The Conquistadors (40 page)

Whether this is correctly reported or not, it was obviously to Pizarro's advantage to play the Inca-maker, and it was undoubtedly his decision to set up an arbitration court to decide who was the rightful Inca that was the direct cause of Huascar's death. When it was reported to him that Huáscar had been murdered Pizarro was at first incredulous, then furious. By this stroke Atahualpa had ensured that the Spaniards were dealing with the one and only Inca. However surprised and indignant Atahualpa may have pretended to be at the news of his brother's death, there can be little doubt that he ordered it. Fratricide, as Prescott points out, was not a particularly heinous crime in the Indian world, since the Lord-Incas were polygamous and fathered many sons. For the Christians, however, it was different, particularly if Garcilaso is right in saying that Huáscar ‘was put to death in a very cruel manner. His executioners cut him to pieces, and it is not known what they did with him afterwards. According to Indian folk legend, they ate him, out of rage. However, Father Acosta writes that his remains were burned.' That he was burned is most unlikely, since in the Indian religion he would then have had no life after death. However it was, the memory of Atahualpa's action no doubt helped to salve the consciences of the Spaniards when the final act in this tragedy came to be staged.

Several weeks passed, the tension mounting in the Spanish camp, before the treasure began to trickle in. The distances were long and every sheet of gold had to be transported by llama or on the backs of the Indian carriers. First came sheets ripped from the nearer temples and great gold plates weighing a quarter of a hundredweight. Packed down tight they took up little space, and the ransom pile grew slowly. The soldiers, with nothing to do but guard the Inca and gamble on their prospects, began to complain. As a result of representations to Atahualpa that he was not keeping his side of the bargain, it was agreed that three Spaniards should be sent to Cuzco to oversee the dismantling of the gold plating of the great Temple of the Sun. This was the most important temple of the Inca world and part
of it can still be seen in the cloisters of the church of Santo Domingo. Garcilaso has has described it in detail:

The main door of the temple opened to the north, as it does today, and there were several others, of less importance, which were used for services in the temple. All of these doors were covered with plaques of gold and the walls of the building were crowned on the outside with a gold band, three feet wide, that went all around it.

The temple was prolonged by a square cloister with an adjoining wall, and crowned by a gold band like the one we have just described. The Spaniards replaced this by a plaster band of the same width that could be seen on the walls, which were still standing, when I left Peru. The three other sides of the cloister gave on to five large square rooms, that had no communication between them, and were roofed over in the form of a pyramid.

The first of these rooms was dedicated to the Moon, the bride of the Sun, and for this reason it was nearest to the main building. It was entirely panelled with silver, and a likeness of the Moon, with the face of a woman, decorated it in the same way that the Sun decorated the larger building. The Indians offered no sacrifices to her, but they came to visit her and begged her intercession, as to the sister-bride of the Sun and to the mother of all the Incas. They called her Mamaquilla, which means our mother the Moon. The bodies of queens were laid away in this Temple, just as those of the kings were kept in the other. Mama Occlo, the mother of Huayna Capac, occupied the place of honour, before the likeness of the Moon, because she had given birth to such a son.

The room nearest that of the Moon was devoted to Venus, to the Pleiades and to all the stars. As we said before, Venus was honoured as the Sun's page, who accompanies him on his way, now following him, now preceding him. The Indians considered the other stars as servants of the Moon, and this was why they were represented near her. The constellations of the Pleiades was particularly revered because of the regularity and perfection of its well-grouped design.

This room was hung with silver, like that of the Moon, and the ceiling was dotted with stars, like the firmament. The next room was dedicated to lightning, and to thunder, which were both expressed by the single name,
illapa
… The fourth room was devoted to the rainbow, which they said had descended from the Sun … the fifth and last room was reserved for the high priest and his assistants.

The three emissaries sent to Cuzco were treated like gods and, according to some accounts, behaved abominably, even ravishing the Virgins of the Sun. Zarate was one of them and it seems most unlikely that he and his two companions, alone in the great city of the Incas, would have risked their lives so unnecessarily. True, Pizarro dispatched de Soto and del Barco to Cuzco, but this was probably because he felt the gold was not coming through fast enough. In any case, it was primarily an embassy to Huáscar. Meanwhile, though the Indian chiefs had been coming in from further and further afield to demonstrate their loyalty – even the chief and high priest of Pachacamac, two hundred and fifty miles away on the coast – the Spaniards were in a state of nervous tension, rumour was rife in the
camp and there was talk of an attack gathering at Huamachuco sixty miles to the south.

On January 14, 1533, Hernando Pizarro was dispatched with twenty horse and ten or twelve foot soldiers ‘to ascertain the truth of these reports, and hurry the arrival of the gold'. The reports proved unfounded. He sent gold off under escort and then set out on the first of those fantastic marches that the Spaniards make so light of in their reports. His first objective was Pachacamac itself. ‘It took us twenty-two days', Hernando Pizarro reports laconically, and he follows this with a brief account of the mountain roads – ‘a thing worth seeing' – the stone bridges, the mines, the towns. ‘It is a cold climate, it snows and there is much rain.' It was ‘winter' in the Sierra, yet he says nothing about the difficulties, the hardships – in fact, the horses' shoes wore out on the mountain roads and for lack of iron they re-shod with silver. Miguel de Estete's report – he was inspector of gold on the expedition – gives the full itinerary; they stopped at seventeen towns in the thirty days which, by his reckoning, it took them to reach Pachacamac, and at twenty-two towns on the return journey, which took much longer – fifty-four days – because they doubled back across snow-covered passes to Jauja.

It never seemed to occur to Hernando Pizarro that he was being over-reckless, yet Jauja had a population of a hundred thousand and was where Atahualpa's general, Challcuchima, was camped with 35,000 warriors. Jauja, he thought, would be a good place for a settlement – ‘in all my travels I did not see a better site'. He remained there five days, and ‘during all that time they did nothing but dance and sing, and hold great drinking feasts'. This carnival of drinking and dancing is still held to celebrate the rainy season. And all he says about his ‘capture' of Atahualpa's general is: ‘The captain did not want to come with me, but when he saw I was determined to take him, he came of his own accord.' Even allowing for Hernando Pizarro's incredible self-confidence, and for the fact that the Spaniards were received by the Indians as though they were gods, it seems hardly possible that he could have secured the person of one of Atahualpa's most formidable chiefs and immobilized an army of 35,000 warriors with a force of no more than thirteen horse and about nine soldiers. He must surely have also had the support of pro-Huáscar warriors, though the presence of Indian auxiliaries is not admitted until the Spaniards themselves were at each other's throats.

Meanwhile, at Cajamarca, Pizarro had at last been joined by Almagro, with the reinforcements for which he had waited so anxiously before his desperate march into the Andes. Almagro had reached the Spanish settlement of San Miguel in December 1532 with a hundred and fifty troops and eighty-four horses, the three large vessels with which he had sailed from Panama having been joined by three small caravels from Nicaragua. Prescott states that he joined Pizarro in Cajamarca ‘about the middle of February, 1533', but according to Xeres the link-up did not occur until April 14. The latter seems more likely since otherwise Pizarro's failure to march with his army on Cuzco is difficult to understand; unless, of course, current Peruvian thinking is correct – that his immobility at this stage was primarily due to the need to wait upon the support of tribes hostile to Atahualpa.

It was certainly April by the time Hernando and the Cuzco emissaries had returned to Cajamarca. By then the combined forces of the two commanders were becoming very restless. Over five months had passed since Atahualpa's capture and still the gold room had not been filled to the ransom height. Nevertheless, the treasure amassed was enormous, a total of 1,326,539 gold pesos, and Pizarro felt that the division of the spoils could not be delayed any longer. Almagro's soldiers inevitably wanted a share, but it was finally agreed that, since they had not been a party to the original contract with Atahualpa, they would only share in future spoils. It was then generally assumed that further great quantities of gold would be acquired when they occupied Cuzco.

This arrangement was undoubtedly facilitated by the decision to dispatch Hernando to Spain. Almagro, the bluff, dedicated soldier, had always disliked the arrogant, much flashier Hernando; and to send him back to report to the Emperor, with a part of the royal fifth in the form of the finest examples of Indian craftsmanship, was not only sensible, but followed the precedent set by Cortés. The total value of the consignment was 100,000 gold pesos; but what happened to this nobody knows. Like the consignment Cortés sent, which fell into the hands of the French, it has disappeared without trace. There were ‘goblets, ewers, salvers, vases of every shape and size, ornaments and utensils for the temples of the royal palaces, tiles and plates for the decoration of public edifices, curious imitations of different plants and animals. Among the plants, the most beautiful was the Indian corn, in which the golden ear was sheathed in its broad leaves of
silver from which hung a rich tassel of threads of the same precious metal.' There was also a fountain ‘which sent up a sparkling jet of gold, while birds and animals of the same material played in the waters at its base'.

With Hernando's departure the two commanders were, temporarily at least, reunited. The work of rendering down into ingots the contents of the ransom halls now began. The final division of the spoils, after deduction of the royal fifth, was as follows: Pizarro – 57,222 pesos of gold and 2,350 marks of silver, plus the Inca's throne of solid gold valued at 25,000 pesos; Hernando – 31,080 pesos of gold and 2,350 marks of silver; de Soto – 17,740 pesos of gold and 724 marks of silver; the sixty cavalry men shared 532,800 pesos of gold and 21,729 marks of silver; the hundred and five soldiers shared about 202,020 pesos of gold and 8,190 marks of silver. Almagro's men got 20,000 pesos, but the poor wretches who had been left to garrison San Miguel – apart from the nine who had turned back from the march into the Andes, they were all men who had been wounded or lost their health in the march down the coast – got a miserable 15,000 pesos. After allowing for the royal fifth and 2,000 pesos donated to the church of San Francisco in Cajamarca, there is 178,369 gold pesos unaccounted for. Presumably this covered the costs of the expedition and the share due to Almagro and Espinosa (for whom Luque had been acting) as the original partners.

An interesting sidelight to this division of the spoils was its effect upon the cost of living amongst men isolated in the Sierra who had to maintain themselves at their own expense. Horses changed hands at from 2,500 to 3,300 gold pesos. A jar of wine cost 60 pesos, a pair of high boots or a pair of shoes 30 to 40 pesos, a cloak 100 to 120, a sword 40 to 50 – even a string of garlic fetched half a peso and a sheet of paper was 10 pesos. Little store was set by the gold and silver now it was in circulation; ‘If one man owed anything to another, he paid it in a lump of gold, without weighing the gold, and being quite indifferent whether it was worth double the amount of the debt or not.'

Now that the ransom room was empty there remained only the problem of Atahualpa. Through the good offices of de Soto, who seems to have been more of a gentleman than the rest of the adventurers, he reasonably demanded his release on the grounds that he had acted throughout in good faith, even though the full amount of the ransom had not been collected. Pizarro was apparently prepared to accept this, since he had his notary record that the Inca was acquitted of ‘further obligations in respect of the ransom' and had it proclaimed publicly throughout the camp. But that was all. He ignored his side of the bargain and continued to hold the Inca captive on the grounds of security.

Who started the rumour of an Indian uprising at this stage is not certain. Prescott makes the point that there were Indians in the camp who had supported Huáscar and were, therefore, hostile to Atahualpa, and he also refers to the ‘malignant temper' of the interpreter, Felipillo, who was supposed to have been
engaged in a love affair with one of the royal concubines. But in view of what followed, the real source was almost certainly Pizarro himself. Challcuchima was interrogated and flatly denied that there was any substance in the rumours. Nevertheless they continued, and the soldiers, imputing to the Indians their own motives, conceived that they were after the gold. Gold has always been a basis for bloodshed amongst those who value it; and men of property, as each soldier now was, are sensitive to the slenderest rumour that may rob them of their wealth. The guards were increased, the men slept with their arms beside them and kept their horses saddled and bridled. And for Almagro's men, who had got so little reward for helping to guard the Inca, the duty was irksome – their golden future lay in Cuzco, and they wanted nothing but to begin the march.