If upon hearing this information the natives refused to obey, then all necessary violence could and would be used against them to either force the natives to submit to the dictates of God, or else to eliminate them from the face of his earth. The fact that the document was often read in Spanish to native peoples who were unable to understand a word of that language didn’t matter. The essential point was that the natives had been read their rights, so to speak, and thus any violence that ensued had been legally sanctioned, ultimately, by God himself. In essence this was a ritual, a ritual symbolizing a preapproved and highly flexible authorization, one that could be adapted to a wide variety of situations. And now one of those situations was presently unfolding nine thousand feet up in the Andes, amid the tightly packed main square of the Inca city of Cajamarca.
Atahualpa watched as the robed foreigner and his interpreter picked their way through the Inca warriors and approached his litter. Standing before the Inca lord, who ruled with as much divine right as any European king, Friar Valverde began by inviting the emperor to dismount from his litter and enter one of the buildings. There he could meet with Governor Pizarro and could speak and dine with him. The friar knew, of course, that if Atahualpa did so that it would be easier for the Spaniards to capture him. Atahualpa, refused, however, stating “I will not leave this place until you return all that you have taken from my land. I know very well who you are, and what you have been doing.”
Obviously, the time had come for the Requerimiento. In a loud voice, Friar Valverde began to paraphrase it, with the young interpreter Felipillo translating the often puzzling and no doubt largely unintelligible ideas as best he could:
[In the name of the] high and mighty kings of Castile and Leon, conquerors of barbarian peoples, and being their messenger, I hereby notify and inform you … that God, Our Lord, One and Eternal, created Heaven and Earth and a man and a woman from whom you and I and all the people of the world are descended…. Because of the great multitude begotten from these over the past five thousand and some years since the world was made … God placed one called Saint Peter in charge over all these peoples.
Valverde paused as Felipillo translated, the feathers on Atahualpa’s litter, plucked from brilliantly colored macaws in the jungle regions of the empire, fluttering in the breeze.
And so I request and require you … to recognize the Church as your Mistress and as Governess of the World and Universe, and the High Priest, called the Pope, in Her name, and His Majesty in Her Place, as Ruler and Lord King … And if you do not do this …
Valverde continued, his voice rising and the Spaniards in their hidden positions straining to hear,
with the help of God we shall come mightily against you, and we shall make war on you everywhere and in every way that we can, and we shall subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church and His Majesty, and we shall seize your women and children, and we shall make them slaves, to sell and dispose of as His Majesty commands. And we shall do all the evil and damage to you that we are able. And I must insist that the deaths and destruction that result from this will be [all] your fault!
After the interpreter finished delivering the speech, silence once again gripped the square. For a moment, time seemed to freeze as two empires stood watching each other. At stake for Atahualpa and the Inca elite were their own vast fertile lands, their ten million tax-paying peasants with their inexhaustible labor and crops, their own elite positions, and an empire that had taken three generations and countless military campaigns to create. At stake for the Spanish monarchy was a ragtag group of 168 expendable conquistadors, a handful of merchants, a few black slaves, a couple of morisca women, and, much more importantly, the opportunity for the Spanish monarchs to seize an empire with twice the population and size of the Iberian peninsula itself. Whether any of the individual protagonists in the present tableau understood the basic historical processes involved at this particular moment is doubtful. The Spaniards, wearing armor and chain mail and preparing themselves for attack, were certainly aware that their own lives and fortunes lay in the balance, however, and, if in the moments to come any of them were surrounded and overwhelmed by the native hordes, that their personal destinies would certainly come to a violent and sudden end.
Yet the Spaniards also knew that if somehow they were able to escape from their present situation and were miraculously able to conquer this empire, that both their own fortunes and the king’s dominions would be vastly expanded. The friar, too, on a religious level, realized that success here meant the expansion on earth of the Christian Church and hence an expansion of God’s dominion. The reverse would be a victory for the forces of Lucifer and for the pagan barbarians of the world. It was precisely the nonbelievers’ refusal to accept the word of God, Friar Valverde believed, that was delaying the reappearance of Christ on earth. A bold success here meant that the Kingdom of God would surely arrive that much sooner.
Among the Incas, only Atahualpa’s top military leaders apparently knew of his plan—to capture and kill the Spaniards, to make eunuchs out of the survivors, and to breed these powerful and majestic animals that the Spaniards called caballos. Atahualpa could hardly have thought that this small group of foreigners—who presently appeared to be cowering from fear inside a few buildings—were any threat. Their successful capture would simply mean the elimination of the final small impediment preventing his march on Cuzco and the reunification of the Inca Empire. As soon as the Spaniards were disposed of, Atahualpa’s coronation in Cuzco awaited him. An Inca emperor wielding control over a reunited empire would then once again rule the entire civilized world.
After listening to the inevitably mangled translation of the friar’s speech, Atahualpa must have appeared puzzled, for Valverde next held up his breviary, or prayer book, and insisted that everything he had stated was contained within. Indeed, the Christian God’s own voice was contained in this very book, the friar insisted. One can only wonder just what words the native interpreter used to convey the idea of objects for which the Incas had no known equivalents. Felipillo may have used the word quipu—the Inca word for their knotted string device on which they stored records—for book, as the Incas had neither books nor writing. Clearly intrigued, Atahualpa asked to see the strange object. He no doubt had already heard of the Spaniards’ mysterious quipus, and that somehow the quipus themselves had the power of speech, but Atahualpa had yet to see or examine one.*
The friar dutifully held the breviary up toward Atahualpa’s golden litter and the emperor took it. As Valverde watched Atahualpa fumble with the book, turning it over and upside down, however, he realized that Atahualpa didn’t know how to open it. Valverde therefore stepped forward, reaching out his hand toward the book in order to show the emperor how it was done. Recounted Xerez:
With great scorn, [Atahualpa] struck [the friar] on the arm, not wishing that it should be opened. Then stubbornly he opened it himself and, without any astonishment at the letters nor at the paper, as [had been displayed by] other Indians, he threw it five or six paces away from him. And to the words that [the friar] had spoken to him through the interpreter he answered with much arrogance saying. “I know well how you have behaved on the road, how you have treated the chiefs, and have taken the [royal] cloth from the storehouses…. I will not leave this place until they return it all to me.”
According to some eyewitnesses, Atahualpa now stood up on his litter and began shouting to his troops to prepare themselves for battle. As the interpreter Felipillo scrambled to retrieve the breviary from the ground, Friar Valverde rushed back to Pizarro’s quarters, very agitated, and began shouting, “Come out! Come out, Christians! Come at these enemy dogs who reject the things of God!” Clutching his crucifix in one hand he shouted, “That chief has thrown the book of holy law to the ground!” Another eyewitness heard the apoplectic friar, the instrument of God’s will, shout to Pizarro, “Didn’t you see what happened? Why remain polite and servile toward this arrogant dog when the plains are full of I
ndians? Go and attack him, for I absolve you!”
With Atahualpa standing on his litter and the priest shouting for the Spaniards to attack, a decision had to be made. Pizarro hesitated for only a moment and then signaled to Pedro de Candia, waiting in the building on the far side of the square, who now ordered that the wicks of the assembled cannons be lit. With loud roars the cannons soon fired directly into the mass of warriors, spewing out smoke and metal shrapnel; simultaneously the nine harquebusiers also fired their guns, having carefully aimed them on tripods. The sudden explosions no doubt stunned the native warriors, as did the sight of bodies suddenly falling down among them and spurting blood. With plumes of smoke rising from one of the buildings they now heard coming from all directions the stark sounds of trumpets and multiple choruses of men shouting “Santiago!” as the Spaniards kicked their feet into their horses’ sides and charged and ran out from their hiding places.* From every direction Atahualpa’s warriors saw the metal-covered foreigners suddenly rushing toward them, together with groups of seemingly ferocious, thousand-pound animals in padded armor, their hooves pounding the ground and each topped by a lance- or sword-wielding Spaniard, screaming hoarsely and with a crazed look in his eyes.
The Spaniards quickly began slashing, stabbing, impaling, hacking, and even beheading as many natives as they could, using their razor-sharp swords, knives, and lances. The native warriors, having confidently marched onto the square only moments earlier and thinking that they had trapped the cowering foreigners in a few buildings, now suddenly realized that they were in a trap, not the Spaniards. Attacking from all sides and suddenly crushing the warriors together, the Spaniards’ surprise attack threw the natives into an immediate panic. The giant horses with mounted Spaniards had the same effect on Inca troops, in fact, that Hannibal’s men on elephants must have had on Roman legions more than 1,500 years earlier. Terrified masses of warriors began surging toward the square’s narrow exits, trampling those who got in the way and seized by an overpowering desire to save their lives. The Spaniards, meanwhile, mercilessly and methodically continued to cut off arms, hands, and heads, using their steel weapons like so many meat cleavers. “They were so filled with fear that they climbed on top of one another,” wrote one eyewitness, “to such an extent that they formed mounds and suffocated one another.” “The horsemen rode out on top of them, wounding and killing and pressing home the attack,” wrote another.
Pizarro, meanwhile, with his twenty foot soldiers carrying swords and shields, had immediately begun slicing his way through the crowd in the direction of Atahualpa, who remained on his litter, attempting to rally his panic-stricken troops. Xerez recounted:
The Governor [Pizarro] armed himself with a thick cotton coat of armor, took his sword and dagger and entered into the midst of the Indians with the Spaniards who were with him. With great bravery and with only four who could follow him, he reached Atahualpa’s litter and fearlessly grabbed [the emperor’s] left arm, shouting “Santiago.” … But he could not pull him out of his litter, which was [still] held high…. All those who were carrying Atahualpa’s litter appeared to be important men and they all died, as did those who were traveling in the litters and hammocks.
Another eyewitness recounted: “Many Indians had their hands cut off [yet] continued to support their ruler’s litter with their shoulders. But their efforts were of little benefit for they were all killed.” As Pedro Pizarro described:
Although [the Spaniards] killed the Indians who were carrying [the litter], other replacements immediately went to support it. They continued in this way for a long time, struggling with and killing the Indians until, becoming exhausted, one Spaniard tried to stab [Atahualpa] with his knife to kill him. But Francisco Pizarro parried the blow and in doing so the Spaniard trying to kill Atahualpa wounded the Governor on the hand.
Finally, as the desperate struggle to seize the emperor continued, seven or eight Spanish horsemen now turned and spurred their horses, slashing their way through the crowd toward Atahualpa’s litter. Pushing against the bloodied nobles trying to steady it, the Spaniards then heaved up on one side, turning the litter over. Other Spaniards now pulled the emperor from his seat. Wielding his sword in one hand and fastening upon Atahualpa with the other, Pizarro and a group of Spaniards now rushed Atahualpa back to Pizarro’s lodgings, thus imprisoning the Inca emperor.
Pandemonium coupled with slaughter, meanwhile, continued to reign on the square outside. As the hordes of trapped warriors continued to try to flee toward the overcrowded exits, those furthest from them, in complete desperation, now began to surge against the far wall, which was roughly six feet high and some six feet thick. Thousands lunged against it until finally a fifteen-foot section gave way. As the terrified natives scrambled over and through it, the Spaniards on horseback—like sixty deranged and screaming Horsemen of the Apocalypse—raced after them, spearing, lancing, cutting, and stabbing. Those eyewitnesses who recorded the event remembered the horsemen chasing the warriors out onto the plain, at first singling out the litters of the Inca nobles who were still being borne away by loyal retainers. “All of them were shouting, ‘After those in the uniforms! Don’t let any escape! Spear them!’”
And so the slaughter continued, the Spaniards chasing after the fleeing natives, inflicting as much carnage as possible, and in the light and long shadows that photographers call the golden hour countless warriors now lay on the ground, many without limbs or with deep gashes and with pools of dark, maroon-colored blood growing quietly beneath them. Elsewhere hundreds lay trampled to death on the square, some crawling, others moaning, many dying and dead, and those who were gradually losing consciousness on this, their last day on earth, trying to understand the nightmare that had so quickly befallen them. Wrote the notary Xerez:
[One of the men killed] in one of the litters was his [Atahualpa’s] page and lord [the lord of Chincha], whom he regarded very highly. And the others were also lords over many people and were his advisors. The lord of Cajamarca also died. Other commanders died, but there were so many of them that they go unrecorded. For all those who came in Atahualpa’s bodyguard were great lords…. It was a marvelous thing to see so great a ruler captured in so short a time, when he had come with such might.
Finally, as the sun sank behind the hills, the Spaniards could still be seen riding and lancing the last fleeing natives in the distance, looking for all the world like the small figures in Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s painting The Triumph of Death. Eventually, however, a trumpet sounded and the Spaniards gradually began making their way back to the main square. Although the Spaniards had feared that Atahualpa’s warriors had arrived bearing hidden weapons, not once that afternoon did a native warrior ever raise a weapon against a Spaniard. If the warriors had carried concealed weapons, then they had simply suffered too much shock to use them.
Miraculously, in the space of just a few hours, the Spaniards had killed or wounded perhaps six or seven thousand natives,* while they themselves hadn’t lost a single man. Taking advantage of surprise, their artillery, and of their meat-cutting weapons, the Spaniards’ Battle of Cajamarca had resulted in a complete rout and slaughter. As darkness deepened around the city, the native emperor descended from the sun god—who had wielded total military, religious, and political control over an empire of ten million—suddenly found himself captive. In less than two hours, the Inca Empire had been beheaded, as neatly as one would sever the head of a llama or guinea pig. And now the emperor, no longer borne on a golden litter, his tunic stained with his nobles’ blood, turned to face his exultant captors, one of whom was a tall, helmeted man, still wearing his bloodied and padded armor, and whom the others deferentially referred to as El Gobernador.
5 A Roomful Of Gold
“‘When I had a chief, the lord of an island, my prisoner, I set him free so that from then on he might be loyal. And I did the same with the chiefs who were lords of Tumbez and Chulimasa and others who, being in my power and deserving death, I pardoned.’
”
FRANCISCO PIZARRO TO ATAHUALPA
“The promise given was a necessity of the past; the word broken is a necessity of the present.”
NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI, THE PRINCE, 1511
AS THE TRUMPET SOUNDED, CALLING FOR THE SPANIARDS TO return to the square and the last Inca warriors were being skewered on the ends of lance points, Pizarro was already busy attending to his prisoner, Atahualpa, who after his capture had been taken to the temple of the sun at the edge of town and placed under a strong guard. Because the emperor’s clothes had been ripped during his capture, Pizarro ordered that new ones be brought and waited while the emperor changed into them. He then ordered that a meal be prepared and had Atahualpa sit down beside him as they were served.
Atahualpa had never met Pizarro before that afternoon, and had only first laid eyes on him from the height of his litter, as the veteran conquistador had fought and slashed his way toward the emperor and then had reached out and seized him. That fateful, jerking grasp was both their mutual introduction and symbolic of their future relationship. For here, in Pizarro’s desperate, clenched grip, the illiterate bastard from the lower classes of Spain had pulled the cream of Inca nobility abruptly from his throne.
A native inspector in charge of one of Tawantinsuyu’s numerous hanging bridges.
On a more figurative level, Pizarro and his rugged band had climbed up the sheer sides of the Inca Empire’s giant social pyramid, had reached the top, and now stood at its zenith, holding a proverbial knife to the throat of the emperor and daring anyone to throw them off. It was through Atahualpa that Pizarro hoped to manipulate the apparatus of the Inca state, believing that by remote control he could paralyze the movements of Inca armies, prevent counterattacks, and ultimately take command of the empire.
The Last Days of the Incas Page 10
