Part 21 (1/2)
183.]
[Footnote 25: ”Y el marques don Francisco Picarro, por tenellos por amigos y estuviesen de paz quando alla pa.s.sasen, les dio algunos princ.i.p.ales los quales ellos matavan en presencia de los espanoles, cortandoles las cavezas por el cogote.” Pedro Pizarro, Descub. y Conq., Ms.]
Maddened by this outrage, the people of Puna sprang to arms, and threw themselves at once, with fearful yells and the wildest menaces of despair, on the Spanish camp. The odds of numbers were greatly in their favor, for they mustered several thousand warriors. But the more decisive odds of arms and discipline were on the side of their antagonists; and, as the Indians rushed forward in a confused ma.s.s to the a.s.sault, the Castilians coolly received them on their long pikes, or swept them down by the volleys of their musketry. Their ill-protected bodies were easily cut to pieces by the sharp sword of the Spaniard; and Hernando Pizarro, putting himself at the head of the cavalry, charged boldly into the midst, and scattered them far and wide over the field, until, panic-struck by the terrible array of steel-clad hors.e.m.e.n, and the stunning reports and the flash of fire-arms, the fugitives sought shelter in the depths of their forests. Yet the victory was owing, in some degree, at least, - if we may credit the Conquerors, - to the interposition of Heaven; for St.
Michael and his legions were seen high in the air above the combatants, contending with the arch-enemy of man, and cheering on the Christians by their example! *26
[Footnote 26: The city of San Miguel was so named by Pizarro to commemorate the event, - and the existence of such a city may be considered by some as establis.h.i.+ng the truth of the miracle. - ”En la batalla de Puna vieron muchos, ya de los Indios, ya de los nuestros, que habia en el aire otros dos campos, uno acaudillado por el Arcangel Sn Miguel con espada y rodela, y otro por Luzbel y sus secuaces; mas apenas cantaron los Castellanos la victoria huyeron los diablos, y formando un gran torvellino de viento se oyeron en el aire unas terribles voces que decian, Vencistenos!
Miguel vencistenos! De aqui torno Dn Francisco Pizarro tanta devocion al sto Arcangel, que prometio llamar la primera ciudad que fundase de su nombre; c.u.mpliolo asi como veremos adelante.”
Montesinos, Annales, Ms., ano 1530.]
Not more than three or four Spaniards fell in the fight; but many were wounded, and among them Hernando Pizarro, who received a severe injury in the leg from a javelin. Nor did the war end here; for the implacable islanders, taking advantage of the cover of night, or of any remissness on the part of the invaders, were ever ready to steal out of their fastnesses and spring on their enemy's camp, while, by cutting off his straggling parties, and destroying his provisions, they kept him in perpetual alarm.
In this uncomfortable situation, the Spanish commander was gladdened by the appearance of two vessels off the island. They brought a reinforcement consisting of a hundred volunteers besides horses for the cavalry. It was commanded by Hernando de Soto, a captain afterwards famous as the discoverer of the Mississippi, which still rolls its majestic current over the place of his burial, - a fitting monument for his remains, as it is of his renown. *27 [See Fernando de Soto: A Captain famous as the discoverer of Mississippi.]
[Footnote 27: The transactions in Puna are given at more or less length by Naharro, Relacion Sumaria, Ms. - Conq. i Pob. del Peru, Ms. - Pedro Pizarro, Descub. y Conq., Ms. - Montesinos, Annales, Ms., ubi supra. - Relacion del Primer. Descub., Ms. - Xerez, Conq. del Peru, ap. Barcia, tom. III. pp. 182, 183.]
This reinforcement was most welcome to Pizarro, who had been long discontented with his position on an island, where he found nothing to compensate the life of unintermitting hostility which he was compelled to lead. With these recruits, he felt himself in sufficient strength to cross over to the continent, and resume military operations on the proper theatre for discovery and conquest. From the Indians of Tumbez he learned that the country had been for some time distracted by a civil war between two sons of the late monarch, compet.i.tors for the throne. This intelligence he regarded as of the utmost importance, for he remembered the use which Cortes had made of similar dissensions among the tribes of Anahuac. Indeed, Pizarro seems to have had the example of his great predecessor before his eyes on more occasions than this. But he fell far short of his model; for, notwithstanding the restraint he sometimes put upon himself, his coa.r.s.er nature and more ferocious temper often betrayed him into acts most repugnant to sound policy, which would never have been countenanced by the Conqueror of Mexico.
Chapter II
Peru At The Time Of The Conquest. - Reign Of Huayna Capac. - The Inca Brothers. - Contest For The Empire. - Triumph And Cruelties Of Atahuallpa.
Before accompanying the march of Pizarro and his followers into the country of the Incas, it is necessary to make the reader acquainted with the critical situation of the kingdom at that time. For the Spaniards arrived just at the consummation of an important revolution, - at a crisis most favorable to their views of conquest, and but for which, indeed, the conquest, with such a handful of soldiers, could never have been achieved.
In the latter part of the fifteenth century died Tupac Inca Yupanqui, one of the most renowned of the ”Children of the Sun,”
who, carrying the Peruvian arms across the burning sands of Atacama, penetrated to the remote borders of Chili, while in the opposite direction he enlarged the limits of the empire by the acquisition of the southern provinces of Quito. The war in this quarter was conducted by his son Huayna Capac, who succeeded his father on the throne, and fully equalled him in military daring and in capacity for government.
Under this prince, the whole of the powerful state of Quito, which rivalled that of Peru itself in wealth and refinement, was brought under the sceptre of the Incas; whose empire received, by this conquest, the most important accession yet made to it since the foundation of the dynasty of Manco Capac. The remaining days of the victorious monarch were pa.s.sed in reducing the independent tribes on the remote limits of his territory, and, still more, in cementing his conquests by the introduction of the Peruvian polity. He was actively engaged in completing the great works of his father, especially the high-roads which led from Quito to the capital. He perfected the establishment of posts, took great pains to introduce the Quichua dialect throughout the empire, promoted a better system of agriculture, and in fine, encouraged the different branches of domestic industry and the various enlightened plans of his predecessors for the improvement of his people. Under his sway, the Peruvian monarchy reached its most palmy state; and under both him and his ill.u.s.trious father it was advancing with such rapid strides in the march of civilization as would soon have carried it to a level with the more refined despotisms of Asia, furnis.h.i.+ng the world, perhaps, with higher evidence of the capabilities of the American Indian than is elsewhere to be found on the great western continent. - But other and gloomier destinies were in reserve for the Indian races.
The first arrival of the white men on the South American sh.o.r.es of the Pacific was about ten years before the death of Huayna Capac, when Balboa crossed the Gulf of St. Michael, and obtained the first clear report of the empire of the Incas. Whether tidings of these adventurers reached the Indian monarch's ears is doubtful. There is no doubt, however, that he obtained the news of the first expedition under Pizarro and Almagro, when the latter commander penetrated as far as the Rio de San Juan, about the fourth degree north. The accounts which he received made a strong impression on the mind of Huayna Capac. He discerned in the formidable prowess and weapons of the invaders proofs of a civilization far superior to that of his own people. He intimated his apprehension that they would return, and that at some day, not far distant, perhaps, the throne of the Incas might be shaken by these strangers, endowed with such incomprehensible powers. *1 To the vulgar eye, it was a little speck on the verge of the horizon; but that of the sagacious monarch seemed to descry in it the dark thunder-cloud, that was to spread wider and wider till it burst in fury on his nation!
[Footnote 1: Sarmiento, an honest authority, tells us he had this from some of the Inca lords who heard it, Relacion, Ms., cap.
65.]
There is some ground for believing thus much. But other accounts, which have obtained a popular currency, not content with this, connect the first tidings of the white men with predictions long extant in the country, and with supernatural appearances, which filled the hearts of the whole nation with dismay. Comets were seen flaming athwart the heavens.
Earthquakes shook the land; the moon was girdled with rings of fire of many colors; a thunderbolt fell on one of the royal palaces and consumed it to ashes; and an eagle, chased by several hawks, was seen, screaming in the air, to hover above the great square of Cuzco, when, pierced by the talons of his tormentors, the king of birds fell lifeless in the presence of many of the Inca n.o.bles, who read in this an augury of their own destruction!
Huayna Capac himself, calling his great officers around him, as he found he was drawing near his end, announced the subversion of his empire by the race of white and bearded strangers, as the consummation predicted by the oracles after the reign of the twelfth Inca, and he enjoined it on his va.s.sals not to resist the decrees of Heaven, but to yield obedience to its messengers. *2
[Footnote 2: A minute relation of these supernatural occurrences is given by the Inca Garcila.s.so de la Vega, (Com. Real., Parte 1, lib. 9, cap. 14,) whose situation opened to him the very best sources of information, which is more than counterbalanced by the defects in his own character as an historian, - his childish credulity, and his desire to magnify and mystify every thing relating to his own order, and, indeed, his nation. His work is the source of most of the facts - and the falsehoods - that have obtained circulation in respect to the ancient Peruvians.
Unfortunately, at this distance of time, it is not always easy to distinguish the one from the other.]
Such is the report of the impressions made by the appearance of the Spaniards in the country, reminding one of the similar feelings of superst.i.tious terror occasioned by their appearance in Mexico. But the traditions of the latter land rest on much higher authority than those of the Peruvians, which, unsupported by contemporary testimony, rest almost wholly on the naked a.s.sertion of one of their own nation, who thought to find, doubtless, in the inevitable decrees of Heaven, the best apology for the supineness of his countrymen.
It is not improbable that rumors of the advent of a strange and mysterious race should have spread gradually among the Indian tribes along the great table-land of the Cordilleras, and should have shaken the hearts of the stoutest warriors with feelings of undefined dread, as of some impending calamity. In this state of mind, it was natural that physical convulsions, to which that volcanic country is peculiarly subject, should have made an unwonted impression on their minds; and that the phenomena, which might have been regarded only as extraordinary, in the usual seasons of political security, should now be interpreted by the superst.i.tious soothsayer as the handwriting on the heavens, by which the G.o.d of the Incas proclaimed the approaching downfall of their empire.
Huayna Capac had, as usual with the Peruvian princes, a mult.i.tude of concubines, by whom he left a numerous posterity. The heir to the crown, the son of his lawful wife and sister, was named Huascar. *3 At the period of the history at which we are now arrived, he was about thirty years of age. Next to the heir-apparent, by another wife, a cousin of the monarch's, came Manco Capac, a young prince who will occupy an important place in our subsequent story. But the best-beloved of the Inca's children was Atahuallpa. His mother was the daughter of the last Scyri of Quito, who had died of grief, it was said, not long after the subversion of his kingdom by Huayna Capac. The princess was beautiful, and the Inca, whether to gratify his pa.s.sion, or, as the Peruvians say, willing to make amends for the ruin of her parents, received her among his concubines. The historians of Quito a.s.sert that she was his lawful wife; but this dignity, according to the usages of the empire, was reserved for maidens of the Inca blood.
[Footnote 3: Huascar, in the Quichua dialect, signifies ”a cable.” The reason of its being given to the heir apparent is remarkable. Huayna Capac celebrated the birth of the prince by a festival, in which he introduced a ma.s.sive gold chain for the n.o.bles to hold in their hands as they performed their national dances. The chain was seven hundred feet in length, and the links nearly as big round as a man's wrist! (See Zarate, Conq.
del Peru, lib. 1, cap. 14. - Garcila.s.so, Com. Real., Parte 1, lib. 9, cap. 1.) The latter writer had the particulars, he tells us, from his old Inca uncle, - who seems to have dealt largely in the marvellous; not too largely for his audience, however, as the story has been greedily circulated by most of the Castilian writers, both of that and of the succeeding age.]
The latter years of Huayna Capac were pa.s.sed in his new kingdom of Quito. Atahuallpa was accordingly brought up under his own eye, accompanied him, while in his tender years, in his campaigns, slept in the same tent with his royal father, and ate from the same plate. *4 The vivacity of the boy, his courage and generous nature, won the affections of the old monarch to such a degree, that he resolved to depart from the established usages of the realm, and divide his empire between him and his elder brother Huascar. On his death-bed, he called the great officers of the crown around him, and declared it to be his will that the ancient kingdom of Quito should pa.s.s to Atahuallpa, who might be considered as having a natural claim on it, as the dominion of his ancestors. The rest of the empire he settled on Huascar; and he enjoined it on the two brothers to acquiesce in this arrangement, and to live in amity with each other. This was the last act of the heroic monarch; doubtless, the most impolitic of his whole life. With his dying breath he subverted the fundamental laws of the empire; and, while he recommended harmony between the successors to his authority, he left in this very division of it the seeds of inevitable discord. *5
[Footnote 4: ”Atabalipa era bien quisto de los Capitanes viejos de su Padre y de los Soldados, porque andubo en la guerra en su ninez y porque andubo en la guerra en su niez porque el en vida le mostro tanto amor que no le dejaba comer otra cosa que lo que el le daba de su plato.” Sarmiento, Relacion, Ms., cap. 66.]