Manco Capac
The indigenous precontact societies of the Andes were nonliterate. The Spaniards recorded several varying accounts of the foundation of the Inca Empire told to them by surviving historians of the last Inca courts.
Archaeologists have identified a large polity they call the Huari Empire that thrived from roughly 600 to 1000 in central and southern Peru north of Lake Titicaca.
These clans lived in agricultural villages called ayllus headed by curacas . Early in the thirteenth century, the curaca Manco Capac decided to relocate to better farmland.
Along the journey, Manco sought advice from his siblings, ayllu elders, priests, and his personal huaca , a huaoque , or “brother,” which was a bird-shaped stone he called Inti, meaning “sun.” This ancient custom of Andean indigenous societies persists today.
Inti told Manco when to act as sinchi , war-chieftain, to force his way into settled areas and pause, sometimes for several years at a time, to plant and harvest crops to sustain his group while trying to locate a permanent homeland.
Years later, in Matagua, Manco initiated Sinchi Roca into manhood with a ceremony that included piercing his ears and placing a golden spool into each pierced hole. As Sinchi Roca grew, progressively larger spools stretched the ear lobes dramatically.
These golden spools in enlarged ears became an identifying feature of all of Manco’s Incas, his princes, who were male descendants and recognized as privileged elites. The Spaniards called the Incas orejones , big ears, because of that trait.
Manco declared that region to be the goal of the migration. Five groups already occupied the area. Four of the groups were Ayarmacas who were related to the newcomers and had migrated years earlier from Pacaritambo.
After fierce fighting, Manco’s forces drove the unrelated group out of the valley and settled Acamama. He made alliances with the other groups and cemented the alliances by exchanging brides. To the weaker groups, Manco gave daughters from the elites of his ten ayllus , signifying that he was the dominant partner.
To the stronger groups, Manco acknowledged his subordinate status by receiving daughters of the elites whom he then married to his own elites, the Incas. The male descendants of his daughters became “Incas-by-Privilege” and shared power as semi-elites in his new kingdom.
The ceques were not geometrically symmetrical but coincided with planetary alignments and allowed the Incas to calculate the arrival of planting and harvesting seasons of the various crops in the different altitudes of their vertical kingdom.
When Manco Capac died, his huaoque Inti became part of the canopa , a collection of sacred objects kept together by his heirs.
After his death, Manco’s first two heirs peacefully expanded the boundaries of Tahuantinsuyo by continuing Manco’s practice of controlling Inca marriages with neighboring elites.
Before dying, the third capac , Lloque Yupanqui, had a vision from the solar deity Apu-Inti Viracocha. The deity told Lloque Yupanqui that his descendants would be great lords. His son, the third successor, Mayta Capac, retrieved Manco’s huaoque , Inti, from its place of safekeeping for consultation.
Inti gave the same aggressive advice it had given Manco, and Mayta Capac’s army pushed the borders of the Incan state northward. He and his successors became great lords. They combined warfare with matrimonial diplomacy to expand the borders of Tahuantinsuyo.
Pachacuti then seized power and took the name Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui. Invoking the name of Manco Capac, Pachacuti inaugurated major changes for the state. He declared that the founding eight Ayar siblings were children of Apu-Inti Viracocha.
They were to find a land chosen for them and to introduce farming, weaving, pottery making, cooking, astronomy, and all the other skills of civilization to the rest of humankind, by subjugation if necessary.
One of the Ayar brothers, Ayar Cachi, was so troublesome that he had been tricked into returning to the cave. When inside, the brothers sealed the cave entrance and continued the migration without him. The other two were turned into stone and became important huacas .
Pachacuti announced that all the heirs of Manco, the surviving brother who fulfilled the sacred mission entrusted to the Ayars, shared the divine essence of the solar deity.
Because the divine Manco had married his sister rather than marry mere mortals, Pachacuti declared that, henceforth, Incas would marry only descendants from Manco himself. A future Inca had to be the son of the Sapa Inca and a Coya, the principal wife who was to be a sister or half sister.
Significance
At his death Manco Capac left a strong state that developed into the largest of the precontact indigenous empires of the Western Hemisphere. The divine Pachacuti continued Manco’s vision and rebuilt the capital of Cuzco with massive stone buildings. He replaced the Inticancha with a larger temple, called the Coricancha, the Golden Enclosure, a complex of four buildings covered with cori , meaning “gold.”
The Coricancha was a Temple of the Ancestors with sanctuaries dedicated to the sun, moon, and planets. Pachacuti renewed and accelerated the mission of spreading civilization, building stone fortresses at important junctures and connecting the major communities with an impressive road system.
When the Spaniards arrived in 1532, Manco’s empire of Tahuantinsuyo had spread from Cuzco north through modern Ecuador to Colombia, south to the Maule River in central Chile, and eastward through Bolivia into northwestern Argentina.