The Last Days of the Incas (43 page)

Having made his decision—and no doubt realizing that the longer he delayed his departure, the more likely it was that he would be attacked—Manco moved quickly to organize his exodus. As his chiefs left to return to their provinces and to take with them the emperor’s disturbing message, Manco presided over the final religious ceremonies needed to guarantee his and his followers’ safety in the land of the Antis. In the words of the chronicler Cieza de León:

With the ceremonies completed, and with thousands of porters, pack trains of llamas, Anti archers, his elite guard, and his wives and children, Manco gave the signal and the procession began to move. Manco himself rode in a royal litter, no doubt seated on a low throne, or
duho
, and with a canopy overhead. On additional litters rode other Inca elites, as well as the mummified bodies of Manco’s father, Huayna Capac, his grandfather Tupac Inca Yupanqui, and his great-grandfather and the creator of the empire, Pachacuti. The mummies’ attendants walked beside them, making sure that flies did not annoy these still powerful emperor-gods. Manco didn’t dare leave his ancestors behind—nor did he want to risk relocating the capital of his dwindling empire without their guidance and aid. Amid the procession also walked various priests, diviners, astrologers, weavers, stone masons,
quipu
readers, accountants, architects, farmers, herders, and even an oracle—in short, all the people necessary to carry on the functioning of the Inca state. Elsewhere in the procession walked Rui Díaz and five other Spanish prisoners, bound with cords and guarded by native warriors with their mace clubs at the ready.

Slowly the expedition began heading northward, up along the banks of the Patacancha River, a tributary of the Yucay. Eventually, it reached the Panticalla Pass and from there began to descend down the eastern side of the Andes. As the procession gradually disappeared around a bend, behind them lay the broad expanse of the Yucay Valley, its sides checkered with cultivated fields, its lower flanks rimmed with terraces that bore a now abandoned crop of corn. Snow-capped mountains rose in the distance, as the Yucay River, glinting in the sun, continued to roll smoothly down the valley, past the high, now empty fortress of Ollantaytambo, through the tight granite gorge, then on and down, winding its way and gathering speed, as it snaked further and further into the heart of the Antisuyu, the homeland of the Antis.

AFTER A CLIMB OF PERHAPS FIVE HOURS, MANCO’S PROCES
sion finally crossed the pass of Panticalla, with the snow-capped Apu of Wakay Willka (Mount Veronica) rising brilliantly white on the left. On the other side of the pass they caught their first glimpse of an endless sea of clouds stretching out below them, all the way to the horizon—the fabled land of the Antis. Descending spurs of the Andes, like the flying buttresses of a massive cathedral, extended down from the mountains, gradually sinking until they disappeared into the swirling mists, their upper crests limned with a black mane of trees. Manco
Inca,
riding in a royal litter carried by individuals from the Rucana tribe—the male members of which were trained to bear litters from a young age and hence were famed for their smooth gait—no doubt paused for a moment, looking out over the immense vista before him. Manco knew that his great-grandfather Pachacuti had been the first to enter the Antisuyu, and that his grandfather Tupac Inca had carried out a number of military campaigns in that region as well. Fittingly, he was bringing both of these ancestors with him, each riding in his own litter, dressed in fine vicuña wool cloaks and with their mummified eyes appearing to look out over the same regions they had conquered so many years before.

One of Tupac Inca’s captains, depicted here shooting a jaguar, while conquering the Antisuyu.

Before his departure, Manco had also no doubt carefully questioned his
quipucamayocs
, the officials whose specialized profession consisted of memorizing and recounting the royal histories and other information, apparently using the data woven into their
quipu
cords as memory prompts. On multiple occasions, Manco had asked the
quipu
readers about the history of this area, asking them to recall the stories that had been so carefully memorized and then passed on from one generation to the next. The
quipu
readers presumably told Manco that his great-grandfather Pachacuti had conquered the Antisuyu but that at one point Tupac Inca had had to reconquer it. After coming to power, Tupac Inca had called a meeting in Cuzco of all the provincial chiefs from the four quarters of the empire, including those from the Antisuyu. The emperor had then ordered the latter chiefs to pay homage to the Incas’ gods and to begin bringing tribute from their forests of hard palm wood, or
chonta
, from which Inca craftsmen could fashion their lances, breast and back plates, and clubs. “The Antis, who did not serve voluntarily, looked upon this demand as a mark of servitude,” wrote the chronicler Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa. “They fled from Cuzco, returned to their country, and raised the land of the Antis in the name of freedom.”

In response to the revolt, Tupac Inca angrily gathered a powerful army and led it down the eastern flanks of the Andes, entering the Amazon in the area of what is now southeastern Peru. According to the
quipucamayocs
, although Tupac Inca’s soldiers cut trails through the thick forest, they soon became disoriented and were able to locate one another only by climbing tall trees and by looking for the smoke from one another’s campfires. Accustomed to the high Andes with its wide sweeping horizons that were punctuated with easily recognizable landmarks, the Incas found the dark, tropical forests claustrophobic and practically impossible
to navigate in. Related Sarmiento:

Despite becoming lost and losing more than half of his men to sickness, Tupac Inca nevertheless persisted. He and his men followed the Tono River, hacking out a trail and eventually conquering four jungle nations: the Manosuyus, the Mañaris, the Chunchos, and the Opataris. Through force of arms, negotiation, and the use of abundant gifts, Tupac Inca was eventually able to form military alliances and trading relationships with these
sacharuna
, or forest people. Unlike the successes they had had with conquering the inhabitants of their other territories, however, the Incas never succeeded in forcing the Antisuyu tribes to pay them tribute. Instead, they simply traded goods (which some chroniclers confused with tribute), exchanging with the often naked warriors their copper and bronze axes and knives, finely woven cloth, and highly prized salt for the Antis’s exotic hardwoods, cacao, manioc, bird feathers, jaguar skins, manatee fat, turtle oil (used by the Incas in their lamps), and other forest products.

In order to facilitate such trade, the Incas extended their road system down from the highlands and into the Antisuyu, following the crests of mountain spurs that descended from the Andes. The Incas soon built towns and administrative centers throughout their new province, with typical Inca storage depots, army garrison quarters, plazas, and shrines. To gain further control over the region, the Incas settled key areas of the Antisuyu with
mitmaqcuna
—groups of citizens from elsewhere in the empire whom the Incas relocated as colonists. Grand practitioners of social engineering, the Incas used
mitmaqcuna
extensively throughout their empire. Some
mitmaqcuna
were law-abiding citizens whom the Inca elite relocated to rebellious provinces, in order to calm an area, just as oil calms stormy
water. Others consisted of the inhabitants of rebellious areas who were relocated to regions where they were surrounded by groups that had already submitted to Inca rule.

Because they had been uprooted from their homeland, the new settlers were given the equivalent of hardship pay—gifts of cloth, women, narcotic coca leaves (normally reserved for the Inca elites), as well as a temporary exemption from paying labor taxes. Along the warm, forested foothills of the eastern Andes,
mitmaq
colonists planted and harvested coca leaves and cotton, traded with the nearby Antis Indians, and served as a kind of cultural and military buffer along the empire’s exposed eastern flank.

It was toward one of the empire’s
mitmaq
colonies that Manco Inca and his followers now headed, working their way down through the dripping cloud forest with its orchids, hummingbirds, tree ferns, spectacled bears, and tangled, moss-encrusted vegetation. Following the Lucumayo River, Manco reached the Amaibamba Valley, where he paused to ponder his next step. Eventually, after a period of indecision, Manco crossed the Urubamba River, via the Chuquichaca bridge, and then led his procession up into the Vilcabamba Valley. There he decided to settle at Vitcos, a royal estate and provincial capital, located on a hill at about ten thousand feet in elevation. Vitcos had been founded by his great-grandfather Pachacuti.

Standing on a high outpost overlooking the eastern frontier, where
mitmaq
colonists routinely traded with the Antis Indians in the lower valleys and near the sacred coca plantations and tropical forest, Manco decided that Vitcos would become the new capital of his now truncated empire. Although Vitcos was located only seventy miles from Cuzco, it was nevertheless separated by a very steep and rugged trail, many parts of which Manco had ordered destroyed. Native work crews had carefully crashed down boulders from above or had created barriers of toppled trees, obliterating the trail. The Spaniards were always unpredictable, Manco knew; he could only hope that these defensive measures would keep his most dangerous enemy at bay.

In Cuzco, meanwhile, Diego de Almagro had his own set of problems. After having seized Cuzco and having imprisoned Hernando and Gonzalo Pizarro, Almagro was now faced with Francisco
Pizarro’s relief force, five hundred strong, that was quickly approaching the capital from the north. Native scouts had informed both parties of each other’s presence, while the relief force’s leader, Alonso de Alvarado, soon realized that his order to rescue the Spaniards trapped in Cuzco was no longer relevant. Instead, Alvarado learned that Almagro had seized Cuzco by force, had imprisoned the governor’s two brothers, and was openly defying Francisco Pizarro’s jurisdiction over southern Peru. The question for Pizarro’s captain now was what he should do about that.

Almagro, in the meantime, had already made up his mind to hold Cuzco at all costs and had appointed Rodrigo Orgóñez, his second-in-command, to lead an army in order to prevent Alvarado from reaching the capital. Having spent nearly two years in the southern region of Tawantinsuyu to no avail and now in firm control of Cuzco, Almagro wasn’t about to give up the city to an army that owed its allegiance to Pizarro. Almagro had already crossed a personal Rubicon of sorts, after having captured and imprisoned Pizarro’s two brothers. From here on, there was no turning back.

Almagro’s military commander, Rodrigo Orgóñez, had been with Almagro now for five years. The son of poor Jewish shoemakers who had been forced to convert to Christianity, Orgóñez had fled from his native town of Oropesa in Spain because of a serious brawl he had been involved in. Orgóñez enlisted in the king’s army, distinguishing himself for bravery in Spain’s Italian Wars: he was, in fact, one of a handful of soldiers who personally captured the French King, Francis I, in the French defeat at Pavia. Returning home a hero, Orgóñez nevertheless found social advancement blocked by the low status of his birth. The young, ambitious ex-soldier, however, soon came up with an ingenious solution to his predicament: shedding his father’s last name of Méndez, Orgóñez simply “borrowed” the paternal surname of a local nobleman, Juan Orgóñez. He then did his best to convince the surprised nobleman that the latter was somehow his biological father. Although the elder Orgóñez vehemently denied the connection, Rodrigo “Orgóñez” and his brother, Diego Méndez, soon set sail for the Indies, hoping to improve their fortunes in the New World. With scarcely a copper
maravedi
coin to his name, Rodrigo nevertheless carried with him something potentially far more valuable—his pilfered aristocratic name.