FROM THE CLASSROOM
Susan A. Niles
Finding Patterns
in the Past
Photography by Chuck Zovko
Bronislaw Malinowski, a founder of our discipline, argued that one goal of anthropology is to begin to “grasp  the native’s point of view.” He extolled the value of living among a group of people so that the things they do begin to seem not exotic and unfathomable to us, but make sense as part of their vision of their world. Anthropologically trained archaeologists share the broad goals of ethnography. But the people who form the subject of our inquiry are often long-dead, and we must turn to their material and narrative legacy to reconstruct an understanding of their lives. These are exactly the kinds of records we use when we try to see the world from the Inca point of view.
In the century preceding the Spanish invasion in 1532, the Incas built an empire that extended along the western coast of South America. They did not have a tradition of writing to tell us how they organized their world, but we do have stories recorded by their conquerors. We use these sources with the caveat that they were written down by administrators and priests who were, themselves, committed to undoing the very empire whose creation the stories chronicle. Narratives of the deeds of the Inca kings left by eyewitnesses such as Juan de Betanzos and Father Bernabe´ Cobo give us tremendous insight into how the Incas saw their world. I would argue that, judiciously, we can also draw from our own experiences of the world—separated from the Incas by half a millennium—to pose questions that help us to better understand that world.
We might demonstrate this understanding by considering
stories that tell of why the Incas went to war.
In the mid-15th century the Andean region was home to hundreds of groups living in uneasy alliance with neighbors. Historically, there had been episodes when people were united under shared belief systems, probably imposed by warriors and missionaries. But it had been more than 400 years since the last of these unifying empires had folded. No single government organized daily life in the region, and different gods oversaw the spiritual lives of these people. Locally ambitious leaders sought out alliances by arranging marriages for their children, but just as often as they succeeded these arrangements failed, leaving raids, kidnapping, and border skirmishes a part of everyday life. Still, some leaders were more successful than others. Viracocha was such a leader who turned to battle when diplomacy failed, and through his efforts the Incas began to claim territory around their homeland of Cuzco. Viracocha’s nascent domain brought the Incas to the attention of the Chancas, another group with regional ambitions, and a plan to keep the Incas from getting in their way. The Incas dated the beginning of their empire to events that unfolded when their homeland was invaded by the enemy Chancas. Viracocha, unwilling to engage them in battle, fled to a palace on a high cliff far from the city. However one of his sons determined to stand fast. Scraping together a small army of warriors from nearby villages, he prepared on the eve of battle by retreating to a spring and praying. A god appeared telling the young Inca that he and his people were favored as the Sun’s children, and that he should be assured that divine reinforcements would be sent to help him defeat his enemies. He returned to his army with confidence that the Inca cause was divinely favored, and the account of his vision inspired the warriors to fight well. When, despite their best efforts, it looked as though the Incas would lose, the Sun’s supernatural warriors materialized: the very stones of the battlefield rose up in human form to help defeat the Chancas.
The defeat of the Chancas was a turning point for the Incas. Taking the name Pachacuti, “Transformer of the Earth,” the young Inca sentenced his father to perpetual exile and began to rebuild Cuzco to match its status as home of people divinely favored by the Sun. He then mustered troops to march on the Chanca homeland and to take over the domains of all who had been allied with them. In the lifetime of Pachacuti, and in the lifetime of the son and the grandson who succeeded him, the Incas sent their armies to all of the “Four Quarters,” as their empire was called, sustained by the belief that their mission was favored by their gods.
There are seeming points of convergence between Inca history
and our own unfolding current events: a drama of wars abandoned
by a father, and continued by a son; the unprecedented horror of an enemy attacking the homeland; the centrality of that invasion to inspiring an initial raid on the enemy homeland, and then the ever-expanding need to extend the war into adjacent regions to counter perceived opposition. It is hardly a stretch to draw parallels between Inca history and our own. But as criticism of our own engagement in seemingly intractable wars is increasingly debated by pundits and news commentators, students have begun to ask questions about Inca warfare. How could Pachacuti convince people to fight in the war? And how did the Incas contend with criticism?
The claim that divine reinforce-ments came to aid the Inca warriors at a key moment of battle converted a bloody skirmish into a holy war, a concept not unfamiliar to viewers of nightly news programs. As we debate the history of our own engagement in war, students question Pachacuti’s vision: Was his reported encounter with a shining god who promised help an Inca equivalent of public assertion of a possibly spurious intelligence report on WMD? Certainly in the Inca case the unassailable truth of a religious vision converted a pragmatic decision (let’s go to war with these guys so they don’t invade again) into a divine mandate (we must go to war because we are the Children of the Sun, and our god is on our side). Where previous generations of students saw the encounter between the Inca and the Sun as an interesting example of a Native American vision quest, some students now see it as well as a claim strategically deployed by a leader who needed to work very hard to rally support for a war.
Students have been especially curious about how Inca leaders devised strategies to convince people to support unpopular causes. They have been interested to learn that Inca leaders, similar to our own, faced criticism from their earlier supporters, as seemingly unwinnable wars dragged on at great expense. Huayna Capac, grandson of the visionary Pachacuti, brought the Inca Empire to its greatest extent by consolidating conquest of the northern-most regions of the Andes. Heir to the military and administrative traditions developed in the previous two generations of imperial rule, he could hardly have known when he picked up the Inca war idol and marched north from Cuzco that the conquest would take many years, and that it would  be so costly in warriors, in provisions, and in the goodwill of his former allies. The increasingly savvy enemies on the northern front fought well, and the previous enmities between the peoples who lived there were put aside in favor of an alliance against the Inca army. Huayna Capac called up thousands of reinforcements, and towns that sent a generation of young men hundreds of miles to fight with the Inca army lamented that so few of their sons returned. Worse, the seemingly endless war cost Huayna Capac support. After feeling that they had sacrificed too much, some of his generals picked up the war idol and began to march back to Cuzco. They stopped only when a supernatural intervened to assure them that they would be well-rewarded for staying loyal to Huayna Capac, a promise that was promptly backed up by a lavish feast, and gifts of gold, valuable cloth, and wives doled out by that leader.
Although we view the Incas from a 500-year remove, some of the issues they faced seem remarkably contemporary. The documentary evidence that we use to study the Incas is frustratingly scant, but we can perhaps draw upon such points of convergence to begin to satisfy Malinowski’s hope that
. . . as we read the account of these remote customs there may emerge a feeling of solidarity with the endeavors and ambitions of these natives. Perhaps man’s mentality will be revealed to us, and brought near, along some lines which we never have followed before. Perhaps through realising human nature in a shape very distant and foreign to us, we shall have shed some light on our own. In this . . . we shall be justified in feeling that it has been worth our while to understand these natives . . . and that we have gathered some profit from the [effort].”
Syllabus: A&S 207
The Inca World: Empire and Imagination in the Ancient Andes
COURSE DESCRIPTION:
Beginning in the mid-15th century A.D., the Incas built an empire
that was the largest known in the ancient Americas. Lacking the traits
central to Western notions of civilization—writing, beasts of burden, wheeled vehicles—the Incas ruled their world effectively through
traditional Andean institutions of reciprocity with the social and spiritual world. As a case study in the growth and persistence of a non-Western
empire, the course explores the world constructed by the Incas on the
eve of Spanish conquest, addressing the ways that they created social
institutions to order their society and regulate tribute, and considers
the engineering innovations they devised to reconstruct their natural
world through terracing, irrigation, and architecture. Using
archaeological evidence and eyewitness accounts of their society,
students consider how Inca political organization and handiworks
reflect a traditional Andean orientation toward the supernatural world.
The course concludes with an examination of native resistance to
Spanish conquest and the way in which Inca institutions persist in
contemporary Andean society.
   
Required reading includes:
Juan de Betanzos, Narrative of the Incas [1557], translated by
Roland B. Hamilton; Bernabé Cobo, History of the Inca Empire [1653], translated by Roland B. Hamilton; Marcia Ascher and Robert Ascher, Mathematics of the Incas: Code of the Quipu; Susan A. Niles, The Shape
of Inca History: Narrative and Architecture in an Andean Empire.
In “From the Classroom,” faculty members give insight into their particular subject, providing a window on the intellectual
rigor that characterizes the environment of academic excellence at Lafayette. This issue features Susan A. Niles, professor of anthropology in the department of anthropology and sociology. She teaches, among other courses, The Inca World: Empire
and Imagination in the Ancient Andes.
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