The Conquistadors (33 page)

When the march was resumed it was at a leisurely pace. They were two days in ‘well-peopled' valleys and a further day crossing a dry, sandy tract into another thickly populated valley. Here they were held up by a river in flood. Presuming that this is the Leche, it is clear that Pizarro was making the most of his opportunity of winning over the local people, for the distance from Motupe to the Leche is barely twenty-five miles. His brother, Hernando, swam the swollen river with an advance party, and though the welcome he received on the far side was friendly, he nevertheless tortured one of the chiefs in an endeavour to obtain accurate information about Atahualpa's intentions. As a result, he was able to send word back across the river to Pizarro next morning that the Inca's army was deployed in three divisions, one at the foot of the mountains, one at the top of the pass, and the third at Cajamarca. Xeres does not say where at the foot of the mountains, or what pass, and the information was almost certainly inaccurate.

When the army had crossed, which took nearly the whole day, swimming the horses and ferrying the baggage over on rafts made from felled trees, they were quartered in the fortress where Hernando Pizarro had spent the night. This was either Tambo Real or Batán Grande, three miles to the east. From here the Inca highway ran south for sixteen miles through a flat plain, between arid hills, to the Lambayeque river. It is now dry as a desert, but, skirting the hills for miles, is one of those deep-dug canals, and the criss-cross traces of old irrigation ditches, the remains of temple mounds and mud-walled fortresses suggest that the whole area was once green and fertile and thickly populated. This would explain why Pizarro halted for a further four days. His object was clearly pacification, a task made easy for him by the fact that the villages had suffered badly at the hands of Atahualpa. And here he found an Indian chief who was willing to go to Cajamarca to act the usual double role of spy and ambassador.

After his four-day halt Pizarro began his march in earnest. He crossed the Lambayeque and Reque rivers, and ignoring the Chongoyape route into the mountains, which trends north-east, pressed on due south, past what are now the haciendas of Pucala and Saltur, arriving after three days at Zaña. From here he had
been told a track ran direct to Cajamarca. His information proved correct, and he now abandoned the main Inca highway, turning due east and following the Zaña river into a gap in the foothills. Since the Spaniards had no names then for the mountains and gorges, and even had great difficulty in recording the names of Indian villages, it is not surprising that the few accounts of the march are vague about the route taken. It is fairly certain that the Spaniards diverged from the Zaña river gorge, turning south-east into the narrower gap of the Nancho gorge. This was the most direct line to their objective, and once over the 12,000-feet pass and into the slightly lower uplands the going is relatively easy. Xeres describes the pass itself as so steep that in places they had to ascend by steps. Pizarro had gone on ahead with fifty horse and sixty foot soldiers, intending to try and force the pass if it were defended. But, though there was a strong fortress there, Atahualpa had left the gateway to his lair unbarred. The cold was intense, so much so that the horses suffered from frostbite. It was early summer now, but when it is summer on the coast, it is regarded as winter in the Sierra, for this is the rainy season and there is snow on the high ground.

He spent the night at a village where the house in which he lodged was protected by an Inca wall of unmortared stone. The following day he moved more slowly to allow his rearguard and the baggage to catch up. He was still climbing, and that night the whole army camped on the top of the mountain. Here he was greeted by messengers from Atahualpa, bringing a gift of ten llamas. They told him that the Inca had been waiting for him at Cajamarca for the last five days. Apparently they also gave him a garbled account of the wars between Atahualpa and Huáscar. In return, Pizarro is reported to have made a long speech, concluding with these words: ‘If he [Atahualpa] should wish for war, I will make war, as I have done against the chief of the island of Santiago [Puná], and against the chief of Tumbes, and against all those who have wished to have war with me. I make war upon no-one, nor do I molest anyone, unless war is made upon me.'

Now that Pizarro was nearing his objective, the messengers moved more rapidly between the two forces. A long day's march across the mountains brought the Spaniards to a village nestled in a valley. Here the same chief that de Soto had brought to Zarán was waiting for Pizarro with half a dozen gold cups from which he offered the Spanish captains
chicha,
the Indian corn liquor. He had orders to
accompany them to Cajamarca. Another day's march and Pizarro decided to rest his men for a day so that they would be fresh to cope with whatever lay in front of them. Here his own messenger, dispatched from Tambo Real, arrived and was so furious that they were giving hospitality to Atahualpa's emissary, whom he regarded as a liar and a rogue, that he rushed upon the man and seized him by the ears. His own life had been threatened in the Inca camp, he had been given no food, and, though a chief himself, he had been refused admittance to Atahualpa on the grounds that the Inca was fasting. Atahualpa, he said, was ‘in warlike array outside Cajamarca on the plain. He has a large army, and I found the town empty.' He had then gone to the camp, had seen tents and flocks and many warriors, ‘and all were ready for war'. In answer, Atahualpa's messenger said that if the town was empty, it was to leave the houses free for the Spaniards, and that Atahualpa was in the field because ‘such is his custom after he has commenced war', by which he meant the war against his brother. Like all exchanges between emissaries it must have left Pizarro more confused as to Atahualpa's intentions than before.

One more day's march and he was within striking distance of Atahualpa's army. He camped the night on a grassy plain, made an early start the following morning, and long before noon was looking down from the rounded hills that hang over Cajamarca into what is perhaps the most beautiful valley in the Andes. The stage was set for one of the cruellest acts of aggression and the wanton destruction of a fascinating and remarkable empire. Throughout the long day's march up the precipitous slopes of the Nancho gorge the Spaniards had been at the mercy of Atahualpa's warriors. Suffering, as everybody does, from the suddenness of the altitude, and caught breathless on the slopes below the pass, they would have had no chance of survival against seasoned warriors attacking from above. Even if they did have Indian auxiliaries with them, the fortress at the top, had it been defended, would have stopped them in their tracks. And afterwards, during the five days' march across the high Sierra, they were still vulnerable. At any moment during that exhausting week Atahualpa could have destroyed them. Why did he hold his hand? What was he afraid of?

Garcilaso insists that it was because of the instructions given by his father, Huayna Capac, on his deathbed, and he quotes this last of the real Incas as saying to his captains and curacas:

Our father the Sun disclosed to us a long time ago that we should be twelve Incas, his own sons, to reign on this earth; and that then, new, hitherto unknown people would arrive; that they would obtain victory and subject all our kingdoms to their Empire, as well as many other lands. I think that the people who came recently by sea to our own shores are the ones referred to. They are strong, powerful men, who will outstrip you in everything. The reign of the twelve Incas ends with me. I can therefore certify to you that these people will return shortly after I have left you, and that they will accomplish what our father the Sun predicted; they will conquer our Empire, and
they will become its only lords. I order you to obey and serve them, as one should serve those who are superior in every way; because their law will be better than ours, and their weapons will be more powerful and invincible than yours. Dwell in peace; my father the Sun is calling me, I shall go now to rest at his side.

Garcilaso de la Vega is a highly imaginative writer. He was descended from the Incas on his mother's side, and it is natural that he should seek to establish a rational explanation for the failure of the Indian people to oppose the invader. Nevertheless, it is not unreasonable to imagine that Huayna Capac shared Moctezuma's sense of impending doom, and he may well have felt it expedient to warn his people on his deathbed not to fight against the inevitable; if so, he would certainly have done it in the Sun god's name. ‘The news of this prediction', Garcilaso goes on, ‘spread throughout all Peru, and the accounts of all chroniclers bear witness to its veracity.' The chroniclers he quotes are Cieza de León and López de Gómara, but they, like Garcilaso himself, were writing after the event. We must, therefore, regard these prophecies and instructions of Huayna Capac as unsubstantiated and decide for ourselves how it was possible for Pizarro, with so small a force, to overthrow a vast empire. To do this we must now take a look at the origins of the Inca empire, the religious beliefs and culture of this Indian people; above all, at the weaknesses inherent in the pyramidical structure of the state and the absolute subservience of all to the father figure of the supreme Inca.

Few areas of the world are as fantastic geophysically as the western littoral of South America; here geography is vertical and climate governed by height rather than latitude. As we have seen, man had certainly reached the central lake area of Mexico some eleven thousand years ago. We now know that he had also penetrated as far south as Patagonia at around this time, so that he may have been in Peru even earlier than 9000 B.C. However, the development from a hunting or fishing subsistence to even the most primitive agriculture was slow and it was not until about 2500 B.C. that some form of primitive civilization began to emerge. Indeed, agriculture only became an important factor in the life of the people about 1000 B.C. and then chiefly in the coastal regions, where geographical conditions were most suitable.

Here the Humboldt current, sweeping up from the cold southern latitudes, teems with fish. Its effect upon the warm air of the tropics is to reduce the temperature and produce cloud, high humidity, even fog in winter months (June to November) – but no rain, except when that curious phenomenon, the counter-current called El Niño, is running southward. The coastal plain is, in fact, so absolutely arid that in many places it is devoid even of cactus. But across it, almost forty river beds reach stoney fingers into the sea. All have their source in the melting snows of the Andes, and about thirty of them manage to maintain some sort of a flow all the year round. It was in the flat delta areas of these rivers that the first farmers began to harvest crops of gourds, beans, chile peppers and squash.

The altiplanos of the high Andes provide a complete contrast. There are six of these great upland basins – Cajamarca, Huaylas, Huánuco, Mantaro, Cuzco and Titicaca – all of them between 8,000 and 13,000 feet and walled in by mountains behind which loom the great snow peaks of the Cordilleras, ranges with names like Sierra Blanca and Sierra Negra. In the south, towering above the present city of Arequipa, three great volcanic masses – Chachani, Misti and Pichu-Pichu – rise to a height of 20,000 feet. El Misti, a cone so perfectly shaped that it matches Fuji Yama, is still active. Indeed, most of Peru is subject to
earthquakes – Huacho, on the coast just north of Lima, was badly damaged in October 1966. Even the altiplanos are not immune, which is why the Inca and pre-Inca people sometimes keyed the stone of their walls, sometimes built them of uneven courses. Much of the best colonial architecture in Cuzco itself has been destroyed because the Spaniards did not appreciate the severity of the shocks their buildings would have to withstand.

At what date man first established himself in these upland basins, which are now called
punas,
we do not yet know for certain, but carbon-dating of finds from one cave-shelter suggests that it may have been as early as 9,500 years ago. Here the geographical accident of optimum conditions for a nomadic herding people at a high altitude resulted in the development of physical characteristics that are virtually unique. The small stature and stocky build is typical of any highland people, the men on average about 5 ft 2½ ins tall, the women 4 ft 9½ ins. What is unique is the lung development, which is almost a third greater than the normal human, the blood volume about four pints more, the haemoglobin about double, the red corpuscle count up from five million to about eight million, and a much slower rate of heart beat. Surprisingly, these characteristics are not inherited, but are developed individually in youth.

Because of the semi-isolation imposed by the terrain there has been little dilution of the basic stock, so that the Quechua Indians you see today, particularly in the south – squat, broad-featured, the women with their provocatively-tilted, round felt hats and llama wool mantas, the men with their coloured woollen caps and ponchos – are basically the same as Pizarro faced in 1532. They are a people accustomed to the solitude of vast spaces, their bodies and their minds moulded by the country in which they live – a world of rock and rain and rushing rivers, with every vista of the sere grass that gives them life blocked by mountain walls. Even their movements are different. They either stand so quiet and still that they seem to merge like animals into the landscape, or else they are moving in a light-footed shuffling trot like leaves blown by the wind. They seldom walk as we do unless they have drunk too much
chicha.

Traces of permanent habitation have been found as high as 17,500 feet and the characteristics developed to cope with the extraordinary altitude have remained unchanged down the millennia. The conquistadors probably had an advantage in stature, but anybody who, whilst gasping for breath on the shores of Lake Titicaca, 12,648 feet up, has watched Indians playing a violent game of football, must wonder at the speed with which the Spaniards acclimatized themselves, coming straight up from the coast and almost immediately prepared for the exertion of fighting. Here, 150 miles south of Cuzco, the high valleys open out into a broad plain, and suddenly to the south-east you have a prairie vista – no mountains, nothing but emptiness. The clear, thin air on the shores of Lake Titicaca is dazzlingly bright, and the rain storms, clinging to the distant heights, circle you with a fantastic cloudscape. Cajamarca is the complete opposite; a
narrow valley, between rounded, almost down-like hills, it is barely six miles wide, and in place of the sere, yellowed grasses of the upper valleys are the lush meadows normally associated with the English countryside – grass that is knee-high, buttercups and clover, and willows growing in the hedges. Only the presence of the occasional cactus, a smaller version of the maguey, reminds one that the valley lies a few degrees from the equator.