Encyclopedia of the Incas

legendary deeds of a prince named Inca Yupanqui, who led the defense of Cuzco
against an invading army and then turned Inca military power outward to
conquer across the Andean highlands. Although Inca Yupanqui receives the
credit for transforming Inca society—so much so that he is better known by the
nickname Pachacuti (The Upheaval of the Universe)—the early chroniclers
Pedro de Cieza de León and Juan de Betanzos describe campaigns of
expansion outside the Cuzco valley a generation or two earlier. One proponent of
a Pachacuti-led imperial expansion was Bartolomé de Las Casas, a staunch
supporter of indigenous autonomy who portrayed Inca expansion as the
benevolent spread of civilization and good government. For Las Casas,
Pachacuti represented a culture hero who invented and spread good government
through benevolent means.
By the 1560s, royal officials complained that Las Casas had misrepresented
Inca expansion, overstating the legitimacy of Inca rule and in the process
damaging Spain’s legitimate interests in the Americas. These writers argued that
the Incas were tyrannical newcomers in most parts of the Andes, and that they
did not begin their conquests until the late 1400s. The most extreme proponents
of a late expansion paradigm claimed that it was not until the reign of Topa Inca
Yupanqui that proper imperial campaigns commenced. Many of these sources
were written around 1570, as the Spanish Crown engaged in administrative
consolidation in the Andes and sought to discredit the legitimacy of Inca
sovereignty. Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa is one of the better known of these
chroniclers.
Although most European writers described the earliest Inca rulers as mythical
ancestors or leaders with very limited local power, several sources from the
1600s focused on these personages as imperial conquerors. Some chroniclers
claimed that Inca conquests began in the time of the first Inca ancestors,
although a large body of archaeological evidence contradicts this interpretation
of early and gradual expansion. These sources include chronicles by men of
Andean descent, such as Garcilaso de la Vega and Felipe Guaman Poma de
Ayala. They present imperial expansion as the outgrowth of the efforts of Manco
Capac, the first Inca ruler, who founded Cuzco and consolidated administrative
power and ethnic unity across the Cuzco region (see Myths, Origin).
The early and late models for Inca expansion coexisted throughout the period
of Spanish Colonial rule, and it was only in the nineteenth century that scholars
began to try to disentangle what really happened from ancient myths and
Spanish propaganda. In rediscovering Colonial manuscripts and publishing them