1. In the early 15th century the Inca were a small highland group occupying the central Andean Cuzco Valley in the Late Intermediate Period. The Inca were one among several such groups of the general region that had probably not seen overall political integration since the fall of Wari political hegemony before AD 1000. However, it is probable that these groups had maintained an organizational level above that of the basic ayllu, with senior lineage heads acting as leaders or chiefs but without any formal coercive power other than that embedded in their kinship based society.
2. These highland groups engaged in periodic raiding, probably over land and water rights, a relatively minor activity during which temporary war leaders or sinchi were appointed for the duration of a crisis. Given the relatively low level of social and political complexity this position may be understood as akin to the elders who managed the “cargo” obligations of the community in a rotating basis with no institutional continuity.
3. Around 1430 the Chankas attacked the Inca, driving the then leader Viracocha Inca out of Cuzco. His son Pachakuti replaced him, defeated the raiders and invaded their land. Instead of retiring to the Cuzco region as was usual he occupied the Chanka lands and established the core of a territorial “empire” that was extended by conquest by his descendants to encompass the entire central Andean region and its environs. This polity lasted from ca.1430 until conquered by the Spaniards under Francisco Pizarro in1532.
4. After the mid 16th century the early Spanish historians wrote their version of Inca history from a factual narrative point of view that fitted their ideas of a linear and event-driven nature of history. Thus they recorded a dynasty of 5 kings ruling the Inca Empire:
- Pachakuti 1430-71
- Topa Inca 1463-71 (co-ruler)
- Topa Inca 1471-93 (sole ruler)
- Huayna Capac 1493-1525
- Huascar 1525-1532
- Atahualpa 1532
The kings from Pachacuti to Huayna Capac were conquerors and unquestioned rulers. However, Huascar was challenged for his entire reign by his half-brother who engaged in long-lasting civil war that severely disrupted the state until its overthrow by the Spanish in 1532 just after Atahualpa’s ultimate triumph.
5. While to the Spanish this scenario seems a simple and fully understandable narrative, to the Andean peoples it may have had very different significance. Structuralist Anthropologists attempting to insert Andean historiography and understanding of time and society now suggest that the narrative may mask a purely structural “myth” of the origins of order in Inca society.
6. Thus Pacakuti in Quechua means a time of transition from one cycle of time and order to another. In this meaning the empire itself was a time of transition in cyclical time. The empire can be regarded as a period of ritual time intended to transform the cosmic order from the antecedent stage to a successor world order after the final triumph of Atahualpa. The civil war was the battle of dual forces whose outcome would have restored the balance of forces that heralded new cosmic order. The coming of the Spanish interrupted this transition and its culmination still awaits. Pachakuti’s co-rulership with his son Topa Inca is another example of dual balance in the Andean sense – they may have been heads of the two most senior lineages or moieties of the Inca. Some scholars would see similar dual lineage leadership in the reign of his successor Huayna Capac. Thus, while historic events undoubtedly did happen in this century, their combination in a narrative may not have been factual but structural.
7. If the structural scenario is correct Inca history is akin to myth in its role as a sacred story that serves to explain the order of things and the relationship of humans to their wider cosmos in space and time. We will see that other Inca “myths” do this in a more obvious manner.
Several new official state tenets justified and underlay Inca imperial administration. These were all transformations of basic Andean ayllu beliefs, changed in scope to support a vastly larger political organization:
The Dynastic Cult.
1. The Andean concept of ranked lineages was expanded to set the senior Inca lineage of Pachakuti as the senior (dynastic) line of a new world empire in which all subjects were junior members of a super-kinship community. This transformed a senior lineage into an imperial dynasty of rulers without changing the basic structural concept.
2. To further strengthen the Inca dynastic cult it was incorporated into a “typical” creation and origin myth that extended it back in mythical time through 12 earlier kings to the progenitor of the Inca lineage Manco Capac who was the son of the Sun (Inti), who emerged from Lake Titicaca before traveling to Cuzco, thus linking Inca rulers with the supernatural power of the cosmic creator force itself. The Inca Empire naturally elevated that reverence of the Sun to the level of official state religion with the establishment of Inti as their patron deity and Viracocha, one of the fluctuating forms of the Sun as Creator, as the supreme Inca divinity.
1. Traditional Andean reverence for the dead ancestors was transformed by the Inca dynasty into a royal mortuary cult.
2. Dead rulers were mummified and their bodies became the most sacred huacas of the empire. As such they continued to own land, maintained religious cults supported by their junior descendents, and were brought from their repositories to participate in great state festivals.
3. This centered another fundamental aspect of Andean belief on the “royal” line, transforming into official ideology and thus strengthening the power of rule.
Split Inheritance as a Dynamic for Imperial Expansion.
1. As noted above, the continuing supernatural power of the rulers after death lead to their continued participation in the strategies of rule. This included land ownership. While the senior son became king all of the dead king’s property remained in his possession to be cared for by his junior descendants. Thus the junior descent lines (panaqas) retained existing royal land rights and the rituals that accompanied this while the new king had to conquer more lands to establish his own economic base.
2. While this practice underlined the continuity of the ruling order and its divine nature and provided a stimulus for imperial expansion, through time it had a negative effect with huge state lands falling into the hands of powerful interests groups giving them power that ultimately rivaled the ruler. In fact split inheritance may have been a contributing factor for the civil war between Huascar and his (junior) half-brother Atahualpa with Huascar attempting to reform the system at the expense of the junior Inca royal panaqas who sided with his rival to protect their interests.
1. The natural result of the concentration of all divine and political power in a single dynastic line was the late development of the principle that only brothers and sisters of full lineage blood could be the parents of the next king.
2. While not a major factor in earlier Inca history the principle of royal incest played an important role in the dynamics of the civil war. Huascar the legitimate king was the son of Huayna Capac and a full sister. However, Atahualpa was his son by a non-royal woman. Thus the Civil War threatened this prerogative for rule as well as the practice of split inheritance.
1. The shamanistic practitioner was changed into a formal priest with an institutionalized religion that included official religious festivals, temples and hierarchies. The senior members of the priesthood were drawn from the ruling line.
2. However, shamanstic practice remained at the center of local and state rituals, with the king himself often playing the shamanistic role of communing with the supernatural on behalf of the state at the centers of state religion. Thus local religious practice was transformed in scope to become institutionalized and formalized.
3. The weather spirits of the Andean ayllu were likewise expanded in scope. The Sun (or Inti) as the patron and creating divinity of the Inca became Viracocha the supreme Inca divinity with a full range of religious institutions and practices surrounding his worship. Viracocha, in the characteristic Andean way of overlapping concepts and divinities, incorporated other transcendent forces such as the spirits of the weather, and climate.