Inca in the Andes

The Inca empire which lies in the peak of the andes was a civilization. Located in Peru. The capital is Cusco.

The Inca Empire or Inka Empire (Quechua: Tawantinsuyu) was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America. The administrative, political and military center of the empire was located in Cusco in modern-day Peru. TheInca civilization arose from the highlands of Peru sometime in the early 13th century.

From 1438 to 1533, the Incas used a variety of methods, from conquest to peaceful assimilation, to incorporate a large portion of western South America, centered on the Andean mountain ranges, including, besides Peru, large parts of modern Ecuador, western and south central Bolivia, northwest Argentina, north and central Chile, and a small part of southern Colombia into a state comparable to the historical empires of Eurasia.

The official language of the empire was Quechua, although hundreds of local languages and dialects of Quechua were spoken. The Inca referred to their empire as Tawantinsuyu which can be translated as "The Four Regions" or "The Four United Provinces."

Many local forms of worship persisted in the empire, most of them concerning local sacred Huacas, but the Inca leadership encouraged the worship of Inti—the sun god—and imposed its sovereignty above other cults such as that of Pachamama. The Incas considered their King, the Sapa Inca, to be the "child of the sun."

Name meaning, Origin, Cusco
The Inca referred to their empire as Tawantinsuyu, "four parts together." In Quechua, the term Tawantin is a group of four things (tawa, meaning "four", with the suffix -ntin which names a group). Suyu means "region" or "province," so the name roughly translates as "The four lands together." The empire was divided into four suyus, whose corners met at the capital, Cusco (Qosqo). The four suyos were: Chinchay Suyo (North), Anti Suyo (East. The Amazon jungle), Colla Suyo (South) and Conti Suyo (West). The name Tawantinsuyu was, therefore, a descriptive term indicating a union of provinces. The Spanish transliterated the name as Tahuatinsuyo or Tahuatinsuyu which is often still used today.

The term Inka means ruler, or "lord," in Quechua, and was used to refer to the ruling class or the ruling family in the empire. The Spanish adopted the term (transliterated as Inca in Spanish) as an ethnic term referring to all subjects of the empire rather than simply the ruling class. As such the name Imperio inca ("Inca Empire") referred to the nation that they encountered, and subsequently conquered.

Inca oral history mentions three possible places as three caves. The center cave, Tambo Tocco, was named for Capac Tocco. The other caves were Maras Tocco and Sutic Tocco. Four brothers and four sisters stepped out of the middle cave. They were: Ayar Manco, Ayar Cachi, Ayar Auca, and Ayar Uchu; and Mama Ocllo, Mama Raua, Mama Huaca, and Mama Cora. Out of the side caves came the people who were to be the ancestors of all the clans of the Inca people.

Ayar Manco carried a magic staff made of the finest gold. Where this staff landed, the people would all live there. They travelled for a very, very long time. On the way, Ayar Cachi was boasting about his great strength and power, and his siblings tricked him into returning to the cave to get a sacred llama. When he went into the cave, they trapped him inside to get rid of him.

Ayar Uchu decided to stay on the top of the cave to look over the Inca people. The minute he proclaimed that, he turned to stone. They built a shrine around the stone and it became a sacred object. Ayar Auca grew tired of all this and decided to travel alone. Only Ayar Manco and his four sisters remained.

Finally, they reached Cusco. The staff sank into the ground. Before they reached here, Mama Ocllo had already bore Ayar Manco a child, Sinchi Roca. The people who were already living in Cusco fought hard to keep their land, but Mama Huaca was a good fighter. When the enemy attacked, she threw her bolas (several stones tied together that spun through the air when thrown)at a soldier (gualla), and killed him instantly. The other people were so scared, they ran away.

After that, Ayar Manco became known as Manco Cápac, the founder of the Inca. It is said that he and his sisters built the first Inca homes in the valley with their own hands. When the time came, Manco Cápac turned to stone like his brothers before him. His son, Sinchi Roca, became the second emperor of the Inca. "We can assure your majesty that it is so beautiful and has such fine buildings that it would even be remarkable in Spain."

Francisco Pizarro The Inca people were a pastoral tribe in the Cusco area around the 12th century. Under the leadership of Manco Cápac, they formed the small city-state Kingdom of Cusco(Quechua Qusqu', Qosqo). In 1438, they began a far-reaching expansion under the command of Sapa Inca (paramount leader) Pachacuti-Cusi Yupanqui, whose name literally meant "earth-shaker". The name of Pachacuti was given to him after conquering over the Tribe of Chancas (modern Apurímac). During his reign, he and his son Tupac Yupanqui brought much of the Andes mountains (roughly modern Peru and Ecuador) under Inca control.

Expansion and Consolidation
It was traditional for the Inca's son to lead the army; Pachacuti's son Túpac Inca Yupanqui began conquests to the north in 1463, and continued them as Inca after Pachacuti'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 a small portion of land to the north in modern-day Ecuador and in parts of Peru. At its height, the Inca Empire included Peru and Bolivia, most of what is now Ecuador, a large portion of what is today Chile north of the Maule River in central Chile. The advance south halted after the Battle of the Maule where they met determined resistance by the Mapuche. The empire's push into the Amazon Basin near the Chinchipe River was pushed back by the Shuar in 1527. The empire also extended into corners of Argentinaand Colombia. However, most of the southern portion of the Inca empire, the portion denominated as Qullasuyu, was located in the Altiplano.

The Inca Empire 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. The Inca empire as a whole had an economy based on exchange and taxation of luxury goods and labour.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">Spanish conquistadors led by Francisco Pizarro and his brothers explored south from what is today Panama, reaching Inca territory by 1526. It was clear that they had reached a wealthy land with prospects of great treasure, and after one more expedition in 1529, Pizarro traveled to Spain and received royal approval to conquer the region and be its viceroy. This approval was received as detailed in the following quote: "In July 1529 the queen of Spain signed a charter allowing Pizarro to conquer the Incas. Pizarro was named governor and captain of all conquests in Peru, or New Castile, as the Spanish now called the land."

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">When they returned to Peru in 1532, a war of the two brothers between Huayna Capac's sons Huáscar and Atahualpa and unrest among newly conquered territories—and perhaps more importantly, smallpox, which had spread from Central America—had considerably weakened the empire. Pizarro did not have a formidable force; with just 168 men, 1 cannon and 27 horses, he often needed to talk his way out of potential confrontations that could have easily wiped out his party.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">The Spanish horsemen, fully armored, had great technological superiority over the Inca forces. The traditional mode of battle in the Andes was a kind of siege warfare where large numbers of usually reluctant draftees were sent to overwhelm opponents. The Spaniards had developed one of the finest military machines in the premodern world, tactics learned in their centuries-long fight against Moorish kingdoms in Iberia. Along with this tactical and material superiority, the Spaniards also had acquired tens of thousands of native allies who sought to end the Inca control of their territories. <p style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">Their first engagement was the Battle of Puná, near present-day Guayaquil, Ecuador, on the Pacific Coast; Pizarro then founded the city of Piura in July 1532. Hernando de Soto was sent inland to explore the interior and returned with an invitation to meet the Inca, Atahualpa, who had defeated his brother in the civil war and was resting at Cajamarca with his army of 80,000 troops.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">Pizarro and some of his men, most notably a friar named Vincente de Valverde, met with the Inca, who had brought only a small retinue. Through an interpreter Friar Vincente read the "Requerimiento" that demanded that he and his empire accept the yoke of King Charles I of Spain and convert to Christianity. Because of the language barrier and perhaps poor interpretation, Atahualpa became somewhat puzzled by the friar's description of Christian faith and was said to have not fully understood the envoy's intentions. After Atahualpa attempted further enquiry into the doctrines of the Christian faith under which Pizarro's envoy served, the Spanish became frustrated and impatient, attacking the Inca's retinue and capturing Atahualpa as hostage.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">Atahualpa offered the Spaniards enough gold to fill the room he was imprisoned in, and twice that amount of silver. The Inca fulfilled this ransom, but Pizarro deceived them, refusing to release the Inca afterwards. During Atahualpa's imprisonment Huáscar was assassinated elsewhere. The Spaniards maintained that this was at Atahualpa's orders; this was used as one of the charges against Atahualpa when the Spaniards finally decided to put him to death, in August 1533.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">Incas weren't very friendly to foreigners. They often try to battle anf fight to conquer several lands.