The Last Days of the Incas (11 page)

Whatever Felipillo’s ability may have been, and whatever Atahualpa may or may not have understood of Soto’s speech, the Inca emperor continued to gaze at the ground, completely ignoring the Spaniards. Atahualpa had been receiving regular reports about the mysterious group of strangers as soon as they had first arrived on the coast. And he had heard many remarkable things. According to the native chronicler Felipe Huamán Poma de Ayala:

After a long silence, one of the native chiefs in attendance finally informed Soto that Atahualpa was finishing the last day of a ceremonial fast and was indisposed; he was not receiving visitors. At precisely this moment, however, Hernando Pizarro came riding into camp, along with two of his men, having been sent by his brother Francisco,
who was fearful that Soto’s small party might be attacked. Hernando later wrote:

When Atahualpa understood that Hernando was the brother of the foreign leader, he finally looked up. And then, according to the notary Francisco de Xerez, he spoke—the first words ever recorded of an Inca emperor to a citizen of the Old World:

Atahualpa appeared to be about thirty years old, Xerez said, and was “of good appearance … and somewhat thickset. He had a large face, handsome and fierce, and bloodshot eyes. He spoke with much gravity, as a great lord.” Like most Incas, he had copper-brown skin, high cheekbones, dark eyes, and a prominent, aquiline nose. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the Inca lord’s opening comment had been one about the Spaniards’ behavior: there were rules and laws in the Inca Empire—and the various reports that the emperor had received indicated that the Spaniards had broken them. The visiting Spaniards, however, continued to ignore Inca protocol by their very behavior in camp. Normally, Inca lords and local chiefs—no matter how powerful—were not allowed to look directly at the emperor, had to arrive carrying a symbolic burden on their shoulders, and by their every move and gesture show great deference and obeisance. The Spaniards, by contrast, showed no humility whatsoever; they remained seated on their strange animals and spoke brashly and with insolence. In short, they ignored the Inca court’s every rule, behaving in Atahualpa’s eyes no differently than uncivilized barbarians.

Hernando Pizarro, meanwhile, knew very well that
Atahualpa had spoken the truth. Three Spaniards
had
been killed by natives while crossing from the small island of Puna to the mainland of Peru, more than four months earlier. In addition, several of their horses had been wounded, although not killed. The Spaniards had exacted a punishing revenge, killing and wounding innumerable natives. Later, hearing rumors of a pending attack on the coast south of Tumbez, Francisco Pizarro had preemptively seized a local chief from a nearby village, along with the chief’s “principal men.” With no evidence other than these rumors, Pizarro had ordered that they all be burned alive, in a sort of primitive auto-da-fé, as the frightened villagers watched. It was a psychological ploy, a clear terror tactic, and obviously an effective one. Francisco de Xerez wrote:

Thirty-one-year-old Hernando—tall, heavily built, arrogant, and the least popular of the Pizarro brothers—decided to deny the Incas’ report of Spanish casualties, insisting that the information Atahualpa had received was not true.

Hernando paused, waiting for Felipillo to finish translating, before continuing:

While heavily outnumbered, the Spaniards clearly had the advantage in information control. Hernando knew very well that his older brother carried a signed license from the king and queen of Spain authorizing the plunder and subjugation of the very empire whose monarch he was addressing. Every member of the Spanish expedition knew about the recent history of the Aztecs. They themselves, in fact, were hoping to repeat in Peru what Cortés had accomplished in Mexico. None of them had any doubt whatsoever that their primary goal was to figure out a way to topple this newly discovered empire and in so doing to seize its inhabitants and its wealth for their own—before other Spaniards arrived and beat them to it.

Atahualpa, on the other hand, despite the previous reports of the Spaniards’ marauding on the coast, didn’t know where the Spaniards were from, knew nothing of their history, had heard of neither Cortés nor Mexico, had never seen the Spaniards fight, and was unsure of their intentions. Yet from the emperor’s point of view, the Incas themselves clearly had an insurmountable advantage. Although the Spaniards were few in number, for some reason they had been brazen and foolish enough to come within striking distance of his own legions of warriors. If he so chose, Atahualpa knew that he could easily crush the entire group. Indeed, from Atahualpa’s perspective, the Spaniards’ fate now lay entirely in his hands. It had been more out of curiosity than anything else that he had even allowed the Spaniards to arrive in Cajamarca in the first place—and it was his decision that they were not now somewhere on the coast dangling lifelessly by their feet from a series of knotted cords.

Listening to Hernando’s obvious boasting, Atahualpa now made the large, bearded man a pointed suggestion. “A [provincial] chief has refused to obey me. My troops will go with yours and you will make war on him.” As Soto and the other four Spaniards watched the emperor carefully, Hernando gave a characteristic reply: “No matter how many men that chief has,” he said, “you don’t need to send any of your Indians. Ten Christians on horseback will be enough to destroy him.”

Until now, Atahualpa’s expression had been solemn
and grave. At Hernando’s reply, however, the emperor could not help but smile. What could be more absurd than ten foreigners thinking they could conquer a powerful chief with many hundreds of warriors? “He smiled like a man who did not think so much of us,” Hernando wrote more than a year and a half later, apparently still smarting from the insult.

Hernando de Soto, seated on his horse as were the others, had meanwhile noticed something. Despite the Inca emperor’s seeming nonchalance with the novelty of their presence, Atahualpa did seem keenly interested in their horses, which he had obviously never seen before. Soto therefore decided to perform a spontaneous demonstration, backing up his horse, rearing it up so that it stood on its hind legs and snorted, then putting it through some showy paces. Noticing the wide eyes on the faces of some nearby warriors, Soto now turned the animal around, dug in his spurs, then suddenly charged directly at them. Although Soto pulled up at the last moment, the charge sent a number of Atahualpa’s elite guard running for cover, with several falling over themselves in a desperate effort to escape. Atahualpa remained seated throughout, watching yet showing no emotion during the entire display. Later that same day, however, he quietly ordered that the entire native battalion be executed. They had shown fear in front of the foreigners and had thus broken with Inca discipline. The sentence was carried out immediately.

The emperor now ordered drinks to be produced, and soon several women brought out golden goblets filled with
chicha
, or corn beer. None of the Spaniards wanted to drink, however, fearing that the mixture might contain poison, but when Atahualpa insisted they finally lifted the goblets and drank. With the sun now beginning to set, Hernando asked the emperor for permission to leave, and also asked what message he should take to his brother. Atahualpa replied that he would visit Cajamarca the next day, and that he would lodge in one of the three great chambers on the square. He would then meet with their leader, he said. With the valley of Cajamarca now bathed in shadows, the Spaniards turned their horses around and began to make their way back toward the city.

As they rode past the masses of native warriors, the Spaniards could not have known that Atahualpa had already made a decision. Tomorrow, Atahualpa had decided, he would capture the foreigners, kill most of them, and castrate the rest to use as eunuchs to guard his
harem. Atahualpa would then seize the magnificent animals the foreigners rode in order to breed them in great numbers; the giant animals would surely make his empire even more powerful and would instill fear in his enemies. The strangers’ arrogance and lack of respect had clearly angered him. Atahualpa had no doubt understood little of Soto’s prepared speech, other than that they had been sent here by another king. Any king who had sent so few soldiers, however, Atahualpa no doubt was sure, could possess only a very small kingdom. As he drifted off to sleep that night, covered in the finest linens the empire could produce, Atahualpa presumably slept with the certainty that the foreigners’ fates were as much as sealed.

When Hernando Pizarro and Soto arrived back in Cajamarca, the sun had already gone down and the stars were out. The air was crisp, clear, and very cold after the rain and the hail that had fallen, cleansing the courtyard and the cut Inca stones and raising the level of water that coursed through the culverts that ran along the centers of the streets. At the two entrances to the courtyard armed Spaniards stood watch, ready to warn the others in case of an attack. The two captains climbed down off their horses, then went directly to the governor’s lodging, which was located in one of the great, cut-stone chambers fronting the square and was presumably illuminated from within by a fire. There, before the elder Pizarro and a large gathering of Spaniards, they described their meeting with the great Inca emperor.

The two told of Atahualpa’s anger about the natives they had killed on the coast and of his accurate knowledge of the three Spaniards who had lost their lives; they also described in detail the massive, fully armed native legions and the air of power and majesty that the Inca lord had projected. Never before, the two said, had they met a native lord of such stature. If they had any doubt that they had penetrated an empire before today, then they were both certain that they had done so now. Soto explained how he had managed to scare a few of Atahualpa’s warriors with his mock horse attack, even though the emperor himself had not so much as flinched. The two also said that they had been given goblets of gold to drink from and that they had seen many golden objects in Atahualpa’s camp.

As the other men listened, they glanced at one another
and their mood gradually turned gloomy. No matter how one looked at it, they had gotten themselves into a grim situation. Here they were, at least two weeks’ march from Tumbez, where they had left their ships, isolated and cut off in the midst of mountainous terrain they scarcely knew. They could not retreat, as the high passes could be blocked and in the jagged canyons they could be easily trapped and killed. Besides, to attempt to flee would send an obvious signal of fear and would give the Incas the psychological advantage. Meanwhile, the Inca emperor was nearby, with legions of well-armed and obviously well-organized troops. Hernando Pizarro had stated that he had seen perhaps forty thousand warriors; privately he told his brother Francisco that the real number was closer to eighty thousand. That meant that the Spaniards were presently outnumbered by roughly four hundred to one. At the same time, if they chose to wait it out in the city, trying to feign friendship with the Incas, what could they possibly hope to achieve?

They could volunteer to fight with the emperor against the Incas’ enemies, some of Pizarro’s captains suggested, and perhaps could thus gain an advantage. They would then have to hope that eventually they might somehow wrest power from him at a later date. The Inca lord might decide to toy with them, however, as a cat does with a mouse, others said; at any time he might seize their weapons and horses and wipe them out. Trying to work with the Inca emperor seemed fraught with danger.

Another obvious possibility was to try to capture Atahualpa. Some of the Spanish captains argued that they should capture Atahualpa just as Cortés had captured the Aztec emperor, Montezuma. Besides, Pizarro and Soto had been capturing lesser chiefs with various degrees of success for decades, threatening to take their lives afterward unless the chiefs ordered their subjects to do as the Spaniards ordered. But others pointed out that that option, too, was risky, as they had no guarantee that they would ever actually be in a position to capture the Inca lord. It was also an all-or-nothing proposition: if they failed to capture the emperor on the first try, then the Incas would have no doubts about their hostile intentions and open warfare would inevitably ensue. Surely, with such large numbers arrayed against them, the Spaniards would be surrounded and overwhelmed.