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THE SOUTH AMERICAN REPUBLICS
* * * * *
Story of the Nations
A Series of Historical Studies intended to present
in graphic narratives the stories of the different
nations that have attained prominence in history.
In the story form the current of each national life is distinctly
indicated, and its picturesque and noteworthy periods and episodes
are presented for the reader in their philosophical relations to
each other as well as to universal history.
12vo, Illustrated, cloth, each $1.50
Half Leather, each $1.75
No. 62 and following Nos. net $1.35
Each (By mail) $1.50
Half leather, gilt top, each, net $1.60
(By mail) $1.75
FOR FULL LIST SEE END OF THIS VOLUME.
* * * * *
[Illustration: CHURCH OF SAN FRANCISCO IN LIMA.]
The Story of the Nations
THE SOUTH AMERICAN REPUBLICS
by
THOMAS C. DAWSON
American Minister to Santo Domingo
In Two Parts
PART II
PERU, CHILE, BOLIVIA, ECUADOR, VENEZUELA, COLOMBIA, PANAMA
G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York and London
The Knickerbocker Press
1904
Copyright, 1904
by Thomas C. Dawson
Published, September, 1904
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
PREFACE
This history begins when Pizarro and Almagro, Valdivia and Benalcazar,
led their desperadoes across the Isthmus to the conquest, massacre, and
enslavement of the prosperous and civilised millions who inhabited the
Pacific coast of South America. It ends with the United States opening a
way through that same Isthmus for the ships, the trade, the capital of
all the world; with American engineers laying railroad iron on the
imperial highway of the Incas; with British bondholders forgiving
stricken Peru's national debt; with their debtor bravely facing the fact
of bankruptcy, and turning over to them all its railways.
The American people, alert, practical, keen, possessing in their press
and congress admirable organisations for the collection and
dissemination of exact knowledge, already fully appreciate the
advantages that will accrue to the United States itself from the
building of the Panama canal. Hardly less thoroughly do they understand
the probable effect upon eastern Asia and the great commercial nations
of western Europe. Few, however, have yet reflected upon the canal's
vital importance to the peoples of the Pacific coast of South
America--to four at least of the six countries whose stories I have
tried to tell in this volume.
Cut off from all practicable communication with the rest of the
continent by those yawning ravines which lead down the inner declivities
of the Andes, gullied by gigantic torrents, and choked by impenetrable
forests, the narrow strip of territory stretching along the mountain
tops and shore plain from Quito to Central Chile, connects with the
outside world solely through ports on the Pacific Ocean. Throughout
colonial times the stream of greedy Spanish office-holders flowed down
the coast from the Isthmus, and a scanty trickle of trade followed the
same channel. For three centuries Panama was the _entrepot_ and Lima the
metropolis of all Spanish South America except Venezuela and eastern New
Granada. Magellan's famous discovery did not divert these currents
because the stormy straits that bear his name are practically useless
for sailing ships, and even Schouten's rounding of the Horn only blazed
a path which proved too perilous for the vessels of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. But with the nineteenth century improvements in
navigation and especially with the use of steam and the freighter built
of iron, all was changed. Valparaiso became nearer to London or New York
than Guayaquil, and during the last seventy-five years the ports of
Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Pacific Colombia have been little more than
remote and unimportant stations on a trade route that stretches its
interminable length from the commercial emporiums in the North Atlantic
through Pernambuco, Rio, Buenos Aires, and around the southern end of
the continent. For centuries Spanish tyranny denied the world access to
those countries, and hardly had they shaken off the political system
that strangled their development, when geographical considerations and
the invention of iron steamships placed them at a disadvantage compared
with their competitors. Their commercial, and therefore their industrial
and political progress, has been ten-fold slower than it should have
been.
The moment the first vessel floats through from the Caribbean to the
Pacific the course of commerce will reverse its direction. Buenaventura,
Esmeraldas, Guayaquil, Callao, Mollendo, Iquique, and even Valparaiso
and Talcahuano will send their ships by the short route of Panama
instead of around the continent and through the Straits of Magellan.
Western Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Chile herself will be tied
by rapidly strengthening bonds of mutual interest and intercourse to
each other and to the great commercial nations; and a transformation
will begin whose extent no man can foresee. Every patriotic American
must hope that his own countrymen will devote the money, energy, and
attention essential to secure that share of influence and trade justly
due the United States' geographical proximity and political sympathy;
that French literature, language, and ideas, British capital, and German
commerce now so dominant in all South America, will be supplemented by
American schools, money, and commercial enterprise; and that such
influences will spread from Panama through Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and
Bolivia down the coast to prosperous Chile and across into the fertile
plains of Argentina and southern Brazil.
The author wishes to acknowledge his especial indebtedness to Sir
Clement Markham's scholarly _History of Peru_, one of the very few
complete and intelligent histories of a South American country available
in the English language. The reader who commands Spanish will be
interested in Torrente's _Revolucion Sud Americana_, Mackenna's
_Historiade la Independencia_, Paz Soldan's _Narracion Historica_,
Mitre's _San Martin_, and Bulnes's _Expedicion Libertadora_.
For Chile excellent books in both Spanish and English abound, among
which are worth special mention, Barros Arana's _Historia General_,
Mitre's _San Martin_, Banados's _Balmaceda_, Hancock's _History of
Chile_, and Hervey's _Dark Days in Chile_.
Few authorities exist for Bolivia. Valdes's _Estudio Historico_ is
admirable for the period which it attempts to cover. Sanjines's
_Historia_, Mitre's _San Martin_ and _Belgrano_, Torrente's
_Revolucion_, and D'Ursel's _Sejours et Voyages_, as well as Fernandez's
recent _Campana del Acre_ have been found valuable.
Wolf's _Geografia del Ecuador_ is more than a geography, and no one
interested in that country can afford not to study this work carefully.
Suarez's _Historia General_, and Cevallos's _Compendio_ give a good
account of military and political affairs but do not bring them down to
recent years.
For Venezuela Tejera's _Manual de Historia_ has been of much use, as
also Scruggs's _Colombian and Venezuelan Republics_, Jenny Tallenay's
_Souvenirs_, and in the war of independence Mitre's great work on the
life of _San Martin_.
Perez's wonderfully condensed book, _Geografia Politica_, has been the
main reliance for Colombia, but Mitre's _San Martin_, Torrente's
_Revolucion_, Holton's _New Granada_, and Scruggs's _Republics_, have
supplied much information on points not covered by Senor Perez's work.
Intelligible details about comparatively recent times are proverbially
the hardest to obtain, and the author feels that whatever of accuracy
these pages may boast is due principally to his friends among present
South American diplomats--men who understand South American history
because they have been a part of it. Salvador de Mendonca, Joaquin
Godoy, Oliviera Lima, Claudio Pinilla, Estanislao Zeballos, Manoel
Gorostiaga, and Carlos Tobar have kindly tried to help him thread his
way through the tangled mazes of Latin-American politics, and his
principal reluctance at giving these pages to the public now is that he
has not had the good fortune as yet to know and converse with men of
like ability from Colombia and Venezuela.
T. C. D.
PETROPOLIS, BRAZIL, March 29, 1904.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
_PERU_
I. THE INCA EMPIRE 3
II. THE SPANISH CONQUEST 20
III. CIVIL WARS AMONG THE CONQUERORS 41
IV. THE COLONIAL PERIOD 58
V. THE WARS OF INDEPENDENCE 74
VI. FROM INDEPENDENCE TO CHILEAN WAR 98
VII. THE CHILEAN WAR AND LATTER-DAY PERU 117
_CHILE_
I. THE SPANISH CONQUEST 135
II. THE COLONIAL PERIOD 148
III. THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE 156
IV. THE FORMATIVE PERIOD 189
V. CHILE'S GREATNESS AND THE CIVIL WAR 211
_BOLIVIA_
I. THE CONQUEST AND THE MINES 235
II. THE COLONIAL SYSTEM AND TUPAC'S REVOLT 248
III. THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE 255
IV. BOLIVIA INDEPENDENT 266
_ECUADOR_
I. THE CARAS 285
II. THE SPANISH CONQUEST 297
III. THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE 311
IV. THE FORMATION OF ECUADOR 320
V. MODERN ECUADOR 330
_VENEZUELA_
I. CONQUEST, SETTLEMENT, AND COLONIAL DAYS 347
II. THE REVOLT 357
III. MODERN VENEZUELA 384
_COLOMBIA_
I. CONQUEST AND SETTLEMENT 403
II. COLONIAL TIMES 419
III. THE WAR AGAINST SPAIN 430
IV. MODERN COLOMBIA 446
_PANAMA_
THE EVENTS LEADING TO INDEPENDENCE 475
INDEX 491
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
CHURCH OF SAN FRANCISCO, LIMA _Frontispiece_
ANCIENT PERUVIAN MONUMENT 7
CHURCH OF THE JESUITS IN CUZCO ON THE SITE OF THE
PALACE OF HUAYNA CAPAC 15
OBSEQUIES OF ATAHUALLPA 33
_From a painting by the Peruvian artist Monteros._
STONE BRIDGE OVER THE RIMAC RIVER, LIMA, PERU 37
RUE MERCADERES, PROCESSION DAY, LIMA 45
LITTLE "INFERNILLO" BRIDGE ON THE OROYA RAILWAY.
ALTITUDE 10,924 FEET 55
PROMENADE OF THE ALAMEDA, LIMA 62
GENERAL VIEW OF LIMA, SHOWING THE CATHEDRAL 68
BAKER ON HORSEBACK, LIMA 75
THE MOLE AND HARBOUR OF CALLAO 83
CHURCH OF SAN FRANCISCO LIMA 87
MILK-WOMAN OF LIMA ON HORSEBACK 91
VILLAGE OF CHICLAY ON THE OROYA RAILWAY, 12,200 FEET ABOVE
THE SEA 100
DON RAMON CASTILLA 107
STATUE OF BOLIVAR, LIMA, PERU 115
GENERAL DON ANDRES A. CACERES 129
MAP OF PERU _Facing_ 132
BRIDGE ON THE ROAD BETWEEN SANTIAGO AND MENDOZA 137
INDIAN ENCAMPMENT 146
HOUSE OF CONGRESS, SANTIAGO 153
PLAZA DEL ARMAS, SANTIAGO 157
BERNARDO O'HIGGINS 165
RAILROAD BRIDGE BETWEEN SANTIAGO AND VALPARAISO 169
TALCAHUANO 175
NATIVE COSTUMES IN CHILE ABOUT 1840 179
VIEW OF SANTIAGO, CHILE, ABOUT 1835 195
VIEW OF VALPARAISO 205
JOSE MANUEL BALMACEDA 221
THE PLAZA, VICTORIA, VALPARAISO 229
MONOLITHIC DOORWAY AT TRAHUANACO 237
BALSAS ON LAKE TITICACA 259
LOADED LLAMAS 279
ECUADOR INDIANS 302
CHURCH OF SANTO DOMINGO AT GUAYAQUIL 305
GUAYAQUIL, ECUADOR 325
COSTUMES OF NATIVES NEAR QUITO 327
ECUADOR PEON'S HOUSE 332
PRINCIPAL STREET IN GUAYAQUIL 340
ANCIENT INDIAN ROCK FOR GRINDING MAIZE 358
THE PASS OF ANGOSTURA, BOLIVAR CITY 373
ROAD NEAR MACUTO 379
ENTRANCE OF PUERTO CABELLO IN 1870 386
VENEZUELAN SOLDIER OF 1870 393
VENEZUELAN GUERILLAS 397
MAP OF ECUADOR, COLOMBIA, AND VENEZUELA _Facing_ 398
OLDEST FORTRESS IN AMERICA, AT CARTHAGENA 407
TRAVELLERS DESCENDING A MOUNTAIN ROAD 411
NATIVE BOATS, MAGDALENA RIVER 415
THE NATURAL BRIDGE AT GUARANDA 421
FALLS OF TEQUENDAMA 423
NATIVE HOUSES IN COLOMBIA 427
ROPE BRIDGE OVER THE MAGDALENA RIVER 434
THE HOME OF BOLIVAR 440
PANAMA FROM THE BAY 445
SCENE IN THE ANDES, EN ROUTE TO BOGOTA 449
CATHEDRAL, PANAMA 453
CROSSING THE MOUNTAINS IN 1850 456
TYPES OF COLOMBIAN NATIVES 459
POST-OFFICE AT BOGOTA 463
RAFAEL NUNEZ, PRESIDENT OF COLOMBIA IN 1879-1883, 1885-1891 467
VIEW OF PANAMA 477
STEAMERS ON THE MAGDALENA RIVER 479
NATIVE VILLAGE ON THE PANAMA RAILWAY 483
MAP OF SOUTH AMERICA SHOWING PROGRESS OF THE MOVEMENT FOR
INDEPENDENCE _At End_
PERU
CHAPTER I
THE INCA EMPIRE
For many centuries before the Spanish conquest and before the rise of
the Incas a succession of great empires existed in Peru. Ruined edifices
of unknown date prove that at some remote period advanced civilisations
and powerful nations were developed in the coast valleys and on the
Andean plateau. In tombs which vastly antedate even these megalithic
palaces and fortresses, cotton twine, woven cloth, and cobs of maize
have been found. The domestication and breeding to perfection of the
llama as a beast of burden, and the alpaca as a fleece-bearer, the
development of potatoes, maize, and the quinoa grain, must have consumed
untold cycles of time. There is no doubt of the remote antiquity of the
civilisation of the Indians who inhabit the Andean plateau south of the
equator, nor that their culture was wholly self-developed, owing nothing
to outside influences.
About the year 1000 the Incas were merely one of several tribes living
on the high, beautiful, and fertile plateau of Cuzco, which lies on the
eastern edge of the gigantic uplift of the Andes. Down the precipitous
gorges into the steaming and impenetrable forests of the Amazon plain
the civilised Indians never cared to go. The maize, quinoa, and potatoes
upon which they depended for food could not flourish in the intense heat
and heavy rainfall of those regions. Neither themselves nor their llamas
and alpacas could thrive in the montana or forested plain. Their natural
habitat was the rough plateau, broken by numerous valleys, which lies
between the Eastern and the Central Cordilleras, and extends from the
Vilcanota "nudo," shutting it off from the Titicaca basin, to the
transverse range of the "Cerro de Pasco," in the North. The ocean lies
two hundred and fifty miles south-west, beyond the Central and Maritime
Cordilleras and the bleak plateau which lies between them.
This great central section, on whose eastern edge near its southern
border we first find the Incas, is the heart of Peru. Although the
climate of a few of its gorges is almost tropical, the valleys have the
temperature of Italy or Spain; higher up the crops of northern Europe
flourish; then are pasture lands, and above all bleak wilds and peaks
covered with perpetual snow. At the dawn of authentic Peruvian history
this favored region was thickly inhabited by many independent tribes;
probably all speaking dialects of the same language, and certainly very
similar in their industrial life and social customs.
Tradition recounts that the Incas had migrated to Cuzco from unknown
ancestral seats--by some conjectured to have been the shores of the
prehistoric fresh-water sea of the Amazon plain--under the leadership
of Manco Capac, the first of an unbroken line of sovereigns who claimed
descent from the Sun-god and ruled the Incas until the Spanish conquest.
The Incas developed a religion whose elaborate and rigid ritual, which
regulated every act of their lives, finds its best parallel among the
Hebrews. Each family had its household god; each sept worshipped an
imaginary ancestor; the whole nation adored the sun as the progenitor of
the reigning family, and the monarch's person was revered as divine. So
profound was the religious feeling of this people that they finally rose
to the conception of a supreme deity--a creator of the universe. His
temple filled one side of the great square at Cuzco.
Even more remarkable than their religious system was the social and
industrial organisation of the Incas. Private property in land did not
exist. It belonged to the septs and was from time to time allotted to
the heads of families. Every person was obliged to work, all males being
divided into classes according to age and strength, and suitable labour
assigned to each. The produce, whether crops or livestock, was divided
between the government, the priesthood, and the communes. Scarcity in
one section was made up from the plenty in others; public officers
annually revised the allotments, and turns at the irrigation works were
taken in accordance with fixed rules. Not a spot of cultivable land was
left unused. Habitations were built on rocky hills; deserts or the sides
of barren cliffs were used for cemeteries; whole mountain sides were
terraced up thousands of feet, and land was literally created by years
of patient labour employed in bringing earth in baskets and laying it on
the bare rocks. By no people has irrigation been more extensively and
successfully applied, and in spite of their ignorance of iron and steam,
of labour-saving appliances and instruments of precision, the Incas
constructed a system which in real effectiveness has never been
surpassed. Many of their canals, reservoirs, and terraces were allowed
to crumble by the Spanish conquerors, but modern Peru still lives upon
the half-ruined fragments of the mighty works of the Incas.
Secured from want by this intelligent socialism, their lives and rights
safe under laws administered with inflexible severity, bound closely by
family and governmental ties, trained from childhood in industry and
obedience, the Incas seemed destined to dominate and absorb the more
loosely organised tribes with whom they came in contact, provided that
they did not become inert, stationary, and unwarlike, and cease to
produce individuals possessing initiative. The dynamic elements
indispensable to expansion were furnished by the ruling clan and by
fanaticism. The offspring of Manco Capac partook of his divinity and
each emperor left numerous sons, whose descendants constituted a
privileged class. In the process of time there gathered around the
emperor thousands of men of his own kindred, devoted from their birth to
warfare and statecraft.
[Illustration: ANCIENT PERUVIAN MONUMENT.]
Under the fourth emperor the Incas were successful in a life and death
struggle against a tribe with whom they had hitherto shared the valley
that surrounds Cuzco. Under the two succeeding emperors they extended
their dominions south to the transverse range of mountains which
separates the Peruvian from the Titicacan plateau. Yahuar Huaccac, the
seventh sovereign, conquered the tribes on the eastern slopes, and by
the beginning of the fourteenth century the Inca domain included the
southern third of the great valley of Peru--an area of fifteen thousand
square miles, containing probably two millions of people. Uira Cocha,
the eighth emperor, began that wonderful series of conquests which
within a century and a half extended over half of South America. On the
other side of the Vilcanota "nudo" lay the vast basin which takes its
name from Lake Titicaca. Too high and too cold for cereals, the plateau
was inhabited by tribes of shepherds, who made no prolonged resistance
when attacked by the armies of the Inca. Their rapid and complete
incorporation into the Inca system followed. Colonies swarmed from the
over-populated provinces of old Peru into the newly acquired
territories. The Titicacan copper mines furnished the material for
weapons and tools, and a great commerce in exchanging the wool,
potatoes, and livestock of the higher regions for the maize and cotton
of the lower added to the prosperity of the whole empire. This conquest
doubled the extent of the Inca domain and opened up a vast field for
colonising expansion within their own territory. Once achieved, the
nation turned its attention to the conquest of the North. Beyond the
gorge of the Apurimac--the Inca boundary in that direction--lay the
rival nation of the Chancas, a vigorous and expanding people who were at
the head of a great confederation of tribes which covered the northern
two-thirds of the central plateau of Peru, and probably also included
the Quichua-speaking tribes of the coast.
The Chancas defeated Urco, Uira Cocha's oldest son and successor, and
their army advanced toward Cuzco, subjugating the northern allies of the
Incas. The victors came within sight of the capital, where meanwhile the
energetic Yupanqui, Urco's younger brother, had gathered the whole force
of the empire. The battle which decided the fate of Peru was fought on
the heights above Cuzco; the Chancas were defeated, and fell back only
to be pursued and overwhelmed by Yupanqui. He returned in triumph and
was installed as emperor in place of his incompetent brother, assuming
the title of Pachacutec, or "Reformer of the World." The Incas pressed
their advantage relentlessly; all the tribes of the Chanca confederacy
were subjugated; and Pachacutec's generals even extended their conquests
north of Cerro de Pasco. The Incas had now conquered a practicable route
to the Pacific, and the coast tribes about Lima soon also fell under
their control. Pachacutec built a great military road from Cuzco north
along the fertile plateau, through the smiling valley of Jauja, and down
the short descent to the neighbourhood of Lima. Colonies were
established at strategic points, and the new territory became so
rapidly welded to the Inca system that, when the Spaniards arrived a
hundred and fifty years later, they found the whole of central and
southern Peru occupied by a homogeneous people, perfectly loyal to the
Inca dynasty.
Pachacutec's successor, Tupac Yupanqui, proved even more successful than
his father. The five hundred miles of rainless coast from Lima to the
Ecuador border was inhabited by a mysterious race, in civilisation and
origin entirely distinct from the Quichua-speaking mountain tribes to
which the Incas belonged. Short rivers, rushing down from the Andes,
each irrigated a portion of the desert, which only requires water to
become extremely fertile. The irrigation works of this people were on a
gigantic scale, one of their reservoirs having its lower end guarded by
a dam eighty feet thick at the base. The valleys were cultivated to the
highest degree of perfection, and filled with a swarming and industrious
population housed in cities whose ruins still survive to attest the
skill of their builders. Enervated by centuries of peace, the
inhabitants had long confined their warlike operations to building
defensive fortresses. Nevertheless, when Tupac advanced up the coast he
met a desperate and prolonged resistance, until one after another the
fortresses fell. The capital of the confederacy was laid in ruins and
great numbers of the people were transported to distant provinces.
Garrisons and Inca colonies were established and a military road was
constructed along the coast. However, the country was really held only
by force, and even in Spanish times Quichua had not displaced the
Mochica tongue in half the northern coast valleys.
Tupac next turned his attention to enlarging the southern limits of his
empire. From Titicaca his armies advanced over hundreds of miles of
bleak plateaux and barren deserts and down the steep Andean slopes into
the fertile valleys of central Chile. His conquests extended as far
south as the river Maule,--three hundred miles beyond Santiago,--but the
tribes retained their autonomy and became rather allies than subjects.
On the eastern side of the Andes he obtained the allegiance of the
peoples living in the mountain valleys of north-western Argentine, and
he completed the incorporation of the vast and fertile plateau which
extends from the Titicacan basin to the present Argentine border.
Returning to the northern frontier, he reduced the peoples who lived in
the confused tangle of mountains and gorges which lies between the two
Cordilleras north of Cerro de Pasco, thus extending his boundaries
nearly to the present Ecuador line. The rest of northern Peru and all of
southern Ecuador belonged to tribes who were loosely attached members of
the confederacy headed by the Caras of Quito. They opposed only a short
resistance to the arms and diplomacy of Tupac, and he made their
territory the base for the great war which he proposed to undertake
against the ancient kingdom of Quito. About the year 1455 he advanced
with a great army, largely recruited from the tribes recently wrested
from the Quito monarch, and defeated the Caras in a great battle. The
whole plateau as far north as Riobamba submitted, reducing the Shiri's
domain to the neighbourhood of Quito itself and a small region north of
that city. However, all of Tupac's efforts to force the last barrier
which interposed between him and the Cara capital failed, and he was
compelled to content himself with extending his conquests on the coast
as far as the Gulf of Guayaquil. In 1460 he returned to Cuzco, where
three years later he was enraged to hear that the Shiri was making a
desperate and partly successful effort to recover the lost provinces.
Tupac's preparations for a final campaign to wipe the Quito kingdom out
of existence were interrupted by his own death.
Huaina Capac succeeded to the throne and continued his father's
preparations. Bad news, however, from the far southern provinces
compelled him first to undertake a campaign into Chile, in which he was
victorious. He then proceeded north and devoted the rest of his life to
conquering and incorporating the Cara empire. He first constructed a
military road from the northern Peruvian coast to the plateau in
southern Ecuador; then he exterminated or reduced to obedience the
tribes on the Gulf of Guayaquil, and the coast beyond, nearly as far as
the equator. Returning south, he defeated the wild savages of the
regions where the Amazon leaves the mountains. Having thus secured
himself against an interruption of his line of communications, he
advanced against Quito in overwhelming force. The Caras and their allies
among the brave tribes of northern Ecuador made a desperate resistance,
but were overthrown in battle after battle, and Huaina Capac entered
Quito in triumph. All the tribes of the confederacy submitted except the
Caranquis, a warlike people who lived north of Quito. These achieved
some minor successes, but were finally overwhelmed and exterminated.
The Inca empire, now at its greatest extent, included all the
inhabitable portions of Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, three-fourths of
Chile, and a large part of the Argentine, stretching two thousand two
hundred miles north and south, and from the Pacific to the eastern foot
of the Andes. Except for the plateaux of Colombia practically the whole
Andean region had been united under one government. The rest of South
America was occupied by savage peoples, divided into small bands, who
picked up a precarious existence along the streams; and the Inca empire
was safe from any serious attack on its continental boundaries. But the
later conquests of Tupac and Huaina Capac had incorporated peoples in
civilisation and warlikeness hardly inferior to the Incas themselves.
Indeed, in the light of subsequent events, it is clear that the later
campaigns weakened the real military power and homogeneity of the
empire. While the older parts, southern Peru and Bolivia--the heart of
the Inca domain--formed a homogeneous and thoroughly loyal centre whose
inhabitants all spoke the same language and where socialism and the
worship of the sun according to the Inca rites prevailed, from the
latitude of Lima north the country had been too recently subdued to be
counted upon. The northern coast still required to be kept down by
permanent garrisons; the mountain tribes of northern Peru retained a
certain measure of autonomy; and the vast territories where the Shiri of
Quito had held sway for so many centuries were very loosely attached.
Tupac, the first conqueror, found it advisable to remain there almost
continuously during the last half of his reign, and Huaina Capac, his
heir, was born in Ecuador, and devoted his whole life to that region. He
married the daughter and heiress of the defeated Shiri, and was regarded
rather as the legitimate successor of the ancient dynasty than as an
alien conqueror.
In 1525 Huaina Capac died at Quito, leaving a will by which he
bequeathed the northern kingdom to Atahuallpa, a son born to him by the
Shiri's daughter. Peru, with the southern provinces, fell to Huascar,
his son by a princess of Inca blood. As the eldest and the legitimate
heir according to the rules of succession which governed in the Inca
dynasty, the latter was to be paramount, thus retaining a semblance of
unity. Huascar and the Inca nobles who surrounded him at the old
Peruvian capital were unwilling to acquiesce in this virtual division of
the empire. The chief of the Canaris, a tribe always hostile to Quito,
sent a messenger to Cuzco offering to swear allegiance to Huascar. As
soon as Atahuallpa heard of this derogation of his authority he ordered
an army to march and unseat the recalcitrant prince, and despatched an
ambassador to his brother with a conciliatory message, at the same time
unequivocally asserting his claim to the lordship of all the ancient
domain of the Shiris. Huascar insisted that southern Ecuador, a region
which had been wrested from the Caras by their grandfather, and whose
tribes had only been allies of Quito, should not be included. His bitter
feeling against his brother was increased by reports that Atahuallpa had
assumed Incarial insignia which only a legitimate emperor was entitled
to use. He returned a harsh answer, demanding immediate and
unconditional obedience. Seeing nothing was to be hoped for from
Huascar, Atahuallpa began gathering the forces of the Quito kingdom.
[Illustration: CHURCH OF THE JESUITS IN CUZCO, ON THE SITE OF THE
PALACE OF HUAYNA CAPAC.]
Huascar was delayed by insurrections which broke out among the tribes of
northern Peru, and at first could only send a few troops to the
assistance of the Canaris. The latter managed to hold Atahuallpa's
generals in check until Huascar's main army advanced. Atahuallpa retired
slowly up the plateau to within fifty miles of his capital, pursued by
the Inca army. It seemed certain that he would quickly be defeated, and
either slain or brought to his brother's feet to receive a rebel's
sentence. But against this invasion, inspired by the ruling oligarchy of
Cuzco, the warlike people of northern Ecuador stood nobly by the
grandson of the last of their ancient line of monarchs. Though the
southerners were victorious in the first encounter, Atahuallpa in person
rallied his army and drew it up in an advantageous position at Naxichi.
The Incas attacked confidently, but this time they were hopelessly
routed and the chief generals slain with thousands of the common
soldiery. The remnant fled in disorder to the territory of the Canaris.
Atahuallpa could not immediately follow up his advantage, and by the
time he had organised his forces for an offensive campaign, Huascar had
sent another great army to the rescue under the command of his younger
brother, Huanca Auqui. When Atahuallpa crossed the transverse barrier of
Azuay and descended into the fertile plateau north of Cuenca, a terrific
battle ensued which lasted two days. Both sides suffered severely, but
the final advantage lay with the Northerners, and Huanca Auqui sullenly
retreated, abandoning Ecuador to Atahuallpa. A fearful vengeance was
taken on the Canaris, while the other tribes joined the victor.
Next year Atahuallpa sent a great force under the command of Quizquiz,
the ablest Indian general of the time, into northern Peru. Huanca Auqui
was again defeated, and abandoned the disputed territory, while
Atahuallpa's troops poured into the northern coast provinces. Having met
with no serious resistance there, they ascended the Cordillera to the
neighbourhood of Cajamarca, where they met the reinforced Inca army.
Again they were victorious and Huascar's forces retreated south of the
Cerro de Pasco, followed by Quizquiz, whose army grew like a rolling
snowball by enlistments among the warlike and half-independent tribes of
northern Peru.
Huascar's resources were, however, by no means exhausted by the crushing
defeats he had suffered during the last four years. The great plateaux
of Peru and Bolivia, the most populous and richest portion of the
empire, remained faithful; the ruling classes regarded Atahuallpa's
revolt not only as an impious rebellion against the legitimate emperor,
but as a menace to their own continued supremacy in the state. Tens of
thousands poured up from the southern provinces to reinforce the army
which lay in the valleys south of the Cerro de Pasco in daily
expectation of attack. But Tupac's and Huaina Capac's conquests had
created a Frankenstein monster. When the ruder nations of the North were
first attacked by the Inca armies they did not know how to organise and
were easily reduced in detail. Three-quarters of a century of Inca rule
had taught them what they lacked without destroying the spirit of
individual initiative nourished by local autonomy. The older parts of
the empire had been frozen by rigid socialism and ritual, and the
people's energies sapped by long centuries of tutelage. The northern
tribes who followed Atahuallpa's banner were superior in military
prowess to the Incas who fought for Huascar, uniformly beating the
latter with numbers constantly inferior. The balance of power had passed
from Cuzco and the centre to Quito and the north.
Quizquiz's forces finally crossed the Cerro de Pasco and poured down
into the beautiful and populous valley of Jauja. Again they were
victorious, and the Incas fled along the road leading toward Cuzco.
Huascar and his partisans determined to make their last stand at the
capital itself. Reinforcements were hurried up not only from Bolivia,
but from Chile, and the Argentine, and an army which is said to have
numbered seventy thousand, the largest ever seen in South America,
assembled at Cuzco. Meanwhile Quizquiz was relentlessly advancing along
the plateau, and his main body reached the neighbourhood of the city
intact. After some manoeuvres for position in which the able and
experienced northern generals obtained a decisive advantage, Huascar's
camp was surprised at early dawn. His soldiers could not form and a
frightful carnage ensued, in the midst of which he himself was made
prisoner. As soon as the capture became known his followers fled in all
directions. Quizquiz advanced his camp to the heights overlooking the
capital; all idea of further resistance was abandoned; the city
submitted, and the principal partisans of Huascar perished in a cruel
massacre.