The Last Days of the Incas (41 page)

The majority of the Spaniards in Cuzco were greatly relieved to hear of Almagro’s arrival, believing that at last their ordeal had ended. Hernando Pizarro, however, became suspicious once he learned that Almagro had entered into negotiations with Manco rather than traveling directly to Cuzco. Negotiations about what? Hernando no doubt asked. And who had given Almagro the right to negotiate about anything in his brother’s kingdom? A naturally distrustful man, Hernando had not forgotten the bitter conflict that his brothers had had with Almagro over the possession of Cuzco while Hernando was in Spain. Anticipating such a conflict, in fact, Hernando had petitioned the king soon after his arrival in Spain, asking the king to extend his brother’s original grant to conquer Peru further southward, in an effort to ensure that Cuzco would ultimately be included within his brother’s governorship. The king had done so, granting Francisco Pizarro an additional seventy leagues (245 miles) to the south. The king had not, however, stipulated if the measurement of Pizarro’s realm was to be conducted in a straight line north and south, or diagonally along the coast. That vagueness, coupled with the difficulty of conducting geographical measurements in sixteenth-century Peru, left Cuzco for the moment in a sort of no-man’s-land, with both the Pizarros and Almagro now set to begin a renewed struggle over its control.

Distrusting Almagro’s intentions, Hernando quickly wrote a letter to Manco, his first attempt to negotiate with the Inca emperor since Manco had unleashed his rebellion. Hernando informed the emperor that he was willing to forgive and forget all that had happened during the previous year; at the same time, however, he urged Manco not to trust anything
that Almagro might tell him. Francisco Pizarro was the king’s governor of this area, not Almagro, Hernando insisted, and if Almagro told him anything different, then Almagro was a traitorous liar.

Two different emissaries and three different forces—two Spanish, one Inca—now jockeyed for position at the high fortress citadel of Ollantaytambo. All were competing for the same thing: control over Peru or, in Almagro’s case, control of the Cuzco region so that it could be added to his kingdom in the south. For almost a century, Manco’s ancestors had ruled the central Andes. Now, however, the young emperor was suddenly confronted with two Spanish forces, both of which were offering to share power with him—if only he were to side with one against the other. But how could he know if either was telling the truth? And how could he know if they weren’t secretly working together to destroy both him and his rebellion?

Suspicious of possible duplicity, Manco abruptly asked Almagro’s two emissaries to prove their sincerity. If they would chop off the hand of Hernando’s native messenger, he said, then that would prove to him that Almagro really hated the Pizarros. In Manco’s eyes, the messenger was in any case a traitor, as he had helped Hernando and his men survive the long and bitterly fought battle for Cuzco. Manco’s warriors quickly pinned the messenger’s arm down while another handed one of the Spaniards a sword. As Manco watched, protected by his elite guards, the Spaniard slowly lifted the sword above the outstretched hand. There it presumably hovered for a moment until the Spaniard brought it down, neatly slicing off four fingers. Apparently satisfied, Manco allowed the two Spanish emissaries to return to Almagro’s camp, asking them to arrange a meeting with the governor in the town of Calca, about twenty miles away. Manco meanwhile sent Hernando Pizarro a message that was both blunt and unmistakably clear: the return of the now fingerless native collaborator.

As the two emissaries began riding their horses back up the valley, they soon crossed paths with a third Spaniard, Rui Díaz, who had decided to try to personally negotiate with the Inca ruler. Díaz had been on good terms with Manco prior to departing with Almagro for Chile; he now apparently believed that if he could successfully negotiate a peace accord that would end Manco’s rebellion, then he would surely receive an
encomienda
or some other reward in return. Díaz therefore headed directly
toward Manco’s headquarters. Wrote Pedro Pizarro:

Not to be dissuaded from his goal, Díaz did his best to try to convince Manco that he could trust Almagro because Almagro was now an enemy of the Pizarros. If Manco would end his rebellion, Díaz said, then the king would pardon him and Almagro would restore Manco to rule. In an attempt to determine if Díaz was telling the truth, Manco decided to test Díaz’s sincerity, just as he had the others. Recently, Manco’s troops had captured four of Hernando Pizarro’s men, who had been caught while on a reconnaissance mission outside Cuzco. Manco now ordered that all four of the prisoners be brought out; he then asked Díaz to prove Almagro’s hatred of the Pizarros by killing them. It was one thing, after all, for a Spaniard to chop off the fingers of a native, but it was quite another for a Spaniard to kill a fellow Spaniard. This Manco had yet to see. Díaz was handed a captured Spanish dagger while the four prisoners stood there, bound with cords, their eyes undoubtedly wide. For a moment, Díaz and the four prisoners looked at one another. Díaz ultimately, however, threw the dagger to the ground, then offered Manco a variety of excuses as to why he couldn’t kill the men. Disgusted, Manco ordered a
now loudly protesting Díaz to be seized and imprisoned along with the others.

At first interested in exploring whether the possible conflicts between Almagro and the Pizarros might in some way be exploited, Manco finally decided that neither group of Spaniards could be trusted. Now twenty-one years of age, Manco was no longer the inexperienced, seventeen-year-old youth who had met Francisco Pizarro outside Cuzco and to whom Pizarro had promised so many things. Nearly four years of contact with the Spaniards had made it clear to him that not only were these bearded men humans and not gods but, as with any humans, some were worse than others. Manco had hated Juan Pizarro, who had heaped abuse upon him, and he still hated Gonzalo Pizarro for having stolen his wife. On the other hand, Manco had genuine affection for Almagro and had quite liked the charming Hernando de Soto. Manco had even gotten along well with Francisco Pizarro, who, for purely political reasons, had taken pains to treat Manco well. In the end, however, Manco realized that fundamentally the Spanish invaders as a whole couldn’t be trusted, since to a man they all seemed to crave what he and his fellow Inca elites possessed: the land, estates, mines, crops, the obedience of the native peasants, the female concubines, the finest dwellings in Cuzco—in sum, the control of all of the rich and varied resources of Tawantinsuyu.

Manco had also apparently received disturbing reports of another large Spanish force, one that had already reached Jauja to the north and was now moving south toward Cuzco. Francisco Pizarro’s desperate pleas for help, apparently, had finally borne fruit: one of his captains, Alonso de Alvarado, had cut short his conquest of the Chachapoya natives in the far north of Peru in order to rush back to Lima. Alvarado was now some three hundred miles away, heading south with more than five hundred Spaniards and hundreds of horses.

Having been unable to overcome fewer than two hundred Spaniards with eighty horses in Cuzco after nearly a year of trying and with hundreds of thousands of native troops at his disposal, Manco realized that his plans for raising additional troops with which to overrun Cuzco had abruptly come to an end. Soon, more than a thousand Spaniards and perhaps five hundred horses would be in Cuzco, only thirty miles away. With such a powerful enemy nearby, maintaining his headquarters in Ollantaytambo was obviously no longer an option. Manco was also no doubt
unable to forget what Rui Díaz had told him: that even if Manco were somehow able to convert the nearby mountain peaks into gold, and were able to send all of that gold directly to Spain, the Spanish king would still not withdraw these sword-wielding invaders from Tawantinsuyu. Looking out over the majestic valley that his great-grandfather, Pachacuti, had conquered, Manco now undoubtedly understood at last that the Spaniards were more powerful than he had originally believed. And that, unfortunately, their power seemed only to be increasing.

Soon after learning that Manco had agreed to meet with him, Almagro began moving his force down the Yucay Valley toward Calca, the suggested meeting place. Almagro no doubt expected to witness the typical arrival of an Inca emperor, that is, a standard ceremonial procession replete with decorated royal litters, drums, music, thousands of native attendants, and then with Manco Inca, lord of the Incas, carried on the finest litter of them all. In Calca, however, no such procession arrived. Instead, five or six thousand native warriors suddenly appeared on the surrounding hills, then began racing down toward the Spaniards in a full-scale attack. Although Almagro soon launched a counterattack, the fierce assault nevertheless forced his troops out of the city; Almagro and his men were in fact barely able to recross the Yucay River, swollen now from recent rains.

Angry and frustrated with the recent turn of events, Manco now vented his wrath upon the prisoner Rui Díaz, whose refusal to kill Hernando’s men had proved, to Manco at least, that he was both a spy and a liar. Wrote the chronicler Cieza de León:

Both Hernando Pizarro and Diego de Almagro clearly understood Manco’s message by this time: that Manco Inca remained at war and that the Inca rebellion would continue. Although Manco may
have briefly entertained the notion of negotiating with Almagro in order to return to power in Cuzco, in the end Manco decided that he really had only one choice. As the leader of an insurgency that had already killed hundreds of Spaniards, including one of Francisco Pizarro’s own brothers, for Manco there was no going back. The Pizarros would never forgive him. Besides, Manco had obviously also had his fill of playing the puppet king, and of having to constantly endure the insults and humiliations of even the lowest-ranking Spaniards.

Diego de Almagro, meanwhile, after failing in his effort to negotiate with the Inca emperor, now shifted his focus to the question of Cuzco. Almagro was by now well aware that—despite nine months of efforts—Manco had been unable to seize the capital. Almagro also knew that Hernando Pizarro, whom Almagro despised, continued to hold the city on behalf of his elder brother. Profoundly disappointed by the king’s grant of what he perceived to be an impoverished, largely ungovernable kingdom to the south, Almagro now found himself increasingly obsessed with a single idea: to seize Cuzco and the surrounding region as his own. Since Almagro was unaware of the fact that the king had already extended the southern boundary of Pizarro’s realm, he believed that there was still a good chance Cuzco actually lay within the northern boundary of his own governorship. Marching his troops to within just a few miles of the Inca capital, Almagro halted his advance and set up camp. The veteran conquistador then dispatched two messengers to

Far from feeling “immense sorrow” over the Pizarros’ recent hardships, Almagro was masking his true intentions while simultaneously trying to sound out Hernando Pizarro. Hernando, however, was already deeply angered by the fact that Almagro had secretly visited the Yucay Valley, had entered into negotiations with Manco Inca, and was only now bothering to apprise him of his presence. Hernando was in fact certain that, despite Almagro’s friendly overture, the one-eyed man’s actions spoke far louder than his words. In Hernando’s view, Almagro’s messengers were merely on a reconnaissance mission in order to collect information on the city’s defenses before Almagro tried to capture it. Almagro’s statement that he “had not discovered in the provinces of Chile that magnificence that the Indians had told him was there” was no doubt proof enough to Hernando that Almagro had returned from the south empty-handed, and that he was intent on claiming Cuzco as his own. Hernando, however, hadn’t just fought for over nine months against nearly impossible odds to meekly surrender the city to Almagro.