The Capture and Death of Atahualpa

The capture and death of Atahualpa was the central political event of the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire. On 16 November 1532, in the highland town of Cajamarca in northern Peru, the Sapa Inca Atahualpa — the reigning emperor of Tawantinsuyu, the victor of a three-year civil war of succession, and the absolute political authority in the Andean world — was seized by Francisco Pizarro and a small force of Spanish soldiers in a surprise attack in the town’s main square. The seizure was followed by a ransom of unprecedented scale, in which the Inca filled a large room with gold and twice an equal volume with silver, and by a trial on charges that included murder, polygamy, and the practice of idolatry, and by an execution by strangulation on 26 July 1533. The capture and death of Atahualpa effectively destroyed the political authority of the Inca state in the northern Andes, opened the way for the Spanish conquest of Cusco in November 1533, and established the personal authority of Francisco Pizarro over the conquered territory. The episode is among the most thoroughly documented events of the sixteenth century: the Spanish chroniclers Francisco de Xerez, Pedro Sancho, and Miguel de Estete, the indigenous chronicler Titu Cusi, and the later historian Garcilaso de la Vega all produced detailed accounts.

Background

The state of the Inca Empire in 1532

When the Spanish arrived at Cajamarca in November 1532, the Inca Empire had been weakened by a decade of crisis. The Sapa Inca Huayna Capac had died of smallpox between 1524 and 1527, and his designated heir Ninan Cuyochi had died of the same disease. The succession crisis had been resolved, after a civil war of about three years, in favor of Atahualpa, the son of Huayna Capac by the Caranqui princess Pacha Duchicela. Atahualpa had been acclaimed Sapa Inca in late 1531 or early 1532, and he was encamped at Cajamarca with an army of perhaps 30,000 to 80,000 men, preparing to descend on Cusco. His brother Huáscar, the senior claimant, was held prisoner in the Coricancha in Cusco. The civil war had been extremely destructive: both armies had used scorched-earth tactics, the highland population had been reduced by famine and displacement, and the epidemic disease had killed a substantial portion of the population.

The Spanish, who had landed at Tumbes in 1532 and had been informed by indigenous intermediaries of the civil war and of the epidemic, correctly understood that the Inca state was divided and that they faced an enemy that was militarily formidable but politically fragile. The ambush at Cajamarca on 16 November 1532 was a deliberate exploitation of the disequilibrium.

The political and religious context of the meeting

The seizure of Atahualpa was not simply a military action but a political and religious one. The Spanish, operating under the legal framework of the Requerimiento and the papal donation of the New World, claimed to be acting under the authority of the Pope and of the Spanish king. The chaplain of the expedition, the Dominican Vicente de Valverde, advanced toward the Inca carrying a breviary and a crucifix and read aloud the Requerimiento, the standard Spanish document requiring non-Christians to acknowledge the authority of the Pope and the Spanish king. The reading was in Castilian, and the Inca, who spoke only Quechua, was told of its content by the interpreter Felipillo. Atahualpa rejected the document, and the rejection, or the scuffle that followed, was the immediate cause of the attack.

The political and religious character of the meeting has been the subject of considerable historical discussion. Some Spanish chroniclers, notably Valverde himself, presented the rejection of the Requerimiento as a free act of defiance; others, including Pedro Pizarro and Garcilaso de la Vega, presented the rejection as a sign of the Inca’s incomprehension. Modern historians generally treat the meeting as a deliberate trap, planned in advance by Pizarro, and the Requerimiento as a legal pretext rather than a serious attempt at conversion. The episode is often cited in the literature on early modern European expansion as a striking example of the gap between European and non-European conceptions of law, religion, and political authority.

The Battle of Cajamarca, 16 November 1532

The plan and the deployment

Pizarro divided his small force into three bodies of infantry, which he placed in the large buildings that surrounded the main square of the town, and a body of cavalry, which was held in reserve in a side street. The plan was to provoke a confrontation in the square and to use the surprise, the horses, and the firearms to seize Atahualpa. The total Spanish force at Cajamarca was about 168 men, with some 62 of them mounted as cavalry, and a small number of arquebusiers — a few hundred men in all. The Inca force that accompanied Atahualpa into the town was, by contrast, perhaps 4,000 to 5,000 retainers, most of whom were unarmed, in keeping with the agreement that the meeting would be unarmed. The rest of the Inca army, perhaps 30,000 to 50,000 men, remained encamped on the plain outside the town.

The Battle of Cajamarca is conventionally described as an ambush, and the description is accurate in the technical sense. The Spanish did not declare war in advance; they did not give any warning of the attack; and they used the agreement of an unarmed meeting as the cover for the seizure. The plan was, in effect, a violation of the agreement under which Atahualpa had come, and the Spanish chroniclers acknowledge the violation, although they justify it on the grounds that the Inca had concealed their army on the plain. Modern historians, again, generally treat the episode as a deliberate trap, planned in advance by Pizarro.

The attack and the seizure

Atahualpa entered Cajamarca at dusk on 16 November 1532 in a litter carried by eighty lords, accompanied by perhaps 4,000 to 5,000 retainers, most of whom were unarmed. The Spanish chaplain Vicente de Valverde advanced toward the Inca carrying a breviary and a crucifix and read aloud the Requerimiento. Atahualpa rejected the document, and a scuffle broke out. Pizarro, who had been watching for a signal, gave the order to attack. The Spanish infantry, armed with steel swords, pikes, and a few arquebuses, charged the Inca retainers in the square; the cavalry, which had been held back, charged out of a side street. The Inca force, which was unprepared for cavalry and lacked effective weapons against steel, broke almost at once. By the Spanish accounts, several thousand Inca were killed in the square and in the immediate pursuit, and Atahualpa himself was seized and held prisoner in a house in the town.

The Battle of Cajamarca is conventionally cited as a striking example of the asymmetry of early modern European military technology. The Spanish were outnumbered by perhaps twenty or thirty to one in the immediate engagement, but their horses, their steel weapons, and their armor gave them a decisive advantage in a confined space against an enemy that had no indigenous tradition of cavalry warfare. The encounter is one of the most cited cases in the literature on European expansion.

The ransom of Atahualpa

The agreement

Atahualpa, held prisoner in a large house in Cajamarca, understood quickly that the Spanish valued gold and silver. He offered Pizarro a ransom: he would fill a room about 22 feet long by 17 feet wide with gold, and would fill a second room twice over with silver, in exchange for his release. The offer was accepted, and a line was drawn on the wall of the room at the agreed height. The ransom of Atahualpa — known to the Spanish as the rescate de Atahualpa — was the largest single payment of precious metal ever made to the Spanish crown by an indigenous ruler. Atahualpa used the period of his imprisonment to gather information about the Spanish and to send instructions to his generals in the north. The Spanish, who were apprehensive about the size of the Inca army on the plain outside the town, used the agreement to keep Atahualpa in effect a hostage.

The delivery of the ransom

The ransom was gathered from the temples and royal storehouses of the northern empire, and the gold was melted down into ingots and counted. By some reckonings, the total reached about 6 tonnes of gold and 12 tonnes of silver, a sum that, in modern terms, would be worth several hundred million dollars. The delivery took about six months, from late 1532 to about May 1533, and the gold and silver were brought to Cajamarca by llama trains and by porters from the highland towns of the northern empire. The Spanish chroniclers give detailed inventories of the objects that were delivered: golden figures of the Sapa Inca, golden llamas, golden vases, silver vases, and a great quantity of smaller items.

The delivery of the ransom had a number of important political consequences. First, it gave the Spanish a clear picture of the location of the major Inca temples and royal storehouses, and it allowed them to plan the conquest of Cusco in 1533 on the basis of detailed intelligence. Second, the gathering of the ransom required the cooperation of the Inca nobility, and the cooperation had the effect of legitimating the Spanish presence in the north in the eyes of many local inhabitants. Third, the gold and silver of the ransom gave Pizarro and his men a substantial financial resource, and the resource was one of the principal causes of the Spanish civil war of the 1530s.

The trial and execution of Atahualpa

The decision to put Atahualpa on trial

In the spring of 1533 the Spanish began to fear that Atahualpa was organizing an attack on them. The Spanish had been informed, possibly by indigenous intermediaries, that Atahualpa had sent instructions to his generals Quisquis and Chalcuchima to attack the Spanish. The instructions are not documented in the Spanish chronicles, and the episode has been the subject of considerable historical discussion. The Spanish, in any case, resolved to put Atahualpa on trial, and the trial was held in May 1533 in a large hall in Cajamarca. The trial was conducted by a Spanish court, in Spanish, with the interpreter Felipillo, who had no Quechua, providing a barely adequate translation.

The charges against Atahualpa were unusual. The Spanish court charged him with polygamy, with the murder of his brother Huáscar, with the worship of false gods, and with the practice of incest. The first three charges had some basis in Inca practice: the Sapa Inca was conventionally polygamous, and Atahualpa had ordered the death of Huáscar in 1533. The charge of incest was almost certainly invented. The trial was, in effect, a legal pretext for an execution that the Spanish had already decided upon.

The execution

The execution of Atahualpa took place at Cajamarca on 26 July 1533. The sentence was originally to be burning at the stake, but at the last moment, after Atahualpa had accepted baptism into the Christian faith, the sentence was commuted to strangulation, on the grounds that baptized persons could not be burned. Atahualpa was given a Christian burial in the small church at Cajamarca. The execution was a political act as much as a judicial one, and it removed the last remaining political authority in the northern Inca Empire. Pizarro’s solution was to install a younger son of Huayna Capac, Manco Inca Yupanqui, as a puppet Sapa Inca, and to use the installation as a cover for the conquest of Cusco later in 1533.

The execution of Atahualpa also had consequences for the Inca religion. Atahualpa, although a Sapa Inca, was not the principal focus of the Andean religious system, which was the cult of the Inti, the sun, and the cult of the royal mummies of the deceased Sapa Incas. The execution of the Sapa Inca did not, in itself, destroy the Andean religious system, but it did remove the figure who, in the Andean political system, was the link between the people and the huacas, the local sacred sites. The execution was the first in a series of Spanish actions that would, over the next two generations, dismantle the institutional framework of the Andean religion.

Significance

Political consequences

The capture and death of Atahualpa was a turning point in the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire. The seizure of the Sapa Inca at Cajamarca on 16 November 1532 effectively destroyed the political authority of the Inca state in the northern Andes, and the execution of Atahualpa on 26 July 1533 removed the last remaining authority in the north. The installation of Manco Inca as a puppet Sapa Inca was a temporary expedient, and the escape of Manco Inca from Cusco in 1535 and the establishment of the Neo-Inca State at Vilcabamba were the consequences. The execution of Atahualpa, in other words, did not end the war but merely transformed it.

The capture and death of Atahualpa also had consequences for the Spanish. The ransom of Atahualpa was the basis of the personal fortunes of Pizarro and his men, and the division of the ransom was one of the principal causes of the Spanish civil war of the 1530s. The execution of Atahualpa, similarly, was the act that established the personal authority of Pizarro in Peru, and the authority was the basis of the conquest of Cusco and the establishment of the Spanish colonial regime in the Andes.

Religious and cultural consequences

The capture and death of Atahualpa also had religious and cultural consequences. The episode is conventionally taken as the symbolic beginning of the religious conversion of the Andean population, although the actual conversion was a much slower and more contested process. The baptism of Atahualpa in 1533, performed by Valverde at the last moment before the execution, was the first recorded instance of the baptism of a Sapa Inca, and the act was a powerful symbolic assertion of the Spanish claim to religious authority in the Andes. The execution of Atahualpa, in turn, was a symbolic assertion of the Spanish claim to political authority, and the two acts together — baptism and execution — defined the Spanish position in the Andes for the next two generations.

The capture and death of Atahualpa also had consequences for the memory of the conquest. The episode has been the subject of an extensive literature, both Spanish and indigenous, and the figures of Atahualpa and Pizarro have been the central characters in the historiography of the conquest. The Spanish chroniclers, notably Xerez and Sancho, presented the episode as a triumph of Christianity over paganism, while the indigenous chroniclers, especially those associated with the El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno of Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, presented the episode as a catastrophe and the Spanish as rapacious and cruel. The episode remains a central case in the literature on early modern European expansion.