The Incas

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INCAS, an American Indian people of Peru who in the

two centuries before the Spanish discovery of America
conquered an area stretching from the southern border
of present-day Colombia to central Chile. Centering on
the city of Cusco (Cuzco) in the Preuvian Andes, the
Inca domain included the coastal and mountain
regions of Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and the northern
areas of Chile and Argentina... the only true empire
existing in the New World at the time of Columbus,
and the greatest political achievement of the American
Indians. In the native language, the term "Inca" was
the title of the Indian emperor. Today, it is also
applied to the original tribe of conquerors and to all
those people who made up the empire, who probably
called themselves capac-cuna, "Great Ones" or "Glorious Ones," in pre-
Spanish times.

The habitat of the former Inca empire is spectacular and varied. In the
mountains, at altitudes between 7,000 and 10,000 feet (2,150 to 3,000 meters),
are temperate zones capable od sustaining an intensive agriculture. The
imposing mountain range, the Andead cordilleras, divides in extreme
southeastern Peru to form the Lake Titicaca basin, a 12,600 foot high plateau.
This and the other
highintermontane plat
eaus that continue
south and east into
Bolivia and
northwestern
Argentina are called
the altiplano;
it forms a treeless
region of long grass
seared by the noonday
sun, frigid at night.
 The bulk of the Andean population lived here. To the southwest are salt
marshes, while in the extreme south, dense mountains give way to the rolling
pampas of Argentina.

The coastal area is desert, for the Humbolt Current, which sweeps up from
the south, is colder than the adjacent land; therefore, the moisture in the
winds going from sea to land does not condense through cooling. Beginning
at Tumbes, 3 degrees south latidue, these desert conditions predominate
throughout the whole coast of Peru and continue down to the Rio Maule in
Chile.

The sea is filled with plankton, which attracts a rich marine life; this marine
life in turn is fed on by the myriads of sea birds whose droppings on the arid
coastalislets are a source of guano, a fertilizer used for agriculture. The 2,000-
mile-long coastal plain, ranging fron one to fifty miles in width, is broken
only every 30 miles or so by rivers. It was these two areas of Peru, mountain
and desert..... that the Incas put together in an economic and social synthesis.

East of the cordilleras is the Montana. The area is characterized by deep

forest-covered valleys and wildly plunging rivers. Still futher east, the Andes
flatten out into the Amazon jungle. The hot, humid portions of the Montana
and the people of the region alike were called "Yungas" by the Incas. The
Indians of this region resisted the Incas with considerable success.

History: Before the Incas

The Incas arrive late on the
Peruvian cultural scene. Humans
had been living for thousands of
years on the coast and were
growing and weaving cotton and
planting such domesticated crops
as corn, squash, and beans before
3,000 BC. The oldest of the high
cultures of the Andes was the
Chavin culture, which began
between 1200 and 800 BC and
lasted until about 400 BC. Its
center, which continued to be important as late as Inca times, was the stone-
built city of Chavin de Huantar in a narrow valley beyond the Cordillera
Blanca in the central Andes. At a latter date other cultures developed on the
north coast, notably the Mochica (c. 100 BC to 800 AD), a caste-minded
empire which developed a high craftsmanship in building, ceramics and
textiles.

Along the southern coast, the Paracas culture (c. 400 BC to 400 AD), wrapped
in mystery, is famed for its textiles, doubtless the finest ever loomed in pre-
Columbian America. Paracas culture influenced the early Nazca culture
located in the five oasis-valley farther south. In the Titicaca Basin there
developed about 800 AD the great Tiahuanaco culture.
Its capital and ceremonial
center at the southern end of
Lake Titicaca was built of
massive worked stones held
together with inset bronze
projections (tenons). The
famed Sun Gate (left photo),
was built with massive
stones, with its sun god
weeping tears in the form of
many animals, found its way
into all Andean and the
coastal cultures.

Further north, at Huari, close to present day Ayacucho, the

Tiahuanaco theme of the weeping god was developed even futher. It was from
here that a combined religious-military invasion was launched down
thePisco Valley to the coast.
From the years 1000 AD to 1300, the Tiahuanaco Empire dominated most of
the coastal cultures, evident in the recurring motif of the weeping god. When
the empire collapsed, the suppressed local political units sprang into new life
and evolved into local empires.

The greatest, and fierce rivals of the Incas, was the kingdom of the Chimus-
Chimor (1300-1463) with its capital at Chan-Chan, near the present-day
coastal city ofTrujillo. Chan-Chan was 8 square miles with irrigated gardens,
immense step pyramids and stone-lined reservoirs. The empire was the center
of large-scale weaving and pottery and possessed a good communications
system and in time came to rule over 600 miles of the Peruvian coast. Such
 was the cultural inheritance of the Incas. They were the heirs rather than the
orignators (as they claimed) of Preuvian culture. They were organizers.

The First Inca

The legendary founding of Cusco
by the first Inca, Manco Capac, is
placed about 1100 AD. Cusco lies
in the hollow of a valley at
11,207 feet. On two sides the
Andes rise precipitously, and at
its southern end the valley
stretches for miles between the
double row of mountains. Manco
Capac, accord-ing to legend,
came up this valley from the
south; following the instructions
of the sun god he threw his
golden staff into the Cusco earth
and when the staff dissappeared, suggesting the land's fertility, he founded
his city. It is generally agreed, and archaeologically agreed, that Inca history
actually begins at 1200 and continues through 13 ruling Incas, ending with
the death of Atahualpa at the hands of the Spaniards in 1533. In the 12th
century, the Incas were only one of the myriad of tribes that occupied the
Andes area,

Conquests
The Incas began by enlarging their hold beyond the immediate valley of
Cusco. By 1350, during the reign of Inca Roca, they had conquered all areas
close to Lake Titicaca in the south as well as the valleys to the east of Cusco.

To the north and east, the region

around the Upper Urubamba River
also soon fell to the Incas, and their
realm then began to spread
westward.

There they faced two tribes, the

Soras and Rucanas, who they
besieged and overcame. In 1350, the
Incas bridged theApurimac
River and its immense canyon. It
had previously been bridged at three
different places to the south-west,
but the new suspension bridge built
by the Incas crossed at the point
which formed a straight line from
Cusco to Andahuaylas and was the
Incas' largest bridge, 148 feet long.
They called it huacachaca, "The
Holy Bridge."

With this event the Incas collided with the Chanca, a powerful, beligerent
tribe which disputed the Apurimac passage. Toward the end of the reign
ofViracocha (died 1437) the Chancas made a surprise attack and invaded
Cusco. Viracocha fled for safety to the Urubamba Valley, but his son
organized the defense of Cusco and the Chancas were completely defeated.
 The son, Pachacuti (Earth Shaker), was made Inca (1438-
1463); under him, the Incas swept northward as far as Lake
Junin;
southward they conquered all of the Titicaca area. Between
1463 and 1493, Pachacuti's son, Topa Inca, pushed the
conquest into Chile, Bolivia and Argentina, then north again
as far as Quito, Ecuador. In 1463 the armies of Topa Inca, by
means of a flanking attack, overwhelmed the costal
kingdom of Chimor.
The Chimu rulers were removed off to Cusco as royal hostages.

The last indisputable Inca, Huayna Capac, who

came to power in 1493, the year after Columbus
landed in the Americas, made the final conquests.
He extended the empire so that it included Chachapoyas on the right bank of
the upper Rio Maranon in northern Peru, and his warriors reduced the
belligerent tribes on the Isle of Puna (off the coast of Ecuador) and
around Guayaquil on the adjacent shore. The final Inca extension was even
farther to the north; in 1525, the frontiers reached Rumichaca, a natural
bridge over the Ancasmayo River, which now marks the boundary between
Ecuador and Colombia.

Inca Empire and Culture

Language: Quechua the language of the Incas, bears only a distant
relationship to Aymara, the language spoken in the vicinity of Lake Titicaca.
It is not known what the Incas spoke before Quechua was made their official
language by the Inca Pachacuti in 1438. Because of their conquests and their
system of population transference, Quechua eventually became the dominant
language. It to this day spoken by a large percentage of Peru's inhabitants.
Agriculture: The population of the Inca Empire was composed primarily
of farmer-soldiers. Agricultural routine was the order of their life, and under
the guidance of "professionals" the entire Inca realm became a center of
plantations.

More than half of the products

that the world eats today were
developed or cultivated in the
Andean areas.

Among these are more than 20

varieties of corn and 240 varieties
of potato, camote, squash, a
variety of beans, manioc (from
which come farina and tapioca),
peppers, peanuts and quinoa (pigweed, wich is the source of a cereal). By far
the most important crop was the potato. Able to withstand heavy frosts, it
was planted as high as 15,000 feet; at these heights the night freeze was used
for dehydration, as the alternating freezing and thawing squeezed out the
moisture until the potato was reduced to a light flour called chuno. Corn
(sara) was cultivated up to a altitude of 13,500 feet and was eaten fresh
(choclo), parched and popped (kollo), made into a hominy (mote), and finally,
made into an alcoholic beverage (saraiaka or chicha). To make the latter, the
corn kernels were softened by the women. The saliva of the chewer converted
the starch, and enzyme distillate, into a malt sugar which became a dextrose
and was converted into alcohol.

In Inca times all tribes were on the same technological level

in their agriculture. Work was communal, and the most
important implement was the taclla, a simple digging stick
consisting of a pole with a thick fire-hardened point. Arable
land was not unlimited. Rain usually falls in the Andes
between December and May, but there are often years of
drought. Water had to be brought to arable lands by canals,
many of which showed superb engineering techniques.

Terracing of the land to prevent erosion was begun by the

pre-Inca tribes and elaborated under the Incas. The Andean
agriculture was sedentary; the slash-and burn techniques
 practiced by the Mexican Indians and the Mayas, in which virgin forest land
was constantly being cleared and planted, were not normally used by the
Andean peoples. The Middle American cultures had no natural fertilizer
except decayed fish and human feces, whereas in Peru the coastal farmer had
guano and the Andean farmer had taqiu, the offal of the llama.

Llamas:
The domesticated llama was developed from
the wild Guanaco thousands of years before
the appearance of the Incas.

It can resist the Andean cold and the desert

heat; it served as a beast of burden, carrying up
to a hundred pounds; it supplied meat (which
when sun-dried was called charqui) and wool,
used mostly for ropes and cargo sacks.

Its dung was important as fertilizer. Llamas,

like camels, use a common voiding place, so that taqui is easily gathered; it
was one of the important factors in Andean sedentary agriculture.

Social Organization: The Ayllu

At the base of the social pyramid of the Inca Empire was the ayllu, a clan of
families living together in a restricted area and sharing land, animals and
crops. Everyone belonged to an ayllu; one was born into it and died within it.

The commune could be small or large;

it could even be a town. No individuals
owned land; land was owned by the
ayllu, or later the emperor and was
only loaned to each member for his use.
Each autumn the land was divided
again; the allotments were increased or
decreased depending upon the size of
the family. Planting and harvesting
were communal.
At the age of twenty, a man was expected to marry. If he did not, a mate was
selected for him by the chieftain. Marriage for the workers was strictly
monogamous, but all members of the ruling class had more than one wife.
Some women had a chance to leave the ayllu and better their life. These were
the "chosen women," who were selected because of their beauty or special
talents and taken to Cusco or one of the provincial capitals. There they were
taught weaving, cooking, and the rituals of the Sun, the state religion. Many
of the "chosen women" became wives of officals and some became concubines
of the Inca himself.

The State: Tawantin-suyu, meaning four quarters, was the name given by the
Incas to their state. Four roads, which went to the ends of each quarter, no
matter how distant, came out of Cusco; each road bore the name of the of the
suyu to which it ran.
1. Anti-suyu included all the land east of Cusco; this domain contained the
montana and the jungle and was continually harassed by attacks from the
only partially pacified tribes of the area.
2. Cunti-suyu embraced all the lands west of Cusco, including the conquered
coastal empires from Chan-Chan through the Rimac down to Arequipa.
3. Colla-suyu was the largest in extent; located south of Cusco, it took in
Lake Titicaca and regions in Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina.
4. Chincha-suyu contained all the lands and tribes which lay to the north, up
to Rumichaca. Each quarter was ruled by apo, or governor, related by blood
ties to the Inca and answerable only to him.

The Inca was selected by a council of advisers of

the royal lineage. There was no clear line of
succession; the most competent of the legitimate
sons of the Inca's principal wife (coya) was usually
selected. The Inca had one real wife, but he
maintained a menage of royal concubines. Huayna
Capac is estimated to have had in the male line
alone 500 descendants living at the time of the
Spanish conquest.

These formed the Inca's own royal ayllu. It was

from them that he chose his important
administrators. The empire was one of the world's
few real theoracies, for the Inca was not only ruler
but also, in the eyes of his people, a demigod and the head of the state
religion.

The Inca Empire was a totalitarian state, and the Incas were absolute rulers
whose power was checked only by the influence of custom and the fear of
revolt.

Colonization: Mit'a-kona. The system devised by the Incas to organize

and assimilate newly conquered territory was an extension of the idea of
work service. As soon as any region was conquered, the unreiable part of the
local population was moved out and a safe Quechua-speaking population
was moved in; these latter were the mit'a-kona (called mitamaes by the
Spaniards).

Local customs, dress and language of the

conquered population which remained
were allowed, but officials had to learn
and use Quechua. It was the duty of the
mit'a-kona to bring Inca culture to the
newly conquered peoples. The mit'a-kona
were of three orders; military (to guard
frontier stations), political
(to win over the population and coordinate the conquered peoples), and
economic. Often, when a planned Inca highway ran through an entirely
depopulated area, mit'a-kona were placed there to provide upkeep for roads
and bridges and to extend the suzerainty of the Inca Empire. The mit'a-kona
were given social and economic benefits much like the benefits accorded the
soldiers of the Roman legions when serving in distant lands.

So complete was the Inca intergration of the Andes, Montana and coast, that
even today the entire region retains the mark of Inca culture. Seven million
people still speak Quechua dialects, the ayllus are maintained in the form of
comunidades; and the Inca culture continues to be manifest in music,
agriculture practices, and the character of the people.
Roads, Bridges, and Couriers were the tactical elements which held the
empire together. The Incas took over the roads of earlier civilizations and
developed more than 10,000 miles of new all-weather highways (capac nan).

Since pre-Columbian
Preuvians did not have the
wheel, the roads were
constructed for foot and the
llama caravans. Still, the
coastal road was a standard
24 feet wide; it was 2,520
miles long, running
from Tumbes to the north,
down to Purumuaca at Rio
Maule in Chile. The Andean
road, since it crossed
mountainous terrain, was
narrower. Its length was 3,520 miles and it had no less than 100 bridges,
either of wood or stone or fiber-cable suspension; four bridges alone crossed
the chasms of the Apurimac River. Distance markers were used every four
and a half miles and rest stations for travelers were placed alongside the
road every 12 to 18 miles. In addition, the communication system had smaller
stations for the couriers (chasquis); the chasquis ran in relays, each covering
a mile and a half. It has been proven
that this chasqui system was able to
convey a message over 1,250 miles in
five days.

Religion... In the Inca concept,

religion and the state were one.....

Viracocha was the creator god, the

one source of power; he was aided in
his divine administration by servant
gods, the most important of which
was the sun god, Inti. The sun god
became the symbol for the Incas; his
name was always invoked, and his image was the motif of the official
religion.

There were also gods for all natural phenomena. Inca religion consisted of
numerous decentralized cults, but the most enduring centered on the huaca, a
magic and holy object or a spirit. Huaca had many ramifications; a lake,
river, or mountain was a huaca; a temple could be a huaca, often huaca was
associated with agriculture, and stones gleaned from fields in cultivation
were gradually transformed into a temple which became huaca.

Religion was practical and life was the religion. Agriculture was holy, and
any-thing connected with it became huaca. Belief in immortality was general.
The nobleman, no matter what his morals, went back to live with the Sun
and had warmth and plenty. The common man, if virtuous, went to the same
abode; if not, he writhed in a sort of hell (okopaca) where there was cold and
hunger. Religion and custom guided conduct. Reduced to a single moral
precept, the rule for good conduct was: Ama sua, ama llulla, ama chella...
"Do not steal; do not lie; do not be lazy."
Art Inca art forms had a tendency towards austerity. Weaving, especially in
thevicuna wool, was of the higest quality, but it lacked the inventiveness of
the weaving of the coastal people. The cutting of semiprecious stones was a
widely practiced art, although the Inca stonecutters depended on the coastal
trade for shells and stones.

Goldsmithing was an Inca specialty. Smiths who worked gold and silver
lived in a special district and were exempt from taxes. the best examples of
their art have not survived since all went into the crucible of conquest, but
according to the Spaniards who first saw it, Cusco seemed full of worked
gold. Some of the buildings were covered with gold plate imitating Inca stone
work.

The grass-thatched roofs of some of the

temples had strands of gold that mimicked the
grass; a setting sun would catch the gleam of
gold and suggest a golden roof.

The fabulous Curi-cancha, the golden enclosure

which enjoined the Temple of the Sun in Cusco,
had a golden fountain; actual-size
representations of maize plants with leaves
and ears of gold were planted in an earth made
up of clods of gold, and there were twenty life-
size golden llams grazing on golden grass in
the golden enclosure.

Gold to the Incas was "The Sweat of the Sun" and Silver "The Tears of the
Moon." Their love for the precious metals was esthetic, for neither Incas nor
their subjects needed to buy anything. Twelve million or more people
rendered abundant tribute to the Incas and paid their taxes in work; a billion
 man-hours a year to build temples, fortresses, and roads and terraces... all for
the grandeur of the realm.

"The Riches that were gathered in the city of Cuzco alone, as capital and
court of the Empire, were amazing and incredible," a priest penned more than
four centuries ago... "For Therein were many big gold houses and enormous
palaces of dead kings with all the imaginable treasure that each amased in
life; and he who began to reign did not touch the state and wealth of his
predecessor but... built a new palace and acquired for himself silver and gold
and all the rest..."

The Fall of the Empire

Many reasons can be offered for the fall of the Incas, but the sudden conquest
of a mighty empire by only a handful of Spaniards is still hard to
comprehend.

The Indian Empires of Central Mexico

had already succumbed to the
Spaniards, who under Hernan Cortes
had invaded Mexico in 1519. However,
the Incas were unaware of such events,
as there was no direct contact of Aztec
and Maya with the Inca.

The white man's presence became

known only in 1523 of 1525, when a
Spaniard named Alejo Garcia led an
attack with Chiriguano Indians on an
Inca outpost in the Gran Chaco, a dry
lowland to the southeast of the Inca
realm.

In 1527, Francisco Pizarro appeared

briefly at Tumbes on the northwest
Peruvian coast and then sailed away,
leaving behind two of his men. Shortly
afterward, Ecuador was devastated by a pestilence (possibly smallpox)
brought by one of them.

Huayna Cupac died in 1527. He is said to have felt that the empire was too
large to be governed only from Cusco. Succession to the Incaship was
immediately disputed between Huascar, residing in Cusco, andAtahualpa, the
favorite of Huayna Capac's 500 sons, living in Ecuador. A five-year-long civil
war which devastated the empire ensued between the two half-brothers.
Atahualpa's final victory occured only two weeks before the second arrival of
Pizarro. The victorious chief was resting at the provincial capital
of Cajamarca in what is today northwestern Peru, surrounded by 40,000
veterans and planning to march to Cusco, there to be formally acknowledged
Inca.

Pizarro arrived at Tumbes on May 13, 1532; he

began his march towards Cajamarca with 177
men, of whom 67 were cavalry. Atahualpa
knew all this; his intelligence reports were
precise, but the interpretation placed on these
reports wasfatuous. He was told that the
horses were no good at night; a man and
animal were one, and when the horse or rider
fell they were useless; guns were only
thunderbolts and could be fired only twice; and
the long steel Spanish swords were as
ineffectual as a woman's weaving battens. In
any of the hundred narrow defiles of the Andes
through which the small Spanish detachment
climbed, they could have been totally
annihilated.

When the Spaniards occupied Cajamarca, they sent out an invitation for
Atahualpa to visit them in the city, which was walled on three sides. No one
has yet been able to explain satisfactorily why Atahualpa allowed himself to
walk into an ambush. He was well aware of Pizarro's strength, and ambush
was a much-used Inca military tactic. Perhaps other factors not sensed by the
Spaniards, guided the Inca in his movements. At vespers on November 16,
1532, Atahualpa marched into the square of Cajamarca displaying all his
power. Although he was surrounded by thousands of his followers, the Inca
 King and his men came, as Pizarro wished, unarmed. There was an
unintelligible parley between a Christian priest and the Inca demigod; then
the Spaniards set upon the Indians. The whole action took thirty minutes; the
only casualty was Pizarro himself, wounded in the arm while defending
Atahualpa, whom he wished to take alive and unhurt.

After that, except for fierce local

skirmishes at several places,
there were no serious resistance
until 1536. Atahualpa,
imprisoned, bargained for his
life by agreeing to fill twice
with silver and once with gold
the large room in which he was
kept, but that was not enough.
On the pretense that Atahualpa
planned to launch an attack
once they were loaded down with their loot, the Spaniards kept Atahualpa in
custody and eventually charged him with "Crimes Against the Spanish
State."

They formally tried and executed him by Garroting (a form of strangulation),

on August 29, 1533. The shock of all these events reduced the Inca people to a
state of strange timidity, and the Spaniards easily advanced southward over
the great Inca highway to Cusco, which they captured on November 15, 1533.
From there, by organizing their new realm, they soon turned Spanish
conquest into Spanish domination.

The Neo-Inca State: Manco II

After establishing the former Inca
capital... Cusco, as the center of Spanish
power in Peru, Francisco Pizarro, to give
a sembalance of legitimacy to the newly
imposed regime, selected a grandson of
Huayna Capac to "Take the Royal Fringe
as Inca." The new Inca, Manco II, was
given no power and subjected by the
Spaniards to trying indignities, but he
bore this during the first years of his reign in order to give himself time to
develop a plan of action.

In 1536, while part of the Spanish occupying force under Diego de

Almagro was off on an exploratory expedition in Chile, Manco II, under a
pretext of delivering up more Inca gold, slipped-off and into revolt. The
timing of the Inca's revolt was auspicious. Almagro and Pizarro had
quarreled over the division of the spoils of the Inca Empire and the invasion
of Chile was only the prelude to a civil war between the factions led by the
two Spaniards. The natives had felt the "Yoke of Peace" long enough to know
that the exactions they were suffering would be permanent unless they
resisted.

On April 18th, 1536... four Inca armies, after killing every Spaniard in the
outlying districts, converged on Cusco. As in a hunt, they beat their quarry
into a central area for annihilation. But Hernando Pizarro, Francisco's half-
brother and an experienced soldier, commanded the besieged forces of Cusco;
although he had only 130 soldiers and about 2,000 Canari Indians auxiliaries,
he managed to wuthstand the seige in one of history's memorable displays of
military skill.

Meanwhile in Lima, which

Pizarro had made his capital in
1535, was also under attack by
the Incas. Also, the area that
surrounded the city was level,
and the Spaniards were able to
use their cavalry with devastat-
ing effect. This siege was
quickly ended. However, four ot
the relief columns sent by
Pizarro were unable to reach
besieged Cusco. The three-month-long siege was lifted only because of the
need of the Inca warriors to return to farming and because of the arrival near
Cusco of Almagro and his troops returning from Chile.
Manco II, with thousands of his followers and carrying the mummies of his
ancestors, retired to prepared positions within the massif of Vilcabamba, the
huge mountainous terrain northwest of Cusco. There he created a Neo-Inca
State, from which he lead his warriors in attacks on the Spaniards. Pizarro
 set upAyacucho as a barracks town to defend the royal road south of Cusco
against thesallies of Manco's warriors.
Meanwhile, the civil wars between Pizarro's
forces and Almagro's (left) "Men of Chile"
continued. In 1538, Almagro was captured and
executed; three years later, Pizarro in turn was
murdered by the men of Chile. New leaders of
the factions came to the force. In the battle
of Chupas (fought near Ayacucho in 1542) the
Inca aided the men of Chile against the King's
troops, and when tha latter prevailed, six of the
defeated men of Chile took refuge in the Neo-
Inca State.

The Spaniards taught the Indians to ride horses,

repair guns, and operate hand forges; this, plus
the firearms, clothes, pikes, and money which the Indians took from waylaid
Spaniards using the royal road made it possible for them to equip a small
army.

In one of their raids, copies of the "New Laws" promulgated by the King of
Spain in 1544 were found. In an effort to right all the abuses of the
conquerors, the King offered a new program, and on this basis Manco II sent
one of the renegade Spaniards, Gomez Perez, out of Vilcabamba to negotiate
with the viceroy, Blasco Nunez Vela. Vela was deposed before negotiations
wer brought to a successful conclusion. Shortly afterward, the Spaniards
living with Manco II fell into dispute with him, struck and killed him, and
were in turn slaughtered.

Sayri Tupac and Titu Cusi

The Neo-Inca State developed under Sayri

Tupac, Manco II's son. They bound themselves
to the Antis Tribesmen living in the Upper
Amazon, and by 1855, twenty years after its
inception, the Neo-Inca State included some
80,000 adherents. In that year, Sayri Tupac went over to the Spaniards and
left Vilcabamba for the warmer climate of the Yucay Valley, where he was
 soon poisoned by his own people. His brother, Titu Cusi Yupanqui, became
Inca and reopened the war on the Spaniards. Every attempt to invade the
mountains ended in failure.

In 1565, Friar Diego Rodriguez entered the Inca stronghold alone for the
purpose of inducing the Inca to come out. His description of the rituals
surrounding the Inca and the number and belligerency of the warriors is
important for its information on the strength of the Inca state. The attempt
to induce the Inca to leave ended in failure. Another missionary tried again
the following year; but during the negotiations, Titu Cusi became ill and died.
His death was laid to the missionary, who was executed as were the members
of another embassy of Spaniards.

Tupac Amaru: the Last of the Incas

Tupac Amaru, another son of Manco II, now became Inca. His only
distinction was that he was to be the last. The Spaniards now decided to
breach the great stronghold of Vilcabamba in the three known entries.

After a sharp struggle, Tupac Amaru and all of his principal captians were
captured and in 1572, chained neck to neck and was marched to Cusco. The
Inca was hastily tried and led to the great square of Cusco.

There, before a mass of people so thightly packed that "If an Orange had been
thrown it would not have reached the ground," Tupac Amaru, the last of the
Inca's was beheaded by a Canari Indian.
The Neo-Incan State had endured as a
serious threat to the Spanish occupation
from 1536 until 1572.

Spanish Rule: During the colonial era

that followed the Spanish conquest of
Peru, many of the Inca state institutions
were retained and adapted to fit the needs
of the conquerors. Spanish rule was largely
indirect:
The colonial administrators and
landowners transmitted their demands through local chieftains, or curacas,
and did not directly interfere with the with the daily life of the Indian
householder.

Like the Incas, the Spanish practiced mass resettlement of villages, demanded
a work-tax of the Indians, and maintained a separate class of servants and
artisans. But Spanish demands for gold and produce were intolerably harsh,
and the greed of the landowners and the corruption of the administrators
provoked numerous Indian uprisings throughout the colonial period. Even
today, the Quechua Indian peasants of Peru and Bolivia speak Quechua and
retain many elements from Inca days in their religion, their family life, and
their agricultural techniques of the Central Andes.