Encyclopedia of the Incas

419 Pages·2015·40.72 MB·English

by  Gary Urton

Encyclopedia of the Incas
Encyclopedia of the Incas
EDITED BY
GARY URTON AND ADRIANA VON HAGEN
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-
Publication Data Encyclopedia of the Incas / edited by Gary Urton and Adriana von Hagen.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7591-2362-5 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-7591-2363-2 (electronic) 1. Incas—
Encyclopedias. 2. Incas—Civilization—Encyclopedias. I. Urton, Gary, 1946–, editor. II. Von Hagen,
Adriana, editor.
F3429.E495 2015
909'.0498323—dc23
2015006444
™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard
for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
Introduction
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
K
L
M
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
Z
About the Editors and Contributors
Introduction
T he Inca Empire was the largest state of the Pre-Columbian New World,
greater by far in extent and number of subjects than either
Mesoamerica’s Aztec Triple Alliance or the Maya city-states. The
territorial boundaries of the Inca Empire at its height extended almost 5,000
kilometers (3,000 miles) from just north of the present-day border between
Colombia and Ecuador; southward along the spine of the Andes through Peru,
Bolivia, and northwest Argentina; and down to the Maule River, about 100
kilometers south of Santiago, Chile. The Pacific Ocean formed the western
boundary along this vast stretch of territory, while to the east, the frontier
generally coincided with the Andean foothills that formed the upper watershed
of the Amazon River (in the northern half of the empire) and the Paraná River
(in the southern half). Within this extensive and ecologically highly diverse
territory—from the flat, desert, coastal plain eastward, rising to soaring
mountains and then dropping sharply down to dense tropical forests—the Incas
exercised an unstable, contested suzerainty over myriad ethnic groups speaking a
host of different languages and dialects.
How did a single ethnic group, even one that claimed divine ancestry, subdue
the many different peoples who occupied this vast territory and maintain some
degree of control over them, even for the empire’s short life span, ca. AD 1450–
1532? This is the challenge that we take up in the Encyclopedia of the Incas, the
first encyclopedia ever produced on this great autochthonous American empire.
To meet this challenge, the editors have drawn on 35 highly knowledgeable Inca
specialists, each of whom has contributed one or more entries dealing with a
topic on which they have special knowledge and expertise. We will have more to
say later about the selection of authors and the general rationale for the
organization of the encyclopedia.
The purpose of this introduction is two-fold: to provide readers with an
understanding of the principal challenges faced by scholars who study Inca
civilization and to introduce the Incas to nonspecialists by providing a broad
overview of the Incas and their empire through which the specific entries in this
encyclopedia may be understood in their larger context.
SOURCES: THE CHALLENGES OF STUDYING A NONLITERATE CIVILIZATION
SOURCES: THE CHALLENGES OF STUDYING A NONLITERATE CIVILIZATION
Unlike other pristine states of the ancient world (i.e., Mesopotamia, Egypt,
China, and the Maya of Mesoamerica), the Incas did not invent a system of
writing. They did, however, develop a unique and extraordinarily complex
record-keeping system based on quipus—knotted-string devices made of spun
and plied threads of cotton or camelid (llama and alpaca) fibers. Most of the
information these devices retain remains opaque to us today. While we know
from postconquest Spanish accounts that quipus were used to register all manner
of administrative information for the Inca state (e.g., census and tribute records),
and while we are able to interpret the quantities of items knotted into the cords,
researchers have not succeeded in determining how the names and identities of
the various categories of information were registered. Therefore, unlike
researchers investigating any of the other great ancient civilizations, who can
read what those people said about themselves, scholars cannot draw on firsthand
accounts written by the Incas; rather, Inca specialists are forced to rely on two
other sources of information: archaeology and the accounts written by Spaniards
following their invasion of Tahuantinsuyu, as the Incas called their land,
beginning in 1532.
These sources have advantages as well as problems. Though the archaeological
record (e.g., the built environment, such as the remains of houses and roads, and
material remains, such as ceramics, metal works, textiles, etc.) bears witness to
Inca activities and achievements, they do not “speak for themselves.” While
these empirical resources provide a base of materials for analysis, nonetheless,
artifacts must be interpreted, and the analysis of the archaeological record is
fraught with uncertainty and ambiguity. What is the absolute age of an object?
Why was it produced, how was it used, and when and why was it discarded?
These questions and many others open up the past to different viewpoints and
interpretations.
Documents about the Incas and their past written by Spaniards in the years
following the conquest often have the ring of authority. Caution, however, must
always be exercised when reading such accounts. First, since they were usually
based on the testimony of informants about events that took place before the
conquest, we will never know what really occurred or how the events, forces,
and consequences of the conquest may have affected Native testimony in early
Colonial times. Second, not only Native Andean informants, but also Spanish
authors of Colonial documents may have had reason to skew an account,
depending on the interests and motives of the new, European overlords of the
Andean world.
For the many reasons cited above, constructing an accurate and reliable picture
of life in the Andes before the Spanish conquest is a challenging business.
Nonetheless, we believe that the information offered in this encyclopedia
provides as knowledgeable, detailed, authoritative, and fair an accounting of
Inca realities as can be constructed with the resources available to scholars
today.
The overview of Inca civilization that follows draws on both archaeological
and documentary (i.e., Colonial era) sources of information. Our purpose in
sketching the general outlines of who the Incas were, how they rose to power,
and how they established and maintained control within the territory they knew
as Tahuantinsuyu (“the four parts bound together”) is to provide a general
framework of the institutions and practices of Inca rule that may facilitate the
reader’s investigation and appreciation of the entries that make up the
Encyclopedia of the Incas.
WHO WERE THE INCAS AND HOW DID THEY RISE TO POWER?
Spanish accounts of what the Incas said about their own origins and nature claim
that the Incas’ ancestors were brought into being by a creator-deity, Viracocha,
on the shores of Lake Titicaca. From there the ancestors traveled underground
northward from Lake Titicaca and reemerged —following the path of the sun
and thus establishing their divine connection to Inti, the Sun—at a place called
Pacariqtambo. Later, the ancestors trekked to a nearby valley where they
founded the city of Cuzco, which would become their capital. The ancestor-king,
Manco Capac, founded a dynasty of some 11 kings (the number varies in
different accounts) who ruled in succession from the founding of Cuzco until the
coming of the Spaniards in 1532.
The history of the first eight Inca kings is lost in the mists of time. It is with the
ninth king, Pachacuti, that some Inca specialists believe we enter discernible
historical time. Pachacuti is characterized in the chronicles as an Andean version
of Alexander the Great, expanding the boundaries of what would become the
imperial domain far beyond the region of Cuzco. Pachacuti was credited with
founding many of the institutions of governance from his time (perhaps around
the 1470s) forward. Subsequent kings further expanded the imperial boundaries
north and south along the spine of the Andes, until the empire reached its
greatest extent. This coincided with the arrival in 1532 of the Spanish invaders
under Francisco Pizarro, who found Tahuantinsuyu embroiled in a war of
succession between two brothers, Huascar and Atahualpa. In under a year,
Atahualpa had killed Huascar, Pizarro had executed Atahualpa, and the Inca
Empire had begun its rapid and inexorable collapse.
Archaeology tells a different and more complicated story about the rise and
expansion of the Inca Empire. This story begins before the appearance of what
later became the identifiable markers of Inca material culture in Cuzco,
including fine ceramics in a variety of standardized forms decorated with
geometric designs; settlements built around large plazas with low platforms with
a hole for ceremonial offerings to the earth (ushnus); and architecture of the
finest stone masonry often displaying trapezoidal windows, niches, and
doorways. In pre-Inca times, the Cuzco valley had been occupied by colonists,
administrators, and possibly warriors from a complex, probably state-level
society, known as Huari, from the region of Ayacucho, to the west of Cuzco.
These Huari peoples exploited the Cuzco valley and neighboring regions for a
variety of purposes, not all of which are entirely clear. In the Cuzco valley, they
probably set up some of the institutions—such as tribute from subordinate
peoples in the form of corvée labor; the production and offering of luxury goods
as a mode of forming alliances; and other practices—that would be adopted by
the immediate ancestors of the Incas.
The early Incas seem to have descended from local inhabitants, possibly a few
ethnic groups (e.g., the Pinahua and Ayarmaca) represented by cultural remains,
notably a ceramic style known as Killke. Scholars believe that the Killke culture
evolved over time into early Inca culture, influenced by interactions with other
ethnic groups in the general Cuzco region. Around the early fifteenth century
AD, the peoples of the Cuzco valley had achieved a degree of political,
economic, and ritual evolution and development sufficient to identify the nascent
Inca state. These early Incas initiated a course of rapid expansion, either
conquering or forming alliances with peoples ever farther from the Inca
heartland, until, with the conquest of other existing regional states, the empire
had taken on the dimensions and institutions of governance that are described in
the Spanish accounts written in the first half century or so following the Spanish
invasion.
HOW DID THE INCAS ESTABLISH AND MAINTAIN CONTROL OVER SUBJECT PEOPLES?
States and empires, whether ancient or modern, can exercise power in two ways.
One option is force; that is, by establishing sufficient police and military forces
not only to conquer opponents, but also to establish control over subject
populations and to maintain the peace. This is a very expensive and costly form
of power, requiring extensive surveillance and a highly efficient system of
moving forces around the land. While the Incas certainly had the infrastructure
to move forces around the empire using their famous road system, it is clear
from the revolts and outright rebellions that plagued the Incas and that the
Spaniards recorded in their chronicles, that in many parts of the empire state
control was tenuous and there was considerable underlying discontent with the
demands made by Inca rulers.
The second form of state power depends on the cooperation of the governed
with state institutions. In order to achieve this so-called hegemony, the state
institutes policies that accord closely (or, at least, that are perceived to accord
closely) with the values and practices of the governed. The state must design
administrative units and procedures to garner a high level of conformity by local
populations with state plans and expectations. Hegemonic power aims at
achieving the legitimacy of rule by virtue of cooperation, not force. It appears
from archaeology and the Colonial historical record that the Incas made use of
both of these forms of power, although they clearly preferred cooperation over
force.
The Inca use of force is clear in the archaeological and historical records. At
numerous strategic sites around the empire, the Incas built military installations
from which they could conquer and oversee potentially rebellious populations.
While the arsenal of Inca weapons, comprising slings, clubs, and lances, was not
extensive by fifteenth-and sixteenth-century European standards, it appears
nonetheless to have been adequate to subdue even the most recalcitrant of
Andean opponents. It was not until the Incas faced the Spanish conquistadors,
with their steel swords and guns, that their weapons proved woefully inadequate.
Beyond acts of conquest and the waging of war against resistant and rebellious
populations, the Incas have long been recognized for their highly efficient
system of administration. It was this administration, built around a number of
highly effective institutions, that appears to have had the greatest influence in the
establishment and maintenance of Inca power across the empire. We can,
however, only cover some of the principles and institutions of Inca governance.
Some of these are highlighted below, and many more are detailed in the various
encyclopedia entries.
Principal among Inca institutions and practices of governance were dualism,
hierarchy, ancestor worship, reverence for the divinity of the Inca lineage, the
recognition of kin groups known as ayllus, and the worship of weather and
creator gods, as well as huacas, sacred places, that united related groups of