The Last Days of the Incas (13 page)

The crowd of nobles and warriors on the square had now become quiet and a light breeze blew. Visible in the building at the far end, four nondescript lumps of bronze with holes protruded from the doorways, looking like some kind of crude ornaments. They were actually four small cannons, primed, charged, and ready to be fired but here, too, no Spaniard was in sight. An Inca nobleman with distinctive golden plugs in his earlobes now walked toward the building as Pedro de Candia and the other artillerymen held their breath. Instead of going inside, however, the
orejón
suddenly stopped and thrust a lance he was carrying into the ground, then returned. From the lance flapped a cloth banner; this was Atahualpa’s royal standard, a personal coat of arms that was always displayed wherever the emperor happened to be present.

As Atahualpa waited, wearing a soft vicuña-wool tunic and mantle and seated upon a small stool on his litter, the Spaniards pressed against the cold stone walls of the buildings, fingering their weapons and staying out of sight. Others sat on their horses, leaning forward and trying to keep their animals from whinnying or making other noise. At last, Atahualpa called out to them, ordering the Spaniards to emerge from their hiding places and show themselves. The square, however, remained completely silent, with only the sound of the royal standard flapping in the breeze. Finally, from one of the buildings, two figures emerged. One was a man dressed unlike any of the other foreigners Atahualpa had seen, wearing a long robe tied at the waist with a rope and carrying what appeared to be some gifts in his hand: a shiny ornament of silver that looked like a broken stick (a crucifix) and a black square-shaped object, perhaps a ceremonial cloth (a breviary, or prayer book). The other individual was Felipillo.

Vincente de Valverde, the Dominican friar, was now in his mid-thirties and had traveled from Spain with Pizarro after receiving
a royal appointment to accompany the present expedition. The only member of the group known to have attended a university, Valverde had studied for five years at the University of Valladolid and thus had been trained in both theology and philosophy. Valverde’s mission was not to participate in conquest or plunder but rather to help fulfill that portion of Pizarro’s contract that stipulated the conversion to Christianity of any and all peoples who were conquered.

Because reports had filtered back soon after the discovery of the New World of Spanish brutality toward the natives, in 1513 a document had been drawn up that the Spanish king demanded be read from then on to all potential subjects before a conquest was carried out. The document, known as the
Requerimiento
, or “Requirement,” was both a justification and an ultimatum. In abbreviated form it explained to newly discovered peoples that since (the Christian) God had created the world and had granted the divine right to rule this world to his emissary on earth, the pope, and since the pope in 1493 had granted to the Spanish monarchs jurisdiction over all lands west of the 46th meridian, which included the western part of South America, then it was the duty of all newly discovered peoples in these regions to submit to their rightful rulers, the Spanish monarchs.
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If upon hearing this information the natives refused to obey, then all necessary violence could and would be used against them to either force the natives to submit to the dictates of God, or else to eliminate them from the face of his earth. The fact that the document was often read in Spanish to native peoples who were unable to understand a word of that language didn’t matter. The essential point was that the natives had been read their rights, so to speak, and thus any violence that ensued had been legally sanctioned, ultimately, by God himself. In essence this was a ritual, a ritual symbolizing a preapproved and highly flexible authorization, one that could be adapted to a wide variety of situations. And now one of those situations was presently unfolding nine thousand feet up in the Andes, amid the tightly packed main square of the Inca city of Cajamarca.

Atahualpa watched as the robed foreigner and his interpreter picked their way through the Inca warriors and approached his litter. Standing before the Inca lord, who ruled with as much divine right as any
European king, Friar Valverde began by inviting the emperor to dismount from his litter and enter one of the buildings. There he could meet with Governor Pizarro and could speak and dine with him. The friar knew, of course, that if Atahualpa did so that it would be easier for the Spaniards to capture him. Atahualpa, refused, however, stating “I will not leave this place until you return all that you have taken from my land. I know very well who you are, and what you have been doing.”

Obviously, the time had come for the
Requerimiento.
In a loud voice, Friar Valverde began to paraphrase it, with the young interpreter Felipillo translating the often puzzling and no doubt largely unintelligible ideas as best he could:

Valverde paused as Felipillo translated, the feathers on Atahualpa’s litter, plucked from brilliantly colored macaws in the jungle regions of the empire, fluttering in the breeze.

Valverde continued, his voice rising and the Spaniards in their hidden positions straining to hear,

After the interpreter finished delivering the speech, silence once again gripped the square. For a moment, time seemed to freeze as two empires stood watching each other. At stake for Atahualpa and the Inca elite were their own vast fertile lands, their ten million tax-paying peasants with their inexhaustible labor and crops, their own elite positions, and an empire that had taken three generations and countless military campaigns to create. At stake for the Spanish monarchy was a ragtag group of 168 expendable conquistadors, a handful of merchants, a few black slaves, a couple of
morisca
women, and, much more importantly, the opportunity for the Spanish monarchs to seize an empire with twice the population and size of the Iberian peninsula itself. Whether any of the individual protagonists in the present tableau understood the basic historical processes involved at this particular moment is doubtful. The Spaniards, wearing armor and chain mail and preparing themselves for attack, were certainly aware that their own lives and fortunes lay in the balance, however, and, if in the moments to come any of them were surrounded and overwhelmed by the native hordes, that their personal destinies would certainly come to a violent and sudden end.

Yet the Spaniards also knew that if somehow they were able to escape from their present situation and were miraculously able to conquer this empire, that both their own fortunes and the king’s dominions would be vastly expanded. The friar, too, on a religious level, realized that success here meant the expansion on earth of the Christian Church and hence an expansion of God’s dominion. The reverse would be a victory for the forces of Lucifer and for the pagan barbarians of the world. It was precisely the nonbelievers’ refusal to accept the word of God, Friar Valverde believed, that was delaying the reappearance of Christ on earth. A bold success here meant that the Kingdom of God would surely arrive that much sooner.

Among the Incas, only Atahualpa’s top military leaders apparently knew of his plan—to capture and kill the Spaniards, to make eunuchs out of the survivors, and to breed these powerful and majestic animals that the Spaniards called
caballos.
Atahualpa could hardly have thought that this
small group of foreigners—who presently appeared to be cowering from fear inside a few buildings—were any threat. Their successful capture would simply mean the elimination of the final small impediment preventing his march on Cuzco and the reunification of the Inca Empire. As soon as the Spaniards were disposed of, Atahualpa’s coronation in Cuzco awaited him. An Inca emperor wielding control over a reunited empire would then once again rule the entire civilized world.

After listening to the inevitably mangled translation of the friar’s speech, Atahualpa must have appeared puzzled, for Valverde next held up his breviary, or prayer book, and insisted that everything he had stated was contained within. Indeed, the Christian God’s own voice was contained in this very book, the friar insisted. One can only wonder just what words the native interpreter used to convey the idea of objects for which the Incas had no known equivalents. Felipillo may have used the word
quipu
—the Inca word for their knotted string device on which they stored records—for
book
, as the Incas had neither books nor writing. Clearly intrigued, Atahualpa asked to see the strange object. He no doubt had already heard of the Spaniards’ mysterious
quipus
, and that somehow the
quipus
themselves had the power of speech, but Atahualpa had yet to see or examine one.
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The friar dutifully held the breviary up toward Atahualpa’s golden litter and the emperor took it. As Valverde watched Atahualpa fumble with the book, turning it over and upside down, however, he realized that Atahualpa didn’t know how to open it. Valverde therefore stepped forward, reaching out his hand toward the book in order to show the emperor how it was done. Recounted Xerez:

According to some eyewitnesses, Atahualpa now stood up on his litter and began shouting to his troops to prepare themselves for battle. As the interpreter Felipillo scrambled to retrieve the breviary from the ground, Friar Valverde rushed back to Pizarro’s quarters, very agitated, and began shouting, “Come out! Come out, Christians! Come at these enemy dogs who reject the things of God!” Clutching his crucifix in one hand he shouted, “That chief has thrown the book of holy law to the ground!” Another eyewitness heard the apoplectic friar, the instrument of God’s will, shout to Pizarro, “Didn’t you see what happened? Why remain polite and servile toward this arrogant dog when the plains are full of Indians? Go and attack him, for I absolve you!”

With Atahualpa standing on his litter and the priest shouting for the Spaniards to attack, a decision had to be made. Pizarro hesitated for only a moment and then signaled to Pedro de Candia, waiting in the building on the far side of the square, who now ordered that the wicks of the assembled cannons be lit. With loud roars the cannons soon fired directly into the mass of warriors, spewing out smoke and metal shrapnel; simultaneously the nine harquebusiers also fired their guns, having carefully aimed them on tripods. The sudden explosions no doubt stunned the native warriors, as did the sight of bodies suddenly falling down among them and spurting blood. With plumes of smoke rising from one of the buildings they now heard coming from all directions the stark sounds of trumpets and multiple choruses of men shouting “Santiago!” as the Spaniards kicked their feet into their horses’ sides and charged and ran out from their hiding places.
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From every direction Atahualpa’s warriors saw the metal-covered foreigners suddenly rushing toward them, together with groups
of seemingly ferocious, thousand-pound animals in padded armor, their hooves pounding the ground and each topped by a lance- or sword-wielding Spaniard, screaming hoarsely and with a crazed look in his eyes.

The Spaniards quickly began slashing, stabbing, impaling, hacking, and even beheading as many natives as they could, using their razor-sharp swords, knives, and lances. The native warriors, having confidently marched onto the square only moments earlier and thinking that they had trapped the cowering foreigners in a few buildings, now suddenly realized that
they
were in a trap, not the Spaniards. Attacking from all sides and suddenly crushing the warriors together, the Spaniards’ surprise attack threw the natives into an immediate panic. The giant horses with mounted Spaniards had the same effect on Inca troops, in fact, that Hannibal’s men on elephants must have had on Roman legions more than 1,500 years earlier. Terrified masses of warriors began surging toward the square’s narrow exits, trampling those who got in the way and seized by an overpowering desire to save their lives. The Spaniards, meanwhile, mercilessly and methodically continued to cut off arms, hands, and heads, using their steel weapons like so many meat cleavers. “They were so filled with fear that they climbed on top of one another,” wrote one eyewitness, “to such an extent that they formed mounds and suffocated one another.” “The horsemen rode out on top of them, wounding and killing and pressing home the attack,” wrote another.