The Last Days of the Incas

by KIM MACQUARRIE

  Not long after the death of Villadiego and his men, an exasperated Francisco Pizarro led a force of seventy cavalry out from Cuzco in pursuit of the rebel emperor. Although he and his troops scoured the countryside, Pizarro was unable to find the elusive Manco amid the wild, rugged landscape of the interior. Manco’s spies, in fact, had warned their emperor of the presence of the cavalry unit; Manco had thus wisely decided to retreat back across the Apurímac River into the Antisuyu, preserving his forces to fight another day. A frustrated Pizarro eventually returned to Cuzco and dictated a letter to King Charles.

  Cuzco, the 27th of February, 1539

  Sacred Catholic Caesarian Majesty,

  … Returning by [the Inca] road, I was informed by letters from this city about how Manco Inca has relocated twenty-five leagues [ninety miles] from here and has robbed certain towns and has sent messengers all across the land telling them to rise up again…. Afterwards we provided men who went to punish him … [but], as they have spies … he avoids the open lands and disappears into the forests. When summer arrives, he will not be able to defend himself against me…. I will have him in my hands, dead or a prisoner.

  Manco Inca, meanwhile, had already sent additional messages to his followers in the south of Peru including his high priest, Villac Umu, who was still holed up in the rugged mountains in the Cuntisuyu quarter of the empire, to the southwest of Cuzco. After receiving Manco’s order, Villac Umu and his forces immediately began attacking Spaniards in the area and encouraging the local natives to rebel. Further to the south, along the altiplano west of Lake Titicaca, Manco’s messages had an equal effect upon the Lupaca tribes, which now decided to rise up. In a relatively short period of time, then, suddenly more than a thousand miles of the Inca heartland, from just below Cajamarca in the north to the shores of Lake Titicaca in the south, were once more in the throes of a native rebellion. Frightened Spanish merchants and encomenderos now found themselves forced to travel on the Inca highways in armed convoys for fear of deadly attacks.

  Once the Spaniards realized the gravity of the situation, they immediately embarked upon a methodical counterinsurgency campaign, determined to preserve their privileged position at the apex of Peru’s newly reconfigured social pyramid. Hernando and Gonzalo Pizarro now left Cuzco, leading a large Spanish cavalry force in the company of five thousand native auxiliaries, led by Paullu Inca, against the rebellious Lupacas. Ferrying horses and men across a portion of Lake Titicaca on rafts, the Spaniards soon routed the natives, capturing and killing the rebellious Lupaca chief and burning his village to the ground.

  The Spaniards now began to shift their campaign northward, with Gonzalo Pizarro leading a force of seventy cavalry headed toward the Collao. After a fierce battle against a confederation of Consora, Pocona, and Chicha tribes, the Spanish cavalry once again emerged victorious, killing thousands of natives in the process. An unexpected bonus from that campaign was the surrender of the Inca general Tiso, the finest general Manco had left.

  To put down the rebellion in the Cuntisuyu, to the southwest of Cuzco, Francisco Pizarro sent another Spanish force, again accompanied by native auxiliaries, to locate and destroy Villac Umu and his army. Although the campaign would last for eight long months and would wax and wane, in the end the Spaniards succeeded in forcing Villac Umu into surrendering. The same bearded invaders who had profaned the Incas’ sacred temples now transported the Inca equivalent of the pope back to Cuzco in chains.

  Although Manco’s general, Illa Tupac, continued to control a large area in the north near Jauja and would fight on for years, the Spaniards spread their own brand of terror throughout the north by dispatching repeated counterinsurgency forces to the rebellious provinces. In the fertile valley lying before the massive Cordillera Blanca, for example, in the Callejón de Huaylas, some four hundred miles northwest of Cuzco, local natives had killed two encomenderos. Lima’s town council sent a cavalry force under the command of Captain Francisco de Chávez to exact retribution. Chávez and his cavalry spent three months in the area, raiding native villages, slashing and spearing their inhabitants, torching their houses, and setting fire to their fields.

  The marauding Spaniards made no distinction between men, women, and children in their campaign. “The war was so cruel that, fearing they would all be killed, the Indians asked for peace,” wrote Cieza de León. Before declaring his counterinsurgency campaign over, however, Chávez—a classic extremeño from Pizarro’s native town of Trujillo—was said to have slaughtered more than six hundred children under the age of three.

  Meanwhile, further to the south, the natives in the area of Huánuco had also responded to Manco’s urgings, killing a number of Spaniards; an additional cavalry force was soon dispatched to this region as well. More than one hundred miles south of their destination, however, the cavalry entered the peaceful Inca town of Tarma, which had not rebelled. The Spaniards nevertheless spent seven months there, “eating their corn and sheep [llamas and alpacas], robbing them of all of their gold and silver, taking their wives … keeping many Indians chained and making slaves of them and … abusing, extorting, and torturing them [the Indian chiefs] so that they would reveal … [the whereabouts] of their gold and silver.” Clearly, the lines between “conquering,” “pacifying,” “occupying,” “delivering retribution,” and “marauding” had become so thin as to be invisible, much to the dismay of Peru’s native inhabitants.

  In April of 1539, as the counterinsurgency campaign in the north continued, Francisco, Hernando, and Gonzalo Pizarro met in Cuzco in order to discuss their plans for the next steps in the conquest of Peru. Because of the complications caused by Almagro’s execution, Francisco thought it best that Hernando return to Spain to exonerate himself. Hernando had too many enemies by now, Francisco believed, who could poison the king’s ear and who could thus turn the king against Hernando and the rest of the Pizarro family. If his brother took with him a newly written chronicle of events that featured Hernando as an Indian-fighting hero during the recent siege, and a new load of gold for the king, then Francisco felt that his brother should be able to successfully plead his case to the king.

  Gonzalo, by contrast, now twenty-seven years old, thought the plan a poor idea. It would be best for Hernando to remain in Peru, he argued, and if necessary for him to wait here with his lance and sword at the ready. In Spain, Hernando might find himself at the mercy of his enemies—and with none of his family there to help him. Hernando, however, “answered angrily, saying that Gonzalo was a boy and didn’t know the King.” In any case, Hernando had already made up his mind: he would return to Spain and would meet with the king. Then, once the issue of Almagro’s execution had been taken care of, he would petition the king for additional favors.

  On the day of his departure, Francisco, Gonzalo, and a small group of conquistadors accompanied Hernando a short way out of town and then dismounted to say goodbye. Hernando embraced both his brothers before taking pains to warn Francisco about the potential danger of Almagro’s followers—those who had gone with the now dead governor to Chile, who had fought against the Pizarros, and who had ended up bitter and destitute for their efforts. Wrote Pedro Pizarro:

  Hernando Pizarro, on taking leave of his brother the Marquis, said to him, “[You know] that I’m going to Spain and that, besides God, that we’re all depending upon you. I say this because those from Chile are behaving very disrespectfully. If I weren’t going away, there would be nothing to fear (and he told the truth because they were very afraid of him). Make friends with them and give something to eat to those who wish it, [but] do not allow [even] ten of those who want nothing to gather together within fifty leagues from wherever you are, for if you … [do] they are bound to kill you.” … Hernando Pizarro said these words aloud, and we all heard them and, embracing the Marquis, he set off and went away.

  Hernando took with him a pack train of gold and silver for the king, letters and requests to the king from Francisco, and a long list of encomiendas that Hernand
o personally wanted for himself and was confident the king would grant him. As they watched their heavyset brother ride off, neither Francisco nor Gonzalo realized that this would be the last time they would ever see Hernando again.

  One thing all three brothers had agreed upon before Hernando’s departure, however, was that Manco Inca must be exterminated. As long as the rebel emperor remained alive, then Manco would permanently endanger their control of Peru. Thus, soon after Hernando’s departure, Gonzalo Pizarro began organizing an expedition, the goal of which was to capture or kill Manco Inca once and for all. Spies had already informed the Pizarros that Manco had relocated to a site called Vilcabamba, hidden somewhere amid the thick lowland forests and protected by bow-and-arrow-wielding Antis. The only remedy for their current predicament, in which a renegade Inca emperor was on the loose, was to track Manco Inca to his jungle redoubt and there, like some noxious pest, to exterminate him.

  Thirty-four years younger than Francisco and eleven years younger than Hernando, Gonzalo Pizarro had been only twenty when he had arrived in Peru and had always been overshadowed by his older brothers. Unlike his brother Juan, who had been a year older than him, Gonzalo hadn’t become a captain until the siege of Cuzco, and then only perhaps because Juan’s death had given him that opportunity. During the siege, however, Gonzalo had distinguished himself as one of the city’s best defenders. Tall, black-bearded, and strikingly handsome, Gonzalo was an excellent horseman and an unerring marksman with both the crossbow and the harquebus. He was also fabulously wealthy, for, like his brothers, Gonzalo had received substantial divisions of the gold and silver at Cajamarca and Cuzco.

  A classic extremeño, possessing many of that region’s indelible characteristics—toughness, insularity, suspiciousness of outsiders, and extreme parsimoniousness—Gonzalo was capable of making both good friends and bitter enemies. He was also insatiably ambitious; Gonzalo was keen to have his own governorship and was not shy about letting others know that. An impulsive and profligate womanizer, Gonzalo had stolen Manco’s wife, Cura Ocllo. That one action had no doubt helped to spark an Inca rebellion that had thus far cost the life of one of his own brothers as well as the lives of hundreds of his fellow Spaniards.

  Whether Gonzalo ever acknowledged his own responsibility in Manco’s insurrection is unknown. Gonzalo did know, however, that if he were able to capture or exterminate the rebellious Inca emperor, then a governorship might very likely figure in his future. Yet for the time being, it was imperative to pacify this realm. “It is believed that, once [the Inca] is surrounded, he cannot fail to be killed or taken prisoner, and then order will be restored to the land,” wrote a Spaniard at the time. “But until this is achieved, everything will remain in a state of suspense.”

  Three hundred Spaniards presently volunteered to accompany Gonzalo, both foot soldiers and cavalry, all of whom were eager to distinguish themselves. Many of the cavalrymen were encomenderos and were thus eager to get their hands on Manco; it was the only means they knew of preventing the natives whose tribute they now depended upon from going over to Manco’s side. Other volunteers were newly arrived conquistadors—former cobblers, tailors, carpenters, masons, and so on who had arrived in Peru with their own weapons and were eager to improve their fortunes. Gonzalo was well aware of the fact that when Rodrigo Orgóñez had sacked Vitcos and nearly captured Manco Inca two years earlier, his Spaniards had found abundant gold, silver, and some of the most beautiful temple virgins in the land. With any luck, Gonzalo’s own expedition might do the same.

  As Gonzalo’s men prepared for their expedition, Paullu Inca organized a large contingent of native auxiliaries to assist them. This time, however, Paullu himself would accompany the Spaniards. Paullu was now determined to take an active part in the fight against his brother, no doubt in order to protect his continued reign as the Sapa Inca, or “Unique Inca”—a position that presently was not unique. Although Paullu knew that Manco had been relegated to the fringes of Tawantinsuyu and was currently living among the Antis barbarians, his brother nevertheless posed a very real danger to him. If Manco were ever to negotiate a truce with the Spaniards and were to return to Cuzco, then Paullu would automatically be deposed as emperor.

  Already convinced that the Spaniards were unbeatable, Paullu had been busy experimenting with wearing an assortment of Spanish clothing in the capital—silk stockings, fine cloaks, and a variety of European hats. Paullu had also indicated that he was interested in adopting the Spaniards’ religion. Living in an Inca palace and waited upon by a retinue of beautiful concubines, the man who had had virtually no chance of becoming emperor only two years earlier was no doubt loath to give up his luxurious new lifestyle. If he had to kill his own brother to maintain his present position, then kill his brother he would. Besides, Inca tradition dictated that the strongest heir to the throne would ultimately rise to the top. Among the Inca aristocracy, the indubitable message was winner take all.

  On a brilliant, sunny day in April 1539, the expedition of three hundred Spaniards and a large force of native auxiliaries set out, followed by llama trains carrying their provisions. As they left the city and began to climb the hill to the north, many of the Spaniards looked back down upon the Inca capital, which, like Paullu’s taste in clothes, was gradually being transformed. Ever since Manco had set fire to Cuzco during the siege, most of the city’s thatched roofs had disappeared. Now, earth-colored clay tiles crowned the gabled roofs of various buildings, as Spanish workmen grafted some of the architectural features of their own country onto those of the Incas. As the expedition reached the bluff overlooking Cuzco and began riding past the fortress of Saqsaywaman, the sounds of masonry hammers and a church bell could be heard from below—sure evidence that Cuzco was gradually developing a Spanish veneer.

  Now, for the second time in two years, a large force of conquistadors headed down the eastern side of the Andes, the Spaniards’ horses following the same, stone-paved Inca trail, picking their way carefully to maintain their footing on the often smooth or wet stones. Three royal litters traveled with the expedition, one occupied by Paullu and the other two by Huaspar and Inquill. The latter two were both half-brothers of Manco and Paullu and were full brothers of Manco’s wife, Cura Ocllo. Like their brother, Paullu, they had switched their allegiance from Manco to the Spaniards, no doubt based upon their assumption that in the struggle for Tawantinsuyu, Manco Inca would ultimately be the loser.

  After three days of travel, the expedition reached the Chuquichaca bridge over the Urubamba River, which Rodrigo Orgóñez and his men had seized on their way to Vitcos two years earlier. The hanging bridge now lay deserted and, unopposed, the Spaniards rode up into the Vilcabamba Valley. Passing the hilltop citadel of Vitcos, which Orgóñez had sacked and which Manco had been forced to abandon, the expedition next headed up to the 12,500-foot Colpacasa Pass. Rugged hills carpeted with thick vegetation now stretched below them into the distance, forming ridge after crumpled ridge. Slowly, the expedition began making its way down the stone-paved trail along the Pampaconas River, past trees festooned with spiky bromeliads and drooping moss, then past waterfalls that would soon become a rushing river.

  At one point, clouds choked their descent, the men losing sight of the front and rear ends of the column as the cavalry was suddenly converted into helmeted silhouettes, bathed in a light gray mist. Drops of water like perspiration collected on the Spaniards’ armor, coalescing into rivulets that then descended like tiny streams of quicksilver. Finally, after three days of descent from the pass, the vegetation became so thick that the Spaniards were forced to dismount and abandon their horses. Carrying swords, harquebuses, and crossbows at the ready, the Spaniards now followed their native guides single file down into the dark and alien underworld of the Amazon rain forest, or selva.

  The air by now had become warm and thick as mosquitoes buzzed about, attacking the Spaniards’ exposed skin. The men sweated under their armor and cotton clothes while in the distance sounds they had
never before heard welled up—deep, lionlike roars that to the Spaniards sounded like the guardians of hell screaming, coupled with strange, haunting trills that wafted through the dripping forest and no doubt sent chills down many of their spines. The men had heard plenty of tales from their native guides of how the Antis natives supposedly ate human flesh and how they would look upon the Spaniards as so many gastronomic delicacies. When another eerie trill erupted, somewhere among the shadowy leaves ahead, the Spaniards no doubt stopped and asked their guides, “Antis?” Pointing up at the tops of giant, soaring trees whose bases stretched for more than twenty feet and had buttresses like giant shark fins, the guides would have replied that these were “Uru-kusillu-kuna,” or “spider monkeys.” The lionlike roars were from monkeys, too, the guides said, but they used another word for them. The guides were undoubtedly nervous, knowing full well that the enemy was close and that at any time they might be attacked. The question was not if they would be attacked—but how, where, and when. Wrote the Jesuit priest Blas Valera:

  Those who live in the … [Antisuyu] …eat human flesh, they are fiercer than tigers, have neither god nor law, nor know what virtue is. They have no idols nor likenesses of them. They worship the devil when he represents himself in the form of some animal or serpent and speaks to them. If they make a prisoner in war … and know that he is a plebeian of low rank, they quarter him and give the quarters to their friends and servants to eat or to sell in the meat market. But if he is of noble rank, the chiefs gather with their wives and children and, like ministers of the devil, strip him, tie him alive to a stake, and cut him to pieces with flint knives and razors, not so as to dismember him, but to remove the meat from the fleshiest parts, the calves, thighs, buttocks, and fleshy parts of the arms. Men, women, and children sprinkle themselves with the blood and they all devour the flesh very rapidly, without cooking it or roasting it thoroughly or even chewing it. They swallow it in mouthfuls so that the wretched victim sees himself eaten alive.