Book Review: The Last Days of the Incas

The Last Days of the Incas, by Kim MacQuarrie

Source: Amazon.com

From the book's cover:

The epic story of the fall of the Inca Empire to Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro in the aftermath of a bloody civil war, and the recent discovery of the lost guerrilla capital of the Incas, Vilcabamba, by three American explorers.

In 1532, the fifty-four-year-old Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro led a force of 167 men, including his four brothers, to the shores of Peru. Unbeknownst to the Spaniards, the Inca rulers of Peru had just fought a bloody civil war in which the emperor Atahualpa had defeated his brother Huascar. Pizarro and his men soon clashed with Atahualpa and a huge force of Inca warriors at the Battle of Cajamarca. Despite being outnumbered by more than two hundred to one, the Spaniards prevailed—due largely to their horses, their steel armor and swords, and their tactic of surprise. They captured and imprisoned Atahualpa. Although the Inca emperor paid an enormous ransom in gold, the Spaniards executed him anyway. The following year, the Spaniards seized the Inca capital of Cuzco, completing their conquest of the largest native empire the New World has ever known. Peru was now a Spanish colony, and the conquistadors were wealthy beyond their wildest dreams.

But the Incas did not submit willingly. A young Inca emperor, the brother of Atahualpa, soon led a massive rebellion against the Spaniards, inflicting heavy casualties and nearly wiping out the conquerors. Eventually, however, Pizarro and his men forced the emperor to abandon the Andes and flee to the Amazon. There, he established a hidden capital, called Vilcabamba—only recently rediscovered by a trio of colorful American explorers. Although the Incas fought a deadly, thirty-six-year-long guerrilla war, the Spanish ultimately captured the last Inca emperor and vanquished the native resistance.

The review:

The Last Days of the Incas was a fascinating look into... well, the last days of the Inca Empire.  It begins by discussing the finding of the ruins of Machu Picchu by Hiram Bingham.  This makes for a pretty interesting start, and the author writes it well.

The book really gets going when we go back in time to the actual period of the Inca Empire, and MacQuarrie really covers the story of this epoch quite well.  I should amend that by saying I am not a scholar of New World civilizations, and so couldn't tell with an authority in any way if the material is done with proper scholarly discipline and procedure.  But the material presented is very interesting, and does tell a fairly well-rounded story of the rise, relatively short dynastic period (when compared to the Romans or some Asian dynasties), and then the fairly rapid decline of the Incan civilization.

The author, Kim MacQuarrie. / Source: kimmacquarrie.com

The heart of the book covers the Incan Empire's longevity and then collapse, mentioning the expansion of the Incan power base across some 2,500 miles of South American territory after the indigenous Inca tribe exploded outward from their original regional holdings.  Last Days of the Incas describes in some detail the great Atawallpa, Incan Emporer who must have felt as though he ruled over much of the known world during his fairly brief reign.  This Atawallpa was the son of another great Inca leader, Wayna Qhapaq, who it is thought died of Smallpox.  This highly infectious plague made its way into the interior of Peru from the newly-landed Spanish explorers in the coastal regions of Western South America.  The epidemic decimated much of the strength of the Incas even before the Conquistadors arrived in person with steel armor and swords, primitive but still effective firearms and cannon, and - most importantly - with horses, which the Incas had never seen before and which they took years to find countering strategies against.

Atawallpa met with the Spanish, led by Francisco Pizarro, in the city of Cajamarca in November, 1532.  After assessing these strangers, Atawallpa determined that on the next morning, he would have them captured and turned into eunuchs for use in his harem.  However, on the morning that this was to occur, the Spaniards were terrified and fought back savagely.  The Incas, 80,000 armed men strong and armed with clubs and slings, were overcome by about 160 Conquistadors.

Francisco Pizarro and his three brothers, Gonzalo, Juan and Hernando, all participated in the conquest of the Incas. The following is directly taken from Wikipedia.org (yes, I'm lazy).  All of them played a major part in the capture (1531–38) and rule of Peru. However, after the death of legal governor Francisco, their legitimate claims were practically forfeit. Juan had died during the ten month-long siege of Cuzco and Hernando was sent back as envoy to Spain and imprisoned in 1540, after accusations of corruption and tax evasion pointed towards the Pizarro administration. After Francisco's assassination in 1541, power was usurped by Cristóbal Vaca de Castro as new governor of "New Castile". In 1544 the king of Spain, who had also granted Francisco governorship in 1528, sent his own envoy Blasco Núñez Vela, as viceroy of Peru. Blasco imprisoned Castro but was the very same year detained and later killed on the behalf of Gonzalo Pizarro, who gathered his supporters and seized much of Peru. When Blasco's successor, Pedro de la Gasca defeated and had Gonzalo executed in 1548, the reign of the Pizarro brothers had definitely passed.  / Source: heritage-history.com

Atawallpa was captured and held prisoner by the Spaniards.  Eventually, in fear of a local uprising, the once haughty but now somewhat docile Atawallpa (who was no fool, by the book's description) was executed by burning at the stake.  One of his sons, Túpac Huallpa, was placed on the throne as a puppet emperor.  He died of Smallpox shortly afterward.  Next his brother Manco Inca Yupanqui was placed on the throne.  This Manco Inca was young and naive at first, and did not understand what the Spanish clearly wanted from their subjugated empire, nor to what lengths they would go to take anything and everything they wanted.  However, Manco would, after much abuse - both political and personal; the Spaniards treated him like a dog on numerous occasions - rise up and lead an insurrection that almost threw the Spanish Conquistadors from the continent.  The author notes near the end of the book that had this insurrection not failed, the Incan Empire might very well have not gone extinct.

I have read elsewhere and agree that MacQuarrie often writes the material as if it was a novel, and he has a flair for drama.  Some of the pivotal moments read like any good historical fiction.  One particular scene nearly two-thirds of the way through the book comes to mind.  By way of short back-story, Manco Inca, the once-puppet ruler of the Incas and now guerrilla leader of the insurgency against the Spanish had a wife whom one of the Conquistadors, Pizarro's brother Gonzalo, lusted after greatly.  Manco was treated very poorly by Gonzalo, and eventually was forced to give up his wife to the lecherous Gonzalo.  After Manco rebelled and fled the presence of the Spaniards, his wife also fled with him, though later she was captured during a Spanish attack on rebel bases.

Atawallpa was physically dragged from his royal litter by one of the Pizarro brothers (I forget which one) upon his capture.  The book describes one of the deficiencies of Incan warfare being that the leader present would be borne into battle on a litter, and would lead his troops either from the front, or to the immediate side of the main body of the troops.  This made them vulnerable to attack by the opposing force, which the Spanish used to their advantage.  Further, without their leader, the non-Incan soldiers of the empire would often turn and run if their Incan general (or in this case, sovereign) was captured, turning a bad situation worse. / Source: sfmission.com

The Spaniards attempted to ravish the poor woman, but she foiled them in their attempts by smearing herself, as the book puts it, "with all manner of foulness," so that the men couldn't stand to be near her to do the evil they intended.  Finally they handed the queen, who was said to be exceedingly beautiful, over to a tribe of local Indians who had allied themselves with the Conquistadors (as this tribe were no friends of the conquering Incas).  These Indians tied her to a stake and shot arrows into her in a slow, tortuous manner.  And yet throughout the queen's ordeal, she never made a sound of complaint, and died, according the the Spanish who witnessed the event, "as bravely as any man could have."  It is scenes such as these, which happen with regular frequency in the book, that tell both of the text's skill at painting a scene, as well as of the brutality and sadness that occurred during this terrible clash of cultures.

The author doesn't dwell solely on the Incan point-of-view.  MacQuarrie covers the Spanish side of the story too.  This was quite fascinating.  I had read a little of Cortez and his dealings with Montezuma in modern-day Mexico, but was not aware of the details of Pizarro and his brothers, who became very rich and powerful men through their skill, wiles and sheer brutality.

Some of only what must be a vast collection of ruins of the jungle city of Vilcabamba.  This was Manco Inca, one of the last emperors of the Incas, capital city and base for the insurgency against the Spanish.  Manco's hidden city was long thought to be Machu Picchu.  Discovered by Hiram Bingham in 1911, Machu Picchu was later found to have been only a fortress retreat for the Incas.  It would not have supported the population that Vilcabamba was supposed to have housed, before it was abandoned and left to be retaken by the Amazonian jungle. / Source: mikeaustin.org

Last Days of the Incas also discusses some of the modern-day explorations of Peru, referencing back to Bingham's discovery of Machu Picchu and then describing how this was mistaken for Manco Inca's capital city.  The modern exploits surrounding the uncovering of Incan ruins is almost as sordid as the rise and fall of that people, though personally, I found this part to be generally less captivating than the actual history of the Incan people themselves.  Though the story of Gene Savoy, handsome as movie star and nutty as a loon (in this reviewer's opinion, based on what the book describes of his transformation from explorer to leader of his own church), is fairly intriguing.

All in all, I would recommend Last Days of the Incas to anyone who is even remotely curious about the Incan civilization, or how the Spaniards, in such small numbers, managed to overcome them.  In the process, for better or worse, they changed the world as we know it.

Learn more about The Last Days of the Incas, by Kim MacQuarrie, on Amazon.com


The parting comment:

Source: Jantoo.com

 The Incas were not cannibalistic, though their worship practices were condemned as debauchery by the Catholic priests who accompanied the Conquistadors.  Hey, they liked getting drunk.  Not my idea of worship, mind you, but it does sound like they had a good time doing it, at least.  A pragmatic people, those Incas...  "If we're gonna conquer most of the known world and put everybody to work with a labor tax, might as well give the subjugated people a beer or twenty for their trouble."

It's a two-for-one on parting comments today!  

This one is a spoof of the scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark in which Indiana Jones raids the temple in the ruins and grabs that idol.  I can't quite decipher everything the "idol" says in this clip, as I don't speak the Queen's English, nor it's various UK derivatives and such (though I do know just a touch of cockney slang, but that's a whole different story).  But the end part, where the idol is doing the Indiana Jones theme?  That cracks me up.