An Inca Account of the Conquest of Peru (8 page)

For the same reason, I have used Hispanized orthography in the translation of the text when rendering common Quechua names and words that have already been solidified in modern scholarship. Thus, I write “Inca” rather than “Inka,” “Atahuallpa” rather than “Atawallpa,” “Huascar” rather than “Wasqar,” “huacas” rather than “wakas,” “coya” rather than “qoya,” and so on. In my rendering of Quechua words that do not commonly occur in modern scholarship (such as
tomëe
), however, I attempt to decipher the original manuscript rather than previous Spanish editions. In these cases, I also note Santo Tomás's first “standardized” sixteenth-century orthography as well as modern (meaning post-1970s) official orthography, citing the
Diccionario Quechua-Español-Quechua
by the Academia Mayor de la lengua Quechua and Laura Ladrón de Guevara Cuadro's
Diccionario Quechua-Ingles-Español
.
Español-Quechua-Ingles
.
Quechua-Ingles-Español
. In references to primary and secondary sources, I have used English translations when adequate ones were available.

The Manuscript and Previous Editions

The manuscript of Titu Cusi Yupanqui's
Instrucción
is today preserved in the Biblioteca del Monasterio de San Lorenzo del Escorial. Some time after its arrival there, it was bound as one section in a volume of several manuscripts and subtitled “De las relaciones del tiempo de la visita. Relación del gobierno y sucesión de los Ingas.” Its pages were apparently numbered by the person
who bound it, for its first page corresponds to page 130 in that volume. In my page references to the manuscript, I cite the pagination applied in this volume.

The text has been published in numerous Spanish editions during the twentieth century in the wake of growing interest in Amerindian perspectives on the European conquest of America. In some respects it shares a common editorial history with other texts by colonial Latin American Indians, such as Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala (1615) or Juan de Santacruz Pachacuti Yamqui (1613) (see Bauer 2001). Like Guaman Poma's
Nueva corónica y buen gobierno,
it was forgotten for more than three centuries. Parts of the text were first published in 1877 by Marcos Jiménez de la Espada as an appendix to his edition of Pedro Cieza de León's
Guerra de Quito
. A first complete edition was published in Lima in 1916 under the title
Relación de la conquista del Perú y hechos del Inca Manco II
by Horacio H. Urteaga with a biography of Titu Cusi by Carlos Romero. Urteaga's transcription was republished in Lima with a new introduction and notes by Francisco Carillo in 1973. In 1985 Luis Millones published in Lima a new transcription that retained—more closely than Urteaga's—the orthographic particularities of the original and indicated the page breaks of the manuscript. Similarly, Liliana Regalado de Hurtado's 1992 edition with a new transcription retained the orthographic characteristics of the manuscript and added a glossary of Quechua terms appearing in the text, as well as onomastic and toponymic indexes. In 1988 María del Carmen Martín Rubio published the first (peninsular) Spanish edition of the text, and in 2001 Alessandra Luiselli published the first Mexican edition, which substantially normalized and modernized the sixteenth-century orthography for the modern reader. There have also been several translations into other languages of Titu Cusi's
Instrucción
. Hidefuji Someda prepared a Japanese translation, Martin Lienhard a German translation, and John H. Parry and Robert Keith translated some short excerpts into English in their collection titled
New Iberian World
(1984).

In preparing this full-length English translation, I have consulted the extant published editions as well as the original manuscript. I was able to inspect the manuscript at the Royal Library of the Escorial in winter 2002–2003 and also to obtain a photocopy of the microfilm copy housed at the Library of the Royal Palace in Madrid by kind permission and assistance of the library staff there. As the manuscript is at times difficult to decipher, it is not surprising to find occasional discrepancies among the existing Spanish transcriptions of the text, which I duly note. In my translation, I have made an effort to strike a balance between remaining as close to the original as possible while rendering it in idiomatic English. I have preserved the paragraph breaks (which are indicated in the manuscript as lines drawn from the last word of a line to the margin) but have frequently broken up long sentences, more common in Spanish than in English, into smaller syntactic units. Although perhaps not always successful, I have taken pains to find current English idioms to capture the sense of the Spanish original as closely as possible. It is my hope in presenting this translation to the public that it will be found useful for scholars, teachers, and students of colonial (Latin) American and Native American history, culture, and literature.

1
. Since completing the manuscript, it has come to my attention that Catherine Julien has also completed a full-length translation of Titu Cusi's text, which is forthcoming. The two translations have evolved independently from on another, and I would like to thank Catherine Julien for bringing her forthcoming translation to my attention.

2
. On Inca expansionism, see María Rostworowski de Diez Canseco,
History of the Inca Realm,
trans. Harry B. Iceland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 12–134; also Terence D'Altroy,
The Incas
(Malden, MA, and Oxford, England: Blackwell Publishers, 2002), 109–262; John Murra,
El Mundo Andino: población, medio ambiente y economía
(Lima:
Pontifica Universidad Católica del Perú, 2002), 41–82; and Kenneth Andrien,
Andean Worlds: Indigenous History, Culture, and Consciousness under Spanish Rule, 1532–1825
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001), 14–39. On the circumstances of Huayna Capac's death, see Michael Moseley,
The Incas and Their Ancestors
(London: Thames and Hudson, 1992), 7–11.

3
. Titu Cusi reports that they “digen que vienen por el viento.” Titu Cusi Yupanqui's
Ynstrucción del Ynga Diego de Castro Titu Cussi Yupanqui
(In “De las relaciones del tiempo de la visita. Relación del gobierno y sucesión de los Ingas,” Biblioteca del Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Manuscrito L. I. 5, folio 141 (64).

4
. On the background of Pizarro and the other men in his band, see James Lockhart,
The Men of Cajamarca: Social and Biographical Study of the First Conquerors of Peru
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1972), especially 135–156; also Rafael Varón Gabai,
Francisco Pizarro and His Brothers: The Illusion of Power in Sixteenth-century Peru,
Trans. Javier Flores Espinoza (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 3–35.

5
. For more details on this struggle for the royal tassel, see Rostworowski,
History of the Inca Realm,
110–134; also John Hemming,
The Conquest of the Incas
(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970), 28–35.

6
. For a more detailed account of these events, see Hemming,
The Conquest of the Incas,
23–70; also Karen Spalding,
Huarochirí, An Andean Society under Inca and Spanish Rule
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984), 106–135.

7
. For a discussion of these complex Hispano-Andean alliances that were instrumental in the Spanish conquest, see Steve Stern,
Peru's Indian Peoples and the Challenge of Spanish Conquest: Huamanga to 1640
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993); also Waldemar Espinoza Soriano,
Destrucción del imperio de los incas: la rivalidad política y señorial de los curacazgos andinos
(Lima, Ediciones Retablo de Papel, 1973).

8
. See Hemming,
The Conquest of the Incas,
89–229; also Andrien,
Andean Worlds,
41–43.

9
. For a detailed account of the neo-Inca state, see Hemming,
The Conquest of the Incas,
256–346; also George Kubler, “The Neo-Inca State (1537–1572),”
The Hispanic American Historical Review
27:2 (1947): 189– 200.

10
. For more detailed accounts of the civil wars, see James Lockhart,
Spanish Peru, 1532–1560
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994), 137–140; also Andrien,
Andean Worlds,
43–49; and Hemming,
The Conquest of the Incas,
227–272.

11
. Edmundo Guillén Guillén (
Versión inca de la conquista
[Lima: Editorial Milla Batres, 1974], 11), has surmised that Saire Topa was poisoned; however, the circumstances of his death have not been definitively established.

12
. For a good recent account of Juan Santos Atahuallpa's rebellion, see Hanne Veber, “Ashánika Messianism,”
Current Anthropology
44:2 (April 2003): 183–211; on Andean resistance more generally, see Andrien,
Andean Worlds,
193–232.

13
. For a more comprehensive discussion of Native appropriations of European sign systems for the purpose of resistance, see Raquel Chang-Rodríguez,
La apropiación del signo: Tres cronistas indígenas del Perú
(Tempe: Center for Latin American Studies, Arizona State University, 1988), and ibid., “Writing as Resistance: Peruvian History and the Relación of Titu Cussi Yupanqui,” in R. Adorno, ed.,
From Oral to Written Expression
. For a more general account of Incan versions of the conquest, see Guillén Guillén,
Versión inca de la conquista,
and ibid., “Titu Cussi Yupanqui y su tiempo, El estado imperial inca y su trágico final: 1572.”
Historia y Cultura
no. 13–14 (Lima: Museo Nacional de Historia, 1981): 61–99.

14
. Although southern Peruvian Quechua had served as the administrative lingua franca of Tahuantinsuyu, the Incas had never enforced linguistic standardization or uniformity. As a result, the Spaniards upon their arrival in Peru found a bewildering linguistic diversity—José de Acosta claims that there were more than 700 languages in the Inca realm (see Andrien,
Andean Worlds,
117)—and promoted a standardized version of southern Peruvian Quechua as a
lengua general
(lingua franca) for the purpose of catechization and instruction (see Sabine DedenbachSalazar and Lindsey Crickmay, eds.
La lengua de la cristianización en Latinoamérica: Catequización e instrucción en lenguas amerindias/The Language of Christianization in Latin America: Catechisation and Instruction in Amerindian Languages
[Markt Schwaben: Saurwein, 1999]).

15
. For historical accounts of this movement, see Stern,
Peru's Indian Peoples,
50–55; Sabine MacCormack,
Religion in the Andes: Vision and
Imagination in Early Colonial Peru
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 175–81; and Andrien,
Andean Worlds,
168–171.

16
. For an account of Ortiz's martyrdom, see also the account given by Doña Angelina Llacsa, one of the Inca's wives, published as an appendix to Urteaga's edition of Titu Cusi's account (
Relación de la Conquista del Perú y hechos del Inca Manco II,
ed. Horacio H. Urteaga, Collección de Libros y Documentos relativos a la Historia del Perú, t. II [Lima: Imprenta y Librería San Martí y Compañía, 1916], 133–137.

17
. This is the interpretation that John Hemming gives of these continuous overtures of goodwill that remained, however, without concrete result for the Spaniards (Hemming,
Conquest of the Incas,
338– 339).

18
. The Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, writing in the early seventeenth century, claimed that the land and labor granted to Saire Topa in exchange for his return to Cuzco—a grant that included substantial parts of Huayna Capac's estate and that Titu Cusi's son stood to inherit in a marriage to Beatriz—had already been divided up among the Spanish citizens of Cuzco at the time the grant was made. For more on the fate of Huayna Capac's estate, see Susan Niles,
The Shape of Inca History: Narrative and Architecture in an Andean Empire
(Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1999), 121–153.

19
. For a discussion of the Andean oral traditions surrounding this scene, see Regina Harrison,
Signs, Songs, and Memory in the Andes: Translating Quechua Language and Culture
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989); also Jesús Lara,
La poesía quechua
(Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1979), 92; and Nathan Wachtel,
The Vision of the Vanquished: The Spanish Conquest of Peru through Indian Eyes, 1530–1570,
trans. Ben and Siân Reynolds (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1977), 35. On Andean oral traditions more generally see also Margot Beyersdorff, and Sabine Dedenbach-Salazar Sáenz, eds.,
Andean Oral Traditions: Discourse and Literature/Tradiciones Orales Andinas: Discurso y Literatura
(Bonn: Bonner Amerikanistische Studien, 1994).

20
. Because of the multiple and culturally diverse agencies involved in the production of this text, Alessandra Luiselli has written of the “mestizo discursivity” of Titu Cusi's text (“Introducción,” in
Instrucción del Inca don Diego de Castro Titu Cusi Yupanqui
, ed. Alessandra Luiselli [Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2001], 17); on
the question of translation, see also Gustavo Verdesio, “Traducción y contrato en la obra de Titu Cusi Yupanqui,”
Bulletin of Hispanic Studies
LXXII (1995): 403–412.

21
. Andrien,
Andean Worlds,
106. On cultural contact and conflict in colonial Peru, see also Susan Elizabeth Ramírez,
The World Upside Down: Cross-Cultural Contact and Conflict in Sixteenth-Century Peru
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996).