The Last Conquistador

by Stuart Stirling

  Building by building the city witnessed the eviction of its lords and their families. Pizarro, who had awarded himself almost the entire neighbouring valley and Indians of the Yucay, once the personal fiefdom of the Emperor Huayna Cápac, also requisitioned for himself the palace of Casana, dominating the central square of Aucaypata. The Friar Valverde, who would become the city’s first bishop, was given for the site of his church the palace of Suntur Huasi. Almagro was awarded the Emperor Huáscar’s palace of Colcampata, overlooking the northern approach to the city. Pizarro’s brother Hernando and Hernando de Soto were given equal share of the palace of Amarucancha, which had belonged to the Emperor Huayna Cápac’s panaca of Tumibamba. The Temple of Coricancha was for a time left in the possession of the Inca Manco before it was eventually requisitioned by Pizarro’s brother Juan.

  Other than treasure and land, the most prized awards – of which no record was ever made – were the persons of the Inca princesses, daughters and nieces of the Emperor Huayna Cápac, who became the concubines of the more prominent conquistadors. Among them were the two full-blooded sisters of the Emperor Huáscar, the coyas Quispiquipi Huaylla (Doña Beatriz) and Marca Chimbo (Doña Juana), who were then probably thirteen and fourteen years old and who the foot soldier Juan de Pancorbo stated he had first seen in Cuzco within a few days of the capture of the city.25 Almagro took the eldest princess, Marca Chimbo, for his concubine, the youngest Pizarro awarded Mansio, together with her lands and Indian yanaconas in the valley of Callanga in the Yucay which she had been given by her father.

  The complicity of the Inca Manco in the concubinage of his half-sisters and in the bondage of his subject tribes would, however, earn him little gratitude from Pizarro, who Mansio recalled denied him the right to any share of the city’s palaces or of his ancestral lands: ‘All the land, houses, cattle [llamas] of this city and valley, was divided and given to those who conquered this city and kingdom . . . and it is known to me that the Inca Manco was neither given nor awarded any lands of encomiendas of Indians so that he could maintain himself in accordance with his rank and lordship, for had anything been given him it would have been known to me’.26 In fear for his life, and ignoring the advice of his amauta elders and of his shaman the High Priest, the Villac-Umu, to refuse his collaboration, the Inca Manco ordered the killing of several of his half-brothers who he saw as potential rivals to his throne. His authority diminishing every day in the small court he was allowed to keep, many of the principal caciques no longer recognized his sovereignty and regarded the Spaniards as their liberators from their past bondage. The chiefs of the great nations of Cañari, Chachapoyas and Huanca had all pledged their allegiance solely to Pizarro.27 Even the Coya Doña Beatriz’s guardian Cariapasa, Lord of the Lupaca, who had lost several thousand of his warriors fighting on behalf of the Emperor Huáscar, refused to render the Inca the service of his people: ‘When Don Francisco Pizarro entered Cuzco there came to the city the principal lord of the province of Chuquito called Cari [Cariapasa] an elderly Indian who was governor of that province, and he arrived at the village of Muina where his tribesmen were bondaged, and said to them: “My brothers, we are no longer living in the time of the Inca, for each and every one of you can go home to your lands . . .”’.28

  The Inca Manco. (Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, Nueva Corónica y Buen Gobierno)

  Pizarro, nevertheless, was aware that the capture of Cuzco had only delayed what would be a decisive confrontation with the army of the chief Quisquis, which had retreated into the Cuntisuyo, to the west of the city. Also an even greater force commanded by Atahualpa’s other warrior chief, Rumiñavi, was encamped between Cajamarca and Quito. Pizarro realized that not only would he have to mobilize all his scattered force, from Cuzco and the settlements of Jauja and San Miguel, commanded by Riquelme and Benalcázar, but also raise a far larger army of Indian auxiliaries. For this purpose he offered formally to recognize the Inca as native ruler and authorized his coronation according to Inca rites. The crowning of the sixteen-year-old prince with the mascapaicha, the traditional headdress and forehead tassel of the Inca sovereign, was witnessed by the entire company of conquistadors in the by then denuded Temple of Coricancha. The ceremony was followed by a procession in the city’s great square, where all the mummies of the emperors were displayed before the thousands of people who had gathered from the outlying regions. The Inca and his brothers and sisters, among them Mansio’s child concubine, dressed in all the splendour of the imperial panacas, their faces masked in beaten gold, were carried in litters to make their final sacrifice to the sun outside the city’s walls. It was a ritual that a year later would be seen for the last time by the priest Cristóbal de Molina, and which would symbolize the last vestige of Cuzco’s grandeur:

  In a plain on the outskirts of Cuzco where the sun rises, they would take all the mummies of the temple and of their rulers under richly adorned canopies, and would make of this encampment a pathway . . . along which would parade all the lords of Cuzco, who were orejones and richly dressed with shawls and shirts embroidered in gold or silver, wearing bracelets and patens in their head-wear of very fine gold that shone with a brilliance, comprising of two rows of persons, each of three hundred lords; in procession and in silence they awaited the sunrise and even before its appearance they began to chant in great unity, their voices rising in tone with the rising of the sun . . . the Inca was seated in a mound nearby, in a tent and on a throne of great splendour, and as the chanting increased he rose with much authority and walked towards the centre of the two rows of lords, and he himself began to chant, a chant that was imitated by all the lords . . . and by mid-day their voices had increased in strength, as had the sun, all during which time many sacrifices were made of llamas and of meat which was burnt . . . at eight of the afternoon more than two hundred young women came from Cuzco, each carrying a pitcher of chicha . . . which they offered to the sun, and also a plant they chew in their mouths which is called coca . . . and when the sun set they demonstrated great sorrow and in the darkness adored its passing with great humility . . . and each returned to the city as did the mummies of their past rulers, each one attended by their mamacuna and servants who would fan them with plumes of birds’ feathers . . .29

  * The Cross of the Conquest is enshrined at Cuzco’s church of El Triunfo.

  * Evidence that fighting was still waging between the remnants of Huáscar’s armies and Atahualpa’s warrior chiefs.

  * Pizarro was created a marqués in October 1537.

  5

  THE FALL OF TAHUANTINSUYO

  Many chroniclers and people recall that in the various battles the Spaniards had with the natives of the New Spain, a knight with sword in hand and mounted on a white horse was seen fighting on the side of the Spaniards, who was none other than the Apostle Santiago, and who is venerated throughout the Indies.

  José de Acosta

  Historia Natural y Moral de las Indias

  Within a few days of Cuzco’s capture Pizarro had sent a squadron of his best horse in search of Quisquis’ army. Mansio Serra de Leguizamón recorded:

  As the city of Cuzco had been won the governor Don Francisco Pizarro commanded the captain Soto to go to the province of Cuntisuyo with fifty horsemen and also some footmen in pursuit of Atahualpa’s warrior chiefs, and I was among those who served there for more than two months, punishing them and fighting them, and working in the most rugged of country, suffering great hunger, until we found their chiefs in the midst of their many warriors, and we fought them, defeating them and capturing some of them. The governor then ordered us to return to Cuzco, for he feared our enemies would attack us; and we returned to where he and the rest of the men were in guard of the city, and which the Indians had surrounded, putting our lives in much danger because of their numbers and the hungers and necessities from which we suffered.1

  It would be several weeks, however, before Soto’s horse would again leave the city, accompanied by the Inca Manco and 5,000 auxiliaries. Lucas M
artínez Vegazo stated: ‘. . . the Marqués once more sent him [Soto] in pursuit of the warriors, and the Adelantado Don Diego de Almagro went with him, and in order to relieve Jauja where the Marqués had left some of the Spaniards in guard of the gold and silver of His Majesty, and which had been gathered after Hernando Pizarro had left for Spain; and we Spaniards experienced great risk to our lives and hardship, and which also Mansio Serra experienced, for I witnessed part of the expedition . . .’.2

  The conquistadors and their Indian auxiliaries, who were led by the Inca Manco, reached Jauja three weeks after the commander of its settlement Alonso de Riquelme had successfully fought off Quisquis’ attack. The great chief’s engagements against Almagro and Soto’s horsemen, who continued their pursuit, were limited to defending his warriors’ march north to their townships and hamlets in the mountain regions of Quito. However, within days of his army’s departure from Jauja, Pizarro was informed of the landing at Puerto Viejo on the northern equatorial coast of an armada of some 500 Spaniards from the Isthmus under the command of Don Pedro de Alvarado, a veteran of the conquest of Guatemala. The arrival of so large an army of adventurers and freebooters, attracted by the news of the vast riches of Peru, was seen by Pizarro as a threat not only to his authority but to the Cajamarca treasure, most of which was still at Jauja. With the dual purpose of defending the township and preventing Alvarado from taking possession of his equatorial settlements, he ordered Almagro to take the main body of his men to the northern coast, leaving a small detachment to garrison Jauja and Cuzco, as Mansio records:

  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 Villac-Umu [High Priest of the Sun]. 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 Villac-Umu 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 . . .3

  Diego Camacho recalled that Mansio had set out to the Villac-Umu’s camp in the Cuntisuyo with nine or ten other soldiers, among them his friend the encomendero Francisco de Villafuerte. Pedro de Alconchel was at Jauja with Pizarro at the time he received the news of the High Priest’s imprisonment in Cuzco and of the ransom that had been given for his release. Pizarro appears to have been infuriated by their action, which he knew would only antagonize the Inca. Mansio, because of his resentment at being deprived of his share of the ransom, grossly exaggerates its value, claiming it to have been worth more than 200,000 pesos of gold. Luis Sánchez describes its value as 34,000 pesos of gold and 36,000 marks of silver.4 Whatever the discrepancy, all forty of Cuzco’s encomenderos were signatories to a donation by the city’s cabildo, dated 4 August 1534, of 30,000 pesos of gold and 300,000 marks of silver.5 ‘And we soldiers, who had been responsible for his capture,’ Mansio commented in his probanza, ‘refused any share of the ransom which was sent to His Majesty and his royal officials.’ The ransom in fact was dispatched to Pizarro at Jauja, and supposedly kept by him regardless of the means by which it had been acquired. Whether Almagro was to use part of the treasure in his payment some weeks later, of 100,000 pesos of gold, to Alvarado for the disbandment of his armada remains a mystery.

  Meeting of Almagro and Don Pedro de Alvarado. (Herrera: BL, 783. g. 1–4)

  The threat of the Guatemalan invasion had dominated Pizarro’s mind for several weeks, and he instructed Almagro to engage Alvarado’s soldiers if necessary. With no more than 250 men and a vast quantity of gold at his disposal, Almagro had been able to bribe the conqueror of Guatemala to disband his army, whose men had ravaged the northern territory of the Inca empire in a genocide unequalled by any of Pizarro’s veterans. With the eventual defeat some months later of the chiefs Quisquis and Rumiñavi, whose depleted armies of warriors had made their last stand against Almagro and Benalcázar’s combined forces near Quito, Pizarro was to secure the conquest of the northern Inca empire. In August 1534, the city of San Francisco de Quito was founded, and five months later on the lands of the cacique Taulichusco at Lima, Pizarro founded his capital of Los Reyes, the City of the Kings, named in honour of the Feast of the Epiphany.6

  On the return of the army to Cuzco, increased in number by the disbanded veterans of Alvarado’s armada, Almagro took charge of the city’s governorship in the absence of Pizarro, who had remained at his settlement at Lima. The relationship between the two men, though cordial, was to deteriorate over the months due to Almagro’s claim to Cuzco as forming part of the territories Pizarro had promised him, and which he had petitioned the Crown to award him. Pizarro’s brothers Juan and Gonzalo and their followers vigorously opposed the claim, creating an open confrontation between the opposing partisans, among them Soto, who supported Almagro. There is no record of Mansio’s role in the dispute, though Almagro’s later hostility towards him possibly demonstrates his allegiance. Pizarro’s subsequent arrival in the city was to prevent further confrontation between the two factions. His offer to Almagro of the conquest of the southern Inca empire of Chile finally brought the dispute to an end. Soto, however, was refused permission by Almagro to join the expedition, even after offering to pay 200,000 pesos of gold for a share of its command, an amount symbolic of the vast sum of unaccounted treasure the veterans of Cajamarca and Cuzco had acquired for themselves.7 Disillusioned by what he saw as his last chance of establishing his own independent fiefdom, and by an increasingly acrimonious relationship with Pizarro’s brothers, Soto decided to return to Spain. Taking with him a caravan of several hundred llamas and Indian porters, carrying his vast fortune, he began a journey that would see his reception at court at Valladolid. Here he was feted and honoured by the Empress and awarded the knighthood of Santiago, embarking shortly afterwards on his conquest of Florida, where he was to die six years later on the banks of the Mississippi River.

  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 Collasuyo. On 3 July, Almagro followed Saavedra with 50 horse and infantry to Lake Titicaca where he was met by his advance party, his army by now numbering in all some 570 Spaniards.8 The Inca Manco, who had remained at Cuzco, had authorized his half-brother Paullu and the High Priest of the Sun to accompany Almagro with 12,000 Indian auxiliaries. Among the expedition’s missionaries was the chronicler Cristóbal de Molina, author of Conquista y Población del Perú. His words more than any other portray the singular inhumanity of his countrymen, in a march that would witness the death of almost half of the expedition’s Indian auxiliaries in the crossing of the southern cordillera of the Andes:

  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 who 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 was made this journey and discovery of Chile . . .9

  With the departure of Almagro’s expedition Pizarro appointed his 26-year-old half-brother Juan as Governor o
f Cuzco. No more than 200 Spaniards had remained in the city, among them most of its founding encomenderos and a number of artisans, notaries and merchants who had recently arrived from the Isthmus.10 It was possibly at this time, as he records in his probanza, Mansio took part in an expedition with Juan and Gonzalo Pizarro to the Bolivian highland region of the Collasuyo: ‘. . . and served there, pacifying and conquering the land after many engagements with the natives who were in considerable numbers, and we Spaniards few, ill fed and with a great many tasks to perform . . .’.11 A year previously his fourteen-year-old mistress the Coya Doña Beatriz had given birth to their son Juan. ‘I witnessed,’ the Indian Mazma of Mayo recorded of the princess, ‘Indians of all the regions and nations show her their obedience and respect . . .’.12 Nothing is known of the Coya’s appearance, though both her mother the Empress Rahua Ocllo and her sister Doña Juana were recorded as being exceptionally beautiful.13 Her sister Doña Juana, however, was to suffer the humiliation of being abandoned by Almagro, to whom she had given a large quantity of gold, and was later repeatedly raped.14 It was an abuse from which not even their half-brother the Inca Manco would be immune with the abduction and rape of his wife by Gonzalo Pizarro, towards the end of 1535, and which would eventually precipitate his flight from the city. Captured within days by a squadron of Gonzalo’s horse, he was brought back to Cuzco in chains. A letter written some four years afterwards by the Vizcayan Pedro de Oñate and Juan Gómez de Malaver to the Emperor Charles V gives an account of the ill-treatment he received at the hands of his captors: