its passing with great humility … and each returned to the city as did the mummies of their past rulers, each one attended by their mamacona and servants who would fan them with plumes of birds’ feathers.30
These images of a people at the height of their civilisation would all but disappear within ten years of their conquest, the treasures of their gold and silver metalwork melted into ingots, the stone masonry of their once splendid palaces used to buttress the foundations of the mansions and churches of their conquerors.
FIVE
The Siege of the Holy City
These are not the sons of God, but the sons of the Devil.
The Emperor Manco
For nights on end, recalled Pedro Pizarro, the sound of drums and drunken feasting could be heard in celebration of the young emperor’s coronation, a sound which put the fear of God into many of the conquistadores because of the vast numbers of Indians that had entered the city. By the week’s close the Emperor Manco had gathered some eleven thousand warriors on the outskirts of the city with their caciques. Seated in a throne chair carried on the shoulders of his Inca lords, he followed the columns of Spaniards in battle order towards the northern cordillera. ‘The marqués sent Hernando de Soto in pursuit of Quisquis, and the Adelantado Don Diego de Almagro went with him to relieve Jauja, where the marqués h
ad left some of the Spaniards in guard of the gold and silver of His Majesty, and which had been gathered after Hernando Pizarro had left for Spain, and we Spaniards experienced great risk to our lives and hardship.’1
The winter rains had destroyed several of the rope bridges across the Andean canyons and rivers which the Spaniards and their Indian allies would have had to cross, and those that had remained had been cut down by Quisquis’s retreating army on their march north. Pizarro, who was informed of Almagro and Soto’s difficulties, and fearing for the safety of Manco, ordered the emperor to return to the city, leaving his warriors with the squadron of horsemen. The Indian auxiliaries were put to work to reconstruct the bridge at Vilcas, on whose other bank they could see a solitary horseman who turned out to be Gabriel de Rojas, who had made his way from the northern coast via Jauja, having earlier sailed from Panama at Pizarro’s instigation. Rojas brought with him news of Jauja’s successful defence against Quisquis, describing to Almagro and Soto how the treasurer Alonso de Riquelme had stacked the Cajamarca booty in its main square, guarded by his foot soldiers and camp women, and how his eighty men and Indian allies had fought off the hordes of warriors.
Rojas also brought news that would cast a shadow on the entire expedition, and which he related to Pizarro several days later. Having been commissioned by Pizarro to bring two supply ships from Panama, his vessels had however been captured by an armada from Guatemala which consisted of some six hundred Spaniards and slaves, led by Don Pedro de Alvarado whose intention was to establish a foothold on the northern Ecuadorian coast. (Álvaro de Paz, who watched the armada leave Guatemala, stated that it consisted of 11 ships and more than 600 Spaniards.) Alvarado, a veteran of the conquest of Mexico and friend of Cortés, and who had been made a Knight of Santiago by the Emperor Charles V for his conquest of Guatemala, had two years previously secured in Spain a tentative sanction for his armada on condition he would not interfere in Pizarro’s governorship.2 More than any other veteran of the Indies, the 49-year-old adventurer personified the brutality of the Conquest: during his governorship of Guatemala he thought nothing of entertaining his guests by hunting his Indian slaves on horseback, accompanied by his pack of mastiffs.
Pizarro was well aware that Alvarado was no ordinary freebooter but a member of one of the great noble families of Extremadura, with connections to the court and the Council of the Indies, the body established to govern the Spanish colonies. Neither were the men he had brought with him in his armada an inexperienced force of simple volunteers, but the hardened and impoverished veterans of the conquests of both Mexico and Central America, many of whom saw the gold of the Incas as their last hope of enriching themselves.
Outnumbered and poorly armed, Pizarro knew that his small and dispersed army of some two hundred Spaniards was no match for the invaders, who posed an even greater threat to his survival than any of Atahualpa’s remaining armies. Nevertheless, he decided to remain at Cuzco with the Emperor Manco, knowing full well that any immediate evacuation of the city would only result in weakening the morale of both his men and of his Indian allies. He therefore sent messengers to Riquelme to fortify Jauja, and to Sebastián de Belalcázar to reinforce as best he could the northern settlement of San Miguel. Belalcázar not only had to contend with the impending invasion of Alvarado’s armada, which had not as yet landed, but faced an even greater threat from Atahualpa’s warrior chief Rumiñavi, who was defending the northern Inca capital of Quito.
It took Soto and Almagro almost a month to complete the task of securing the central Andes, though they failed to capture Quisquis. Meanwhile, Pizarro, accompanied by the emperor, had made his way to Jauja, leaving forty encomenderos to guard Cuzco. Manco celebrated the temporary rout of Quisquis’s squadrons by organising a royal hunt in honour of Pizarro. The chronicler Bernabé Cobo recorded that 10,000 Indians acted as beaters and a total of 11,000 animals were speared and killed by the Spanish horsemen, who at first had been wary of the invitation, imagining that they themselves might become the victims of the chase.
It was shortly afterwards that Pizarro was informed of Belalcázar’s march on Quito with a large number of volunteers who had landed at San Miguel, and whom Pizarro’s agents had for some time been recruiting in the Isthmus as future colonists. Also by then aware that Alvarado’s armada had disembarked on the northern coast, Pizarro ordered Almagro to reinforce Belalcázar and take sole command of his forces. Agustín de Zárate wrote:
Just at this time a great number of men arrived from Panama and from Nicaragua; and Belalcázar took two hundred of them with him, including eighty horsemen, and advanced on Quito with the intention of protecting the Cañaris Indians, who had made a treaty with him, and because he had heard that Atahualpa had left a great amount of gold at Quito. When Rumiñavi learnt that Belalcázar was approaching he advanced towards him with some 12,000 warriors, also securing various passes, where he laid ambushes, but which Belalcázar because of his cunning avoided. It was his habit to send fifty or sixty horse to ride through the night above and below the mountain ridges and seize the passes before daybreak. In this manner he drove the Indians back on to the plains, where his cavalry could inflict great losses on them.
When the Indians prepared for his attack they dug deep and wide pits set with sharp poles and stakes, which they covered with turf or grass or thin bamboo, which were like those dug by the people of Alexia for the defence of their city, as Caesar described in his seventh Commentary. Regardless of their endeavours, the Indians could not deceive Belalcázar, who evaded such traps, and never made a frontal attack on the Indians but only from their flank or rear. He took great care never to ride over grass or turf that appeared unnatural … [In Quito] Rumiñavi said to his wives: ‘Now you can rejoice because the Christians are coming, and you can have some sport with them.’ They all laughed, thinking that what he said was a joke, but their laughter cost them dearly, for he ordered them to be beheaded … Belalcázar then took possession of the city.3
The chronicler Fernández de Oviedo, who had known Belalcázar as a young man in Nicaragua, recorded that 50,000 warriors had faced the 200 or so Spaniards, who had been supported by only 3,000 Cañari auxiliaries. Also marching from the Ecuadorian coast towards Quito was Almagro and his small retinue of troops, but by the time he reached the northern Inca capital Belalcázar had already entered its gates in triumph. Among the Indians who came to greet Almagro were Atahualpa’s two young sons and daughter, whom he had entrusted to Pizarro’s care on the day of his execution at Cajamarca. It was a request with which to his great discredit Pizarro had never complied, and it was left to Almagro to bring the children to Cuzco. For a long time – as their testimonial to the Crown demonstrates – their fate was one of ignominy and poverty until they were looked after many years later by the elderly conquistadore and chronicler Diego de Trujillo, one of the poorest of Cuzco’s encomenderos, who, as noted earlier, gave them a home in his modest house.4
The third contingent moving towards the foothills of the northern cordillera was Pedro de Alvarado’s army of invasion, whose brutality, recorded by the Italian Franciscan Marcos, a native of Nice, was unequalled by any other conquistadore army in the level and extent of its torture, pillage and rape of the natives whose lands they passed through, and in their relentless search for gold. Line after line of Alvarado’s horse and foot soldiers and packs of mastiff dogs – some of the larger hounds protected by specially fashioned coats of armour – made their way up into the craggy passes of the cordillera. The harsh and biting winds and snow, at first a novelty to men who had known only the tropical heat of Guatemala, soon brought derision and despair; some died where they stood, others froze in their saddles, their horses still carrying their corpses. Ignoring their near starvation, one chronicler recorded that in answer to their plight some cried out in defiance that gold was their only food. ‘One Spaniard, who was accompanied by his wife and two small daughters, seeing them sit down too tired to march on and being himself too exhausted to car
ry or help them, stayed with them until all four were frozen to death.’5
It was a march that cost the lives of almost a fifth of Alvarado’s army and a great number of his slaves and porters, until finally, less than a hundred miles from Quito, he learnt that the city was already in the hands of Belalcázar and Almagro.
Within weeks the two rival Spanish armies were to face each other and prepare for battle. Heralds were sent to parley and after a while Alvarado, whose army was still almost twice the size of Almagro and Belalcázar’s combined force, agreed to meet Pizarro’s emissaries. The three mounted figures made a curious spectacle as they each rode out from their respective armies, clad in full body armour: the stocky and elderly figure of Almagro, recognisable by the patch covering his blinded eye; the black-bearded Belalcázar, the skull of a puma prominently displayed on his helmet; and the fair-haired and opulently cloaked Alvarado with his courtly manners, each one of whom was prepared to die that day.
It was gold that had brought each of them to Peru and it was gold that would smooth their differences, irrespective of the fact that Almagro had brought with him a copy of the Crown’s edict, issued in Spain a year previously, prohibiting Alvarado from entering the colony. Of the gold taken from Cajamarca and Cuzco 100,000 pesos was sworn to Alvarado in exchange for his ships and the disbanding of his army. Within less than an hour the future of Spain’s colony of New Castile had been decided.
The treaty, signed on 26 August 1534, guaranteed not only Pizarro’s governorship of the whole of the former Inca empire, but led to the destruction of what remained of Quisquis’s forces by the combined Spanish contingent, following the capture of Rumiñavi and his execution in Quito’s main square. The great warrior chief Quisquis fled to the eastern Amazonian forests, bringing to an end the last threat posed by Atahualpa’s armies to Spanish rule. Belalcázar’s role in the northern conquest of Quito was rewarded by Pizarro, who subsequently gave him permission to establish a semi-independent settlement at Popayán on the northern border of the Inca empire, which today forms part of the Republic of Colombia. Alvarado’s disbanded troops were, however, denied any share in the gold he had been promised by Almagro. Though they were allowed to remain in the colony, their resentment soon manifested itself in looting and scavenging as they followed Almagro’s army to Jauja and then to Cuzco, from where many of them would later form part of his expedition in the conquest of Chile.
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