For those who grew up in, or live
in, the Andean area, and for those who spend a majority of their lives in this
area, or those who come here and are interested in the history of the Andes and
not just searching for treasure, or finds, or stories to make them famous, the
question of the actual Inca history is a limited story. Only to those who are
unfamiliar with the real history of the Andes, who only come here to
occasionally excavate and study artifacts, ruins, and cultures, believe the
Inca created all the things attributed to them.
Perhaps, for those who have been
misled and misdirected about the Inca, we might present here a small glimpse of
the real Inca—not the Inca often
presented to those outside the Andean area, even by National Geographic and other well-known sources.
First
real Inka ruler, Cusi Yupanqui, who later took on the name of Pachacuti, who
defeated the Chanka and began the Inca Empire in 1438
First of all, the term Inca
(Inka) actually relates to a person—one of the kings or rulers of the Inca state,
or empire from about 1438 to 1530 A.D.—and actually means ruler or lord in Quechua.
According to their own history, which is quite faulty, the term Sapa Inca was used, meaning loosely, the
Great Inca. The term Inca also related to a member of the royal family of the
Inca. Today, however, the term Inca
relates to the Quechua people in highland Peru that established an empire from
about 1438 to 1530 A.D., that stretched from northern Ecuador to central Chile
between the coast and the Andes Mountains.
Initially, the people that later
became the Inca, were a small group living in the Cuzco area. They were
actually an insignificant pastoral tribe until they began to see themselves as
more—creating an Inca state under its first ruler, and adopting the name “Kingdom
of Cuzco” (Qusqu ‘Qosqo).
The problem with Inca history is
found in the fact that the shadow of their actual history, events clouded in
darkness and unsubstantiated except through the writings of an Inca apologist, himself
the son of an Inca noble woman and a Spanish conquistador, only began in the
latter half of the 13th century, somewhere around 1380 to 1410 A.D.
Exactly when is not known, for the Inca always had the habit of making vast and
elaborate claims about their origins and history that was unfounded and, in
most cases, downright fabrications. It was also their habit to 1) claim all
other peoples of the Andes were barbaric savages except for themselves, and 2)
acquire and claim as their own the great things that had been done before by others.
Left
and Right: Pachacuti (Pachacutec) in battle dress readying for the battle with
the invading Chanka; Top Center: The
ancient God Virachocha (Creator of the Universe) which the Inca also used:
Bottom Center: Portrait of Inca Pachacuti
The actual first Inca that can be
fairly accurately claimed is that of Cusi Yupanqui, who later took on the name
of Pachacuti, who was said to be the son of Viracocha, who supposedly headed
the Inca from 1410 to 1438. It was Pachacuti (Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui or
Pachacutec), who became Sapa Inca in 1438, who according to their history transformed
the Inca from an insignificant hamlet tribe into a conquering nation.
At the time he became the Inca
ruler, he was merely a warrior chieftan, and another people, called the Chanka,
in the Andahuaylas region (Apurimac), who were renowned for being “bloody in
battle,” were the power of the Andes. They created fear among their enemies by
scalping and skinning prisoners alive. The Chankas came to power sometime after
1200 A.D. and were at their height in the early 1400s when they set their sites
on the conquest of Cuzco.
Confident of their victory, the feared Chanka leader Uscovilca leads the attack against a
smaller force defending Cuzco
So fearful of the
Chanka, that when they approached Cuzco, the Inca ruler, Viracocha, Pachacuti’s
father, and Urco, Pachacuti’s brother, who was destined to be the next Inca,
cowardly fled Cuzco before the Chanka attacked. While
his father and brother ran for cover, Pachacuti rallied the army and prepared
for a desperate defense of his homeland. In the resulting battle, the Chanka
were defeated so severely that legend tells even the stones rose up to fight on
Pachacuti's side. Thus "The Earth Shaker" won the support of his people
and the recognition of his father as crown prince and joint ruler, becoming the sole
Inca in 1440.
Pachacuti
died in 1471 from a terminal illness, and his son, Tupac Inca Yupanqui, took uncontested
control, but his son, Huayha Capac, had to earn the position, and did so
through expanding the empire, a highly authoritative and repressive government
that arbitrarily displaced hundreds of thousands in massive programs of
relocation and resettling to colonize the most remote edges of the empire.
It
should be noted that in 1438, after the successful defeat of the Chanka, which
gave the Inca renowned prestige throughout the area of Peru and enabled them to
later expand their kingdom into an empire because of the lack of resistance
among many small tribes, the Cuzco Inca were still a small kingdom. They, in no
way, had sufficient people or resources to become involved in rebuilding Cuzco,
as claimed, or in building such edifices as Sacsayhuaman, for which they are
credited.
For
the next 90 years, up to 1528 when the Spanish arrived in the Andes, the Inca
were involved in expanding their empire from approximately 155,000 square miles
to 700,000 square miles, from the Ancs Maya (Blue River) which is now known as
the Patia River in southern Colombia, to the Maule River in Chile, and eastward
from the Pacific Ocean to the edge of the Amazonian jungles. The empire covered
some of the most mountainous terrain on earth. Scholars estimate that the
population of the Inca Empire probably numbered over 16,000,000 by
1528—however, in no way were these obedient citizens, but a collection of more
than 100 nations, held in check by a vast military network, that was called
upon to fight battles over most of their existence.
Every
territorial gain resulted in another war, which expanded the borders of the
empire again. The larger the Inca Empire became, the greater the need for war
to control territories the empire gained. Obviously, the Inca were a warlike
people, and during that time the Inca were involved in fighting scores of
battles from Chile to Ecuador—a 2500 mile long battle line, and from Cuzco to
the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Amazon jungle to the east, and area just
under 700,000 square miles. Their battles in central Chile were so long and
difficult, they finally gave up their push southward, as were their aborted attempts
to move into the Amazonas area to the east. In the north, the tribes in
southern Colombia stubbornly stopped the Inca movement further in that
direction.
The
Incan army was always on the move and almost always at war
The
point of this is simply that for 90 years of their existence, the Inca were so
busy expanding the territory of their empire and fighting some one hundred
different tribes or indigenous nations, they had little time for anything else. As they defeated one after another of
these tribes, they found themselves administering or monitoring governments
across hundreds of thousands of square miles. Consolidation of such a large
empire was to become a continuing struggle for the ruling Inca as their
influence reached across many advanced cultures of the Andes, and between fighting
and control, the Inca had little or no time for social expansion, no time for
building extensive structures or complexes, and certainly no time for such
magnificent, time-consuming accomplishments as Sacsayhuaman, Kuelap,
Pachacamac, and scores of other sites scattered throughout Peru, Ecuador and
Bolivia that modern historians attribute to them.
While
these areas came under Inca conquest in their 90-year zenith, they were not
Inca in design or construction. Nor were the roads. In fact, had the roads not
already existed, the Inca could never have accomplished the building of such a
far-flung empire, for it was over these existing roads they moved their vast
armies from one end of the empire to the other, constantly attacking smaller,
less capable, and far less organized tribes. Of course, to appreciate the
difficulty of moving troops over the terrain of the Andean area of South
America in this 90-year period, one would have to travel this land, climb its
hills and mountains, traverse the numerous cordillera valleys, ravines, gorges,
and mountain passes. Had the Inca not already had those roads to traverse,
their empire would not, and could not, have expanded much beyond the Cuzco area
in such a limited time!
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