The Incas

Franklin Pease

• Publisher: Fondo Editorial de la PUCP
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9786123171100
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Latin American & Caribbean History
• Index: History

Essential to understand Inca culture in all its aspects: origin, economy, social organization, religion and art. This is an introduction to life in the Tawantinsuyo, which is opposite to the versions provided by Spanish historians, whom imposed their occidental interpretation to a very Franklin Pease, well-known Peruvian historian, dedicated his entire life to study Inca civilization.In The Incas, Peruvian historian Franklin Pease explores all aspects of life in the Tawantinsuyu, the great Inca empire that stretched for thousands of miles along the Andes of modernday Bolivia, Chile, Ecuadro and Peru. Pease does so by reexamining the sources of most of our knowledge of this complex society, the "chronocles" written during and after the Spanish conquest by a disparate group of soldiers, priests, colonial administrators ands the descendants of this protagonists, often themselves of mixed Andean-Spanish blood. This account opens a window into the Inca universe, vividly explaining everything from the Inca polity and economic structures to its agriculture, transportation infrastructure, creation myths and religious beliefs. It also takes great care to avoid the common historioraphical error of projecting onto the Incas, arguably the last great civilization to have existed without contac with the "Old World" western ways of seeing and imagining the universe.The Incas is one of our best sellers and has already been translated to different reality.

Chapter I
The Andes, its History and the Incas

Inca History

Many theories have been presented regarding the history of the Inca Empire since, in the 16th century, the Spanish chroniclers first wrote about the rulers that Pizarro and his band found in the Andes. Initially, the classical chroniclers posited that the Incas had been present the entire period before the Spanish invasion, believing they were responsible for part of the construction of the social organization which they found and even affirming that before the Incas, only villages or scarcely organized human groups had existed. From the perspective of 16th century Europe, the chroniclers debated the probable duration of the empire of Cusco, viewing it either as a historical continuity of long duration, as in the case of The Royal Commentaries of the Incas by Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (1609), or as a rapid and violent expansion of the Incas across the Andes, as suggested, for example, by Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa in his History of the Incas (1572).

This discussion regarding the antiquity of the Tawantinsuyu was related to the justification that the Spaniards needed in order to explain their own conquest, which would be just if the rulers of the Andean area had been usurpers or “illegitimate” holders of power. For this reason, in the discussion of the origin of the Incas and the extent of their conquests, the Spanish chronicles of the 16th century presented the notion of a long reign in which the rulers had “inherited” power, from father to son, along European lines, in a civilized Andean way, all of which “legitimized” their power. Against this theory, other proposals—such as that of Sarmiento de Gamboa—the Incas were illegitimate usurpers and violent domineers, who had subjugated the “natural lords” of the earth. In this context it is difficult to ascertain the truth and it is worthwhile indicating certain elements that allow us to understand what the chroniclers collected orally from the Andean people of that time.

The chroniclers gathered oral traditions of various types, mainly myths and ritual dramatizations, which were not ordered or processed according to the historical categories of 16th century Europe. In order to obtain the information that they needed regarding the legitimacy of the Inca government, the chroniclers examined the ancient sovereigns, their deeds and conquests. For this purpose, they not only transferred to Andean America the existing notions of “legitimacy” and “inheritance” from Europe but they also identified the Inca with the European king. They introduced into the Andes the European notion of “monarchy” which presumed a single ruler, which is today disputed when one realizes that the political organization of the Andes was primarily dualist.

The chroniclers interrogated a history and received myths and oral traditions. The first spoke of the origin of the world and, in more elaborate cases, of varying ages or states through which the world had passed. Appearing in these accounts were the gods who had participated in the ordering of the world as well as the founding heroes who had realized the sacred arrangements. In a mythical universe, an image of the past presented itself which was not historical and which did not correspond, in consequence, to the temporal, spatial and personal categories that history consecrates. The chroniclers ordered—reordered—this information in chronological form, tinged with the presence of the “kings”, in other words, the Incas who had governed the Tawantinsuyu, considered from the historical, European point of view of the chroniclers.

In this manner, a history of the Incas was constructed that has lasted until the current century, when the archaeological studies initiated in the Andes in the 19th century and developed in the 20th century, and the recent development of Andean anthropology, allowed us to understand the affirmations of the chroniclers from new points of view. Years ago attention was called to the anthropological quality of the chronicles, which also dealt with the Andes from the perspective of Renaissance history; at the same time it became increasingly difficult to consider the historical claims of its authors as deriving from Andean information. Today, the historical vision of the chroniclers may be more easily contested, even though for a long time many of their frameworks will continue to reign at the expense of others. For example, the chronology proposed by these authors will continue to be an important point of reference for the last Incas, even though we now know that the same Incas, presented as monarchical rulers, formed part of a dual power structure that is today being fully researched.

But the chroniclers offered invaluable documenting of the lives of the Andean people, which at times goes beyond the pure history of the Tawantinsuyu, and this can be appreciated in the information of ethnographical character, sometimes referenced marginally in the history of the Incas which they wrote with European readers in mind. Thanks to an enormous amount of information offered by official and private documentation from the Spaniards of the 16th century, and in accordance with the archaeology and anthropology of the Andes of recent years, it is possible to complement and reorder the information of the chronicles regarding the Incas.

The information about the Incas which can be found in the chronicles and other colonial documents is not uniform. Since the earliest contact, it must have taken some time for the Spaniards just to acquire the linguistic instruments necessary to gather and process the information which the Andean people were able to offer; equally, it took just as long for the Andean people, in possession of tools reciprocally acquired as a result of the Spanish invasion, to write in Quechua or Spanish an equivalent version, or one at least in conditions to be processed by European readers. This resulted from the fact that the Spanish chroniclers—the chroniclers of the conquest—provided little information about the history of the Incas, even though in many cases they left data of unquestionable ethnographic value, even as they began the elaboration of historical and cultural stereotypes which have lasted for centuries.

It could not be avoided that, in the 16th century, the chronicles included mythical cycles in their diverse histories. Neither were the Andean chroniclers, already immersed in a process of acculturation, able to avoid the inevitable construction of a history, even though in the last of these the use of European historical categories is more obvious, and the permanence of those criteria which governed the oral transmission of information, the traditional method in the Andes, more visible. At the same time, as the process of colonization advanced, the chroniclers acquired new and more complete information. After the early years, in which the chronicles fundamentally focused on relating the deeds of the Spaniards—the epic of the conquest—they took more interest in the Tawantinsuyu of the Incas and they sought to offer more systematic information about the Andean past. This tendency grew specifically in the times of the Viceroy Francisco de Toledo (1569-1581), when there was a concrete effort to gather “official” information, produced both by the descendants of the Incas in Cusco as well as through studies among the population. But none of this changed the situation of the chroniclers as collectors of oral traditions, and the chronicles continued as receptacles of combinations of myths and ritual dramatizations, transformed into history. In turn, the chroniclers were using the writings of their predecessors, utilizing topics established since the first authors wrote about the Andes, assuming stereotypes and maintaining the prejudices of their times. Specialists have allowed us to see that the chroniclers constantly copied each other and redrafted similar information, rapidly standardizing the oral versions which circulated at the time. Reprocessing that information is one of the fundamental tasks of contemporary Andean historiography.

The chroniclers were conscious of transcribing myths—the so-called “fables” or “legends”—regarding the allusive tales of the origin of the world or the beginnings of Inca domination in the Andean area. This occurred, perhaps, because they could not guarantee to their own eyes, or those of their readers, the verisimilitude of the information they were reproducing. However, they equivocated less in transforming into chronologically-ordered histories those tales which appeared linked to the personal biographies of the Incas. Today, when we look with fresh eyes at their descriptions of the deeds of the Incas, we can still see in these very chronicles the indubitable legacy of the oral tradition. There, we can appreciate, for example, the form, like a collection of myths, in which they spoke about a war which would have taken place between the Incas of Cusco and the Chancas—inhabitants of the zone around the Pampas River, north of Cusco—transformed into a story of the epic of the victor, who the chroniclers linked to the beginning of the expansion of Cusco across the Andes. The cycle of the Chanca war, already assimilated in the times of the Inca Pachacuti, was also associated in the chronicles with a series of modifications in the organization of Cusco, generally linked to the organization of the state. At the same time, as the versions which were available to the chroniclers were closer to the times of the Spaniards and could be completed or reorganized with other information, it was easier from then on for the chroniclers to offer a better picture of the history of the successors to Pachacuti, up until the war between Huascar and Atahualpa, coinciding with the arrival of the Spaniards in the Andes.

The versions the chroniclers received from their Andean informants included dramatic representations, or the tales corresponding to them. The chroniclers themselves gave testimony to their existence, attributing to them the formation of an official history, although they also identified them as a type of Andean theater. There is some additional data that allow us to get closer to these dramatizations and their meaning, as many of them continued during the Spanish colonial period and even into the present, changed no doubt by time and due to the cultural modifications introduced into and experienced in the Andes since the 18th century. A good example of the colonial functioning of these dramatizations is found in the pages of the History of Potosí, written in the 16th century by Bartolomé Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela, who compiled information written by previous Spanish inhabitants of that city in the 16th century. Arzáns relates the festivals which were celebrated at the end of one of the civil wars between the Spaniards of the 16th century, in which both the Hispanic and the Andean populations of the city of Potosí participated:

After fifteen days passed in which the inhabitants of Potosí solely dedicated themselves to attending to the divine services accompanying the Holiest Sacrament which, when uncovered, was declared by its patron, to the Holiest Virgin and the Apostle Santiago, they attempted to continue the festivities with demonstrations of various rejoicings. And putting this into effect, they began with eight comedies: The first four represented with general applause the noble Indians. The first was the origin of the Inca monarchs of Peru, in which was vividly represented the style and manner in which the gentry and wise people of Cusco introduced the very fortunate Manco Capac I to the royal throne, how he was received as Inca (which is the same as a great and powerful monarch), the 10 provinces which he subjected to his dominion with arms and the great celebration which he dedicated to the Sun in thanks for his victories. The second was the triumphs of Huayna Capac, 11th Inca of Peru, which he achieved with the three nations: Changas, highland Chunchus and the Lord of the Collas, who was struck on the temple by a stone hurled by the powerful arm of this monarch and the violence of a catapult, stripping his crown, kingdom and life; a battle which saw powers confronted in the fields of Hatuncolla, with the Inca Huayna Capac upon a litter of fine gold, from where he aimed the shot. The third, the tragedies of Cusi Huáscar, 12th Inca of Peru,was shown in the festivals marking his coronation, the great chain of gold which at the time had just been fashioned and for whom the monarch took his name, because Cusi Huáscar is the same in Spanish as cord; the rising of Atahuallpa, his brother albeit a bastard; the memorable battle which these two brothers launched in Quipaypán, in which from both sides 150,000 men died; they subjected Cusi Huáscar to prison and undignified treatments; the tyrannies which the usurper committed in Cusco, taking the lives of 43 brothers who he had there, and the painful death to which they subjected Cusi Huáscar in prison. The fourth was the ruin of the Inca Empire; representing the arrival of the Spaniards in Peru; the unjust confinement that they subjected on Atahuallpa, the 13th Inca of this monarchy; the omens and signs which were seen in the sky and the air before they took his life; the tyrannies and pain that the Spaniards inflicted on the Indians; the structure of gold and silver that he offered so they would not take his life, and the death that they brought to him in Cajamarca. These comedies [to which Capitan Pedro Méndez y Bartolomé de Dueñas gave them permission to perform] were very special and famous, not just because of the cost of their scenery, the propriety of their costumes and the novelty of their plots, but also because of the elegance of the mixed verse of the Spanish language with the Indian.

The description adds that at another moment the festivities resembled Andean “processions”, where people, agricultural products and animals from diverse parts could be seen. After this all the Incas could be seen again, seated on litters and with their traditional attire and attributes. In the list of the latter “… who was most visible … was the magnificent Atahuallpa (who until these times [the 18th century] is still held by many of the Indians as he is shown when they see his portraits) …”

The version which Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela offers has direct reminiscences from The Royal Commentaries of the Incas by Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, inserted intact because of their significance as they explain how, in accordance with the classical chroniclers, the Andean population was accustomed to transmit information about the past through representations of this nature. The classic chronicles mentioned that the same ceremonies were held in the solemn festivals of the Tawantinsuyu, including w...

Table of contents

• CoverImage
• The-incas-epub
• Introduction
• CHAPTER I. THE ANDES, ITS HISTORY AND THE INCAS
• CHAPTER II. THE ORIGIN OF THE INCAS
• CHAPTER III. THE INCA ECONOMY
• CHAPTER IV. THE ORGANIZATION OF SOCIETY
• CHAPTER V. DESCRIPTION OF CUSCO
• CHAPTER VI. THE INCA RELIGION
• CHAPTER VII. ART AND CULTURE
• CHAPTER VIII. THE INCAS AFTER THE SPANISH INVASION
• GLOSSARY OF QUECHUA TERMS
• BASIC BIBLIOGRAPHY