The Last Incas and the Vilcabamba Resistance

The Neo-Inca State at Vilcabamba, also known as the Inca State of Vilcabamba or the reino del Perú, was a small but politically important rump state of the Inca Empire, established in 1537 in the remote cloud-forest region of Vilcabamba, on the eastern slopes of the Andes, and destroyed by the Spanish in 1572. The state was the political expression of the indigenous resistance to Spanish rule in the four decades after the conquest of Cusco in 1533, and it served as a focus for the loyalty of those indigenous peoples who refused to accept Spanish authority. The state was ruled by four Sapa Incas in succession: Manco Inca Yupanqui, the son of Huayna Capac who had been installed by Pizarro as a puppet and who escaped from Cusco in 1535; Sayri Túpac, who succeeded in 1544 and accepted a Spanish agreement in 1557; Titu Cusi, who rejected the agreement and resumed the war; and Túpac Amaru I, the last Sapa Inca, who was captured and executed by the Spanish in 1572. The Neo-Inca State was a small polity, perhaps 30,000 to 40,000 people, in a remote and difficult country, and it survived for thirty-five years only because the Spanish, distracted by their own civil wars and by the consolidation of the colonial regime, were unable to mount a decisive campaign against it.

Background

The escape of Manco Inca

The Neo-Inca State was the result of a rebellion by Manco Inca Yupanqui, a younger son of the Sapa Inca Huayna Capac, who had been installed by Francisco Pizarro as a puppet Sapa Inca after the execution of Atahualpa in 1533. The relationship between Manco Inca and the Spanish deteriorated rapidly in the months after the conquest of Cusco in November 1533. The Spanish demanded gold and silver from the Inca nobility, took possession of the aqllawasi — the houses of the chosen women, who were considered to be wives of the Sapa Inca — and treated the young Inca with increasing contempt. The chroniclers, both Spanish and indigenous, record that the Spanish openly took the wives and daughters of the Inca nobility, and the abuses were a major cause of the rebellion.

In the spring of 1535 Manco Inca escaped from Cusco, taking with him a small retinue of loyal Inca nobles and a few thousand warriors. He withdrew to the highland fortress of Ollantaytambo, in the Sacred Valley northeast of Cusco, and from there he organized a general rebellion against the Spanish. The rebellion, which spread across the central and southern highlands, was the most serious indigenous challenge to Spanish rule in the Americas.

The highland rebellion, 1535–1536

The highland rebellion of 1535–1536 was the most serious military challenge the Spanish faced in the Andes. Manco Inca, with an army that the Spanish chroniclers put at 30,000 to 100,000 warriors, besieged the Spanish garrisons at Cusco, Lima, and the central highlands. The siege of Cusco in 1536, in which Manco Inca’s forces succeeded in cutting the Spanish off from the surrounding countryside, is one of the most serious defeats the Spanish suffered in the Americas. The Spanish garrison at Cusco, under the command of Hernando Pizarro, was reduced to eating the bodies of dead horses and mules, and the situation was saved only by the arrival of a relief force under the command of Alonso de Alvarado, which was sent by Francisco Pizarro from Lima.

The Spanish counterattack succeeded in relieving Cusco and in pushing Manco Inca from Ollantaytambo. Manco Inca withdrew further into the cloud-forest region of Vilcabamba, on the eastern slopes of the Andes, where the Spanish were unable to follow him effectively. The Spanish cavalry, which had been decisive in the battles on the highland plain, was less effective in the dense forest and the steep terrain, and the indigenous forces, which were familiar with the terrain, were able to mount a successful defense. The retreat to Vilcabamba, in 1537, was the founding of the Neo-Inca State.

The Neo-Inca State at Vilcabamba

Geography and population

Vilcabamba was a remote and difficult region on the eastern slopes of the Andes, in what is now the department of Cusco, Peru. The region was densely forested, with deep river valleys and steep mountain ridges, and it was inhabited by Antisuyu peoples, the lowland groups of the Inca Empire’s eastern quarter, who had been incorporated into the empire only recently and who had their own reasons for resenting Cusco. The region was accessible from the highland plain of Cusco only by a few narrow passes, and the Spanish found it difficult to mount sustained campaigns into the area. The capital of the Neo-Inca State was the town of Vilcabamba, also known as Espíritu Pampa, which had been an Inca provincial center before the conquest.

The population of the Neo-Inca State is estimated to have been between 30,000 and 40,000 people, mostly Antisuyu peoples who had been incorporated into the empire only recently and who now had a strong interest in defending their new state against the Spanish. The state was a multi-ethnic polity, in which the Inca ruling dynasty was supported by a coalition of Antisuyu, lowland Quechua, and highland refugees from the Spanish-controlled areas. The state was too small to mount serious military campaigns against the Spanish, but it was large enough to defend itself effectively against Spanish incursions, and it survived for thirty-five years on the basis of guerrilla warfare and raids into the highland provinces.

The political organization of the state

The Neo-Inca State at Vilcabamba was organized, in many respects, as a smaller version of the Inca Empire. The Sapa Inca was the absolute political and religious authority, and the state religion of the Inti sun cult was maintained, with the major temples reconstructed and the mummification of the deceased Sapa Incas continuing. The decimal system of administration was preserved, and the system of mit’a labor extraction was continued, although on a smaller scale. The state, in effect, attempted to preserve the institutional framework of the Inca Empire, but on a much smaller scale and in a much more difficult environment.

The political organization of the state was, however, fragile. The Sapa Inca depended on the loyalty of the Antisuyu peoples, who were not naturally inclined to Inca rule, and the loyalty had to be maintained by a combination of religious authority, military force, and material inducements. The state was also threatened by internal disputes over the succession, and the four Sapa Incas of Vilcabamba all died in circumstances that are at least partly suspicious.

The Sapa Incas of Vilcabamba

Manco Inca, 1537–1544

The first Sapa Inca of Vilcabamba was Manco Inca Yupanqui, who had escaped from Cusco in 1535 and had withdrawn to Vilcabamba in 1537. Manco Inca ruled the state for seven years and used it as a base for raids into the highland provinces. The Spanish, who were at this time distracted by the civil war between Pizarro and Almagro, were unable to mount a serious campaign against Vilcabamba, and Manco Inca was able to consolidate his position.

Manco Inca was assassinated in 1544 by a group of Spanish-allied indigenous, who were acting, according to the Spanish chroniclers, on the orders of the Spanish. The assassination was the first in a series of Spanish actions against the Neo-Inca State that culminated in the campaign of 1572. The throne was taken by his son, Sayri Túpac.

Sayri Túpac and the agreement of 1557

The second Sapa Inca of Vilcabamba was Sayri Túpac, who succeeded his father in 1544 at a young age. In 1557 he agreed to leave Vilcabamba, to be baptized as a Christian, and to accept an encomienda in the highland province of Yucay, north of Cusco. In exchange, the Spanish recognized his claim to the Inca title, although not to political power, and he was married to a Spanish woman, María Beatriz Coya. The agreement was a personal one: Sayri Túpac abandoned the war but did not formally surrender the legitimacy of the Inca order, and the survival of the Inca royal line was, in effect, guaranteed by the agreement.

The agreement of 1557 was a significant Spanish achievement, but it did not formally end the war: the Antisuyu peoples of Vilcabamba, and a faction of the Inca nobility, refused to accept the agreement, and the Neo-Inca State continued to exist under the rule of Sayri Túpac’s younger brother, Titu Cusi.

Titu Cusi, 1559–1571

Titu Cusi, who had been raised in Vilcabamba and had not been baptized, succeeded to the throne in 1559 after the death of his brother Sayri Túpac, and immediately rejected the agreement of his brother. The Spanish, who were at this time distracted by the silver discoveries at Potosí and the consolidation of the colonial regime, did not press a campaign into Vilcabamba during the 1560s. Titu Cusi, for his part, was unable to mount serious military campaigns against the Spanish, and the war was reduced to a series of raids and counter-raids. Titu Cusi is known to history through the Relación de la conquista del Perú y hechos del Inca Manco II, an account of the conquest and the resistance that was dictated by Titu Cusi to a Spanish scribe in 1570. Titu Cusi died in 1571, and his death was followed by a brief succession dispute. The new ruler was a younger brother of Titu Cusi, who took the dynastic name Túpac Amaru I. The new Sapa Inca was about twenty years old and lacked the political experience of his older brothers. The accession of Túpac Amaru I coincided with a change in the policy of the Spanish crown, and the change was decisive.

Túpac Amaru I and the fall of Vilcabamba, 1572

The fifth viceroy of Peru, Francisco de Toledo, had been appointed in 1569, and he resolved to put an end to the Neo-Inca State once and for all. The viceroy assembled a force of about 250 Spanish soldiers and a large number of indigenous auxiliaries, and in April 1572 he sent it into the Vilcabamba region under the command of Martín García de Loyola, a distant relative of Saint Ignatius of Loyola. The campaign took several months, and the Spanish occupied the towns of Vilcabamba and captured the Inca court in late June 1572. Túpac Amaru, who had been betrayed by some of his own retainers, was taken prisoner and brought to Cusco in chains.

The trial of Túpac Amaru I took place in Cusco in September 1572. The Inca was charged with rebellion, with the murder of Spanish and indigenous allies, and with the practice of polygamy. He was found guilty and was sentenced to death. The execution took place in the main square of Cusco on 24 September 1572. Túpac Amaru was beheaded in front of a large crowd, and his head was displayed on a pike at the entrance to the city. The death of the last Sapa Inca brought the Inca dynasty to a formal end. The Spanish confiscated the estates of the Inca nobility in the Yucay valley, and the descendants of the Inca became a small landholding class within the colonial system.

The legacy of the Vilcabamba resistance

The survival of the Inca royal line

The fall of the Neo-Inca State at Vilcabamba in 1572 did not, in fact, end the Inca royal line. The descendants of the Sapa Incas continued to exist, and the Spanish, partly for political reasons and partly for reasons of prestige, recognized the surviving members of the dynasty as a sort of native aristocracy. The descendants of Sayri Túpac, in particular, became an important landholding family in the Yucay valley, and the family continued to play a political role in the colonial period. The most famous member of the family in the late colonial period was José Gabriel Condorcanqui, who took the name Túpac Amaru II and led a major rebellion against Spanish rule in 1780–1781.

The survival of the Inca royal line was important for the indigenous political imagination in the Andes. The figure of the Sapa Inca continued to be a powerful symbol of indigenous political authority, and the memory of the Neo-Inca State at Vilcabamba was an important element in the indigenous resistance to Spanish rule throughout the colonial period.

The archaeological site of Vilcabamba

The ruins of the Neo-Inca State at Vilcabamba, also known as Espíritu Pampa, were rediscovered by the American explorer Hiram Bingham III in 1911. Bingham incorrectly identified Espíritu Pampa as the site of the last capital of the Inca Empire, and the identification was contested by later scholars. The correct identification of the site as the capital of the Neo-Inca State was established in the 1960s, and the site has since been the subject of extensive archaeological investigation. The ruins include the remains of a palace, several temples, a system of terraces, and a number of residential structures, and they are among the most important archaeological sites of the late Inca period.

Significance

The end of the Inca state

The fall of the Neo-Inca State at Vilcabamba in 1572 is conventionally taken as the formal end of the Inca state. The execution of Túpac Amaru I on 24 September 1572 was the last political act of the Inca dynasty, and the destruction of the Neo-Inca State removed the last remaining political expression of the indigenous resistance to Spanish rule. The legacy of the Spanish conquest is, in this sense, dated from 1572, and the colonial regime that took shape in the following decades was a regime that no longer had to deal with an organized indigenous political authority.

The fall of the Neo-Inca State was also important for the Spanish. The destruction of the state removed the principal focus of indigenous resistance, and the consolidation of Spanish control over the central highlands allowed the Spanish to reorganize the colonial economy around the silver mines of Potosí and the colonial mita. The colonial regime that lasted until the wars of independence of the early nineteenth century was the regime that was established in the decades after 1572.

A symbol of indigenous resistance

The Neo-Inca State at Vilcabamba has been a symbol of indigenous resistance in the Andes since the sixteenth century. The figure of Manco Inca, who escaped from Cusco in 1535 and led the highland rebellion of 1535–1536, has been a symbol of indigenous resistance to foreign rule, and the figure of Túpac Amaru I, the last Sapa Inca, has been a symbol of indigenous political authority. The memory of the Neo-Inca State was an important element in the indigenous political imagination throughout the colonial period and into the modern period.

The figure of Túpac Amaru, in particular, has been claimed as a national hero in modern Peru, and the memory of the Neo-Inca State is an active element in modern Andean political culture. The Inca heritage in the modern Andean world is, in this sense, a heritage that includes the memory of the Neo-Inca State at Vilcabamba and of the indigenous resistance that the state represented.