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crushed their opposition. When the Spanish
entered the mountains, Atahualpa was march-
ing south to complete his control of the empire
by conquering its capital, Cuzco, located in
south-central Peru. With thousands of troops at
his command, Atahualpa felt he had little to
fear from asmall group of Spanish soldiers. The
Spaniards were also safeguarded by the fact
that the Inca had no idea that the strangers
secretly intended to conquer their empire.
Pizarro left Tumbes in May 1532. For
months, he marched inland, demanding the
loyalty of local chiefs and executing those who
resisted Spanish demands for gold and workers.
Heading toward the Andes, he marched along
part of the Royal Inca Highway, a 1,000-mile-
long toll road stretching from Ecuador to Chile.
His secretary Xéres described the passage:The road is level, and the part which trav-
erses the mountains is very well made,
being broad enough for six men on horse-
back to ride abreast. By the side of the road
flow channels of water brought from a dis-
tance, at which the travelers can drink. At
the end of each day’sjourney there is a
house, like an inn, where those who come
and go, can lodge.In late 1532 Pizarro learned that Atahualpa
was in northern Peru at Cajamarca, on the other
side of the Andes, only 12 days’ march away.(^68) B Discovery of the Americas, 1492–1800
The Inca Empire =
Like the Aztec empire of Mexico, the empire of the Peruvian ethnic group
known as the Inca was relatively young when Europeans first landed in Peru
in the early 1500s. In less than 100 years the Inca had expanded far beyond
lands they had traditionally occupied high in the Andes Mountains, taking
control of Peru, most of Ecuador, western Bolivia, northern Chile, and north-
west Argentina. In area it was one of the largest empires in the world at the
time. Had it not been divided by civil war when the Spanish arrived, there is
little chance that Pizarro’s conquest could have succeeded so quickly, if at all.
Governed by a supreme ruler also known as the Inca, who was considered
to be a descendant of the Sun, Inca society was highly organized. Much of
daily community life was devoted to agriculture. Working with cut stone, Inca
architects developed a system of mountain terraces, complete with irrigation
and drainage systems that kept the soil suitable for farming in the unpre-
dictable climate of the Andes. The Inca genius for building can still be seen in
remnants of the Royal Inca Highway and at Machu Picchu, a city 50 miles
northwest of Cuzco that escaped detection by the Spaniards and whose jun-
gle-covered ruins were discovered in 1911 by an American explorer, Hiram
Bingham.
The language of the Inca, which is still spoken in Peru, is called Quechua.
The Inca did not record events through writing. They recorded and communi-
cated statistical information by a sophisticated method of knotting strings,
which were called quipus. Surviving Inca textiles and pottery, along with what
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