Warfare was also celebrated in less tangible ways. The drumbeat of conquest
in the chronicles reflects Inca military values: Cieza states that the histories of
the quipucamayocs honored the valiant, victorious kings, while of those who
were “remiss, cowardly, given to vice and a life of ease without expanding the
realm of the empire, it was ordered that little or nothing be remembered” (Cieza
2010 [1553]). Orejones trained for war from boyhood, internalizing core values
of honor and martial prowess. In triumphal processions and staged battles in
Cuzco, captives, soldiers, and Incas dramatized imperial victory. Human trophies
fashioned from the bones, skulls, and skin of prominent enemies were conserved
and displayed in battle. On a cosmological level, triumph in war was linked to
agricultural fertility, a concept that was probably far older than the Incas.
Victory, then, signaled not just military superiority, but also divine favor and the
promise of good fortune.
Further Reading
Andrushko, V. A., and E. C. Torres. “Skeletal Evidence for Inca Warfare from the Cuzco Region of Peru.”
American Journal of Physical Anthropology 146:361–72, 2011.
Bram, J. An Analysis of Inca Militarism. New York: J. J. Augustin, 1941.
Cieza de León, Pedro de. The Second Part of the Chronicle of Peru. Translated and edited by Clements R.
Markham. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010 [1553].
Cobo, B. Inca Religion and Customs. Translated and edited by Roland Hamilton. Austin: University of
Texas Press, 1990 [1653].
D’Altroy, Terence N. Provincial Power in the Inka Empire, Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press,
1992.
———. The Incas. 2nd ed. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2014.
Hemming, John. The Conquest of the Incas. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970.
Murra, J. V. “The Expansion of the Inka state: Armies, War, and Rebellions.” In Anthropological History of
Andean Polities, edited by John V. Murra, Nathan Wachtel, and Jacques Revel, 49–58. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Nielsen, A. “Ancestors at War: Meaningful Conflict and Social Process in the South Andes.” In Warfare in
Cultural Context: Practice, Agency, and the Archaeology of Violence, edited by A. Nielsen and W.
Walker, 218–43. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2009.
Rowe, John H. “Inca Culture at the Time of the Spanish Conquest.” In Handbook of South American
Indians, edited by Julian Steward, vol. 2, The Andean Civilizations, 183–330. Washington, DC:
Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, 1946.
Topic, J. R., and T. L. Topic. “Hacia una comprensión conceptual de la guerra andina.” In Arqueología,
Anthropología e Historia en los Andes: Homenaje a María Rostworowski, edited by R. Varón Gabai and
J. Flores Espinoza, 567–90. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1997.
Urteaga, H. H. “El ejercito incaico.” Boletin de la Sociedad Geografica de Lima 35–36:283–331, 1919.
■ELIZABETH ARKUSHWARS, DYNASTIC