Atlas of Hispanic-American History

of Ecuador and Colombia. At the

moment Pizarro arrived, Atahualpa had

just defeated and captured his half-broth-

er Huáscar in a civil war and was march-

ing triumphantly toward Cuzco to take

power. To overthrow him, Pizarro used

every tactic of Cortés’s: playing Native

American factions against one another;

making false promises; terrifying the

locals with firearms, steel swords, and

horses; and capturing the ruler.

The conquest began in 1532, when

Pizarro lured Atahualpa into a trap and

took him prisoner. Pizarro accepted

Atahualpa’s offer of a roomful of gold as a

ransom, but rather than letting Atahualpa

go, Pizarro had him garroted. Huáscar

was already dead, on Atahualpa’s order, so

Pizarro installed a new puppet emperor,

Manco Inca. In 1535, viewing Cuzco as

too far inland to serve as a viable capital,

Pizarro founded Ciudad de los Reyes,

“City of the Kings,” near the coast as the

region’s new capital. It soon became

known as Lima, a corruption of the

Quechua Indian name Rímac, meaning

“Talker.”

Manco proved to be less compliant

than Pizarro had hoped. Supported by

Native Americans, Manco led a revolt

against the Spanish in 1536. He lost and

retreated to Vilcabamba, where an inde-

pendent Inca kingdom survived until

1572, when the last pretender to the Inca

throne, Manco’s son Tupac Amaru, was

defeated.

By then Pizarro was long dead.

Despite his achievement in conquering

for Spain an even richer empire than that

of the Aztec, he enjoyed not even Cortés’s

38 ATLAS OF HISPANIC-AMERICAN HISTORY

New Spain in 1600