The Inka: Communist, Imperialist Theocrats

The Inka: Imperial Communists

It's been awhile since i've written on a historical people or a warrior culture still living. I've covered the Seljuq Turks, the Normans, the tribes of the Horn of Africa, the French and now I i'm going to do the Inca or Inka empire. I'll go with the Quechua spelling. Sounds more authentic. These guys rose from being a small tribe living by the lake having some good times to the greatest Andean Culture ever. They really do have my respect, because in some ways they're still fighting today to recreate Tawantinsuyu or - the Inka Empire with about 12 million people.

Out of all the places on Earth. The Andes mountains and coastal zone nearby is one of the most difficult places to create a civilization. Yet, people have done so. For over 5000 years. The Andes along with Mesoamerica, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Indus River Valley, Yangtze and Yellow Rivers are the cradles of civilization. Somehow peopled eked out a living whether they had to live 2000 meters high in bitterly cold mountains or 2000 meters below on a desert coastal plain. Two cultures before the Inka were the Wari and Tiwanku cultures. These two empire builders existed at the same time. The Wari had the high Andes and some southern colonies and the Tiwanku was near the shore of lake Titicaca in modern day Bolivia and it was a major religious site. Pilgrims would come in the thousands to go to the temple, get high and sacrifice some llamas to the Sun God. The Wari were more belligerent, they'd forceably remove whole peoples from the mountains to the coast to grow corn and men had to labour to pay taxes.

Both Empires collapsed about the same time.

Growing food was hard in the Andes for the people who came to live there. You could grow amaranth, potatoes (domesticated here), corn (which was mostly for the aristocrats) and for meat there was always llamas, alpacas, guinea pigs and dried fish since there tended to be a lot of it on the coast.

The Inka began as a tiny tribe on the shore of lake Cuzco (or Qosqo) which became a city-state in a world in turmoil. You see to these Andeans, the World was the Andes and that world had sunken into chaos since the last two great empires had fallen. Now these Inkans had to pick up the pieces. Manco Qapak or however you'd like to spell it was the son of the Sun God and as such all his sacred, inbred (for they married their sisters) royal family were seen as wise, just and perfect. After all, they were Demi-Gods.

An Inka named Pachacuti who was the ninth Sapa Inka (or Emperor) would tranform his tribe into an Empire. His name meant "Earth-Shaker" and he was about to shake the Andean world. Pachacuti would send spies to report to him about neighbouring kingdoms and states and he would offer them to join the Empire. Or die of course. They'd try diplomacy, economic deals, marriage exchanges, political alliances to get kingdoms to join his expanding empire. Failing that, he'd go to war to get what he wanted. These imperialists had the smarts to take over a chaotic world.

The Inka had the best organized army around. If they didn't, some other people like the Chimu would conquer them, take their wives and pillage their crops. The Inka brought a variety of weapons to battle but the most interesting thing as that they lacked iron weapons. They had bronze weapons but not iron. A reason why is that the Inka liked they're metals to be flexible, not hard. The Inka used slings which could throw flaming rocks wrapped in cotton at foes, shields made out of hardwood, helmets due to the projectile nature of their warfare, axes (which was reserved for the elite in battle), clubs and bronze swords. Each soldier wore cotton tunics and if they were nobility they could sport awards or jewelry in battle.

After a region was conquered, it'd have to play by Inka rules.. or else. The Inka would pretty much leave a tribe alone most of the time as long as your swore allegiance and did labour when they asked you to. Like the Soviets, they'd resettle a restless population if it was getting too uppity or put them in different locations to stop a potential revolt. This was made easy by the roads they built so that troops could move to these areas quickly and suppress an uprising or go to the frontier to battle a new enemy. The Sapa Inka would also intermarry daughters from different tribes to get a hold over an ethnic group so that they were now allied with the new elite - the Inka.

As highland Inka moved to a more reasonable sea-level things got better. They could grow more and more diversified crops. They could have more children who didn't have to feel cold all of the time. Also, there was peace. But being forceably moved along with the rest of your tribe is never a fun and happy time and doing labour for the Sapa Inka was time away from the farm terraces. Since the Inka were communists and everyone belonged to the head of state, the Sapa Inka. Things like food were distributed on his whim. Food, weapons, clothes and other material were stored so that they could be distributed when the people need them like during a famine or an unexpected campaign north. All of this was measured by knots on strings called Quipus because to most socialist societies, keeping stats on things was very important. Such as the fancy cloth made out of the softest Vicuna fur which was a symbol of status and wealth.

The religious ideas of the Inka also allowed them to govern an Empire in the first place. Since the Sapa Inka was a direct descendant from the highest God in their pantheon ; Inti the Sun God who created the world. It was the right thing to do to bow to his will, accept his judgement and generally shut up when things went bad for you and your family. Having a Demi-God on Earth ruling over must've made the Inka feel safe and special, but not even warm and happy feelings could save these theocrats from the Civil War they were about to have... or the Castilian Spaniards.

Inka rule wasn't a set pattern. The oldest son wasn't always the heir to the throne. Brothers would compete with each other to rule such as the sons of Huayna Qapak. Around 1500 his armies conquered Quito in modern day Ecuador and to seal the deal he married one of their princesses. They had a son named Atahualpa. He died in 1525 due to smallpox which in an epidemic killed him and a third of the remaining Inka in the Empire after smallpox had just wiped out a third of the Aztecs further north in Mesoamerica. Huascar, the pure Inka son of Wayna or Huayna Qapaq (i'm sticking with pure Inka spelling after this) took control of Qosqo.

Atahualpa gathered in army in Quito but Huascar quickly moved his forces north and after a fierce battle captured him. However, during a party to celebrate he escaped due to a woman who came to visit him during his imprisonment. He created a new army to do battle with his half-brother. After 3 years of warfare and an estimated 500,000 dead it seemed like Atahualpa was winning and he came to Cajamarca to relax and that's when he heard of the Spanish arrival.

It seems fitting that the die-hard Inka warriors would be subdued with a people who's had a harder history than they had. The Spaniards weren't even called Spaniards then. The ones who spoke Spanish were Castilians and they had a hard life. For more than 700 years they've been fighting each other and Muslims from Africa who'd conquered Iberia. They launched a reconquista to take back their homeland which finally happened in 1492 with the fall of Granada. The conquistadors mainly came from a province called Extremadura which was extremely poor and the best way for young men from there to make money was to become a soldier. Thats what Francisco Pizarro and his cousin Hernan Cortez did.

Most people know the story of the battle of Cajamarca where less than 200 Castilians defeated 20,000 hardened Inka warriors but the modern excuse is that the Inka were celebrating the end of the war but the weapons the Spanish used were devastating to the Inka. Horses made them swift and struck fear into the Inka who'd never seen them before. Their iron shields, swords and armour protected and struck down natives easily. Although the arquebus (long musket) was useful i'd imagine it was impossible to use considering that before you could get a shot in you'd get an arrow in the eye just trying to fire the damn thing. Crossbows were just easier to use.

Atahualpa was captured and strangled after giving the Castilians an amazing ransom to be set free but he was later strangled probably because if he escaped, the Castilians knew he'd just gather an army to defeat them. That's when the Inka rebellions began.

Years after the Spanish conquest, Inka armies were besieging their old capital Qosqo to reclaim their empire but after 10 months of siege the rebellion led by Manco Inka Yupanqui failed to conquer the city. After an unsuccessful Spanish siege of the fortress city of Ollantaytabmo he retreated from the mountains to the jungles of the city of Vilacabamba where an residual Inka state was run. All the while, Quechuas and Aymaras (the people who made up the Inka Empire) rebelled against Spanish rule as typhus, smallpox and measles at away at their numbers until there was only 2 million people left in Peru. In 1572, the last Inka Emperor Tupac Amaru (that's where Tupac Shakur, the wrapper got his name from I believe) was attacked by the Spanish viceroy and after a heroic fight the last Inka emperor was hanged. Other Inka descendants fled around the world to avoid death as far flung as Sicily and the US.

If you think the Inka rebellions are over, they're not. Even today, the mainly Quechua Shining Path is once again resurgent in Peru after a bloody conflict in the 1980s which killed thousand of people. The natives are at it against the Spanish conquistadors descendants who own most of th wealth and the fancy clothing. I can't blame them for trying to be communist like their ancestors did. They're just lucky their descendants are in the millions still speaking Quechua. I'm sure there's only a million Nahuatl-speaking Aztecs left in Mexico. Some tribes get all the luck, especially if you're born a conquerer. Must be that mountain air....