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THE GILDED LITTER OF THE INKA

How did Pizarro do it? Sooner or later, everyone who studies the Inka confronts this question. Henry Dobyns wondered about it, too. The empire was as populous, rich, and well organized as any in history. But no other fell before such a small force: Pizarro had only 168 men and 62 horses. Researchers have often wondered whether the Inka collapse betokens a major historical lesson. The answer is yes, but the lesson was not grasped until recently.

The basic history of the empire was known well enough by the time Dobyns began reading the old colonial accounts. According to Cabello Balboa’s chronology, Pachakuti died peacefully in 1471. His son Thupa Inka, long the military commander, now took the imperial “crown”—a multicolored braid, twisted around the skull like a headband, from which hung a red tasseled fringe that fell across the forehead. Carried on a golden litter—the Inka did not walk in public—Thupa Inka appeared with such majesty, according to the voyager Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, that “people left the roads along which he had to pass and, ascending the hills on either side, worshipped and adored” him by “pulling out their eyebrows and eyelashes.” Minions collected and stored every object he touched, food waste included, to ensure that no lesser persons could profane these objects with their touch. The ground was too dirty to receive the Inka’s saliva so he always spat into the hand of a courtier. The courtier wiped the spittle with a special cloth and stored it for safekeeping. Once a year everything touched by the Inka—clothing, garbage, bedding, saliva—was ceremonially burned.

Thupa Inka inaugurated the Inka custom of marrying his sister. In fact, Thupa Inka may have married two of his sisters. The practice was genetically unsound but logically consistent. Only close relatives of the Inka were seen as of sufficient purity to produce his heir. As Inkas grew in grandeur, more purity was required. Finally only a sister would do. The Inka’s sister-wives accompanied him on military forays, along with a few hundred or thousand of his subordinate wives. The massive scale of these domestic arrangements seems not to have impeded his imperial progress. By his death in 1493, Thupa Inka had sent his armies deep into Ecuador and Chile, doubling the size of Tawantinsuyu again. In terms of area conquered during his lifetime, he was in the league of Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan.

TAWANTINSUYU

Expansion of the Inka Empire, 1438–1527 A.D.

Tawantinsuyu is known to have risen and fallen with breathtaking rapidity, but the exact chronology of its trajectory is disputed. Most researchers regard the account of Miguel Cabello Balboa as approximately correct. It is the source for this map, though the reader is cautioned against regarding it as either exact or universally accepted.

Thupa Inka’s death set off a fight for the royal fringe. Tawantinsuyu did not have strict succession rules. Instead the Inka selected the son he thought most qualified. Thupa Inka had more than sixty sons from all of his wives, according to Sarmiento de Gamboa, so he had a lot of choice. Alas, Thupa Inka apparently selected one son but then changed his mind on his deathbed and selected another. Factions formed around each son, leading to a melée. The first son was banished or killed and the second took the name Wayna Qhapaq (Why-na Ka-pok) and became the Inka. Because the new Inka was still a teenager (his name means “Munificent Youth”), two of his uncles served as regents. One uncle tried to usurp power but was killed by the other. Eventually the Inka grew old enough to take the reins. Among his first official acts was killing two of his own brothers to avoid future family problems. Then he, like his father, married his sister.

Wayna Qhapaq was not a military adventurer like his father. He initially seems to have viewed his role mainly as one of consolidation, rather than conquest, perhaps because Tawantinsuyu was approaching the