The last Lamanite Control of the Andes

The last of the Lamanites in control of the Andean area from Ecuador to Chile were the famed Inca (Inka), who dominated the highlands and lowlands of the Andes. However, it is debatable when this dominance began and how long it took place.

Terence D’Altroy, a professor of anthropology at Columbia University and author of “The Incas,” claims that the Inca Empire’s rise was meteoric, but feels precise dates for its rise seem elusive. Still, there are others who have a very different view of this. In perhaps a more believable beginning there are those historians who think that the Inca existed over a much longer period and came to power in a natural growth of their culture.

While much has been written about the Inca, and much of that ill-founded in non-factual writing and tourism needs of Peruvian merchants, vendors, and tour guides, interwoven among the pompous rhetoric heard all over the Andean area today, except from the professionals who have spent much of their lives studying the history of their people.

The reality is that, as we have written here before, the Inca who were initially called simply cusquenos (“natives of Cusco”) were a small community, nowhere near numbering the millions many claim, and not even much into the tens of thousands, at the turn of the 15^th century. And more importantly, they were not a dominant society at the time, and the name Inca (Inka) was unused.

Chanka village west of Cuzco

 

Third, a people called the Chanka (Chanca) dominated the region today known as Andahaylas, which is taken from the Quechua word Antahuaylla, composed in turn, by the conjunction of the words: Anta which means: copper-colored clouds; and the word: huallya, which in turn means: meadow. Therefore, Antahuaylla would come to mean: meadow of the clouds; a term on which many authors agree and especially Juan Barrio, who in his book titled: Antahuaylla en la ruta de los libeadores ; published around 1975, in the city of Lima; devotes a whole chapter to explain the origin and meaning of Antahuaylla .

In the early 1400s AD, the Spanish called this area pradera de los celajes (“prairie of colored clouds”) and is located in the western part of the Apurímac Region, near the modern city of Abancay. This large Chanka culture was divided into three main groups: the Urin Chankas, or the Lower Chankas; the Villca, or Hancohuallos; and the Hanan Chankas, or the Upper Chankas, the latter located at Antahuaylla. It was this latter group that dominated the area, mounting an army of a claimed 60,000 warriors around 1435 AD, claimed origination from the lake named Chulqlluqucha, and united the Choclopus and Urququcha, and had a territory between the rivers Ancoyaco (Mantaro), Pampas and Pachachaca (Apurímac). In the century or two before, they expanded to "Ancoyaco ayllukuna" with its headquarters in Paucar and the Urin Chankas of Antahuaylla as a secondary base.

They developed an autonomous culture and had an optional language of puquina. Its capital was Waman Karpa (“falcon’s tent"), on the shore of Lake Anori, 21 miles from Antahuaylla. Located on the banks of the river Pampas, the Chanka began their expansion under Uscovilca, whose mummified body was preserved with veneration in Waman Karpa until the time of the Chankas move to conquer Cuzco (Quechua Qosqo).

The terrible Chanka that threw fear into their enemies

It is believed by most archaeologists that the Chankas, with their large population, were considered bloody in battle, brutal to their enemies and terrorizing to their captives. For nearly 250 years they developed into a strong, aggressive, and large faction in central Peru, and considered themselves superior to all other groups in every way in the area they controlled, and as the result desired to control all the people around them.

In 1438, the Chanka ruler, Anccu Hualloc made his move, leading the Chanka against Cuzco, where the Cusqueños a smaller society under Viracocha were located. The Cusqueños leader, Viracocha , upon learning of the approaching Chanka, fled Cuzco and took his oldest son, Urco with him, leaving a younger son, Cusi Yupanqui, behind. This young prince rallied his people, and tried to enlist the aid of several small groups living around them in the Cuzco area, who declined, waiting to see who would be the winner of the coming conflict.

To offset the vast number of approaching Chanka, Cusi Yupanqui devised a unique plan of defense of painting warriors on large rocks surrounding the Cuzco area of their land. His subterfuge surprised and frightened the Chanka in their attack, killed Anccu Hualloc and defeated the superior sized Chanka army, claiming 22,000 Chanka dead to 8,000 Cusqueños.

This victory catapulted Cusi Yupanqui into the leadership of the Cusqueños, who changed his name to Pachacuti Yupanqui or Pachacutec (meaning “he who shakes the earth with honor”), adopted the appellation Inka, meaning “Prince” or “King” Inka for himself, and over time in history the Cusqueños became known as the Inca, and as their power expanded, called their growing empire Tawantinsuyo (or Tahuantinsuyu) meaning “Land of the Four Quarters” or “The Four Parts Together.”

Chanka-style ruins of an early settlement

 

After their defeat the Chanka (some withdrew into the jungle to settle eventually in Lamas) along with the small tribes in the valley, joined with the Cusqueños, making them into a sizable military force, and their sudden power led to an aggression that lasted for almost 100 years until the Spanish arrived, creating fear in numerous small city-states throughout the Andean area, who joined the Inka rather than fight them. After the defeat of the Chanka, Cusi Yupanqui changed his name to Inka Pachacuti

Within three generations, the Inca expanded their domain from the valley of Cuzco to nearly the whole of western South America. By the time the Spanish arrived in 1532, they ruled an empire that extended along the Pacific coast and Andean highlands from the northern border of modern Ecuador to the Maule River in central Chile.

Between 1438 and 1532 (94 years) the Cusqueños, whose name Inka (which means prince or king) was used to describe them, when they reached their peak, the empire included up to 12-million people and extended from the border of Ecuador and Colombia to about 50 miles south of modern Santiago, along the Maule River. To support this empire, a system of pre-existing roads stretched for almost 25,000 miles about three times the diameter of the Earth.

The Inca lived mostly in buildings built long before they existed, along with an increased number of stone houses, made out of fieldstones or semi-worked stone blocks and dirt set in mortar; adobe walls were also quite common, usually laid over stone foundations varying in size. They were all built in the Andes on flat plateaus. Their temples, however, were built on circular mounds made by the Inca, sort of like a slanted cylinder. At the top, there was a plateau.

The laws of the empire of the Incas, were designed to inculcate mainly the values of the honesty, the truth, and the work, and to create a harmonic society, laborious, disciplined, and favorable to the empire. Most common people were farmers, artisans, or servants. There were no slaves in Inca society. Lower-class men and women farmed on government lands, served in the army, worked in mines. Children of common Inca were not educated.

Maize growing in the Inca Empire

 

Crops cultivated across the Inca Empire included maize, coca, beans, grains, potatoes, sweet potatoes, ulluco, oca, mashwa, pepper, tomatoes, peanuts, cashews, squash, cucumber, quinoa, gourd, cotton, talwi, carob, chirimoya, lúcuma, guayabo, and avocado.

In 1529, after 91 years of the Empire, a dynastic (civil) war erupted between the two half-brothers, Huáscar and Atahualpa, sons of Huayna Capac (Wayna Qhapaq), who had travelled north to investigate the strangers, but did not personally encounter any Spaniards.  He contracted smallpox and died in 1527, with his eldest son and heir, Ninan Cuyochi, died soon after hi

Though Huayna Capac had appointed Huáscar as king, and though he was supported by the nobility in Cuzco, by religious and political authorities and other main figures, and though he was considered the eldest "pure" Inca, because his parents, Huayna Capac and Chincha Ocllo, were siblings, he was described as ill-tempered, suspicious, and disrespectful of laws and customs, Atahualpa claimed the throne as well.

With the Empire thrown into uncertainty over who was to replace Huayna, the brothers fought a civil war over the succession to the throne of the Inca Empire. Atahualpa, with 250,000 men fought against his half-brother, Huáscar with his 400,000-man army, and claimed victory in the north where Hauyna had stationed the Empire’s army.  In 1532 as the war was ending, the Spanish arrived.

Francis Pizarro leads his small band into Peru

 

Following Atahualpa's victory, Spanish forces led by Francisco Pizarro invaded this region with a force of 62 horsemen and 106 afoot soldiers, plus local groups who did not appreciate the Inca takeover of their lands. Francisco Pizarro ultimately captured and killed Atahualpa, after receiving a ransom that was purportedly to free him.

Thus ended the Inca Empire, the last Lamanite control of the Andes as Pizarro killed and relocated many of the Inca, and placed others in slavery, pressed into working in the gold, silver and copper mines throughout the land. Once again, while many Peruvians today, especially those who rely on tourism, claim the Inca built all the famed buildings that are now in ruins; however, these had been built long before the rise of the Inca—more than a thousand years before the Inca.