An act of homage by Inca orejones to the King of Spain

UNJUST and callous though it was, Atahualpa’s execution did achieve the immediate purpose of Almagro and those who had insisted on it. The combined forces of Pizarro and Almagro were now free to push their conquest into the heart of the Inca empire. The first reaction to Atahualpa’s death was one of relief among much of the local population. It seemed to them to mark an end to oppression by the Quitan victors of the civil war. Pizarro lost no time in consolidating the goodwill of the Huascar faction, for he was about to march towards Cuzco and wished to appear as its liberator. He knew by now the extent to which the administration of the empire depended on the Inca himself. And he had the good fortune to have the eldest remaining legitimate son of Huayna-Capac with him in Cajamarca. This was Tupac Huallpa, the younger brother of Huascar, and the man who had taken much care to avoid assassination by Atahualpa’s followers after his arrival in Cajamarca.* Pizarro made sure that this puppet Inca would be crowned with every traditional attribute of an Inca investiture. As soon as Atahualpa was buried, Pizarro ‘immediately ordered all the caciques and chiefs who were residing in the city in the court of the dead ruler – there were many of them, some from remote districts – to assemble in the main square so that he could give them another ruler who would govern in the name of His Majesty’. They said that Tupac Huallpa was next in line of succession and would be acceptable to them.

The coronation started on the following day. ‘The appropriate ceremonies were performed, and each [chief] came up to offer him a white plume as a token of vassalage, for this had been the ancient custom among them ever since the country had been conquered by the Incas. After this they sang and danced and held a great feast, during which the new cacique king did not wear any precious clothing and did not carry the fringe on his forehead, as the dead ruler had done. The Governor asked him why he did this. He replied that it was the custom of his ancestors for the man taking possession of the empire to mourn the dead ruler. They traditionally spent three days fasting, shut up inside a house, and then emerged with great majesty and ceremonial to hold a great feast…. The Governor told him that if this was an ancient custom, he should observe it.’ The natives rapidly built a large house in which the new Inca was to make his retreat. ‘Once the fast was over he emerged magnificently dressed and accompanied by a great crowd of people, caciques and chiefs who were guarding him; and any place where he was to sit was decorated with very valuable cushions and with tapestries beneath his feet. Atahualpa’s great general Chalcuchima … was seated alongside the Inca, with Captain Tiso beside him and various brothers of the Inca on the other side. And so on in succession on alternate sides sat the other caciques, military commanders, provincial governors and lords of large districts. In short, no one was seated there who was not a person of quality.’ ‘They then received him as their lord with much humility, and kissed his hand and cheek, and turning their faces to the sun they gave thanks to it, saying that it had given them a natural lord. They then placed a very fine fringe on him, which is the equivalent of a crown among them.’ ‘They all ate together on the ground, for they do not use tables, and after they had dined the cacique said that he wished to do homage in the name of His Majesty, just as his own chiefs had done to him. The Governor told him to do whatever he saw fit, and the Inca then offered him a white plume that his caciques had given him … The Governor embraced him with great affection and accepted it.’

On the following day it was the Spaniards’ turn to conduct the ceremonies. ‘The Governor presented himself to the assembly dressed as finely as he was able in silk clothing, accompanied by the royal officials and some hidalgos* from his army who attended in their best clothes to add to the solemnity of the ceremony.’ Pizarro spoke to each chief in turn, and had his secretary record their names and provinces. He then delivered a declaration known as the Requirement, in which Spanish captains were supposed to inform native populations that the conquerors had been sent by the Emperor Charles in order to bring them the teaching of the true religion, and that all would be well if they submitted peacefully to the Emperor and his God. ‘He read all this out to them and had it proclaimed word by word through an interpreter. He then asked them whether they had fully understood it and they answered that they had…. The Governor then took the royal standard in his hands, raised it above him three times, and told them that they must each do the same.’ The caciques all dutifully raised the royal standard, to the sound of trumpets. ‘They then went to embrace the Governor who received them with great delight at their prompt submission…. When it was all over the Inca and the chiefs held great festivities. There were daily celebrations and entertainments with games and parties which were generally held in the Governor’s house.’

While the native leaders celebrated what appeared to many of them as a restoration of their legitimate royal house, the Spaniards made final preparations for the conquest of central Peru. A number of the less adventurous conquistadores asked permission to return to Spain with their share of the treasure. Pizarro felt confident enough to let them depart. He gave them llamas and Indians to help transport their gold across the mountains to San Miguel. Francisco de Xerez was among them, and he reported the sad news that some Spaniards lost treasure to a value of over 25,000 pesos when some llamas and Indians ran off with it. The returning conquistadores sailed to Panama and thence in four ships to Spain. The first ship sailed up the Guadalquivir to Seville on 5 December 1533, carrying Cristóbal de Mena and the first Peruvian gold to reach Europe. Hernando Pizarro arrived on the second ship on 9 January with the first treasure for the King. In addition to the gold and silver that had already been melted down into bars, Governor Pizarro had thought to send some works of art, to demonstrate the sophistication of this unknown civilisation. There were ‘thirty-eight vessels of gold and forty-eight of silver, among which was one eagle of silver whose body had a capacity of two cántaras [eight gallons] of water; two huge urns, one gold and one silver, each of which could hold a dismembered cow; two golden pots each of which could hold two fanegas of wheat; a golden idol the size of a four-year-old boy; and two small drums’. The treasure was unloaded on to the jetty of Seville, and transported by ox-cart to the Chamber of Commerce. Hernando Pizarro eagerly wrote to King Charles, on 14 January 1534, that he was bringing these precious objects, ‘pitchers, vases and other rare shapes that are worth seeing’. He assured the King that no prince had ever possessed such a beautiful and fascinating collection. Even the Council of the Indies was excited. It wrote to the King: ‘Since the news is so great, we beg Your Majesty to see [Pizarro’s letters], and to make provision … whether it pleases Your Majesty that he should come before your royal person with the pieces of silver and other jewels he is bringing.’

The King’s first reaction was negative: he ordered the Chamber to mielt all but a few light objects and to mint the gold into coins immediately. But he partially reversed this order a few days later, permitting the collection to be displayed to the general public and allowing Hernando to bring him a few more pieces. One young man who viewed the works of art was Pedro Cieza de León. His imagination was fired. He later became one of the most important and perceptive chroniclers of Peru, but he always remembered ‘the magnificent specimens exhibited in Seville which had been brought from Cajamarca’. Hernando Pizarro went to Toledo at the end of February, taking a small selection of objects. These included one huge silver urn and the two heavy gold pots (all of which were later sent’ to make coins’), two small gold drums, the bust of an Indian plated in gold and silver, and a golden stalk of maize. The King recorded no pleasure over these few lovely objects. They were entrusted to the royal jeweller after their brief public display, and were probably melted down, as were the other objects left in Seville.*

The return of the first conquistadores caused intense excitement. Hernando Pizarro was given a magnificent reception at Court, where he negotiated concessions highly favourable to Pizarro, and he then went on a recruiting drive to fire the enthusiasm of the young men of his native Extremadura. Mena and Xerez each produced books that rapidly became best-sellers and were translated into other European languages. Post-Renaissance Europe was dazzled by the discovery and sudden conquest of an unimagined empire of such brilliance.

The men at Cajamarca were now ready to abandon the city they had occupied for the past eight months and to set out towards Cuzco. They were attempting one of the most staggering invasions in history. Without supplies, communications or reinforcements, this tiny contingent was going to try to force its way into the heart of an enormous hostile empire, to seize its capital city. The road from Cajamarca to Cuzco lies along the line of the central Andes. It crosses and recrosses the watershed between the Amazon basin and the Pacific, and traverses half a dozen subsidiary ranges of mountains and wild torrents. The distance as the crow flies between the two cities is some 750 miles, and the journey was comparable to travelling from Lake Geneva to the eastern Carpathians or from Pike’s Peak to the Canadian border, in each case following the line of the mountains.

Pizarro, Almagro, Soto and their men marched out of Cajamarca on 11 August 1533.* Progress was uneventful in the early stages. Two days were spent at Cajabamba and four at Huamachuco. The army made its way through the rolling country between Cajamarca and the hills above the Huaylas valley, an area without spectacular views, but green and nowadays relatively wooded for Peru, with low, gnarled native Peruvian trees and plantations of tall imported eucalyptus. Two ruins survive at Huamachuco: close to the colonial town is a compact ruin whose walls intersect at right angles and whose rectangular enclosures possibly served as an Inca army camp;* and on a rocky ridge above the town is a wild series of mud and fieldstone walls towering out of a tangle of bushes and brambles. This is Marca Huamachuco, a citadel dating from the period before the Inca conquest when Peru was divided into city states.* From Huamachuco Pizarro’s force marched on to Andamarca, the town where Huascar was killed by Atahualpa’s men, and rested there for three days. They decided not to take the main highway through the Conchucos to the east of the Cordillera Blanca because of its many hills. They descended instead into the deep valley of Huaylas, at the point where the turbulent Santa river turns westwards to slice through dry gorges of pink rock towards the Pacific.

Huaylas was reached on the last day of the month, after its river had been crossed on one of the famous Inca suspension bridges. ‘At a point where the rivers are narrowest and most terrifying, and their waters most compressed, they make a great stone foundation on either bank. Thick wooden beams are laid across this stonework, and they fasten across the river cables of a thick osier, made like anchor ropes except that these cables are each some three palmos [3½ feet] thick. When half a dozen of these have been joined and laid across the river, to the width of a cart, they are interwoven with strong hemp and reinforced with sticks … When this is done, they place edges on either side like the sideboards of an oxcart. And so it lies suspended in mid-air, far above the water. It seemed impossible to make the horses – animals that weigh so much and are so timorous and excitable – cross something suspended in the air…. Although they refused at first, once they were placed on it their fear apparently calmed them and they crossed one behind the other, and there was no mishap at this first bridge.’ Pedro Sancho recalled how this first crossing terrified him: ‘to someone unaccustomed to it, the crossing appears dangerous because the bridge sags with its long span … so that one is continually going down until the middle is reached and from there one climbs until the far bank; and when the bridge is being crossed it trembles very much; all of which goes to the head of someone unaccustomed to it’.

Pizarro’s men rested for eight days at Huaylas before marching up its radiant valley. It was warm in the valley itself, with a profusion of wild flowers, good crops of maize and nowadays even palm trees. But the sides of the valley rise steeply and evenly to towering ranges of mountains on either side: to the west the bare crests of the Cordillera Negra, and to the east the permanent snows of the Cordillera Blanca crowned by Peru’s highest mountain, Huascaran.* The valley walls are too steep: for the high mountain tarns occasionally burst their banks of glacial moraine and the hillsides collapse in murderous landslides. Pizarro’s men were in no hurry to leave the valley, and spent twelve days of mid-September resting at Recuay. Beyond here one Inca road ran down the Fortaleza valley to reach the coast near the great adobe fortress-temple of Paramonga. But Pizarro followed the higher road that skirted the mountains to the south east, climbing across the heads of the Pativilca and Huaura rivers through Chiquian, Cajatambo and Oyón.*

The Spaniards were now almost half-way to Cuzco, and there had been few difficulties during the eight weeks since they left Cajamarca. The part of Peru through which they passed had been strongly loyal to Huascar’s faction, and ‘as far as Cajatambo the caciques and lords of the road gave the Governor and the Spaniards a good reception, providing all that they needed’. Despite this, the conquistadores had advanced with caution, ‘ always using great vigilance … and always maintaining a vanguard and rearguard’. Riding in litters in the midst of the Spanish column were the leading survivors of the two sides of the civil war: the young new Inca Tupac Huallpa and Atahualpa’s great general Chalcuchima. The former thought that he was being borne towards a restoration of his family on the imperial throne at Cuzco, and was an eager collaborator with the conquistadores. But Chalcuchima had seen himself lured away from his command at Jauja, tortured on arrival at Cajamarca, and had witnessed the execution of his lord Atahualpa. It was hardly surprising that the Spaniards should have feared and suspected every move by this formidable figure. No sooner had they left Cajamarca than they learned that a friendly Inca prince, Huaritico, whom they had sent ahead to ensure the repair of bridges and preparation of the route, had been killed by Quitan troops for his collaboration. ‘The cacique [Tupac Huallpa] showed great grief at his death and the Governor himself regretted it because he had liked him and because he was very useful to the Christians.’ Chalcuchima was blamed for the killing.* The Incas maintained storehouses along the highways to feed passing imperial armies. When some of these were found to be empty Chalcuchima was again blamed; but he protested that this inefficiency resulted from having Tupac Huallpa in charge of the native part of the expedition.* The suspicions about Chalcuchima heightened as the invaders marched closer to his former headquarters at Jauja. Cajatambo and Oyón were found to be almost deserted: their inhabitants had fled to avoid Atahualpa’s troops. An Indian now reached the column with news that Chalcuchima’s former army at Jauja was under arms and preparing to resist under the command of one Yucra-Hualpa. Quitan patrols were trying to prevent word of these preparations from reaching Tupac Huallpa. Pizarro decided to ensure that Chalcuchima could not escape to lead the resistance, and had him put in chains. Part at least of the Peruvian nation was finally trying to oppose the invasion. As Pizarro’s secretary naively explained: ‘The reason why these Indians rebelled and were seeking war with the Christians was that they saw the land being conquered by the Spaniards, and they themselves wished to govern it.’

Pizarro’s men now left the eerily empty towns on the Pacific side of the Andes, and marched up through the same desolate pass that Hernando Pizarro had crossed in March. There was still snow on the ground, and some men suffered from the terrible nausea of the altitude sickness, soroche. To the east of the pass the country continued to be bare, a plateau of wet treeless savannah and lichen-covered rocks. The anxieties of the invaders were heightened when yet another village was found deserted. There were further reports of Quitan troops massing ahead. ‘It was considered certain that this force had been moved on the advice and at the orders of Chalcuchima – he intended to escape from the Christians to go to join it.’ By Tuesday 7 October, the Spaniards rejoined the main imperial highway at Bombón on Lake Chinchaycocha (modern Junín).

In view of the increasing rumours, Pizarro decided that he must accelerate the advance. He therefore left the unwieldy part of his column – the infantry, artillery, precious metals, even the tents – to proceed more slowly under the command of the royal treasurer Alonso Riquelme. Pizarro himself pressed ahead with the best 75 horsemen and his able lieutenants Diego de Almagro, Hernando de Soto, his own brother Juan, and Pedro de Candía, with a special contingent of twenty foot-soldiers to guard the chained Chalcuchima.*

The Inca highway ran further to the east than does the modern dirt road: it climbed over the hills and down into the tight warm valley of Tarma. It was all ideal topography for an ambush. ‘The pass proved difficult – it looked as though we could never climb it. There was a difficult stretch of rock to descend into the canyon where all the horsemen had to dismount. Afterwards we had to climb to the top of an ascent, most of which was precipitous, difficult mountainside.’ Modern Tarma is a pretty town closely surrounded by hillsides of flower nurseries. But Pizarro feared that its cramped location would leave his horses no room for manoeuvre. He paused only long enough to feed the horses and pushed on to spend the night of 10 October on an exposed hillside. Sancho recalled it vividly. The men ‘ remained continuously on the alert, with the horses saddled and the men themselves unfed. They had no meal whatsoever, for they had no firewood and no water. They had not brought their tents with them and could not shelter themselves, so they were all dying of cold – for it rained heavily early in the night and then snowed. The armour and clothing they were wearing were all soaked.’ Next day the weary men rode on through Yanamarca and saw the corpses of over four thousand natives killed in one of the battles of the civil war – a further reminder of the fighting qualities of the Quitan professional soldiers.* They moved through hills covered with the ruins of pre-Inca settlements of Huanca Indians, and at last looked down on to the surprisingly level Jauja valley, with the Inca city cradled between sharp hills at its northern end.*

They also saw below them dark masses of Quitan soldiers, the men once commanded by their captive Chalcuchima and now led by Yucra-Hualpa.* But as they advanced down into the valley there was a vivid illustration of the suicidal cleavage that was paralysing Peru. ‘The natives all came out on to the road to look at the Christians and greatly celebrated their arrival, for they thought that it would mean their escape from the servitude in which they were held by that foreign army.’ Meanwhile the ‘foreign army’ of Quitan Incas was bracing itself for an act of resistance – the first military action in the seventeen months since the Spaniards landed on the Peruvian mainland or in the two months since they left Cajamarca. The bulk of the native army was massed on the far bank of the Mantaro river. But six hundred soldiers had been sent into Jauja in a last-minute attempt to destroy the city’s great storehouses. As the first two Spanish horsemen rode into Jauja they met armed natives running between the houses. The Spaniards reacted with the tactic whose effectiveness they had learned in their conquests in Mexico and Central America. They charged immediately. There was a skirmish in the narrow alleys of the town, and as more Spaniards galloped in the native troops were driven back to the river. They had just succeeded in setting fire to the thatched roof of one large storehouse and some other buildings. Juan Ruiz de Arce recalled that they entered Jauja just as the city was catching fire. Pedro Pizarro remembered that various golden vases were recovered from the embers of the burned storehouse, and Martín de Paredes and Toribio Montañés both wrote from San Miguel that Pizarro had taken ’300,000 pesos of burned gold in Jauja’. Almagro continued the pursuit by driving his horses into the river, which was beginning to rise at the start of the rainy season. The Indians on the far bank were in two minds as to whether to stand and fight or flee to defensible positions. Some fled northwards into the hills, others attempted to fight and were cut down. The battle ended in a field of maize at the river’s edge, with the slaughter of the frightened warriors who had tried to take refuge there: ‘On investigation it was found that not fifty had escaped.’

The native army must have been demoralised by this first savage encounter. Its leaders determined to march south to try to join Quisquis’s forces at Cuzco. But the Spaniards again acted quickly. After resting the exhausted men and horses for only one day, Pizarro sent eighty mounted men in pursuit. Riding hard, the invaders soon reached the Indians’ camp where the fires were still smoking. The great column of the native army was moving down the broad Mantaro valley a few miles beyond, with its soldiers marching ‘in squadrons of a hundred with the women and serving people between the squadrons’. The rearguard – ‘a squadron of good men’ – put up a resistance, but when they were ridden down the rest of the troops ran for cover in the rocky hills bordering the valley. Many men were too slow, and the Spaniards were merciless. ‘The pursuit continued for four leagues [sixteen miles] and many Indians were speared. We took all the serving people and the women … there was a good haul of both gold and silver.’ Herrera noted that the captives included ‘many beautiful women, and among them two daughters of Huayna-Capac’.

Francisco Pizarro stayed at Jauja for two weeks, from Sunday 12 October to Monday the 27th. A week after his arrival the slower-moving infantry under Riquelme reached the town with the army’s baggage and treasure. There was much activity during this brief stay. Jauja was tentatively ‘founded’ as a Spanish municipality and designated as the first Christian capital of Peru. Eighty Spaniards, half of whom had horses, were to be left in the town as its first citizens, and buildings were earmarked for a church and a town hall. Now that the invaders had encountered organised resistance, Pizarro decided to pare down his army, leaving the less useful elements to guard the treasure at Jauja. The royal treasurer Riquelme was also left behind: Pizarro preferred to be unencumbered by his advice and free from his observation; Riquelme did not mind being left in the rear of the fighting. Since many of the conquistadores were leaving their hoards of gold, there was a flurry of will-making and other legal activity by those about to strike deeper into unconquered Peru.*

During the stay at Jauja, the young Inca Tupac Huallpa died of an illness that had been weakening him since Cajamarca. The Spaniards were deeply distressed at the loss of this compliant puppet. They looked for a scapegoat. The leading citizens of Jauja wrote to the King: ‘It was commonly supposed that Captain Chalcuchima had given him herbs or some drink from which he died – although there was no proof or certainty about this.’ The young Inca probably died from natural causes, although Chalcuchima had good reason to kill this collaborating member of the Cuzco branch of the royal family. The death was a real embarrassment for the Spaniards. Pizarro had chosen Tupac Huallpa as the man most acceptable to Atahualpa’s chiefs, and he now had no idea whom to elevate. He was unaware that Peru was seething with plots to crown other claimants. In Quito, Atahualpa’s military commanders were considering the coronation of the Inca’s brother Quilliscacha while the general Rumiñavi was about to seize power for himself. In Cuzco Quisquis was rumoured to have offered the royal fringe to Atahualpa’s brother Paullu, who had shown certain sympathies to the Quitan cause.* Pizarro hastily summoned a meeting of native chiefs, including the two generals Chalcuchima and Tiso. The meeting reached deadlock, with two possible candidates for Inca. The Huascar faction suggested a full brother of the dead Tupac Huallpa, presumably one called Manco who was in the Cuzco area; the Quitans favoured Atahualpa’s young son. Pizarro tried to give secret encouragement to both sides. He told Chalcuchima that he would make him regent if he could lure Atahualpa’s son to the Spanish camp for coronation. Chalcuchima said that he would send envoys to Quito to try to bring the boy. Both leaders were probably lying and the proposal came to nothing.*

This haggling over the succession revealed how low the majesty of the Inca had sunk since the outbreak of the civil war and humiliations of Atahualpa. As the Inca lost prestige, so did the entire ruling caste of Peru. Another disruptive tendency was the decline of Cuzco and the resurrection of regional centres and tribal capitals. The Inca empire was just as much the triumph of one tribe and city as of a ruling dynasty. Cuzco was therefore fostered as spiritual and administrative heart of the empire, just as Rome and Byzantium had been in their day. It contained the superb residence of each successive Inca, a pantheon of mummified rulers, an enormous central square for daily ceremonial, a court attended by representatives of every assimilated tribe and the administrative councils of the Inca’s court. The Inca language, Quechua, was imposed throughout the empire and has proved the most durable legacy of the Incas: over half the present population of Peru speaks it as first language.

Cuzco was equally paramount as the religious heart of the empire. It contained the chief temples of the official creator god Viracocha and of the sun and moon worship that the Incas were trying to impose in place of local tribal deities. The animism that had existed before this sun worship was still preserved in innumerable shrines and holy places – rocks, springs, caves, trees – throughout the valley of Cuzco. These included the hills of Huanacauri and Qenco and the cave of Tambo-toco at Pacaritambo. All these holy places were now identified with the legend of the acquisition of Cuzco by the Incas’ ancestor Manco Capac.* The Incas showed skill and tact in dealing with the deities of conquered tribes. Portable gods and holy objects were accorded the honour of being transferred to Cuzco with their attendant priests. Once there, they acted as hostages for the good behaviour of their tribes. Cuzco also formed the focal point of many religious ceremonies that studded the Inca calendar. At the start of the rains in December there was the ceremony of Capac Raymi, in which foreigners were required to leave Cuzco while adolescent Inca nobles underwent their coming-of-age initiations. May witnessed Aymoray celebrating the maize harvest, and in June there was Inti Raymi, the important festival in honour of the sun. The Situa or Coya Raymi in September was a ceremony of purification: gods of subject tribes participated in the main ceremony, and relays of runners radiated from Cuzco throughout the empire performing symbolic rites of exorcism. Ploughing could take place in outlying provinces only after the Inca had first broken the ground at Cuzco with a golden hand-plough.*

Cuzco’s pre-eminence was temporarily eclipsed by Huayna-Capac’s long residence in the north, but Atahualpa had been on his way to be crowned and to rule in the former capital. The civil war and the Spaniards’ capture of Atahualpa damaged the prestige of Cuzco as well as of the Inca dynasty and tribe. The result was a resurgence of tribes that had been only half digested into the empire. This centrifugal tendency was only just beginning. The Spaniards saw the first signs of it in the hostility of the Jauja Huancas towards the Inca army of occupation. Regionalism and tribalism became increasingly important with the melting away of recently-imposed Inca systems of government. It was invaluable to the Spanish invaders – just as useful as the dynastic schism of the civil war, and the indifference of the native masses to the fate of the upper classes of Inca society.

Another factor commonly thought to have worked in the Spaniards’ favour was the natives’ identification of them with the returning creator god Viracocha. There is little evidence to support this idea. Atahualpa and his military commanders clearly regarded the Spaniards as ordinary mortals and had little hesitation in fighting them. None of the contemporary accounts of the Conquest showed that the native leaders hesitated for fear that the intruders might be divine. Atahualpa said after his capture that he had allowed the Spaniards to penetrate as far as Cajamarca only because of their small numbers. For the peasants the Spaniards were awesome strangers, but not divinities.

The legend of divinity grew when later chroniclers noticed similarities between Inca origin myths and their own biblical stories. Two of the most conscientious, Pedro de Cieza de León and Juan de Betanzos, both of whom wrote shortly after 1550, were struck by the fact that the natives called Spaniards ‘Viracochas’ like their god. ‘When I asked the Indians what this Viracocha was like when the ancients saw him … they told me that he was a tall man who had a white robe reaching down to his feet; that he wore this robe with a belt; that his hair was short and there was a crown around his head in the manner of a priest; and that he carried in his hands something that now appears to them like the breviaries that priests carry in their hands.’ Viracocha was ‘a white man, large of stature, whose air and person aroused great respect and veneration…. The Indians further relate that he travelled until he came to the shore of the sea, where, spreading his cloak, he moved on it over the waves, and never appeared again nor did they see him. Because of the manner of his departure they gave him the name of Viracocha, which means “foam of the sea”.’ Cieza wrote that the name Viracocha was first applied to the Spaniards by Huascar’s followers, to whom the conquistadores appeared as god-like deliverers from Atahualpa’s Quitans. Atahualpa’s own nephew agreed: ‘They seemed like Viracochas, which was our ancient name for the universal creator.’ And they had appeared mysteriously from the same sea into which the creator god had disappeared.

Pizarro and his Spaniards were only dimly aware of the forces that may have been acting in their favour, apart from the obvious dynastic struggle that they tried to exploit. To them Cuzco was still the all-important hub of the empire. Natives spoke of the city with veneration, and the three Spaniards who had been there gave spellbinding descriptions of its treasures. Cuzco became an irresistible magnet for every man in Pizarro’s force. Its inaccessibility and its armies of native defenders were discounted in a passionate frenzy to conquer this supreme prize.