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By Root 1860 0

two great powers: the technologically expert empire of Wari, which held sway over the coastline previously under Chavín; and Tiwanaku, centered on Lake Titicaca, the great alpine lake on the Peru-Bolivia border. (I briefly discussed Wari and Tiwanaku earlier, and will return to them—and to the rest of the immense pre-Inka tradition—later.) After Wari and Tiwanaku collapsed, at the end of the first millennium, the Andes split into sociopolitical fragments and with one major exception remained that way for more than three centuries. Then came the Inka.

The Inka empire, the greatest state ever seen in the Andes, was also the shortest lived. It began in the fifteenth century and lasted barely a hundred years before being smashed by Spain.

As conquerors, the Inka were unlikely. Even in 1350 they were still an unimportant part of the political scene in the central Andes, and newcomers at that. In one of the oral tales recorded by the Spanish Jesuit Bernabé Cobo, the Inka originated with a family of four brothers and four sisters who left Lake Titicaca for reasons unknown and wandered until they came upon what would become the future Inka capital, Qosqo (Cusco, in Spanish). Cobo, who sighed over the “extreme ignorance and barbarity” of the Indians, dismissed such stories as “ludicrous.” Nonetheless, archaeological investigation has generally borne them out: the Inka seem indeed to have migrated to Qosqo from somewhere else, perhaps Lake Titicaca, around 1200 A.D.

The colonial account of Inka history closest to indigenous sources is by Juan de Betanzos, a Spanish commoner who rose to marry an Inka princess and become the most prominent translator for the colonial government. Based on interviews with his in-laws, Betanzos estimated that when the Inka showed up in the Qosqo region “more than two hundred” small groups were already there. Qosqo itself, where they settled, was a hamlet “of about thirty small, humble straw houses.”

Archaeological evidence suggests that the Inka gradually became more powerful. The apparent turning point in their fortunes occurred when they somehow made enemies of another group, the Chanka, who eventually attacked them. This unremarkable provincial squabble had momentous consequences.

According to a widely quoted chronology by the sixteenth-century cleric Miguel Cabello Balboa, the Chanka offensive took place in 1438. The Inka leader at that time was Wiraqocha Inka.*8 “A valiant prince,” according to Cobo, Wiraqocha Inka had a “warlike” nature even as a young man and vowed that after taking the throne “he would conquer half the world.” Perhaps so, but he fled the Chanka attack with three of his four sons, including his designated successor, Inka Urqon. A younger son, Inka Cusi Yupanki, refused to run. Instead he fought the Chanka with such bravery that (according to the legend) the very stones rose up to join the fray. Inka Yupanki won the battle, capturing many Chanka leaders. Later he skinned them in celebration—Pizarro saw the trophies on display. But first Inka Yupanki presented the captives to his father, so that Wiraqocha Inka could perform the victory ritual of wiping his feet on their bodies.

Fearing that Inka Yupanki was becoming too big for his britches, Wiraqocha Inka chose that moment to remind his younger son of his subordinate status. The foot-wiping honor, he proclaimed, actually belonged to the next Inka: Inka Urqon. “To this,” Betanzos wrote, “Inka Yupanki answered that he was begging his father to tread on the prisoners, that he had not won the victory so that such women as Inka Urqon and the rest of his brothers could step on them.” A heated argument led to a standoff. In a Shakespearian move, Wiraqocha Inka decided to settle the issue by murdering his inconvenient younger son. (It was “a crazy impulse,” one of Wiraqocha Inka’s generals later explained.) Inka Yupanki was tipped off and the scheme failed. The humiliated Wiraqocha Inka went into exile while Inka Yupanki returned in triumph to Qosqo, renamed himself Pachakuti (“World-shaker”), and proclaimed that the ruling Inka families