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The Inca had three origin myths. In one, Ticei Viracocha of Colina de las Ventanas in Pacaritambo sent forth his four sons and four daughters to establish a village. Along the way, Sinchi Roca was born to Manco and Ocllo, and Sinchi Roca led them to the valley of Cuzco where they founded their new village. There Manco became their leader and became known as Manco Capac.
In another origin myth, the sun god Inti ordered Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo to emerge from the depths of Lake Titicaca and found the city of Cuzco. They traveled by means of underground caves until reaching Cuzco where they established Hurin Cuzco, or the first dynasty of the Kingdom of Cuzco.
In the last origin myth, an Inca sun god told his wife that he was lonely. She proposed that he create a civilization to worship him and keep him company. He saw this as a wise plan and carried it out. The Inca were born from Lake Cuzco and populated the Andes and worshipped their sun god.
The myths are transmitted via oral tradition, since the Incas did not have writing. There probably did exist a Manco Capac who became the leader of his tribe. The archeological evidence seems to indicate that the Inca were a relatively unimportant tribe until the time of Sinchi Roca, also called Cinchi Roca, who is the first figure in Inca mythology whose existence is supported by physical evidence.
The Inca people began as a tribe in the Cuzco area around the 12th century. Under the leadership of Manco Capac, they formed the small city-state of Cuzco (Quechua Qusqu), shown in red on the map. In 1438, they began a far-reaching expansion under the command of Sapa Inca Pachacuti, whose name literally meant "world-shaker". During his reign, he and his son brought much of the Andes mountains (roughly modern Peru and Ecuador) under Inca control.
Pachacuti reorganized the kingdom of Cuzco into an empire, the Tahuantinsuyu, a federalist system which consisted of a central government with the Inca at its head and four provincial governments with strong leaders: Chinchasuyu (NW), Antisuyu (NE), Contisuyu (SW), and Collasuyu (SE). Pachacuti is also thought to have built Machu Picchu, either as a family home or as a summer retreat.
Pachacuti sent spies to regions he wanted in his empire; they brought reports on the political organization, military might and wealth. He would then send messages to the leaders of these lands extolling the benefits of joining his empire, offering them presents of luxury goods such as high quality textiles, and promising that they would be materially richer as subject rulers of the Inca. Most accepted the rule of the Inca as a fait accompli and acquiesced peacefully. The ruler's children would then be brought to Cuzco to be taught about Inca administration systems, then return to rule their native lands. This allowed the Inca to indoctrinate the former ruler's children into the Inca nobility, and, with luck, marry their daughters into families at various corners of the empire.
It was traditional for the Inca's son to lead the army; Pachacuti's son Túpac Inca began conquests to the north in 1463, and continued them as Inca after Pachucuti's death in 1471. His most important conquest was the Kingdom of Chimor, the Inca's only serious rival for the coast of Peru. Túpac Inca's empire stretched north into modern day Ecuador and Colombia.
Túpac Inca's son Huayna Cápac added significant territory to the south. At its height, Tahuantinsuyu included Peru and Bolivia, most of what is now Ecuador, a large portion of what is today northern Chile, and extended into corners of Argentina and Colombia. However, it should be noted that most of the southern portion of the Inca empire, the portion denominated as Collasuyu, was desert wasteland.
Tahuantinsuyu was a patchwork of languages, cultures and peoples. The components of the empire were not all uniformly loyal, nor were the local cultures all fully integrated. For instance, the Chimú used money in their commerce, while the Inca empire as a whole had an economy based on exchange and taxation of luxury goods and labour (it is said that Inca tax collectors would take the head lice of the lame and old as a symbolic tribute). The portions of the Chachapoya that had been conquered were almost openly hostile to the Inca, and the Inca nobles rejected an offer of refuge in their kingdom after their troubles with the Spanish
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The Chimú were the residents of Chimor with its capital at the city of Chan Chan in the Moche valley of Peru. Chimor was conquered 50 years before the arrival of the Spanish, so there were plenty of survivors from pre-Inca times to dictate the particulars of the daily life of the Chimú before their conquest by Inca Tupac Inca Yupanqui. Chimor grew out of the remnants of the Moche culture; initially, Chimú pottery had some resemblance to Moche pottery.
An Andean bronze bottle made by Chimú artisans from circa 1300 A.D.
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An Andean bronze bottle made by Chimú artisans from circa 1300 A.D.
The Chimú are best known for their distinctive monochromatic pottery and fine metal working of copper, gold, silver, bronze, and tumbago (copper and gold). The pottery is often in the shape of a creature, or has a human figure sitting or standing on a cuboid bottle. The shiny black finish of most Chimú pottery is not achieved by using glazes, but instead is achieved by firing the pottery at high temperatures in a closed kiln which prevents oxygen from reacting with the clay.
The largest Pre-Columbian city in South America, Chan Chan is an archaeological site located in the Peruvian region of La Libertad, just north of Trujillo. Covering an area of approximately 20 km², Chan Chan was constructed by the Chimor (the kingdom of the Chimú), a late intermediate period civilization which grew out of the remnants of the Moche civilization. The vast mud city of Chan Chan was built between c.850 and c.1470 and was the imperial capital until Chimor was conquered by the Inca in the 15th century. It is estimated that 30,000 people lived in the city of Chan Chan.
The city is composed of ten walled citadels which housed ceremonial rooms, burial chambers, temples, reservoirs and some residences. Each of these citadels has a rectangular configuration with a north-facing entrance, high walls, and a labyrinth of passages.
Reliefs of fish in the Tschudi Complex, Chan Chan
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Reliefs of fish in the Tschudi Complex, Chan Chan
The walls themselves were constructed of adobe brick, and were then covered with a smooth cement into which intricate designs were carved. There are two styles of design present in these carvings: one is a ‘realistic’ representation of subjects such as birds, fish, and small mammals; and the other is a more graphic, stylized representation of the same subjects. While earlier civilizations concentrated on cat-like and anthropomorphic forms, the Chimú style shows a preference for maritime motifs. The carvings at Chan Chan depict fish, pelicans, and nets for catching various sea creatures. Chan Chan, unlike most other coastal ruins in Peru, is located extremely close to the Pacific Ocean.
Pelican carvings, Chan Chan, excavated in 2004
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Pelican carvings, Chan Chan, excavated in 2004
Chan Chan was added as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1986. The city is severely threatened by erosion from El Niño, which causes heavy rains and flooding on the Peruvian coast. Present-day visitors to Chan Chan can enter the Tschudi Complex, believed to be one of the later citadels built in the city. There are also several other Chimú and Moche ruins in the area around Trujillo.
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The Chachapoyas, also called the Warriors of the Clouds, were an Andean people living in the cloud forests of the Amazonas region of present-day Peru. The Incas conquered their civilization shortly before the arrival of the Spanish in Peru. When the Spanish arrived in Peru in the XVI century, the Chachapoyas were one of the many nations ruled by the Inca Empire. Their incorporation to the Inca Empire had not been easy, due to their constant resistance to the Inca troops. The name Chachapoya is in fact the name that was given to this culture by the Inca; the name that these people may have actually used to refer to themselves is not known.
Since the Incas and the Spanish conquistadors were the principal sources of information on the Chachapoyas, unbiased first-hand knowledge of the Chachapoyas remains scarce. Writings by the major chroniclers of the time, such as El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, were based on fragmentary second-hand accounts. Much of what we do know about the Chachapoyas culture is based on archaeological evidence from ruins, pottery, and other artifacts.
The chronicler Pedro Cieza de León offers some picturesque notes about the Chachapoyas:
"They are the whitest and most handsome of all the people that I have seen in Indies, and their wives were so beautiful that because of their gentleness, many of them deserved to be the Incas' wives and to also be taken to the Sun Temple (...) The women and their husbands always dressed in woolen clothes and in their heads they wear their llautos, which are a sign they wear to be known everywhere."
Cieza adds that, after their annexation to the Inca Empire, they adopted the customs imposed by the people from the department of Cuzco.
The meaning of the word Chachapoyas is unknown. It may have been derived from sacha-p-collas, the equivalent of "colla people who live in the woods" (sacha = wild p = of the colla = nation in which Aymara is spoken). Some believe the word is a variant of the Quechua construction sacha puya, or people of the clouds.
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Geography
Valley of the Marañón between Chachapoyas (Leymebamba) and Celendín
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Valley of the Marañón between Chachapoyas (Leymebamba) and Celendín
The Chachapoyas' territory was very extensive. They were located in the northern regions of the Andes in present-day Peru. It included the triangular space formed by the confluence of the rivers Marañón and Utcubamba in the zone of Bagua, up to the basin of the Abiseo river. The ruins of Pajatén are located here. This territory also included land to the south up to the Chontayacu river. In this way it exceeded, in a southerly direction, the limits of the current department of Amazonas. But the center of the Chachapoyas culture was the basin of the Utcubamba river. Due to the great size of the Marañón river and the surrounding mountainous terrain, the region was relatively isolated from the coast and other areas of Peru, although there is archaeological evidence of some interaction between the Chachapoyas and other cultures.
The contemporary Peruvian city of Chachapoyas derives its name from the word for this ancient culture as does the defined architectural style. Garcilazo de la Vega noted that the Chachapoyas' territory was so extensive that,
"We could easily call it a kingdom because it has more than fifty leagues long per twenty leagues wide, without counting the way up to Muyupampa, thirty leagues long more (...)"
The league was a measurement of about 5 kilometers.
The area of the Chachapoyas corresponds to a region that, being part of a mountain range because of its land, was characterized for being covered by dense tropical woods. Thus, it came to be referred to as the Amazonian Andes.
As fast as the population was growing, the forests of the Amazonian Andes were felled in order to expand agriculture. Tropical forests were thereby diminished drastically and the soil eroded, no longer being protected by its ancient green mantle. Nowadays, the Amazonian Andes resembles the barren landscape of the Andean moorlands.
The Amazonian Andes constitute the eastern flank of the Andes, which were once covered by dense Amazon vegetation. the region extended from the cordillera spurs up to altitudes where the forests have not been felled, usually above 3500 m.
The cultural realm of the Amazonian Andes occupied land situated between 2000 and 3000 m altitude. This means that they are limited to the altitude occupied by the Chachapoyas, attested to by the location of architectural remains.
Chachapoyas' Origin
According to the analysis of the Chachapoyas's objects made by the Antisuyo expeditions of Amazon Archaeology Institute, the Chachapoyas do not exhibit Amazon cultural tradition. Their cultural goods have Andean roots. Although in certain cases they present a particular physiognomy, the investigations show that it is only a question of forms that suffered modifications due to geographical factors and a probable relative isolation.
The anthropomorphous sarcofagi do not seem to be another thing than the imitation of funeral bundles provided with a wooden mask proper of the so-called Horizonte medio, when it reigned culturally on the coast and the highlands what is known as Tiahuanaco-Huari or Wari culture. The "mausoleums" are equally modified expressions from the chullpa or pucullo, architectural element of funeral character that has a big diffusion in Peru and also inserted in the cultural frame Tiahuanaco-Huari.
If we look for an answer to the question: why people who live in the mountain range of the Andes occupied zones of the Amazonian Andes, the reason will be that such occupation was an answer to the need of extending the agrarian border. This need can only have its explanation in the geographical enviroment, not only from the Andes but also from the coast, characterized by its extensest desert areas that are translated in suitable soils for agriculture, limited and insufficient to sustain a population like the ancestral Peruvian people. People dedicated, for three thousand years, to the intensive growing of the land and, for this reason, had supporting a increasing demographic rate.
This dissertation has received the epithet of "serranización of the rainforest", that is seen in both: the geographical part and in the cultural one. On one hand, when the scenery of the Amazonian Andes changed, after the fell of the tropical forests, into a barren one that resembles the mountain range of the Andes; and, on the other hand, when the Andean people carried their cultural Andean baggage to places that were originally filled with Amazon verdant grove. This phenomenon, which is still current, repeated itself in the southern Amazonian Andes in times of the Inca Empire, with the mountain projection to the zone of Vilcabamba that raised haughty Inca architecture exponents like Machu Picchu.
Incorporation to the Inca Empire
The conquest of the chachapoyas by the Incas took place, according to Garcilazo, during the government of Tupac Inca Yupanqui in the second half of the 15th century.
He recounts that the warlike actions began in the slope of Pias. If this is true, it was to the south-west of the Gran Pajáten, from what it is deduced that the area of Pias was already considered as a chachapoyas' territory.
About the resistance that the chachapoyas put up against the Inca's penetration in times of Tupac Inca Yupanqui, there is abundant historical information, especially in the chronicle of Cieza.
During the sovereign Huayna Capac's government, the chachapoyas rebelled:
"They had killed the Inca's governors and captains (...) and (...) soldiers (...) and many others were imprisoned, they had the intention to make them their slaves."
As an answer, Huayna Capac, who was in the Ecuadorian cañaris land and while he was gathering his troops, sent messengers to negotiate peace. But again, the chachapoyas "punished the messengers (...) and threatened them with death".
Then Huayna Capac ordered to attack them. He crossed the Marañon river over a bridge of wooden rafts that he ordered to be built probably in the surroundings of Balsas, next to Celendín.
From here, the Inca's troops went to Cajamarquilla (Bolivar), with the intention of destroying this town that was "one of the principal towns" of the chachapoyas. From Cajamarquilla, an embassy integrated by women went out to meet them. In front of them there was a matron, who was an ancient concubine of Tupac Inca Yupanqui. They were asking for mercy and forgiveness, that the Inca granted them. In memory of this event of peace consecration, the place where the negotiation had taken place was declared sacred and closed so from now on "(...) neither men nor animals, nor even birds, if it was possible, would put their feet in it."
To assure the pacification of the chachapoyas, the Incas installed garrisons in the region. They also arranged the transfer of groups of villagers under the system of mitmac, or change of territories of human groups:
"(...) it gave them grounds to work and places for houses not much far from a hill that is next to the city (Cuzco) called Carmenga."
Of the inca presence in the territory of Chachapoyas remain the architectural rests of Cochabamba, placed in the outskirts of Utcubamba in the current district of Leimebamba.
The architectural model of the chachapoyas is defined by the circular tendency of their constructions and the masonry of regular stones. Their constructions are also characterized for being raised on platforms that were constructed in slopes. Their walls are, in certain cases, decorated with symbolic figures. It is necessary to add the colossal character of some monuments such as Cuélap and other numerous enclosures, like Olán.
It might indicate that the chachapoyas constructions date back to the IX or X century, and that their architectural tradition was still current until the arrival of the Spanish to their territory in the second third of the XVI century. The exceptions were those constructions that were erected by the Incas using their own style, such is the case of the ruins of Cochabamba in the district of Leimebamba.
The presence of two funeral patterns are also typical from the Chachapoyas culture. One of them is represented by sarcophagi, placed vertically and located in caves that were excavated in the highest place of the precipices. The other funeral pattern was groups of mausoleums; that is to say "mansions for deceased people". They were constructed like tiny houses and were located in caves worked in cliffs.
The chachapoyas' ceramics did not reach the handmade level of the Mochica's or Nazca's. Their small pitchers are frequently decorated by cordoned motives. As for the textile art, cloths were generally colored in red. A monumental textile, proceeding from the precincts of Pajatén, showed that had been painted by figures of birds. The chachapoyas also used to paint their walls, since a haughty present sample in San Antonio, province of Luya, reveals. These walls stages a ritual dance of couples that were held by the hands.
Although there is archaeological evidence that people began settling this geographical area as early as 200 C.E. or before, the Chachapoyas culture is thought to have developed around 800 C.E. The major urban centers, such as Kuélap and Gran Pajaten, may have developed as a defensive measure against the Huari, a Middle Horizon culture that covered much of the coast and highlands.
In the fifteenth century, the Inca empire expanded to incorporate the Chachapoyas region. Although fortifications such as the citadel at Kuélap may have been an adequate defense against the invading Inca, it is possible that by this time the Chachapoyas settlements had become decentralized and fragmented after the threat of Huari invasion had dissipated. The Chachapoyas were conquered by Inca ruler Tupac Inca Yupanqui around 1475 C.E. The defeat of the Chachapoyas was fairly swift; however, smaller rebellions continued for many years. Using the mitamaq system of ethnic dispersion, the Inca attempted to quell these rebellions by forcing large numbers of Chachapoya people to resettle in remote locations of the empire.
When civil war broke out within the Inca empire, the Chachapoyas were located on middle ground between the northern capital at Quito, ruled by the Inca Atahualpa, and the southern capital at Cuzco, ruled by Atahualpa's brother Huascar. Many of the Chachapoyas were conscripted into Huascar's army, and heavy casualties ensued. After Atahualpa's eventual victory, many more of the Chachapoyas were executed or deported due to their former allegiance with Huascar.
It was due to the harsh treatment of the Chachapoyas during the years of subjugation that many of the Chachapoyas initially chose to side with the Spanish colonialists when they arrived in Peru. Guaman, a local ruler from Cochabamba, pledged his allegiance to the conquistador Francisco Pizarro after the capture of Atahualpa in Cajamarca. The Spanish moved in and occupied Cochabamba, extorting what riches they could find from the local inhabitants.
During Inca Manco Capac's rebellion against the Spanish, his emmissaries enlisted the help of a group of Chachapoyas. However, Guaman's supporters remained loyal to the Spanish. By 1547, a large faction of Spanish soldiers arrived in the city of Chachapoyas, effectively ending the Chachapoyas independence. Residents were relocated to Spanish-style towns, often with members of several different ayllu occupying the same settlement. Disease, poverty, and attrition led to severe decreases in population; by some accounts the population of the Chachapoyas region decreased by 90% over the course of 200 years after the arrival of the Spanish.
More to come ~:)