Inca Marriage Customs: Betrothal, Divorce, Polygyny, and Royal Incest

Marriage in the Inca world was universal and nearly universal in its adult incidence: the colonial visitas of 1558–1570 record widows and widowers remarrying, but unmarried adults of either sex were rare, and the most common cause of unmarried adulthood was the death of a fiancé or a fiancée’s family in the wars of the late fifteenth century. Marriage was regulated by a set of conventions, well documented in the chronicles of Garcilaso de la Vega (1609), Pedro Cieza de León (1553), and Bernabé Cobo (1653), that distinguished two principal forms of union — sayru and pormo — and that prescribed detailed rules of betrothal, divorce, polygyny, and ritual observance. The most distinctive feature of Inca marriage at the apex of the social order was the practice of royal brother-sister marriage, in which the Sapa Inca married his eldest sister (often designated the coya) in a ritual union considered essential to the preservation of the dynastic line’s purity. Marriage was the principal mechanism by which ayllu lineages, lands, and ritual obligations were transmitted across generations, and the family and the ayllu together constituted the foundational institution of Andean life in the Tawantinsuyu.

Betrothal and the textile exchange

The formal betrothal of an Inca couple was a substantial ritual event, involving a textile exchange of considerable scale. The betrothal, known as sirviqusqa or sawaripay (the two terms are not exact synonyms: sirviqusqa is the Quechua term for the formal engagement, while sawaripay is the early-colonial Aymara-influenced term that came to be used in the southern highlands), was arranged by the senior members of the bride’s and groom’s families, often with the intervention of a camayoc (ritual specialist) of the local ayllu. The principal acts of the ceremony were the giving of textiles from the groom’s family to the bride’s, the reciprocal giving of cloaks and food from the bride’s family to the groom’s, and the public announcement of the engagement in the principal plaza of the ayllu.

The textile exchange was the symbolic core of the betrothal. The groom’s family gave the bride a lliclla (mantle) and an aqsu (dress) of fine cumbi alpaca-wool cloth; the bride’s family gave the groom a series of cloaks and a quantity of food. The cloth given on these occasions was woven in the t’oqapu patterns of the two lineages, and the act of giving and receiving bound the two lineages together in a network of ritual obligation. The chronicler Garcilaso de la Vega, who was the product of such a marriage between an Inca princess and a Spanish conquistador, recorded in 1609 that the textile exchange at an Inca betrothal was the moment at which the pacarinas — the places of origin — of the two lineages were formally joined. The size of the textile exchange was calibrated to the status of the two families: a betrothal between two panaca families might involve the exchange of several hundred cumbi textiles, while a betrothal between two commoner families of a single ayllu might involve the exchange of perhaps a dozen.

The betrothal ceremony was followed by a period of bride service — typically several months — during which the groom worked for the bride’s family, helping with agricultural labor and with the construction of the new household. The chronicler Cieza de León recorded that the duration of bride service was calibrated to the size of the textile exchange: the larger the bridewealth, the longer the bride service. After the completion of bride service, the formal marriage ceremony — the raymi quicuy or “feast of giving” — was held, and the couple was established in a new household.

Forms of marriage: sayru, pormo, and the trial union

The chroniclers distinguish two principal forms of marriage in the Inca world. Sayru (also siri) marriage was the standard consensual union, terminable for serious fault and requiring the repayment of the bridewealth if the wife left. Sayru marriage was permanent in intent, was celebrated by a public ceremony, and was the form of marriage practiced by the great majority of the population. The chronicler Murúa recorded that a sayru marriage could be terminated only on specific grounds — adultery, desertion, incurable disease, or failure to perform the ritual obligations of marriage — and that the aggrieved party had a right to claim damages from the offender.

Pormo (or warmi churinkapa) was a trial union in which a couple lived together for a probationary period — typically one to two years — before committing to permanence. Children born of the trial marriage remained with the mother, and either partner could return to his or her natal family at the end of the probationary period without penalty. Pormo marriage was particularly common among commoners, and the chronicler Cobo recorded that as many as a third of the marriages in some highland ayllus in the colonial period were pormo unions. The colonial visitas record several cases in which a pormo union was converted into a sayru marriage at the end of the probationary period, and several other cases in which the pormo union was dissolved and the partners returned to their natal families.

Age at marriage, endogamy, and the levirate

Boys and girls were typically betrothed at the age of 18 to 20, with the formal marriage ceremony taking place shortly thereafter. Among the nobility, however, the age of betrothal was lower: the chronicler Murúa recorded that the daughters of panaca nobles were often betrothed at 12 to 14 and married at 14 to 16. The age of betrothal for a qoya — the principal wife of the Sapa Inca — was even lower: Huayna Capac’s principal wife, Rahua Ocllo, was reportedly betrothed at 10 and married at 13, and the chronicler Sarmiento de Gamboa recorded that several of the later qoyas were betrothed in early childhood to cement dynastic alliances.

Marriage within the ayllu was regulated by a strong endogamous preference. The classic study of a single highland community, presented in John Murra’s Accesiones de collavina a Cuzco entre 1524 y 1606 and in the more recent work of the ethnographer Olivia Harris on Laymi in the 1970s, shows the proportion of marriages contracted within a given ayllu hovering between 75 and 85 percent. Exogamous marriages — typically between paired hanan and hurin ayllus, or between ayllus of different ecological zones — were permitted but required the payment of a higher bridewealth, and the children of such unions were generally ascribed to the father’s ayllu.

A distinctive form of marriage in the late prehispanic period was the levirate — the marriage of a man to his deceased brother’s wife. The levirate was common in the rural ayllus of the central highlands, and the colonial visitas record several cases in which a widowed woman was required by the ayllu to marry her husband’s brother. A related form of marriage was the sororate — the marriage of a woman to her deceased sister’s husband — although the chroniclers treat the levirate as the more frequent of the two. Both practices were understood as mechanisms for keeping the household’s land and labor within the lineage, and the chronicler Cobo recorded that the levirate was considered a duty rather than an option in many rural ayllus.

Polygyny and the order of wives

Polygyny was permitted in the Inca world but practiced mainly by the Sapa Inca, the royal panacas, and the senior officials of the imperial administration. The Sapa Inca typically maintained a principal wife (the coya or qoya) and a number of secondary wives (runtumamaq mama kuna); the chronicler Murúa recorded that Huayna Capac maintained perhaps 300 secondary wives, all of them drawn from the royal panacas, and that the principal coya ranked above the secondary wives regardless of the relative age of the marriage. Polygynous wives ranked according to the order of their marriage and the status of their natal families: a secondary wife from a powerful panaca might rank above an earlier-married secondary wife from a less distinguished lineage.

The children of polygynous unions were ascribed to the status of their mothers, and the coya’s sons had a prior claim to the imperial succession. The colonial visitas record several cases in which disputes over the order of polygynous wives and the status of their children led to dynastic crises: the civil war of 1529–1532 between Huáscar and Atahualpa was, in part, a dispute over the status of the two brothers’ mothers, since the two princes were born of different secondary wives of Huayna Capac. The detailed treatment of the Sapa Inca’s marriages and of the politics of royal polygyny is given in the Sapa Inca role article; the politics of royal incest and the Capac Raymi ceremony are treated in the article on sacrifice and ritual.

Royal incest and the marriage of the Sapa Inca to his sister

The most distinctive feature of Inca marriage at the apex of the social order was the practice of royal incest, in which the Sapa Inca married his eldest sister (often called the coya, although the term is sometimes used more loosely) in a ritual union considered essential to the preservation of the dynasty’s purity. The practice is well documented in the chronicles: Sarmiento de Gamboa, Betanzos, and Cobo all describe the brother-sister marriage of the Sapa Inca in detail, and the colonial chronicler Pedro Pizarro recorded that the coya was ceremonially married to the Sapa Inca at the festival of Qhapaq Raymi in the months before the solstice. The children of the brother-sister marriage (huahua inti, or “children of the sun”) were considered the purest of the royal line, and they had a prior claim to the imperial succession.

The brother-sister royal marriage was, in formal terms, restricted to the Sapa Inca and to the members of the royal panacas. The chronicler Cobo recorded that commoners who engaged in incestuous unions of the same type were severely punished, and that the death penalty was imposed on those who committed adultery with a close relative. The asymmetry between the royal and commoner rules reflects the special status of the Sapa Inca as the living representative of Inti: because the Sapa Inca was considered to be the son of the sun, his union with his sister was understood not as incest in the moral sense but as a recapitulation of the primordial union of the sun and the moon, Mama Killa.

The Spanish chroniclers varied in their assessment of the practice. The soldier-chronicler Pedro Sancho de la Hoz, who was present at the coronation of Manco Inca in 1533, treated the brother-sister marriage as a “barbarous” custom inherited from the Inca’s pagan ancestors. The mestizo chronicler Garcilaso de la Vega, by contrast, defended the practice as a rational policy designed to prevent the dispersion of the royal patrimony and to ensure the legitimacy of the succession; he noted that the huahua inti were treated with a deference bordering on religious veneration. The detailed ethnohistorical analysis, by Gary Urton in The History of a Myth: Pacariqtambo and the Origin of the Inkas (1990), has shown that the brother-sister marriage was, in origin, a ritual marriage between the Sapa Inca and a representation of the Mama Killa (moon) deity, and that the actual marriage of the Sapa Inca to his eldest sister was a later development designed to legitimate the succession of the Capac Ayllu of Pachacuti in the fifteenth century.

Divorce and widowhood

Divorce was permitted under the Inca legal system, although it was uncommon and socially costly. The grounds for divorce, as recorded by Cieza de León, included adultery, desertion, incurable disease, and failure to perform the ritual obligations of marriage. A wife who initiated a divorce without just cause was required to return the bridewealth, while a husband who did so forfeited half his property to his wife; a man who committed adultery was additionally required to give the aggrieved husband a cloak of cumbi cloth. A widow or widower was expected to remarry within a year of the spouse’s death, generally to a sibling or close relative of the deceased; the levirate marriage was particularly common in the late prehispanic period and is documented in the colonial visitas of 1558–1570.