The Ransom of Atahualpa and the Room of Gold

The ransom of Atahualpa — known to the Spanish as the rescate de Atahualpa — was the most famous treasure-gathering of the Spanish conquest, in which the captive Sapa Inca agreed to fill a room of his prison with gold, and a second room twice over with silver, in exchange for his release. The offer was made in the early weeks of Atahualpa’s captivity at Cajamarca, and the ransom was gathered from the temples and royal storehouses of the northern Inca state during the first half of 1533. By the most reliable modern estimate, the total reached about 6.1 tonnes of gold and 12.4 tonnes of silver, although the contemporary estimates varied widely and the calculations of the quinto, the royal fifth, were complicated by the loss of much of the treasure to fraud, theft, and the melting down of the goldwork into ingots. The ransom did not, in the end, save Atahualpa’s life: he was tried and executed on 26 July 1533. The ransom is significant, however, both for the light it throws on the wealth of the Inca Empire and for the role of precious metals in the political economy of the Spanish conquest.

The offer of the ransom

The captivity at Cajamarca

Atahualpa had been held prisoner in a large house in Cajamarca since the Battle of Cajamarca on 16 November 1532. The house — sometimes called the Ransom Room or, in Spanish, the Cuarto del Rescate — was a large rectangular structure with thick adobe walls and a single door. The interior of the room was, by the standards of the period, exceptionally large: about 22 feet (6.7 meters) long by 17 feet (5.2 meters) wide, with a height of perhaps 9 feet (2.7 meters). The room has been preserved, although the building has been substantially modified, and it remains one of the principal tourist attractions in Cajamarca. The line that marks the height to which the gold was to be filled is still visible on the wall.

Atahualpa, who had been the victor in the civil war of succession between Huáscar and Atahualpa, had been briefed by his attendants about the Spanish obsession with gold and silver. Within a few days of his capture, he sent word to Pizarro offering a ransom: he would fill the room in which he was held with gold, piled as high as a man could reach, in exchange for his release. The offer was made, in part, on the basis of Atahualpa’s understanding of the Spanish conception of exchange: the Inca ruler had assumed that the Spanish, having taken his person, would be willing to release him in exchange for a quantity of metal. The Spanish, who had been equally briefed by their interpreters about the Inca conception of ransom, accepted the offer and drew a line on the wall of the room at the agreed height.

The terms of the agreement

The terms of the ransom were recorded by the secretary of Pizarro, Francisco de Xerez, and were elaborated in the later chronicles. Atahualpa agreed to fill the room with gold objects — vessels, plates, figurines, sheets of beaten gold from the temple walls, and jewelry — piled to the height of a man’s outstretched arm, and to fill a second, larger room with silver, twice over. The objects were to be brought from the temples and royal storehouses of the northern Inca state, which were under the control of the generals who had served Atahualpa in the civil war. The Spanish undertook to release Atahualpa within about two months of the completion of the delivery, and to provide him with a ship to take him to Spain. The agreement was witnessed by the Spanish chaplain, Father Vicente de Valverde, and by several of the Spanish captains.

The interpretation of the agreement is the subject of historical debate. The Spanish accounts present the ransom as a formal contract, in which Atahualpa was bound to deliver the gold and the Spanish were bound to release him. The indigenous accounts, recorded by the chroniclers Miguel Cabello Balboa and Titu Cusi Yupanqui, suggest that Atahualpa understood the agreement differently: he had offered the ransom as a gift, in the Inca manner, and had expected the Spanish to reciprocate in kind. The question of whether the ransom was a contract or a gift is important, because the Spanish executed Atahualpa after the ransom had been delivered, and the question of whether the execution was a breach of the agreement has been a matter of historical controversy ever since.

The gathering of the ransom

The role of the Inca generals

The gathering of the ransom was a major logistical undertaking. The temples of the northern Inca state — the Temple of the Sun at Cusco, the temple at Pachacamac, the temples at Tomebamba, Cajamarca, and Quito, and the many smaller provincial temples — were systematically stripped of their treasures, and the gold and silver objects were carried to Cajamarca in long processions. The most important of the Inca generals — Quisquis and Chalcuchima — were ordered to cooperate, and they did so, although they were aware that the ransom would not save their master. The Spanish accounts report that the Inca generals tried to delay the delivery of the gold, on the grounds that the season was bad and the roads were difficult, but the Spanish forced them to comply.

The gold and silver objects that made up the ransom included a wide variety of artifacts. The Inca were sophisticated metallurgists, and they had developed techniques for working gold, silver, and a copper-gold alloy called tumbaga. The temples of the Inca contained large quantities of gold and silver objects — sheets of beaten gold covering the temple walls, golden llamas, gold and silver vessels, jewelry, and figurines of the Sapa Inca and the Inca gods — and the ransom included both the imperial treasures and the local temple treasures. The most famous objects in the ransom were a golden sun disk, a golden image of the Sapa Inca, and a silver image of the moon, all of which were later sent to Spain.

The division of the ransom

The delivery of the ransom took about six months, and the gold and silver were melted down into ingots and counted. The total is recorded in the documents of the time, and the calculations of the quinto, the royal fifth, are preserved in the archive of the Casa de Contratación in Seville. By the most reliable modern estimate, the total reached about 6.1 tonnes of gold and 12.4 tonnes of silver. The Spanish accounts report that the gold was of exceptional purity, with little or no alloy, and that the silver was of high quality. The total value of the ransom, in modern terms, has been estimated at about 6 to 8 million dollars, although the calculation is complicated by the inflation of the sixteenth century and by the fact that the gold and silver were valued by the Spanish at the European rate, which was much higher than the Inca rate.

The division of the ransom was a complex process. The Spanish had agreed, in the capitulación of 1529, that the proceeds of the conquest would be divided into five parts, with one-fifth going to the royal fifth and the remainder divided among the participants. The division was made in Cajamarca in the summer of 1533, and the amounts paid to the principal participants have been preserved in the records. Pizarro received the largest share, equivalent to about 55 pounds of gold and 2,350 marks of silver, although the exact amounts are uncertain. The smaller participants received much less, and there were complaints from the rank and file that the distribution had been unfair. The gold and silver were minted into coin in Spain, and the proceeds were used to finance the further conquest of the Andes and the establishment of the colonial economy.

The fate of the ransom

The execution of Atahualpa

The ransom did not save Atahualpa’s life. In the spring of 1533 the Spanish began to fear that Atahualpa was organizing an attack on them, and they resolved to put him on trial. The charges included polygamy, the murder of his brother Huáscar, the worship of false gods, and the practice of incest — the last of which is mentioned in the Spanish accounts but was almost certainly invented. The trial was conducted by a Spanish court, in Spanish, with the interpreter Felipillo, who had very imperfect Quechua, providing a barely adequate translation. Atahualpa, who had been baptized into the Christian faith shortly before the trial, was found guilty and was sentenced to death. The sentence was carried out at Cajamarca on 26 July 1533, and Atahualpa was strangled rather than burned, on the grounds that baptized persons could not be burned.

The execution of Atahualpa, after the delivery of the ransom, has been interpreted in different ways. The Spanish accounts present the execution as a just punishment for the crimes of which Atahualpa had been convicted. The indigenous accounts, recorded by the chroniclers Titu Cusi Yupanqui and Miguel Cabello Balboa, present the execution as a breach of the agreement and as a sign of the bad faith of the Spanish. The truth is uncertain, but the execution was clearly a political act as much as a judicial one, and it removed the last remaining authority in the northern Inca state. The execution was followed by the Spanish advance on Cusco and the conquest of the Inca capital in November 1533.

The legacy of the ransom

The ransom of Atahualpa was, in the long term, a mixed blessing for the Spanish. The treasure enabled Pizarro to finance the conquest of the Inca heartland and the establishment of the colonial economy, but the division of the ransom generated bitter disputes among the Spanish, and the execution of Atahualpa, after the delivery of the ransom, contributed to the alienation of the Inca nobility and the indigenous population. The ransom also established a pattern that would be repeated in other Spanish conquests: the Spanish demand for gold and silver, the indigenous willingness to pay, and the Spanish refusal to honor their agreements once the gold had been delivered. The pattern would have important consequences for the subsequent history of the conquest and for the legacy of the conquest in the modern Andean world.

The ransom is also significant for the light it throws on the wealth of the Inca Empire. The total amount of gold and silver gathered for the ransom was, by the standards of the early sixteenth century, very large, and it enabled the Spanish to establish a foothold in the Andes and to finance the further conquest of the region. The wealth of the Inca state, however, was not based primarily on the accumulation of gold and silver, but on the labor extraction system of the mit’a and the mitma. The gold and silver of the Inca were, in effect, the surplus of a non-monetary economy, and the Spanish demand for them disrupted the system in ways that the Inca had not anticipated.