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History of How the Spaniards
Arrived in Peru
History of How the Spaniards
Arrived in Peru
Dual-Language Edition
Titu Cusi Yupanqui
Translated, with an Introduction, by
Catherine Julien
Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
Indianapolis/Cambridge
Copyright © 2006 by Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
All rights reserved
12 11 10 09 08 07 06 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
For further information, please address:
Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
P.O. Box 44937
Indianapolis, IN 46244-0937
www.hackettpublishing.com
Cover design by Abigail Coyle
Text design by Meera Dash
Composition by Agnew's, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Yupangui, Diego de Castro, titu cussi, 16th cent.
[Ynstruçion del ynga don Diego de Castro titu cussi Yupangui. English &
Spanish]
History of how the Spaniards arrived in Peru :dual-language edition / titu
cusi Yupanqui ; translated, with an introduction, by Catherine Julien.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-10:0-87220-828-1 (pbk.)
ISBN-10:0-87220-829-X (cloth)
ISBN-13:978-0-87220-828-5 (pbk.)
ISBN-13:978-0-87220-829-2 (cloth)
1. Peru—History—Conquest, 1522-1548. 2. Peru—History—1548-1820.
3. Incas—History. I. Julien, Catherine J. II. Title.
F3442.Y8513 2006
985'.02—dc22
2006010681
eISBN: 978-1-60384-016-3 (ebook)
Contents
Acknowledgments vi
Introduction vii
Selected Bibliography xxx
Maps xxxvi
HISTORYOFHOWTHESPANIARDSARRIVEDINPERUAND
WHATHAPPENEDTOMANCOINCADURINGTHETIMEHE
LIVEDAMONGTHEM
(Relasçion de cómo los españoles entraron en el Peru y el subçeso
que tubo Mango Ynga en el tiempo que entre ellos biuio),
Vilcabamba, 6 February 1570 1
Appendix: Memorial,1565 170
Index 173
v
Acknowledgments
The work for this project was supported by a National Endowment for the
Humanities Fellowship at the John Carter Brown Library and by a John
Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. Travel funding for archival re-
search in Spain was provided by the Burnham-Macmillan Fund of the His-
tory Department at Western Michigan University. I thank the staff in the
library of the Escorial for their assistance in allowing me to see the origi-
nal manuscript and for making a copy of it. My greatest debt is to Ken-
neth Mills for his thorough reading of the manuscript and suggestions for
revision.
vi
Introduction
In the History of How the Spaniards Arrived in Peru(1570), Titu Cusi of-
fers Philip II, king of Spain, an account of all that had happened follow-
ing the arrival of Francisco Pizarro and his men on the coast of the Inca
empire—the largest native polity in the Americas. What motivated the cre-
ation of the Historycan only be guessed. Titu Cusi may have been trying
to secure the implementation of the agreement he had negotiated with
the king’s representatives as the recognized head of the Inca dynasty. The
work involves much more than diplomacy, however. Titu Cusi narrates the
story of the alliance made between his father, Manco Inca, and Francisco
Pizarro just as the latter arrived in Cusco in late 1533. In Cajamarca,
Pizarro had executed Atahuallpa, who had just won a fratricidal war that
left deep divisions in the Inca dynastic elite. When Pizarro met Manco
Inca, a half-brother of Atahuallpa’s, the two joined forces out of mutual
need to defeat Atahuallpa’s remaining armies. Titu Cusi also tells about
his own dealings with the Spaniards after Manco’s death in 1544, but the
centerpiece of the story is how the alliance between his father and Fran-
cisco Pizarro unraveled. In it, he combined the forms of the Spanish his-
torical narrative with what appears to be an Inca rhetorical genre. The
result is a unique literary and historical achievement that forces us to re-
consider how the story of the conquest has been told.
The History is one of only a handful of historical narratives to be au-
thored by native Andeans in the century after the Spanish arrival. The
scarcity of such narratives probably stems, at least in part, from the ab-
sence of an Andean alphabetic writing system prior to that time. Of these
narratives, Titu Cusi’s stands out because it is the earliest; it is the only
narrative authored by an Inca; its author was theInca (the recognized head
of the dynastic line); and it was written from Vilcabamba, a province then
only tenuously subject to Spanish authority. Though the full title of Titu
Cusi’s narrative—History of how the Spaniards arrived in Peru and what
happened to Manco Inca during the time he lived among them—is taken
from the heading of the first chapter about his father, the story actually
begins with the arrival of the Spaniards on the coast of the Inca empire.
During the time covered in the History,the Spaniards overthrew the Inca
vii
viii Introduction
elite and usurped authority over the largest native state in the Americas,
establishing the de facto rule of Spain in the Andes. Although we still use
the word “conquest” to refer to this period of initial engagement between
Europeans and native Andeans, we now realize that the capture of Ata-
huallpa was an initial salvo in a much longer war, and that the Incas may
not have even guessed at Spanish intentions for some two years after the
events at Cajamarca. Interestingly, Titu Cusi does not use the term “con-
quest.” Instead, he says that the Spaniards “arrived” and events “hap-
pened” during the time his father “lived among them.” He portrays his
father as naïve and foolish, a man who ignored his closest advisers’ calls
for resistance and inadvertently allowed the Spaniards to take the Inca em-
pire away from him. His story is another telling of the traditional story of
the conquest, containing truths as well as new forms of bias.
In the traditional version of the “conquest” of Peru, control passed
from Inca to Spanish hands with the capture of the Inca Atahuallpa in
Cajamarca in November 1532. The official accounts, written by Pizarro’s
secretaries, represent Atahuallpa’s capture as a battle between Spaniards
and Incas. Spanish domination was decisively established when the Incas
lost the fight. A long period of rooting out pockets of resistance followed,
finally ending with the campaign against the Vilcabamba Incas in 1572.
When relating the history of the period, modern scholars tend to use lan-
guage that reflects their basic acceptance of the story told in the official
accounts: control over the Andes effectively passed to Europeans upon
Atahuallpa’s capture; the Incas appointed by Pizarro after Atahuallpa’s
death were “puppets”; the ensuing military events were “rebellions.” But,
as Titu Cusi’s Historymakes clear, there are other ways to tell the story.
One account situates the events of the Spanish arrival within the broader
context of Andean history (Rowe, “Como se apoderó”). A war had broken
out after the death of Huayna Capac, Manco Inca’s father, about 1528.
Huayna Capac had been campaigning in Ecuador at the time of his death,
and his son Atahuallpa took effective control of the army. Another son,
Huascar, was named Inca ruler in Cusco, the center of the empire and
homeland of the Incas. War soon broke out between the two brothers.
Atahuallpa’s army, led by some of his father’s most capable generals,
outmaneuvered Huascar near Cusco and took him captive. At the very mo-
ment Pizarro captured Atahuallpa, Huascar was a prisoner of Atahuallpa.
Atahuallpa, afraid that Pizarro might prefer to ally himself with Huascar, had
