Pizarro

by Stuart Stirling

  Pizarro met Alvarado at Pachacamac, near the temple his brother Hernando had plundered almost a year and a half previously, and where he paid him the 100,000 gold pesos. This sum the conqueror of Guatemala took with him to Spain and later used to help finance a proposed expedition to China across the Pacific, but the expedition faltered and witnessed his death in a riding accident in Mexico seven years after leaving Peru.

  Pizarro’s descent from the cordillera into the fertile plain of Pachacamac, situated not far from the sea, had, however, convinced him of the need to found the future capital of his colony in the region. He knew that like Cuzco, Jauja was far too isolated from the coast and communication with the Isthmus. A small outpost had already been established near Pachacamac for several months under Nicolás de Ribera, who took Pizarro on a reconnaissance of its northern coast and the lands of the cacique Taulichusco at Lima. There, on the Feast of the Epiphany Pizarro founded his capital of Los Reyes, the City of the Kings.

  Before creating his new coastal settlement Pizarro had celebrated at Jauja the birth of his daughter Doña Francisca, whose mother was the young Inca Princess Quispe Sisa. At her baptism in the town’s wooden chapel, some of the Spanish camp-women, among them the Morisca slave Beatriz de Salcedo, acted as her godmothers. A witness records that the celebrations were accompanied by cane fights on horseback and that the Indians of the city also held their traditional feasting in honour of the child, who carried the blood line of their emperors and of their new Spanish lord. Among the thousands of Indians who had gathered in the city were the warriors of Quispe Sisa’s mother Contarhuacho, once concubine of the Emperor Huayna Cápac, and who was one of the few women caciques of the subject tribes. Quispe Sisa was also baptised and given the name of Inés, the name of her Spanish godmother Inés de Muñoz, the wife of her uncle Pedro Martín de Alcántara.

  It was an elaborate ceremony conducted at night and over which the old slaver presided, imitating the solemnity and gestures he had himself witnessed in his youth in the churches of his native Trujillo. In the darkness amid the incense that rose above the heads of the small congregation, and surrounded by his captains, he may well have demonstrated the emotion he seldom showed and which only at Atahualpa’s death is he recorded to have expressed with his tears. His pride in his daughter and in the colony he had established against all odds, would, however, be shattered by the news that reached him from Cuzco in the coming months.

  Towards the end of July 1534 – almost a month before Diego de Almagro had reached his agreement with Pedro de Alvarado – Pizarro had appointed Hernando de Soto governor of Cuzco. It had been an attempt by Pizarro to strengthen his hand among the city’s encomenderos who had openly flouted his orders to desist from extracting gold from the city’s native lords. Shortly after Pizarro had left Cuzco, which he had put under the command of Beltrán de Castro, Mansio Serra de Leguizamón and several other encomenderos captured the Villaoma, who had been in hiding in the neighbouring Cuntisuyo province, and whom they ransomed for gold. In his testimonial to the Crown some thirty years later Serra de Leguizamón records the event:

  I was one of the forty soldiers chosen to remain in the city of Cuzco in its defence in the company of the Captain Beltrán de Castro, which was when the governors had gone to meet with Don Pedro de Alvarado who had come from Guatemala with his men. While on guard of this city it was learned the Incas planned to kill us all and recapture Cuzco, bringing with them as their chief Villaoma. In order to forestall their purpose, I and a number of my companions disguised ourselves as Indians, and taking with us our arms we went on foot to where Villaoma was encamped with a great number of his warriors. And taking heart I was the first to seize him and we brought him as our prisoner to Cuzco and handed him over to the Captain Beltrán de Castro.6

  One of the witnesses to his testimonial, Diego Camacho, recalled that Serra de Leguizamón had set out to the Villaoma’s camp in the Cuntisuyo with nine or ten other soldiers, among them his friend the encomendero Francisco de Villafuerte. Another witness, Luis Sánchez, records that the value of the treasure received as a ransom was 34,000 gold pesos and 36,000 silver marks. Pizarro, who was then at Jauja with the Inca emperor, was incensed by the news and ordered the Villaoma’s immediate release. Fearing for their lives, as a placatory gesture Cuzco’s encomenderos sent the treasure to Jauja in a donation which all forty signed, dated 4 August 1534, of 30,000 pesos of gold and 300,000 marks of silver.7

  There is no official record of what became of the treasure. It is more than likely that it formed part of the 100,000 gold pesos Pizarro paid Pedro de Alvarado for the disbanding of his forces. Though Serra de Leguizamón was reprimanded by Pizarro, several years later his capture of the Villaoma was recorded in the coat of arms the Emperor Charles V awarded him, and which portrays the Inca High Priest wearing his ceremonial crown within a border of chains.

  At the founding of Cuzco’s municipality Pizarro had originally appointed among its officials both of his brothers Juan and Gonzalo, together with a number of experienced Isthmian veterans such as Gabriel de Rojas and the infantry captain Pedro del Barco. The city, nevertheless, had remained in a state of near anarchy because of the clandestine looting and vandalism of its encomenderos, among them Pizarro’s brothers who were a law unto themselves. Even Pedro de Candía, whom Pizarro had appointed the city’s first mayor, had been unable to maintain order.

  Pizarro’s solution to Cuzco’s problems was to relieve Beltrán de Castro and Pedro de Candía from any effective role in governing the city and to appoint Soto as its governor. It was a decision which elicited a great deal of dissent from Pizarro’s two younger brothers, who had both for a time served with Soto’s squadron in his hunt for Quisquis, and whose dislike for him was well known.

  Pizarro had also resolved to allow the Emperor Manco to return to Cuzco, having instructed Soto to act as his advisor in securing the allegiance of the subject tribes of the Collasuyo, the southern region of the empire. The small court Manco was permitted to maintain in one of the city’s palaces was to resemble more a refuge for his many relatives than the grandeur of an imperial household. There the continual demands from Cuzco’s encomenderos for more gold and silver were endured by the hapless emperor, and at times met from his own treasury, if only as a means of protecting himself and his family.

  Though without doubt the foremost fighter of Indians among all Pizarro’s men, Soto was no administrator and his short-lived governorship of Cuzco proved an error of judgement on Pizarro’s part. Few, if any, of the city’s encomenderos respected his authority, principally because of the influence exerted on them by Pizarro’s two brothers who were determined to undermine Soto at every turn. Others who had served with Soto in his cavalry squadron were themselves loath to support him publicly so as not to offend the younger Pizarros, in the hands of whose family the wealth and power of Peru now lay. Some encomenderos were summoned before the city’s cabildo and fined for their looting, but none was punished with any great severity. And it is possibly the case that Soto himself eventually took a full share in the looting and harassment of the Inca lords, as the considerable wealth he is recorded to have taken with him to Spain would later reveal.

  Manco’s harem, comprising many of his half-sisters, was the envy of every encomendero in the city. Apart from gold no single commodity was valued more highly by the conquistadores than the native women, especially the daughters of the Inca lords and of the caciques of their encomiendas, whom they bartered and sold among themselves. From the earliest days at Cajamarca, Pizarro had forbidden any of his men on pain of death to abduct any of Atahualpa’s harem, realising the reverence in which his sister-wives and concubines were held. It was a sanction to which Soto had also adhered in Cuzco, knowing that if anything were to incense Manco to rebellion it would be the rape of his women. Other than Pizarro, Soto alone is recorded as having been permitted at Cajamarca to take one of the princesses for his mistress, and she accompanied him from Jauja to Cuzco. Forbidden fruit
, yet in time they would fall into the clutches of the young Pizarros and their henchmen, intent on proving their virility and machismo, acts of dishonour which fuelled the rebellion of the Incas and almost cost Pizarro his colony.

  Among the emperor’s numerous half-brothers in the city was Paullu Inca, who was a few months younger than Manco and the son of their father’s concubine Añas Collque, a cacique’s daughter from the Huaylas region. The fact that Paullu’s mother was not of the Inca royal blood made him less of a threat to Manco than his other half-brothers, who, though illegitimate like himself, were sons of Inca princesses. What, however, had impressed Soto was the following Paullu was said to maintain among the Collasuyo tribes, regardless of his low standing among his other relatives. Imprisoned by the Emperor Huáscar for raping one of their sisters, he had been set free by Quisquis on his capture of Cuzco and had probably been party to the murder of Huáscar’s immediate family so as to ingratiate himself with Atahualpa. He had been born at Tiahuanacu during his father’s tour of the Collasuyo, and it was there that he had sought refuge during Quisquis’s occupation of Cuzco, and where he married a priestess of the Temple of Copacabana at Lake Titicaca, a site that years later would be converted into a Christian sanctuary in honour of the Virgin.

  That Manco was no longer indispensable to the Spaniards was brought home to him soon after his return to the city. The more secure its encomenderos became with the emergence of their private armies of caciques, the less control he was able to exert on his subject people. Other than among his Inca lords and Quéchua tribesmen, his standing as emperor was gradually being eroded. Even the Villaoma was urging him to break his links with the invaders and leave the city. Frightened and lacking confidence, he knew no other course than to acquiesce to the demands of his Spanish allies.

  By the beginning of 1535 news had reached the city of Almagro’s imminent arrival from Pachacamac, where he had ratified his agreement with Alvarado, paying him the final instalment of gold and silver bars from the Cajamarca and Cuzco treasure. Accompanying Almagro was an army of some five hundred men, most of whom had formed part of Alvarado’s now disbanded forces. The prospect of so large an army unnerved not only the city’s encomenderos and settlers, who numbered fewer than a hundred men, but Manco and his lords, who viewed the establishment of so many Spaniards in Cuzco as a sign that they were to be dispossessed of even their remaining dwellings. Nor was Soto much pleased when he learnt that Pizarro had replaced him as governor, appointing Almagro in his stead.

  It was, however, the additional news that the Crown had awarded Almagro the governorship of the southern territories of the Collasuyo, to be known as New Toledo, and that Almagro claimed Cuzco as part of his territory that brought a shudder to many of Pizarro’s veterans, who felt they could no longer count on the awards of their encomiendas being honoured. Almagro’s nomination had been secured at court by his friends, and though the Royal Decree had yet to reach him, its contents had been publicised in Toledo and signed by the emperor in May 1534.

  Pizarro, who was at his new settlement at Lima when the news reached him, had been visibly indignant at what he regarded as an encroachment on his governorship, with the added humiliation of having to forfeit the Inca capital. ‘I would rather die,’ he is recorded as saying, ‘than surrender and abandon what I have conquered and won by my own endeavour.’8 It was a sentiment echoed by every one of the veterans of his small army, men who had secured Atahualpa’s capture; the affront to their achievements raised the spectre of civil war once more, resurrecting the confrontation between the two elderly slavers.

  Pizarro had despatched a messenger to Cuzco with all urgency in an attempt to forestall Almagro’s appointment until a confirmation had been obtained from Spain, which would be brought to the colony by Hernando Pizarro, who had himself been at Toledo, negotiating his family’s interests. Nothing, however, was to dissuade Almagro of what he believed to be his rightful share of the spoils of the Inca conquest. Not only had he supplied Pizarro with a reinforcement army at Cajamarca, which in the opinion of many of its veterans had prevented their massacre, but with Belalcázar he had destroyed the last Inca resistance in the northern Andes. His successful bribery of Alvarado had further secured the safety of the colony. Neither was he ever able to forgive his treatment by Pizarro in robbing him of their dual governorship, nor the years they had both spent exploring the northern Pacific coast of South America in search of the Inca kingdom, and for which his blinded eye was a constant reminder of what he had sacrificed in their cause.

  At the head of his army of cavalry and foot soldiers and several thousand Indian warriors, Almagro entered Cuzco and claimed it as the capital of his governorship of New Toledo. Like some conquering hero, he led his army into Cuzco’s great central square where their victorious shouts of ‘Almagro!’ and ‘New Toledo!’ resonated across its buildings. It was in every way a demonstration of his superiority over Pizarro’s outnumbered veterans, who looked on in silence, fearful of the vendettas that would inevitably ensue from the drunken brawling of so many impoverished and battle-hardened soldiers, some of them disfigured by their horrendous experiences during their crossing of the northern Andes.

  Hernando de Soto had no choice but to accept Almagro as governor, though maintaining himself in the office of the city’s chief alderman. Juan and Gonzalo Pizarro, however, refused to recognise Almagro’s authority, regardless of the fact that his appointment had been made by their brother before he had learnt of the Crown’s decision regarding Almagro’s governorship. The two brothers led a campaign of civil disobedience, abusing Almagro and his captains at every opportunity until they finally locked themselves in Pizarro’s palace of Casana. As the city’s alderman, in charge of law and order, Soto was forced to intervene. But his words fell on deaf ears. Juan Pizarro, suspecting Soto was in league with Almagro, threatened to kill him. An eyewitness recorded how the two men eventually faced one another in a duel, armed, armoured and on horseback in the city’s main square, surrounded by the partisans of each opposing side; and that had it not been for a relative of Alvarado, who had joined Almagro’s army and who placed himself between the two horsemen, they would have fought to the death.

  News that Cuzco was in a state of virtual civil war with the followers of Almagro fortifying the northern part of the city near his palace of Colcampata while the veterans of Cajamarca had commandeered the central square, soon reached Pizarro at Trujillo, the new settlement he was founding north of Lima. With the determination and physical endurance for which he was renowned, Pizarro immediately set off on the gruelling journey through the central cordillera of the Andes to Cuzco, a journey he completed in under a week on horseback or carried by Indian porters when his horses were too exhausted to continue. He was in no mood to accept excuses from anyone when he finally reached the city, and was well aware that the public squabbling among the Spaniards could easily have encouraged a native rebellion.

  Pizarro discovered that Almagro had taken the young Inca emperor under his wing and gifted him the palace of Colcampata which Almagro had been given by Pizarro in the distribution of the city’s buildings; and that at Manco’s request Almagro had authorised the killing of some of the emperor’s brothers whom he suspected of plotting against him, for which Almagro had received a large quantity of gold. Pizarro’s task was not enviable. He had to restore not only his hold on the Inca emperor, but separate the two warring factions of conquistadores. His main objective, however, was to avoid a direct confrontation with Almagro and to free the city of his marauding army, described by one conquistadore as little more than a pack of thieves and brigands. To this end, he informed Almagro that it was not his desire to question his right to the city’s governorship once the authority of the Crown had been invested in him, clarifying his jurisdiction and stipulating whether Cuzco lay within its boundaries. Meanwhile, he suggested that Almagro lead an expedition of conquest into the heartland of his future governorship of the Collasuyo, and its southern coastal lands o
f Chile.

  Flattered by the support Pizarro offered him in gold and munitions from Cuzco’s armoury and treasury, Almagro once more succumbed to the persuasive words of his former partner. He ignored the advice of many of Alvarado’s veterans who had urged him to uphold his claim on Cuzco by force of arms and to redistribute its encomiendas: something he realised would only lead to further dissension. The prospect of sharing in the booty and future encomienda awards of the Collasuyo and unexplored Chilean lands, reputedly far richer than any other region of the Inca empire, was sufficient to persuade Alvarado’s veterans to leave the city. A few, however, such as the Extremaduran hidalgo Garcilaso de la Vega, father of the mestizo historian, decided to remain and throw in their lot with the Pizarros. According to Pedro Pizarro half of Cuzco had been burnt by Almagro’s soldiers in their scavenging and looting.

  The events at Cuzco would mark the end of Hernando de Soto’s career in Peru. Pizarro had no wish to offer him a governorship, let alone reinstate him as Cuzco’s governor. Almagro, who had known Soto since the time of their arrival in the New World in Arias Dávila’s armada, refused him permission to join his expedition to Chile, even after Soto had offered to pay him 200,000 pesos of gold for a share in its command. The sum he offered Almagro is indicative of the vast amount of unaccounted for wealth Soto and other conquistadores had acquired aside from their recorded awards at Cajamarca and Cuzco. At Cajamarca Soto had received 17,740 pesos of gold. Disillusioned by what he saw as the collapse of his last chance of establishing his own independent fiefdom, and by his increasingly acrimonious relationship with Pizarro’s brothers, Soto decided to leave Cuzco and return to Spain. Escorted by a caravan of llamas carrying his vast fortune, he began a journey that would eventually take him to Seville and Valladolid, where he was fêted and honoured by the empress and awarded the knighthood of Santiago.