Gonzalo Pizarro, completely obsessed with having no other woman than the queen of the Incas, by this time could scarcely restrain himself. In Titu Cusi’s recounting:
“Mr. Manco Inca, if she is for me, give her to me right away because I can’t stand it any longer.” And my father, who had instructed her well, said “Many congratulations—do whatever you wish with her.” So in front of everyone, and oblivious to all else, [Gonzalo] went and kissed and embraced her as if she were his legitimate wife…. Inguill, horrified and frightened at being embraced by someone she didn’t know, screamed like a mad woman and said that she would rather run away than face people such as these…. And when my father saw her behaving so wildly and so strongly refusing to go with the Spaniards, he realized that his own freedom depended upon her complying. Completely furious, he ordered her to go with them and, seeing my father so angry, she did what he commanded her to do and went with them, more out of fear than for any other reason.
In the end, however, the deception didn’t last. Gonzalo eventually realized that he had been deceived, then discarded the sister and seized Manco’s wife as his own. “Gonzalo Pizarro … took my wife,” Manco later said bitterly, “and [still] has her.”
If Manco still had any doubts about the price he had to pay in order to become the emperor of the Incas, those doubts were soon accentuated when the high priest, Villac Umu, unexpectedly arrived back in Cuzco. Manco had sent Villac Umu to accompany his brother Paullu on Almagro’s expedition to the south. Yet three months into that expedition Villac Umu had escaped; he now regaled Manco with horror stories of all that he had witnessed. Everywhere they had gone, Villac Umu recounted, the Spaniards had been consumed with finding objects of gold and silver. If the local chiefs didn’t immediately produce what they demanded, then the Spaniards treated them with brutality. Even if gold and silver were produced, the Spaniards nevertheless demanded that the native villagers accompany the expedition as servants. “Those [natives] who did not want to go voluntarily with them [the Spaniards] were taken along bound in ropes and chains,” wrote Cristóbal de Molina, a young priest who had accompanied the expedition.
They carried off their wives and children, and the women who were attractive they took for their personal service, and for other things besides…. And when the mares of some Spaniards produced foals, they had the Indians carry these on hammocks and litters. And other Spaniards had themselves carried in litters as a pastime, leading the horses by their bridles so that they [the horses] would become very fat.
Even the native porters Manco had provided Almagro with, the high priest explained, were routinely treated in a violent fashion.
[They] worked all day long without rest and without eating, except for a little roasted corn and water, and were barbarously imprisoned at night. There was one Spaniard on this expedition who locked twelve Indians in a chain and boasted that all twelve died in it, and that when one Indian died they cut off his head in order to terrify the others so that they didn’t have to undo the padlock on the chain. If some poor Indian got sick or tired, then they routinely beat him until he died from it, because they said that if they were lenient with one, then the rest would become sick or tired.
Disgusted by what he had seen, Villac Umu had escaped from the expedition in what is now southern Bolivia, and then had hurried back to Cuzco. Not long afterward, all the remaining servants and porters Manco had sent along with Almagro abandoned the expedition as well, leaving the Spaniards to fend for themselves. Nevertheless, Almagro and his men would continue on into what is now Chile, pillaging native towns and killing any who resisted their demands. The Spaniards soon began suffering numerous deaths of their own, however, due to the freezing mountain passes they had to cross and also due to frequent attacks by increasingly hostile natives.
Coinciding with Villac Umu’s graphic descriptions and with Manco’s own recent humiliations, various reports began gradually filtering in from other areas of Tawantinsuyu of gross mistreatment by the Spaniards. Natives who had attractive sisters, daughters, or wives, it was said, now had to begin hiding them from the bearded foreigners, “for no woman who was good-looking was safe [even] with her husband [around and] it would be a miracle if she escaped from the Spaniards.” Everywhere the Spaniards went, the anger of the natives “was smoldering and this was because the Spaniards were not satisfied with the service of the natives but tried to rob them in every town. In many areas the Indians would not put up with this and began to rise up and to organize themselves for their defense. The Spaniards certainly went too far in their abuse of them.”
Not long after his arrival, Villac Umu and other high-ranking Incas began to organize secret meetings—making sure that they were not noticed by the Spaniards or by the Spaniards’ native spies. Privately and together they began urging Manco to put an end to such abuses and to revolt. The bearded foreigners were not liberators, they argued, but occupiers. The Spaniards in Cuzco, in fact, had merely replaced the occupation of Atahualpa’s army with an occupation of their own—and both occupations were intolerable. “We cannot spend our entire lives in such great misery and subjection [while being] treated even worse than the Spaniards’ black slaves,” they told Manco. “Let us rebel once and for all and die for our liberty, and for our children and wives, who every day they take from us and abuse.”
By November 1535, a little over a year after the Spaniards had occupied Cuzco, Manco had reached a turning point. In the beginning, Manco had hoped to rule independently alongside the bearded viracochas and, being few in number, that they could easily be satisfied by giving them whatever they wanted. The problem was that the Spaniards’ needs had no limits—up to and including Manco’s own coya, or queen. With each passing day, in fact, it was more and more obvious who was really in control, not just of Cuzco but also of the rest of Tawantinsuyu. In the south, Almagro and his men were currently ravaging and pillaging the countryside, while on the coast, Manco was undoubtedly told, Francisco Pizarro was busy drawing lines on the sand where he expected new cities teeming with Spaniards to arise from the earth. In the far north, Pizarro’s captain, Sebastián de Benalcázar, had conquered and was ravaging the area that Manco’s brother Atahualpa had once controlled. Even in Cuzco, at the very heart of the empire, the encomenderos were clamoring each day for more and more produce to be delivered to them by way of tribute—yet they gave nothing to the natives in return.
The more Manco thought about it, the more he undoubtedly realized that he had been incredibly naive. All the words of Pizarro, Almagro, and Soto about restoring the Incas’ liberty and about their brotherhood and friendship had obviously been lies. The viracochas had not come to restore Manco and Huascar’s faction back to the throne—they had instead come to rule Tawantinsuyu. They had simply duped Manco into helping them do so.
Experiencing an epiphany that was no doubt magnified by the unforget-table image of Gonzalo Pizarro dragging away his tearful wife, Manco’s situation had finally become as clear as the chilly waters that ran through the stone channels in the city, as clear as the view from the heights of the glistening, snow-covered mountains. At some point Manco must have also realized that if he chose to fight the Spaniards, he would essentially be resuming the war recently fought by Atahualpa’s generals, Quisquis and Rumiñavi—at least one of whom he himself had helped to destroy. It was a grand awakening for the young emperor, and no doubt an unpleasant one. Along with his newfound perception, however, came a gradual decision that never again would he take the Spaniards at their word. The Christians’ words were clearly designed only to distract and to deceive.
In early November of 1535, Manco Inca took his first concrete step in the direction of rebellion, calling for a secret meeting of his chiefs and governors from the four quarters of the empire—the Cuntisuyo, Antisuyu, Collasuyu, and Chinchasuyu. With his generals and the high priest, Villac Umu, in attendance, twenty-year-old Manco delivered a speech to what was essentially the cream of the Inca elite. It was a major turning poin
t in the young emperor’s career.
“I have sent for you in order to tell you in the presence of our relatives and attendants how I feel about what these foreigners intend to do with us,” Manco said, no doubt wearing large golden ear spools, a soft vicuña tunic, and with the royal fringe hanging across his forehead,
so that before more [Spaniards] join them we can arrange things in time so that in general everyone will benefit. Remember that the Incas, my fathers, who rest in the sky with the Sun, ruled from Quito to Chile, did so many things for those they received as vassals that it seemed they were children who had emerged from their own entrails. They neither robbed nor killed [anyone] except when it served justice, and they kept order and reason in the provinces that you [well] know. The rich did not succumb to pride and the poor were not destitute; [instead] they enjoyed tranquility and perpetual peace.
Our sins made us unworthy of such lords and were the reason that these bearded ones entered our land, their own being so far away from here. They preach one thing and do another and [despite] all of the admonitions they give us, they do the opposite. They have no fear of [the Sun] God nor shame and, treating us like dogs, they can call us by no other names. Their greed has been so great that there is no temple or palace left that they have not pillaged. Furthermore, even if all the snow [on the mountains] were transformed into gold and silver, it would [still] not satisfy them.
Armed native guards peered from the doorways as Manco continued, the Inca leaders occasionally looking at one another, then back at the young emperor. None had presumably ever heard Manco speak with such intensity and clarity of purpose before. Manco continued:
They keep the daughters of my father and other ladies, your sisters and relatives, as mistresses, desiring them bestially like this. They want to distribute, as they have [already] begun, all of the provinces, giving one to each of them so that as lords they can ravage them. They intend to keep us so subjugated and enslaved that we will have nothing to do other than to find them metals and to provide them with our women and livestock. Furthermore, they have taken for themselves the yanaconas and many mitmaqkuna. These [native] traitors didn’t used to wear fine clothing nor an opulent llautu.* Since they joined these foreigners, they act like Inca [lords]; it won’t be long before they’ll take my [royal] fringe. They do not honor me when they see me, and they speak boldly because they learn from the thieves they associate with.
The yanaconas of which Manco spoke were a separate class of natives who were lifelong servants of the Inca elite. Yanaconas tilled no land and in a sense were a rootless class, a kind of Inca proletariat; many were quick to attach themselves to the Spaniards, working for them as servants, auxiliary fighters, and spies. The mitmaes (or mitmaqkuna) that Manco was so bitter about were rebellious natives that the Incas had removed from their own provinces and had resettled in areas where they were surrounded by peasants loyal to the emperor. Not surprisingly, they, too, were quick to become collaborators of the Spaniards. Manco went on:
[What] justice and reason did they have to do these things and what [more] will these Christians do? Look, I ask you! Where did we meet them, what is it that we owe them or which one of them did we injure [in order] that with these horses and weapons of iron they have made such cruel war on us? They killed Atahualpa without cause. They did the same with his Captain General, Chalcuchima; they also killed Rumiñavi and Zope-Zopahua by burning them [to death] in Quito—so that their souls would burn with their bodies and couldn’t go to enjoy [our Inca] heaven. It seems to me that it would be neither just nor honest that we put up with this. Rather, we should strive with the utmost determination to either die to the last man or [else] to kill our cruel enemies.
Instead of collaborators, they would become resistance leaders, Manco said. No longer would they obey the bearded foreigners from across the seas. Either they retook control of the realm their ancestors had built—or else they would all die fighting.
That same evening, no doubt realizing that the Spaniards were bound to find out about the meeting, Manco slipped quietly out of the city. In the penetrating cold of the Andean night, Manco took with him some of his wives, personal servants, nobles, and chiefs. He was determined now to rebel, to wage war against the Spaniards, no matter what the cost. Behind him lay the soft yet increasingly unrewarding life of a puppet emperor; before him lay the far riskier life of an independent Inca lord, fighting to rid his empire of a brutal band of invaders. As Manco hurried out of the city, under the cover of night, he no doubt had already decided that the next time he entered Cuzco it would only be at the head of a conquering army, an army with which he was determined to exterminate the Spaniards.
“Manco Inca … sent messengers to every province, from Quito to Chile,” wrote the Spanish chronicler Martín de Murúa, “commanding the Indians that on a certain day, within four months’ time, everyone would rise up together against the Spaniards and that they would kill them all, pardoning no one, including the black [slaves] and the many Nicaraguan Indian [slaves] who had come to these parts in the company of the Spaniards … because in that way they would be able to achieve liberty from the oppression they were under.”
Despite Manco’s precautions, however, spies had been in attendance at the clandestine meeting and afterward had reported to Juan Pizarro the emperor’s rebellious speech. The young lieutenant governor rushed off to search Manco’s house and, not finding him, raised the general alarm. Soon, he and his brother Gonzalo and a group of Spanish horsemen saddled up and raced off into a night that was “wretched, dark, and fearful.”
On the stone-flagged road that headed south toward the Collao—the region south of Cuzco and north of the vast, jewel-like expanse of Lake Titicaca—already miles outside the city, the Spaniards began to overtake some of Manco’s entourage—dark figures standing motionless alongside the road and lit from overhead by the glittering mayu, or Milky Way. Although the Spaniards demanded that they tell them where their emperor was, the Inca nobles lied, indicating that Manco had gone in a certain direction when in reality he had gone in another. Racing ahead yet finding no sign of the emperor, Gonzalo soon captured another Inca noble and demanded that he divulge Manco’s whereabouts. When the noble refused, Gonzalo “dismounted from his horse, and with help from the others they tied a rope to his genitals to torture him, which they indeed did so that the poor orejón screamed loudly, declaring that the Inca [emperor] was not traveling on that highway.” The Spaniards quickly corrected their mistake and galloped off in the opposite direction.
Manco had until now been traveling on a royal litter, carried by native porters, but when he and his attendants eventually heard the unmistakable sound of horse hooves galloping in the distance, the young emperor realized that he had been betrayed.
[Manco] feared the enemy and cursed a great deal those who had informed them that he had escaped…. With great fear he got out of it [the litter] and hid among some small rushes. The Spaniards [arrived and] loudly called out to him. [Soon] one of the horsemen approached the place where he was hiding and, believing that he had been discovered, he came out, saying that it was he and that they should not kill him. He told a great lie, which was that [Diego de] Almagro [had] sent him a messenger in order that he should follow him [to Chile].
The two Pizarro brothers, relieved to have found the emperor before he could organize an insurrection, didn’t believe Manco’s story for a minute. They quickly escorted him back to Cuzco and locked him in a room—just as they had imprisoned Atahualpa three years earlier. The same man who had stolen Manco’s wife and who openly slept with her now supervised the removal of Manco’s final outward vestiges of power. “Gonzalo Pizarro ordered [his men] to bring irons and a chain,” recalled Titu Cusi, “with which they shackled my father as they pleased … and then all at once they threw a chain around his neck and irons on his feet.”
With Manco now their prisoner, the Spanish inhabitants of Cuzco no longer made a pretense of showing the emperor any respect. Juan and
Gonzalo Pizarro, in fact, were especially brutal, threatening Manco with even worse consequences if he didn’t immediately reveal the location of more gold and silver. Manco was later quoted:
I gave Juan Pizarro 1,300 gold bricks and 2,000 golden objects, bracelets, cups, and other smaller pieces. I also gave seven gold and silver pitchers…. They said to me: “Dog, give us gold. If not, you will be burned,” and … they swore at me and said that they wanted me to burn…. I am not lying [when I say that] I rebelled more on account of the abuses they inflicted on me than because of the gold they took from me, for they called me a dog and they struck my face, and they took my wives and the lands that I used to farm.
Even with Manco’s latest gifts, however, the Spaniards were still not satisfied; with little to restrain them, they became more and more abusive, both to Manco and to the rest of the city’s native inhabitants, whether aristocrats or commoners. No longer did the Spaniards attempt to hide who was in control, nor what kind of future lay in store for the native citizens of Tawantinsuyu. According to Titu Cusi, during his captivity Manco tried to reason with the Spaniards, in an attempt to remind them of everything he had done for them previously.
The Last Days of the Incas Page 21
