The most dashing and famous of all Pizarro’s captains, Soto’s deeds in the conquest became the legends of Spain. Shortly after his return to his home in southern Extremadura he embarked on his conquest of Florida and of the territories which would become the southern United States, where he died six years later on the banks of the Mississippi River. One of the great pioneers of the New World his name is still remembered in the townships of the Deep South, through which he had led his band of 600 men, only half of whom survived. A man capable of compassion, as he demonstrated in his treatment of Atahualpa, he was nevertheless as brutal as any of his fellow conquistadores in his methods of warfare and in his North American venture was responsible for the massacre of several thousand men, women and children, as one of his Portuguese volunteers recorded.
Pizarro had never trusted Soto, and though he was relieved to see his departure from Cuzco, he trusted even less the behaviour of his two hot-headed brothers who had almost brought him to civil war. The public dressing-down he gave his brothers instilled a certain confidence in Almagro, who had never forgotten the abuse he had received from Hernando Pizarro on so many occasions. But to see Pizarro’s two brothers commanded to show him the respect due his rank as an adelantado and marshal of the Crown greatly pleased him, even if it was more theatrical than sincere. Unbeknown to him, Pizarro had decided to name his brother Juan temporary governor of the city. It was the manner in which Pizarro dealt with affairs: never letting anyone know his mind, let alone his intent.
Pizarro’s attitude to the Emperor Manco was severe. He greatly resented the manner in which the emperor had supported Almagro against his brothers in his dispute. He expressed his displeasure soon after his arrival in the city when he called a council of the principal Inca lords and caciques, during which he struck Manco’s half-brother Paullu in the face for daring to question his authority by allowing another of their brothers to criticise the emperor. It was enough to show Manco the limits of his sovereignty.
Towards the end of June 1535, the first of Almagro’s contingent under the command of Juan de Saavedra left the city on the southern Inca road to the Bolivian highlands of the Collasuyo and the conquest of Chile. It had been a route taken shortly after the fall of Cuzco by two of Pizarro’s conquistadores, Diego de Agüero and Pedro Martín, who had been the first Spaniards to behold the vast lake of Titicaca. On 3 July Almagro followed Saavedra with fifty horse and infantry to the lake, where he was met by his advance party, his army by now numbering in all some five hundred and seventy Spaniards, made up mostly of Alvarado’s landless men. The Inca emperor, who had remained at Cuzco, had agreed to supply Almagro with 12,000 warriors and porters under the command of his brother Paullu and the Villaoma.
Taking the southern route from Lake Titicaca, Almagro’s army set out on what would become one of the bloodiest and cruellest conquests of the New World. In a letter to the Emperor Charles V, the Friar Vicente de Valverde records that the Villaoma ‘was treated very badly, for they wished to take him chained at the neck, as they had chained Paullu’.9 Among the expedition’s missionaries was the chronicler Cristóbal de Molina, known as ‘the Chilean’. More than those of any other, his words describe the singular inhumanity of his countrymen in a march that would witness the death of most of the expedition’s Indian auxiliaries in the crossing of the southern snow-bound cordillera.
The Spaniards took with them from the region of Cuzco for the conquest a great number of llamas, clothing and Indians; those who had not wished to accompany them willingly, in chains and tied to ropes, and each night they would be put in harsh imprisonment, and in the day they would work as porters and almost die of hunger … and in each of the villages they took more Indians whom they placed in chains … and also the women who were of fine appearance they took for their service, and if they injured themselves they would make them carry them in hammocks and litters … and in such manner also they imposed their authority on their Indian retainers and on their Negroes, who were great pillagers and robbers, and those of whom were the greater were esteemed … I have written these things I witnessed with my eyes, of those, who because of my sins, I did accompany, so that they who read this will understand of what I speak, and of the cruel manner in which was made this journey and discovery of Chile.10
With the departure of Almagro’s expedition Pizarro’s appointment of his 26-year-old brother Juan as governor of Cuzco was announced to the city’s encomenderos. It was the worst decision he had ever made, demonstrating the psychological dependence he had on his new-found family: a weakness which brought him time and again to the brink of ruin, and which would eventually lead to his death five years later.
When Pizarro returned to his settlement at Lima some two hundred Spaniards were left at Cuzco, among them most of its founding encomenderos. The relations between Juan Pizarro and the emperor had never been good due to the former’s unceasing demands for more gold and silver, which Manco was forced to give him. An even greater abuse occurred when Gonzalo Pizarro seized Manco’s sister-wife Cura Ocllo, and raped her. The emperor had at first tried to deceive Gonzalo by making one of his other sisters impersonate his wife. Manco’s illegitimate son Tito Cusi Yupanqui also claimed that Gonzalo, the most coarse and thuggish of all the brothers, threatened to cut off the Villaoma’s testicles for objecting to his demands. Though the Inca prince also asserted that Hernando Pizarro had taken part in the rape, when in fact he was not even in Cuzco at the time, his testimony regarding Gonzalo probably comes nearest to the truth of what took place.11
My father, seeing that with so much impunity they demanded the Coya, and that it was impossible for him to desist, ordered that one of his Indian women [concubines], the most beautiful to be found, and who had been combed and dressed to impersonate his wife, be brought to the Spaniards. But even though they had never seen the Coya before they refused to believe it was her. And they continued to demand the Coya and would have no other business with my father. And so as to dissuade them he ordered some twenty other women brought to them, some more beautiful than others, but none of them pleased the Spaniards. And with no other recourse my father ordered that one of his principal women [sisters] of his harem be brought out, and who was a companion of his wife, and who looked just like her and dressed like her, and who was called Ynguil, which means flower; and the Spaniards were greatly impressed by her beauty and regal appearance, and with much jubilation and cheering they shouted: ‘Yes, this is the Coya, not the other ones!’ Gonzalo Pizarro, who desired her more than anyone, and who let this be known, said to my father: ‘Lord Manco Inca, if she be for me give her to me now! I can’t hold myself any more!’ And my father who had her well trained said: ‘Do what you will with her.’ And he [Gonzalo] in front of everyone went up to her and kissed her and embraced her as if she were his wife, which made my father laugh greatly. And Ynguil, frightened and terrified by being embraced by a stranger, began to scream like a mad woman, shouting that she did not want to be with such people.12
Within days, however, Manco was forced to surrender his wife to Gonzalo, who installed her as his mistress in Pizarro’s palace of Casana which the brothers used for their lodging. The young emperor finally decided to accept the advice of his lords, most of whom had suffered similar abuse of their women and daughters, and flee the city. Whether Manco had thought of rebelling against the Spaniards before his wife’s abduction is uncertain, but once it had taken place even he realised that such an affront in the eyes of his people could never be tolerated if he wished to retain their allegiance. Though the Villaoma may or may not have been in Cuzco at the time of Cura Ocllo’s rape as Tito Cusi Yupanqui alleges, there are a sufficient number of witnesses who state that he soon after returned to the Inca capital having made his escape in the Bolivian hinterland from Almagro’s army before they crossed the Andes to Chile. It was at this juncture in the Collasuyo and Cuntisuyo that the High Priest initiated the first plans for an uprising, to be carried out with or without Manco’s support.
Juan and Gonzalo Pizarro maltreated him and those lords of his who were in his company, placing him in irons and imprisoning him; where his guards urinated and spat in his face, stealing his clothes and belongings, and calling him a dog, and threatening to burn him alive if he did not reveal to them where he hid his gold … and his treatment was so cruel that many times he cried out that if they did not strangle him he would strangle himself.13
In a letter to the Emperor Charles V the Biscayan Pedro de Oñate and Juan Gómez de Malaver, who some four years later met Manco in the valley of Ollantaytambo, recorded:
The Inca received us well and listened to our words and made the following reply: ‘How is it that the great Apu [lord] of Castile ordered that I and my women be imprisoned with iron rings to our necks, and that I be urinated and excreted in my face? And that Gonzalo Pizarro, brother of the principal lord, would take my wife, whom he still holds with him? And that Diego Maldonado would torture me so as to demand from me gold, telling me he was also a great lord?’ He also protested that Pedro del Barco and Gómez de Mazuelas, who are encomenderos of this city, and Alonso de Toro and Pantiel de Salinas, Alonso de Mesa, Pedro Pizarro and Solares, also encomenderos of this city, urinated on him when he was being held captive, and that with a lighted candle they burnt his eyebrows.14
Most of the encomenderos who acted as his guards took part in the emperor’s torture, including Pizarro’s kinsman Pedro Pizarro, who in his chronicle perhaps unsurprisingly makes no mention of his involvement. Some of them were also responsible for the rape of Manco’s sisters whom they took for their concubines, and who would be the mothers of their mestizo children, which explains why some of the younger and least senior of the conquistadores, who were neither captains nor officials of the city, were related to the Inca royal family. Fernández de Oviedo wrote that Hernando Pizarro, his two brothers Juan and Gonzalo and their intimate companions ‘left no one single woman or sister of his [Manco’s] unviolated’.15
One of the princesses, who would later be known as Doña Lucía Clara, was the mother of Diego Maldonado’s sons, whom Maldonado pretended in his testimonial to the Crown that he had been awarded by Pizarro at Cajamarca.16 Another was the Princess Isabel Yupanqui, the concubine of Lucas Martínez Vegazo.17
For weeks on end Manco suffered the abuse of his captors, chained in the main square of the city, a sight that outraged his people and led to the killing of two encomenderos in their lands. The immediate retribution of the Spaniards was recorded by Diego Camacho, whose brother had been one of the victims: ‘Because of the killings by the Indians in the province of Cuntisuyo of an encomendero by the name of Pedro Martín [the same Pedro Martín who first sighted Lake Titicaca] and another encomendero called Simón Suárez, I saw the captain Juan Pizarro and Gonzalo Pizarro, and Mansio Serra de Leguizamón among them, leave the city with other soldiers to exert reprisal of the province; and being as I was in the city of Cuzco I heard it said the reprisal had been carried out at the capture of the mountain fortress of Aconcagua, where more than eight thousand Indian warriors had taken refuge, and that a great deal of fighting took place.’18
Pedro de Cieza de León wrote that four conquistadores, Juan Flores, Francisco de Villafuerte, Pedro del Barco and Mansio Serra de Leguizamón volunteered to gain entry to the fortress by shaving their beards and disguising themselves as Indians, and that they made their ascent of the mountain crag at two in the morning, accompanied by an Inca lord:
The Spaniards were fearful, believing they had been betrayed, and cursed the orejón [Inca lord] who appeared to have closed the gate behind him, but throwing back his robe he took out his battleaxe and shouted: ‘Viracochas [Spaniards] come quickly!’ which they did, though some Indians had injured the orejón: many now came shouting they had been betrayed and wounding the orejón, whom they killed and who begged the Spaniards to avenge his death. The four men with their swords in hand fought alone against the entire encampment of Indians, their lives being saved solely by the darkness of the night. Juan Pizarro with the rest of his men then came to their aid, and as dawn was breaking the Indians could see their great number that had gained entry into their fortress, nor could their enemies lightly ignore the clamour of shouting of their men, women and children, and those who could see the steel of their swords many decided to take their own lives, throwing themselves over the cliffs on to the crags and rocks below, where the blood of their brains coloured the snow … without restraint the Spaniards wounded and killed, cutting arms and legs, letting none survive: the yanaconas did the same, and the greater their clamour the greater the killing … and those who were not killed, with their women and children, whose eyes they shielded, threw themselves over the cliffs to their deaths.19
When Juan Pizarro and his squadron returned to Cuzco he found the city under the control of his elder brother Hernando, whom Pizarro had appointed governor. After an absence of three years he had returned to Peru laden with honours from the court at Toledo where he had been made a Knight of Santiago for his services. He had brought back with him four white women slaves for his brother the governor, and had also obtained permission to import 100 African slaves on his behalf – proving that Pizarro’s slaving days were still not completely over.20 Aware of the ill-feeling Manco’s imprisonment and the killings at Aconcagua had created among the natives of the city, he ordered the emperor’s partial release.
The emperor’s maltreatment, however, continued unabated, as the Indian witness Alonso Puscon stated: ‘Hernando Pizarro and Gonzalo Pizarro treated him very badly, slapping him and hitting him, and Hernando Pizarro once more chained him in a cell, demanding that he order the collection of gold and silver from his people, and that it be taken to the palace of Casana, and Manco gave a great deal of gold and silver.’21 As a reward for his compliance Hernando Pizarro granted Manco permission to leave Cuzco to officiate at a ceremony in the neighbouring valley of the Yucay, accompanied by the Villaoma. It was a gesture influenced in part by Manco’s promise to bring him a further quantity of gold and a life-size gold statue of his father Huayna Cápac which was hidden in the valley.
The emperor’s departure from the city signalled the beginning of the Inca rebellion. In a clearly well-orchestrated manoeuvre, the Incas laid siege to the city, a siege which would not be lifted for almost fourteen months. The suddenness and organisation of the siege indicate that it had been planned for some time, bringing together as it did from the various regions of the empire warriors and provisions; both Spanish and Inca witnesses set the number of warriors at a staggering 200,000, though possibly the true figure was nearer 100,000. The rebellion, however, was betrayed to the Spaniards.22
Hernando Pizarro sent Juan Pizarro his brother with seventy horsemen to the Yucay valley to attack the gathering of Indians there, and once we reached the valley, we found some ten thousand warriors who believed we would be unable to reach them because of its river; but Juan Pizarro waded into the river with his horse, and we all followed, our horses swimming across, and we attacked and defeated the warriors, who then retreated to a neighbouring hill. And being there three or four days, we received word from Hernando Pizarro to return to the city which was being besieged … and when we reached the city we saw that all its surrounding hills were filled with Indians, and which half a league away resembled some gigantic black cloth, and which at night, because of the fires they lit, looked as if the hills were filled with stars; and such were their cries and shouting we looked on in amazement. There were assembled there, as even the Indians themselves recall, some 200,000 warriors the Inca had gathered for his siege. Then
one morning they descended on the city, setting Cuzco alight, and with these fires they gained control of much of its streets, building barricades so that we Spaniards could not make our escape.23
Serra de Leguizamón recorded that it was not until the eve of Easter Sunday that word finally reached the city of the mass uprising:
and those who remained in its defence, I among them, barricaded ourselves in one of its fortresses which in the Indian language is called Hatuncancha; and Manco Inca sent a great number of Indians against the City of the Kings [Lima] where the Marqués Pizarro was at the time, and against other settlements of Spaniards … from as far as Chile to Popayán and Pastu, a distance of some seven hundred leagues … and there were many in this city who attempted to flee to the ports of Lima and Arequipa to escape by sea, but who were detained by Hernando Pizarro and Juan Pizarro and Gonzalo Pizarro, the Marqués Pizarro’s brothers, who defended this city, and who I accompanied in that defence … and it was known that the marqués had sent word from these realms to Guatemala and to Tierra Firme, asking them for their help.24
In the first few days of the siege the garrison, numbering no more than two hundred Spaniards and several hundred Indian auxiliaries, together with all the women and children, retreated to the two fortress palaces of Suntur Huasi and Hatuncancha to the north-east of the main square, where they barricaded themselves in and from where, day and night, they led sorties of cavalry and infantry against the onslaught of warriors. In the initial days of the fighting, thirty Spaniards were wounded or killed. Within a week Manco’s squadrons of Quéchua and subject tribes, which had marched undetected to Cuzco from all the regions of the empire, had taken control of most of the city. In the fortress of Hatuncancha, amid the cries of the wounded and the stench of unburied corpses, three friars heard the confessions of the men as they prepared for their deaths. In the stockades of the fortress the Spaniards had stabled those that had survived of their horses and mules, some eighty animals. Pedro del Barco, who commanded the infantry, recalls that he raised two large tents on either side of the square, where he billeted his men for some time, but that they were soon overrun by the Indians, forcing him and his soldiers to fight ‘hand to hand with their swords and daggers’.25
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