The Last Days of the Incas (15 page)

After the two lords had departed, Pizarro no doubt quietly made the sign of the cross, touching his forehead and then each side of his chest. Military leader, strategist, diplomat, CEO, terrorist, and now hostage taker, Pizarro was also a sincerely devout Christian. The fifty-four-year-old conquistador fully believed in divine providence. He also believed that God had intervened today on the side of the slashing, blood-splattered Christians on the square. The proof lay in Atahualpa’s capture and in the fact that so many had been killed by so few. The Inca emperor and his subjects
were nonbelievers, after all, whose souls, without conversion, were destined for hell. Though blood had been spilled, Pizarro was nevertheless convinced that in the end it would be he and his conquistadors and their bloody swords that would bring the great mass of nonbelievers into the sacred fold of the Lord.

Many of the Spaniards now sank into sleep, the first that some of them had had in more than forty-eight hours. Pizarro had appointed others to patrol the town that night. Soon, the town’s inhabitants who had hidden in their houses that day heard the metallic footsteps of the strange giant animals the bearded invaders rode, the horse hooves clacking slowly on the deserted streets, while bodies still lay strewn about in darkened piles. Meanwhile, inside the temple of the sun, Pizarro ordered that a bed be prepared for Atahualpa in the same room where he himself slept. As the two leaders from different worlds lay down in their beds—Inca style, with a gathering of richly woven blankets on the ground underlain by a woven mat—each no doubt had entirely different thoughts as he drifted off to sleep. Here, within a stone chamber that Inca masons had assembled with painstaking care, long before any Inca had ever heard of a Spaniard, drifted off to sleep two men upon whom the fate of the entire empire now rested: Pizarro and Atahualpa—the conquistador and the native king.

The next morning, Pizarro sent Hernando de Soto with thirty horsemen to investigate Atahualpa’s old camp, the same camp where Soto had had his first meeting with the emperor two days earlier. As they galloped along the now familiar road and then crossed the two rivers, Soto noticed that little seemed to have changed. The same great fleet of tents spread out before him in a vast tableau and here, too, stood what seemed to be the same vast ranks of native soldiers—as if the day before the Spaniards hadn’t even made a dent in their numbers. While clearly tense, none of the warriors made a move against the Spaniards. At least for the time being, they were obviously obeying the orders of their commanders, who in turn were obeying the commands of their captured emperor. With free rein now to plunder all that he had seen only a few days before, Soto and his men ransacked the royal camp, gathering up all the gold, silver, and jewels they could find, then galloping their horses over the plains, where they collected even more golden objects. For it was on the plain that
Atahualpa’s frightened servants had dropped their serving pieces and ornaments as they themselves had fled. Before the sun had fully risen in the sky, Soto and his men

The Spaniards—most of whom were in their twenties and for many of whom this was their first expedition—couldn’t believe their good luck. Almost overnight they seemed to have cracked open the hard outer shell of an empire and now, as if from a giant piñata, gold, silver, and jewels suddenly began to tumble to their feet. While his men admired the loot, Pizarro noted that the llamas—strange, flat-backed, camel-like creatures with large eyes and biting yellow teeth—were befouling the square, the same square that he had earlier ordered some of the captive natives to clean of dead bodies. Pizarro now insisted that the llamas be set free, as they might encumber troop movements if the Incas should decide to attack. Besides, there were so many of the animals that the Spaniards could easily kill as many as they needed for food. Pizarro next ordered the natives who had been captured to assemble on the square, choosing some to serve the Spaniards and ordering the rest to return to their homes. The governor then ordered Atahualpa to disband his army, overruling some of his captains who had suggested that first the right hand of each native soldier be cut off before sending them on their way. The bloody rout the day before, Pizarro no doubt felt, was sufficient to get his message across: that a new set of masters had arrived in Peru—and that those new masters were to be strictly obeyed.

The behavior of Pizarro and his entourage had thus far followed standard conquest procedure. First, evidence of a native empire had to be discovered, one civilized enough to include a mass of native peasants who were used to paying taxes to an elite. It
was of no use to find “wild” Indians who didn’t farm or had no experience with civilization. The Spaniards, after all, had come to create a feudal society over which to rule, and a feudal society, by definition, required a tax-paying peasantry.

Second, a few legalities had to be taken care of, which normally included the need for obtaining a royal license from the monarchs of Spain. Third came a legal pretext, which in the case of Atahualpa consisted of reading him the
Requerimiento
and thus his legal rights. Conveyed to him in probably a bad translation, the Requirement had informed Atahualpa that he had the right to accept the new power structure—and that if he or anyone else resisted they would quickly be put to the sword. According to the logic of sixteenth-century Spanish jurisprudence, by refusing to submit to the Spaniards and by throwing to the ground a black object with fine squiggles on its leaves that he had no way of understanding, Atahualpa had immediately forfeited his rights to the Inca Empire.

The fourth step in the normal process was to begin the conquest itself, one that was almost always accompanied by a massive display of terror in a typical “shock and awe,” or “blitzkrieg,” campaign. Savage attacks were purposely unleashed in order to crush native resistance and to terrorize the local inhabitants into obeying their new masters. Cortés had done this early on in Mexico, where in the town of Cholula he and his men had massacred an estimated three thousand natives in less than two hours. Spaniards throughout the Indies, in fact, had frequently cut off the arms or hands of any natives who resisted their demands, and had burned alive many native chieftains, using such spectacular displays to sow terror throughout the local population. Pizarro and his men, in their slaughter of perhaps seven thousand natives in less than a few hours, had obviously set a new benchmark for terror in the New World. Every Spanish leader, however, had to determine just how much terror was necessary in order to achieve the desired results. Pizarro’s goal was not to exterminate the natives but to control them. Pizarro also knew that, if needed, additional terror could always be methodically applied.

One of the final protocols of the typical Spanish conquest was to capture alive the native leader, if at all possible. In most cases, the Spaniards could then leverage the bonds of loyalty the subjects had for their leader as a method of political control. The power gained by capturing one native leader, seized by a relatively small
group of Spaniards, was similar to the effect of fielding a Spanish army of thousands, which no conquest expedition in the New World possessed.

In terms of standard operating procedures, then, the conquest of Peru was proceeding very well indeed. Pizarro had discovered a vast, wealthy civilization based upon tax-paying peasants, had acquired the proper licenses for its plunder, had informed the local ruler of the new power structure and of his obligation to submit, had successfully carried out a massive shock and awe campaign after the ruler’s refusal, and now held that same ruler hostage, whom the rest of the empire’s inhabitants appeared to be continuing to obey. The final steps in this process, Pizarro knew, were to consolidate and extend his already substantial gains, to carry out the empire’s plunder, and then to begin diverting the vast stream of tax revenues away from the Inca elite and into the arms of Peru’s new rulers.

Not long after Pizarro had ordered Atahualpa to disband his army, the giant Inca camp Soto had visited began to pack up and disperse. Abruptly decommissioned, Atahualpa’s warriors now began fanning out in every direction as most headed off to the distant villages from where they had been conscripted. The planned triumphal march to Cuzco now canceled, confusion and rumors began to spread from Cajamarca to all parts of Peru, as the traveling warriors frequently paused on their return journeys to recount to groups of fascinated listeners the story of the recent massacre. In modern terms, their story was a simple one: a band of foreign terrorists had captured their leader and now held him prisoner. The inevitable questions in the shocked listeners’ minds were: Who were these foreigners and what did they want? And, How long were they likely to stay?

As Atahualpa watched Pizarro’s men marveling and shouting to one another excitedly about the golden plates and goblets from his camp, his observations of the invaders’ behavior must have led him to an inescapable conclusion: obviously, these bearded foreigners were here merely to maraud and steal. Few in number, they were clearly not a conquering army and thus must have no intention of staying. Instead, their only interest appeared to be in plundering all they could. Once the foreigners had gathered all they could carry, Atahualpa reasoned, watching them with a slight frown, then surely they would take their booty and leave. The foreigners, after all, didn’t even try to hide from view what seemed to excite them most. Anything made of gold, which the Incas
called
qori
, or of silver, which they called
qullqi
, seemed to fascinate them more than anything else.

The Spaniards’ behavior, in fact, no doubt reminded Atahualpa of the behavior of the barbarians the Incas had conquered in the Antisuyu, or eastern quarter, of their empire, those who inhabited the dark, dense, seemingly claustrophobic jungles and who seemed to have a fascination for almost anything the Incas produced. The Incas called the uncivilized peoples beyond their eastern borders the Antis.
^*
Surely, Atahualpa no doubt believed, despite their strange animals and powerful weapons, these foreigners were no different. They, too, were like the Antis or other marauding tribes. Barbarians. The question no doubt foremost in Atahualpa’s mind, therefore—as he observed the Spaniards excitedly fingering his dinnerware and babbling in an unintelligible tongue—was how could he hasten these savages’ departure? And how could he, in the meantime, stay alive and regain his own freedom?

Having spent the last five years ruling as the de facto emperor of the northern half of the Inca Empire, making decisions on a daily basis and deciding which problems had to be addressed and how they might be overcome, Atahualpa not surprisingly now came up with a possible solution for his predicament. Motioning to one of the interpreters and to Pizarro, the emperor walked into one of the rooms of the temple of the sun, then with a piece of chalk drew a white line on the wall, reaching up well over his head to do so. Turning to Pizarro, Atahualpa told the grizzled conquistador, a quarter of a century older than himself, that he was well aware of why the Spaniards had come to Tawantinsuyu, and that he, Atahualpa, would present them with all the gold and silver objects they wished—if Pizarro would spare his life.
^†
One eyewitness wrote:

Most of the gold and silver objects were in Cuzco, Atahualpa explained, a city lying far to the south. Thus it would take him about a year to collect all that he had promised. If nothing else, Atahualpa no doubt thought, he would at least be increasing his own value to the Spaniards and therefore would be buying himself more time. With additional time, he would have more opportunities. For even though he was captive, Atahualpa still commanded armies totaling perhaps 100,000 men. It was too dangerous, however, to risk ordering his armies to attack, for he might be killed in the process. Yet if he could simply remain alive, and if the Spaniards were to let down their guard for even a moment, then he might still be in a position to do something about it.

Pizarro was clearly amazed by Atahualpa’s sudden offer. In all of his thirty years in the Indies he had never heard of a native chief who had made such a proposition. Clearly, a roomful of gold would make this latest expedition an instant financial success. And, if such a quantity of gold were so easy to come by, then obviously he had stumbled upon an empire even richer than he had imagined. Was Atahualpa telling the truth, however? Or was he simply stalling for time? For even though the emperor had just disbanded his army—how could he know for certain that Atahualpa hadn’t simply ordered his army to reassemble nearby in order to prepare for an attack?

Pizarro still didn’t understand the vast dimensions of the empire he had invaded, one that enclosed roughly three times the landmass of modern Spain, was five times its length, and had twice its population. If Atahualpa’s offer, however, provided strong evidence that the empire must be vast, the emperor’s next answer confirmed it. “How long will your messengers take to go to the city of Cuzco?” Pizarro asked, and then watched Atahualpa’s expression intently as the translator converted Spanish into the Incas’
runasimi: