Empire of Gold, Alien Invaders: The Incas and the Spaniards

The Story

Introduction

Imagine, if you will, arriving on the surface of Mars for the first time. The journey was long, and dangerous. Many of your friends died on this trip. Maybe you left earth for the adventure, maybe because you left a troubled past behind, maybe because you wanted to get rich. You meet natives, Martians who look a little like you, but speak a different language and have a weird and strange culture. There are many of them, hundreds of thousands, and only there’s only a handful of you earthling adventurers, but their only weapons are crude muskets, while you are armed with the best machine guns in the galaxy.

Oh, and one more thing. They have more diamonds than you’ve ever seen. Lining their walls, gathered in huge chests, shaped into the very utensils they use to eat and drink. One of their serving bowls is worth more money than you’ll make on your entire lifetime.

What do you do?

Or, imagine, if you will, that you are minding your own business. You have a spouse, and children, a good job and a decent income. One day a spaceship descends out of the sky. Aliens who look like you walk out, but they don’t look quite right and their language is totally incomprehensible. They ride giant, armored beasts like nothing you’ve seen before, and their weapons look strange and terrible.

There aren’t very many of them, and they seem to be saying they come in peace.

What do you do?

The reason the alien example is particularly useful is that it is hard otherwise to conceive of how strange and bizarre the Spaniards and the Incas must have seemed to each other when they first met in 1526.

The Spaniard and the Inca ChiefFrancisco Pizarro meets the Inca Atahualpa for the first time

The Spaniards at least knew they were looking for a foreign empire when they plunged blindly into the South American jungle, but even they knew nothing of the language, the ruling structure or the terrain of modern-day Peru. The Spaniards were trying to conquer an empire, but they didn’t even know how big it was. To the Incas, for whom the Spaniards simply stumbled out of the jungle, it must have been an even more thoroughly strange, intriguing and disquieting experience.

That’s the background for today’s “History is Cool” lesson, and something I hope you keep in mind as you read on. There’s plenty of exciting stuff in this story — bloody battles, fearless conquerors, heroic last stands, greed, lust, ambition, brothers sticking by each other in a dangerous land, brothers betraying each other for their own gain, palace politics, love stories and succession crises — but underlying it all is the fundamental uncertainty, fear and curiosity of two sides that viewed each other as completely alien.

That’s what was motivating all the actors, in ways both large and small, when the Empire of Gold was faced with Alien Invaders.

What you may know about the Incas already

Cocktail party facts

  • The Inca Empire had only been in existence for 100 years by the time the Spanish arrived, and in that short span of time they had formed the largest and most powerful empire in the New World. The Incas were the greatest American power that had ever existed, and no American power eclipsed them at the height of their power until the rise of the United States.
  • The Spanish conquered the Incas with a force of barely 200 men, who could only charitably be called soldiers and who were more a ragtag band of mercenaries. They were able to conquer this huge empire mostly due to the power of Spanish cavalry.
  • The Incas did not read or write, instead recording their tales through oral histories, and through an intricate system of knots called the quipus. Unfortunately, soon after the Spanish conquest the Spaniards repressed the use of quipus, so much of the original records of the Inca Empire are now illegible to us.
  • The Incas had an incredible amount of gold and silver, but they did not use it for currency. Instead they viewed gold and silver as religious materials, and made intricate sculptures, masks and dining utensils out of the precious metals. Some of the most important temples of the Incas were literally sheathed in gold plates. Most of these artifacts were lost when the Spaniards took over, melting down thousands of art pieces so the gold and silver could be formed into bars and shipped back overseas.

Sources

Primary Sources

History of the Incas, Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa

Royal Commentaries of the Incas and General History of Peru, Volumes 1 and 2, Garcilaso de la Vega

The Discovery and Conquest of Peru, Pedro Cieza de Leon

Modern Histories

The Conquest of the Incas, John Hemming

War Horse: A History of the Military Horse and Rider, Louis A. DiMarco

Books for Casual Readers

The Last Days of the Incas, Kim MacQuarrie

Turn Right at Machu Picchu, Mark Adams

One thought on “Empire of Gold, Alien Invaders: The Incas and the Spaniards”

Leave a comment