Who Were The Incas?
The Incas were the ruling class of the Inca Empire. At its height, the empire encompassed 10 million subjects, 40 thousand ethnic Incas, 30 languages, and countless religions and customs. It ran 2500 miles along the Andes, and included parts of modern-day southwest Ecuador, all of Peru, western and south central Bolivia, northwest Argentina, southwest Colombia and northern Chile.
The empire existed from 1438 until 1533. Before this period, The Incas founded The Kingdom of Cusco in 1285 when, as the tradition goes, the founder Manco Capac was forced north from the village of Paqarittampu, settling in a valley that would become Cusco 15 miles away. The Kingdom of Cusco, located in modern day Peru, expanded until it became known as the Inca State. Cusco remained the capital of the Inca Empire, its translation from Quechua (the Inca language) is ‘centre of the world’. As the empire grew the Incas built roads going North, South, East and West to connect their increasingly far away territories.
The Incas held the belief that God had bestowed upon them the divine right to rule over the people they conquered. In practice this meant the appointment exclusively of Incan nobility to positions of power in the empire, speakers of the Quechua language were given privileged status, and conquered subjects were required to acknowledge Incan gods as superior to their own. These were some of the causes for the discontent that bubbled constantly during the Incan reign. The Incas often had to put out local uprisings, even building a new Inca city called Quito to the north to stamp out unrest there. When the Spanish arrived, there was no shortage of disgruntled local chieftains eager to assist and take up arms against their oppressors.
Nature and animals took centre stage in the beliefs and customs of the Incas. Theirs was an animalistic, pagan religion which worshipped the sun, the moon, mountains, and objects through complex daily, monthly, and annual ceremonies. Daily sacrifice (human or animal) was commonplace, for example, to encourage the sun to return the next day. When famine, pestilence or defeat in battle struck, sacrifices became more and more extreme. Children, well-fed and mummified in veils, would be sacrificed in order to turn the luck that the disgruntled gods had smited upon them.
All important decisions were given over to the gods. From diagnosis of illnesses, predicting the outcome of battles, or arriving at guilty or non-guilty verdicts. It was also used to decide which gods required what type of sacrifice and when. Of course, in order to enforce the gods will, someone had to know what it was they wanted. Thankfully it was made plain through the use of divination.
Divination is the practice of seeking knowledge of the future or the unknown through supernatural means. The gods spoke to the Incas through various idols and oracles located throughout the kingdom. Other divination methods included observing the movements of spiders, observing the arrangement that coca leaves took after dropping them in a shallow dish, and the drinking of ayahuasca. Ayahuasca is a psychedelic brewed from plants that affect the central nervous system. It was believed that once high as a kite, one could communicate with supernatural powers, and hence know their will.
Festivals were numerous and based mainly around the agricultural calendar- agriculture being the engine for the empire- feeding its subjects and driving the economy. To this day, the descendants of the Incas carry out these festivals and rituals (thankfully without the sacrifice) in the main square and other sites in Cusco.
The empire hadn’t even reached its 100th birthday when it fell apart. A cocktail of factors came together to bring about the end of the great empire and the beginning of Spanish rule.
First, the arrival of the Spanish. Encouraged by the recent plundering of The Aztecs, Spanish explorer Pizarro and his cronies were scouting out the West coast of South America, looking for further treasures. They came to the edge of the Inca kingdom and created the first Spanish settlement in Peru called San Miguel de Piura. After a year had passed, the Spanish met with the Incan King Atahualpa, took him hostage, and demanded a hefty ransom. Once the ransom was paid, the Spanish executed the king anyway, based, they claimed, on charges to do with the recent civil war he had fought and won against his brother.
The civil war left the Incas divided at a terrible time given the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors backed by the Spanish crown. Even though one brother had won, there were still factions of the kingdom that remained loyal to the other. General unrest among the population due to oppressive policy also didn’t help. Locals were quick to take up arms and assist the Spanish in their march on Cusco after they had executed the Incan King. Disease, especially smallpox, had spread from Central America where it had been brought across from Europe by the Spanish during their conquest of The Aztecs. This severely affected the population of the empire, weakening and killing many.
Finally, the war tactics and equipment of the Spanish were vastly superior to that of the Incas. The Incas were new to concepts like ambush in battle, they had never seen horses before, and the weapons (including guns) and armour that the Spanish had were vastly superior.
Thus came the beginning of the end for The Incas after Cusco fell in 1533 to the Spanish. The remaining Inca royalty retreated to a remote area of jungle where they established a short-lived neo-Inca state. It took a further four decades for the Spanish to root out the last surviving Inca royalty and kill them.
