The Last Days of the Incas (47 page)

A native woman in the jungles of Antisuyu, flanked by a monkey and a macaw.

ALMOST IMMEDIATELY AFTER DIEGO DE ALMAGRO’S EXECU
tion, news of the governor’s death traveled from Cuzco in the direction of Antisuyu, across the
high
grassland
puna
, dotted with its blue lakes and herds of llamas and alpacas, past the mountain peaks with their caps of ice and snow, then over the eastern rim of the Andes before plunging down through what the Spaniards called the
ceja de la selva
, or “eyebrow of the forest”—the dense, moist cloud forest that clings to the upper edge of the eastern Andes and is almost perpetually bathed in fog. The news, conveyed by Manco’s spies, continued downward, emerging from beneath the clouds, zigzagging down the green slopes, then along the tumbling streams and rivers before plunging into the foothills and finally into the thick rain forest. Eventually, a lone messenger emerged from beneath the faintly lit canopy and saw spread out below him a giant, brilliantly lit clearing in the forest, filled with high-gabled houses and buildings of stone, with tendrils of smoke filtering through many of the thatched roofs of the houses.

As the messenger ran down the long stone stairway that led into the city, he also ran past stone conduits carrying water, past flowing fountains, past noblemen wearing gold earplugs and armbands, and past clusters of brown-skinned native inhabitants, most of whom wore white cotton tunics, although a few walked about naked with their bodies painted in intricate designs. In one area of the city a giant granite boulder, or
huaca
, protruded from the ground, reverenced by all, while a stone temple of the sun, cared for by the priests, rose up nearby. Further ahead stood a cluster of finely cut stone buildings, built on three levels. The news from Cuzco had finally arrived at its destination, for this was Manco Inca’s palace, his new, Amazonian-based home. It was here, in a provincial town located at 4,900 feet in elevation, surrounded by high jungle canopy, coca plantations, and chattering troops of monkeys, that Manco Inca had established his new headquarters. This was Vilcabamba, capital of the free Inca state—a province where, if any Spaniard ventured, he would automatically and without question be killed.

Although Vilcabamba lay only thirty miles from Manco’s previous capital of Vitcos, his new headquarters was located nearly six thousand feet lower in elevation and was over one hundred miles from Cuzco. Vitcos—Manco had painfully learned—had proven too vulnerable to a Spanish attack. Now, for the first time, Manco had moved his mostly highland followers to a new and utterly alien realm, migrating thousands of feet further down
the flanks of the Andes to where the longest mountain chain on the planet meets the largest rain forest in the world.

The Incas’ new capital took its name from the
runasimi
words
huilca
, which means “sacred,” and
pampa
, which means “plain” or “valley”; it thus meant “Sacred Plain” or “Sacred Valley.” It was here, in a warm, fertile valley lying between two rivers—the Concevidayoc and the Chontabamba—that Manco’s grandfather, Tupac Inca, had ordered a typical Inca administrative center to be built; he had soon populated it with transplanted
mitmaqcuna
(colonists) from an ethnic group called the Pilcosuni. Wrote the chronicler Juan de Betanzos:

In Vilcabamba, the transplanted Pilcosunis and visiting highland masons completing their
mit’a
labor tax soon chopped down the surrounding jungle canopy, cleared away the underbrush, then began erecting a traditional Inca town, complete with rectangular stone houses, storage facilities, a central plaza, fountains, water conduits, and a variety of governmental and religious buildings. Nearby, they cleared and planted coca plantations—the sacred leaf that normally only the Inca royalty were
allowed to enjoy. Here, however, in reward to the colonists for the hardship of having to relocate, the
mitmaqcuna
were also allowed to chew the sacred leaves, which contain minute amounts of cocaine and tend to dull both hunger and pain.

Following up on the initial exchange of goods between Tupac Inca’s troops and the local tribes, the imported colonists soon set up a frontier trading post that eventually became a link in a far-flung Amazonian trading network that extended deep into the surrounding jungle. Regular pack trains of llamas began arriving from the highlands, bringing Inca goods such as salt, cloth, beads, and bronze and copper axes. These were exchanged for gold, bird feathers, honey, hardwoods, turtle eggs, and other local products that were soon packed securely onto the llamas for their return trip home. Naked and often decorated with distinctive body and face paints, whole families of natives from the various ethnic groups in the area soon began visiting the Inca trading post, bringing their loads of trade items either on their backs or else by canoe. All the while, they looked in wonder at the stone city that had arisen in their midst and at the exotic goods imported from the distant, cold, and treeless land that they had been told existed high above their own.

When Manco Inca arrived on his litter at the Vilcabamba trading post sometime in 1538, he brought with him those of his retinue who had escaped the recent Spanish invasion and sacking of Vitcos. With his sister-queen, Cura Ocllo, and with what was left of his harem, his temple priests, masons, architects, servants, carpenters, healers, royal guards, diviners, farmers, and herders, Manco soon began transforming the rugged frontier town into a makeshift royal city, the capital of a self-sufficient state. True, he had been forced to abandon the highlands, but Manco was nevertheless convinced that here, deep in the Antisuyu, he would be able to maintain Inca sovereignty. Ironically, the Antisuyu had been one of the first provinces his great-grandfather Pachacuti and his grandfather Tupac Inca had conquered. The empire they had created and that had once exploded across the Andes like a supernova, however, had now suddenly fallen back upon itself. It was now up to Pachacuti’s twenty-two-year-old heir to try to prevent its collapse.

Manco was not interested in simply maintaining a free Inca state, however. Despite his recent setbacks, he was still determined to continue his struggle to eject the bearded
invaders from Tawantinsuyu—or else die in the effort. Although his new headquarters now lay hidden amidst the outer rim of the once vast empire his ancestors had ruled, Manco still maintained lines of communication that snaked out westward from Vilcabamba, climbed up the sheer face of the Andes, and then spread out across the highlands. Manco was also well aware of the fact that, even though his brother Paullu now wore the royal fringe in Cuzco and had assumed Manco’s previous role among the Spaniards as a collaborator, many Incas and other highland groups still looked to Manco for leadership, considering him to be the only legitimate Son of the Sun. With a massive native following who still considered him divine and with a new refuge in which he felt secure, Manco believed he was in a position to resume his struggle against those who had usurped his empire.

Manco therefore set about transforming his remote frontier city into a new royal capital, and also created a new command center for his struggle against the Spaniards. Under Manco’s guidance, Vilcabamba would soon become the headquarters for native resistance against the arrogant, bearded invaders. From his newly refurbished city, Manco would begin dispatching a stream of messages that would be carried high up into the looming mountains to the south, to the north, and to the west.
Resist
, he told his followers,
the Spaniards are not viracochas but mortals; slaughter them and join me in driving the bearded ones back into the sea.

A political snapshot of Peru at this time would have revealed that, although Francisco Pizarro had received considerable reinforcements from abroad, the Spaniards still controlled only a handful of cities: Quito, Tumbez, San Miguel, Trujillo, and Cajamarca in the north; Jauja and Lima in the center; and Cuzco in the south. Wide swaths of the rest of the country—especially the countryside outside the cities, the entire southern half of the empire stretching from below Lake Titicaca halfway down into modern-day Chile, and nearly the whole of the eastern quarter, or Antisuyu—lay beyond Spanish control. By 1538, in fact, six years after the capture of Atahualpa, the total population of Spaniards in Peru still amounted to no more than two thousand—roughly one hundred of whom were women—in an empire 2,500 miles long. In addition, most of those Spaniards were concentrated in Cuzco and Lima. The total population of natives in the area now known as Peru, meanwhile, most of whom lived primarily in
the countryside, still numbered at least five million.

A basic rule of modern warfare states that an occupying army should have a ratio of from ten to twenty soldiers per one thousand inhabitants if an army is to adequately control a conquered population. To control the five-million-strong inhabitants of this portion of Tawantinsuyu, therefore, the Spaniards theoretically needed between 50,000 and 100,000 Spanish and/or auxiliary troops. Even with the collaboration of Paullu Inca, Spanish and auxiliary native forces were still greatly outnumbered and, not surprisingly, the Spaniards themselves made few excursions into the countryside. Instead, the Spaniards preferred living in cities, where their own forces remained concentrated, cities that served the same function as military garrisons. It was this basic weakness—the lack of a Spanish presence in the countryside and their concentration in a handful of cities—that Manco Inca was determined to exploit.

When news finally arrived in Vilcabamba of Diego de Almagro’s death, therefore, Manco’s resolve only stiffened. At one time he had hoped that civil war might break out among the Spaniards and that they would destroy themselves. With Almagro dead, however, Manco no longer had any such illusions; he now knew that he would have to rely on his own resources. In the north, his relative Illa Tupac—one of the high-ranking captains, now a general, who had participated in the rebellion of 1536—still commanded native levies, was still loyal, and remained unconquered. Manco soon sent orders for General Tupac to renew the rebellion and to kill any and all Spaniards in his territory. Not long afterward, Tupac and the various tribes north of the Huánuco area along the upper Marañon River rose in revolt and marched down the Andes toward the coastal city of Trujillo, killing any Spaniards, African slaves, and native auxiliaries they found along the way.