Atahualpa

Atahualpa, or Atawallpa in Quechua, was the last ruler of an independent Inca Empire. A son of the emperor Huayna Capac, he won a devastating civil war against his half-brother Huáscar in 1532, only to be seized by Francisco Pizarro's small Spanish force at Cajamarca days after his victory. He paid an enormous ransom in gold and silver and was then executed by the Spaniards in 1533. His capture and death opened the Spanish conquest of the Andes.

Atahualpa was born around 1502, one of many sons of Huayna Capac, who ruled Tawantinsuyu, the Inca state, at the height of its power, from what is now southern Colombia to central Chile. His birthplace and his mother's identity are disputed. Chroniclers who questioned the Inca nobility of Cusco, such as Pedro Cieza de León and Juan de Betanzos, said he was born in Cusco, and Betanzos made his mother a princess of the royal lineage of Pachacuti. A later tradition, popular in Ecuador, holds that he was born in the north, at Quito or Caranqui, to a daughter of a local ruler, which would make him a son of the conquered northern lands. Many historians think the Quito story was partly spread by Huáscar's supporters to paint Atahualpa as an illegitimate outsider, but the question remains open and is still a matter of national feeling in Ecuador and Peru.

What is clear is that Atahualpa spent much of his youth and adulthood in the north, where Huayna Capac waged long campaigns to put down rebellions by peoples such as the Caranqui and Cayambe and to push the frontier further. There he gained military experience and the loyalty of veteran generals, above all Chalcuchímac, Quizquiz and Rumiñahui, and the army based around Quito came to see him as its leader.

Around 1527, Huayna Capac died suddenly, probably of smallpox, a disease brought to the Americas by Europeans that had spread south ahead of them, part of the Columbian exchange. His designated heir, Ninan Cuyochi, died in the same epidemic. Inca succession had no fixed rule of primogeniture, and power had always depended on support among the royal kin groups, the priesthood and the army. Huáscar, another son, was accepted as ruler in Cusco, while Atahualpa remained in the north, apparently as governor of the Quito region.

The arrangement broke down after a few uneasy years, and around 1529 open war began. Huáscar had the capital and many allies, including the Cañari of the southern Ecuadorian highlands; Atahualpa had the most experienced army. Chroniclers report that Atahualpa was at one point captured by Huáscar's forces and escaped, though some doubted the story. His generals then won a string of victories, and in April 1532 they defeated Huáscar's last army near the Apurímac at the battle of Quipaipán, captured Huáscar and took Cusco. The war was savage on both sides. Atahualpa punished the Cañari harshly for supporting his rival, and in Cusco his commanders killed many of Huáscar's family and supporters and destroyed the preserved body of the emperor Tupac Inca Yupanqui, whose lineage had backed Huáscar. Atahualpa took the throne name Caccha Pachacuti and set out south to be installed in the capital.

He was resting at the hot springs near Cajamarca with a large army when Francisco Pizarro arrived in November 1532 with fewer than 200 Spaniards. Atahualpa had followed their progress through his messengers and appears to have regarded them as a small, curious band he could deal with at leisure, perhaps capturing their horses and men. On 16 November he came to the main square of Cajamarca carried on a litter, surrounded by thousands of attendants who had come largely unarmed. The friar Vicente de Valverde demanded, through an interpreter, that he accept Christianity and the authority of the Spanish king, and handed him a breviary. Atahualpa examined it and threw it to the ground. The Spaniards, hidden in the buildings around the square, attacked with cannon, guns, horses and steel swords. Thousands of Inca subjects were killed in a few hours, many crushed as they tried to escape, while the Spaniards lost no one. Atahualpa was taken alive.

Seeing how much the invaders wanted precious metals, Atahualpa offered to fill a room about seven metres long and five wide with gold to the height of his raised hand, and a smaller room twice over with silver. For months, convoys brought objects from across the empire, including the gold plates that covered the walls of the Coricancha, the Temple of the Sun in Cusco. Masterpieces of Inca metalwork were melted into bars and divided among the conquerors and the Spanish crown.

From captivity Atahualpa continued to govern, receiving officials and wives, and he is said to have learned to play chess with his captors. Fearing that the Spaniards might restore Huáscar, he ordered his half-brother's death, and Huáscar was drowned. Although the ransom was largely delivered, the Spaniards did not release him. Rumours that Inca armies were gathering to free him, and the pressure of the newly arrived men of Diego de Almagro, who wanted to move on, led Pizarro to put him on trial. He was convicted of treason, idolatry, polygamy and the murder of Huáscar, among other charges, and sentenced to burn. Burning would have destroyed his body, which in Andean belief needed to be preserved, and so he agreed to be baptised, taking the name Francisco, and was garrotted instead. The traditional date is 26 July 1533; documentary research has led some historians to place it on 29 August. Several Spaniards, including Hernando de Soto, who was away at the time, and later the crown, criticised the killing.

Atahualpa's death did not end the war. The Spaniards installed other sons of Huayna Capac as puppet rulers, first Túpac Huallpa and then Manco Inca, who later rebelled and founded a refuge state at Vilcabamba. Atahualpa's generals resisted in the north and centre; Rumiñahui is said to have hidden or destroyed treasure and burned Quito rather than let it fall to the invaders, and was captured and executed in 1535. Many Andean groups, including the Cañari and the followers of Huáscar, sided with the Spaniards against Atahualpa's party, which helped the conquest succeed. The Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire and the epidemics that accompanied it brought the collapse of the Inca state and a steep fall in the Andean population.

Atahualpa's grave is unknown; some accounts say his body was taken north by his followers, and there have been repeated searches in Ecuador. Andean writers of the colonial period, such as Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, and the Inca descendant Garcilaso de la Vega, who belonged to the Cusco lineage that had suffered at the hands of Atahualpa's generals, gave sharply different views of him, and Spanish chroniclers often portrayed him as a usurper to justify the conquest. Andean popular culture remembered his death in dramas performed at festivals, and in Ecuador he became a national symbol of resistance, the subject of monuments and the name of Quito's main stadium. For historians of the Inca civilisation, his story is a reminder that the fall of the Inca Empire was shaped as much by disease and an Andean civil war as by Spanish steel.