Meanwhile, the Spaniards had landed at Tumbes on the northern coast of Peru early in 1532 and were seeking an interview with Atahuallpa so that they could kidnap him. It is clear that they understood the nature of the Inca civil war and were dealing with emissaries from both factions. Their actions, however, must have seemed puzzling to Atahuallpa. On the one hand, Pizarro and his men were deposing and executing leaders who were loyal to him, and, on the other hand, they were sending messages that recognized him as the legitimate ruler of Tawantinsuyu. As the Spaniards moved toward Cajamarca, he sent them a message indicating that he was now the sole ruler of his father’s domain. Furthermore, he reminded the Spaniards that they were far from their base of supply and in a land controlled by his armies. The Spaniards replied to this veiled threat by indicating that they would come to his aid against any group that opposed his rule. Atahuallpa clearly wanted the Spaniards as allies but continually misinterpreted their intentions and underestimated their abilities—even after he was kidnapped in Cajamarca on November 16, 1532.

Atahuallpa was allowed to meet with his advisers while the Spaniards held him prisoner, and he arranged to have the ransom they demanded paid. An enormous ransom was raised, but Pizarro did not free him because it would have been too dangerous for the Spaniards. While he was in prison, Atahuallpa decided that the Spaniards were indifferent to the idea of having his brother slain and ordered Huascar’s death. The Spaniards, of course, wanted all pretenders to authority removed but later used this act to justify their execution of the Inca ruler. Realizing that Atahuallpa’s death was a mistake because it weakened their position, they approved the coronation of Topa Huallpa, a candidate whom they thought would be acceptable to both Inca factions. But the Spaniards miscalculated. Topa Huallpa had not supported Atahuallpa and, in fact, had been in hiding as long as the latter was alive. He was supported by Huascar’s group and was opposed by Atahuallpa’s following, who believed that the legitimate heir was the deceased ruler’s son in Lima. With this act, the Spaniards suddenly found themselves closely allied with Huascar’s faction and were so viewed by both Inca groups.

Topa Huallpa died within a few months—poisoned, according to Huascar’s supporters. At this point, the Spaniards reaffirmed their alliance with Huascar’s following, placing Huascar’s brother, Manco Inca, on the throne and assisting him in dispersing the remnants of Atahuallpa’s army. The real Spanish conquest of Peru occurred during the next few years, when they prevented Manco Inca from reestablishing control over the coast and the north, much of which was still loyal to Atahuallpa or under no control at all. By 1535 the Inca ruler realized that the Spaniards were more dangerous than any threat posed by the remnants of Atahuallpa’s followers. But it was too late. His attacks on the Spanish settlements were beaten back, and he was eventually driven into a remote mountainous area called Vitcos, where he established an independent Inca state that lasted until 1572.

Social and political structure

According to the incomplete evidence provided by the Spanish eyewitnesses, the Inca themselves considered the term Inca applicable only to the descendants of the 12 individuals who traditionally are said to have ruled from Cuzco. Of the 12, only four or five can be documented to have been actual historical personages. The others may have been products of later efforts to legitimate and enhance the royal genealogy. There is also the possibility that some of the “earlier” names were actually a parallel line of personalities, possibly with different functions that may have been considered “heathen” by the Spanish. This hypothesis cannot be verified with the sources now available.

In addition to the 12 lineages, the ranks of “Inca by decree” or “as a privilege” are also mentioned by some of the Spanish sources. Their origins and functions were just as nebulous as those of the royals: one of the few Andean sources, Poma da Ayala, claims that some of the inhabitants of the Cuzco basin who were conquered early during the expansion of the Late Horizon were “granted” or “promoted to” Inca status. They were “improved,” according to Poma da Ayala, although his own case is weakened by his claim that his ancestors, who lived many hundreds of miles north of Cuzco, had benefited from such social mobility.

The administrative organization of Tawantinsuyu is poorly understood, although its origins are known to lie in the earlier ethnic subdivisions. Claims have been made that authority was left in the hands of traditional lords who simply had to demonstrate their fealty. Other Spanish sources make reference to an administrative reorganization, in which all of the conquered groups were shoehorned into a decimal system. There is some evidence that decimal subdivisions were present in the Cajamarca region of northern Peru; and at the time of the conquest the decimal vocabulary apparently was in the process of being imposed on the rest of the country, presumably to rationalize the multiplicity of local and divided loyalties. The administrative papers available for a part of the Huánuco region allow the identification of a “hundred-households” unit with five actual hamlets, all of which were near each other. Since these records were kept house by house, it has been possible to test the significance of the decimal vocabulary at its lowest level. What is meant when the records speak of “lords of 10,000 households,” however, cannot now be fathomed.

A clearer picture has emerged of the ethnic lords incorporated by the Inca into their realm. Some had ruled only small units—a few hundred households; others, like the Huanca or the Lupaca claimed to have had 20,000 domestic units. There is no record of the size of the coastal Chimú polity, which must have been quite large. The Chincha claimed 30,000 “fires,” and the Chimú may well have been even larger before their defeat by Cuzco.

Usually, two lords ruled each ethnic group—which has been one of the arguments for considering as plausible a dual rule in Cuzco as well. The best evidence of the duties of the ethnic lords has come from the Aymara kingdom of the Lupaca: at one point in Inca history they rose in rebellion against Cuzco rule, and in the decades immediately prior to the arrival of the Europeans they were busy leading “6,000 soldiers” on faraway battlefields in what is now Ecuador. The testimony of the Lupaca, collected in 1567, claims that on such adventures they did not return to their lands for the harvest but devoted most of their energies to war, and in return they were exempted from farming, road building, and other state chores.

There was no tribute system in Inca statecraft, just as there had been no contributions in kind in earlier Andean polities. The peasantry owed only their energy, which was delivered through the well-understood mit’a system. Led by their traditional leaders, the people appeared for their obligations, lineage by lineage. The best quipu record of these obligations has come from a group who lived in the Huánuco area. Just as they had provided energy for their own lords, under Inca rule this group sent dozens of couples to labour on public works or to produce the grain that, as beer, was “fed” to the mummies of deceased Inca kings. Others became soldiers or helped fill the warehouses; some carried loads along the Inca highway system, while still others were soldiers under the command of their traditional lords. Using this quipu, it has been possible to test the claim that there was no tribute system: of its 26 cords only two deal with articles submitted in kind, wild honey and tropical feathers, both of which were lowland commodities that were gathered and not cultivated.

The absence of tribute was closely connected to the absence of markets. Just as all households owed some of their energies to their ethnic lords, to the shrines, and to Cuzco, so too their household needs were satisfied by the claims they could make to the reciprocal services of their kinfolk or their ethnic peers or to the administrative services of their ethnic authorities. It is probable that with the growth of the Inca state over time, this formula was breached, particularly in the case of prisoners of war and other populations moved from their traditional areas for state purposes.

The most elaborate example of the structural changes that emerged from the need to create new state revenues was the expansion and reorganization of corn production for military purposes in the Cochabamba Valley. This region was the largest single corn-producing area in the highlands. One of the later kings removed the native population and set up a large state enterprise (more than 2,000 warehouses), to which some 25 highland groups were sent on rotation, lineage by lineage. Each ethnic group was responsible for particular strips that were traced across the valley by Cuzco surveyors. In 1575 the Spanish viceroy Francisco de Toledo used this Inca precedent to establish the repartimiento system that provided labour for the silver mines at Potosí.

Inca technology and intellectual life

The intellectual tradition of the Inca emerged from their detailed and efficient knowledge and use of an extremely challenging environment. No system of writing, in the European sense, has been discovered, and the question remains as to how long-distance communication was achieved.

Beyond oral transmission, the most promising domain for research is in textiles. In the highlands very few have been preserved because of the humidity, but on the coastal desert many burial cloths from widely different periods have been located and studied. Their artistic qualities have fomented grave robbing on a very large scale; museums throughout the world have dozens if not hundreds of such cloths, each of great beauty and enormous sophistication.

Fibre technology went beyond burial or sacrificial textiles: Viceroy Toledo wrote to Philip II that he was sending four gigantic cloths on which maps of his Andean realm had been painted. While the letter was carefully filed in the Archives of the Indies, at Sevilla (Seville), the maps have never been located. Other uses of textiles included the quipu used for bookkeeping and possibly also for historical recording; suspension bridges, some of which are still maintained on a regular basis by particular villages responsible for reweaving; and calendars and ceremonial accounting.

While in the field, Inca armies were rewarded with corn and cloth. One European observer was told that soldiers would rebel if they did not receive their issues of textiles and corn beer. A major manufacturing centre employing “a thousand” full-time weavers was established on the northeastern shore of Lake Titicaca. The craftspeople there were men, but every administrative centre along the Inca highway is said to have housed a group of secluded women weavers (Chosen Women); one such house, at Huánuco Pampa (administrative centre of the Huánuco region), has been located and excavated. The storehouses, full of thousands of textiles, were one of the wonders frequently mentioned by the early Spaniards in their letters.

As Tawantinsuyu grew and involved peoples of many different environments and cultures, techniques originating in any particular ethnic group were spread across the land. Prior to the Inca expansion, metals—gold, silver, copper, and their alloys—were used mainly for ornaments; and tools were made from wood and stone. Bronze tools—crowbars, chisels, axes, knives, and clubheads, to name only a few—became exceedingly common after the Inca conquest.

The remarkable Inca highway system was also noted by the earliest Spanish eyewitnesses, since these roads were in constant use, even by horses. Research since the 1950s has provided fresh insights into the engineering methods and geographic location of two parallel roads—one in the highlands, the other on the coast—the whole system adding up to at least 15,500 miles. While some of these roads may have been built first during the Middle Horizon and even earlier, it was during Inca times that the roads were maintained and unified into a single political and economic system. Travel units, adjusted to the pace of a loaded llama or human carrier, can still be detected along the Qhapaq Ñan, the main north–south royal road in the highlands. At the end of each day the caravan stopped at a tambo, a way station, which, although smaller than an administrative centre, was complete with warehouses and barracks. The maintenance of the road segment and the filling of storehouses was part of the mit’a responsibilities of neighbouring groups.

Measurement of both distance and surface area was done by units called tupu, since the Andean concern was with units of human energy expended. Somehow, two measurements that belonged to very different European systems of reckoning were part of a single Andean concern. Units of land measurement, called papakancha, also differed: where the land was in continuous cultivation, as in corn country, one unit was used; another unit was in use for highland-tuber cultivation, where fallowing and rotation was the dominant crop pattern. As one “measurer” explained to the viceroy’s envoy, the papakancha was of one size when it was at a protected, lower altitude, but it could be up to seven times that size on the high, cold puna.