[The following is in relation to the kidnapping of Atahualpa by the Spanish Conquistadores, the killing of his retinue, and the opening moves in the Spanish destruction of the Incan civilization. The following incident took place during the initial encounter between the Inca and the Spanish.]
It was agreed during their initial negotiations that Atahualpa would descend from his camp to visit the Europeans, whom he had billeted in Cajamarca itself. The Spaniards waited until the emperor had taken his place in a three-sided courtyard, surrounded by a large number of unarmed royal attendants. A Spanish priest came forward to engage him in a discussion on religion to distract his attention. Then at a given signal, invoking the names of their holy saints, firing their cannon, the Spaniards launched themselves at the Incan delegation.
The unprovoked assault on American towns and villages was by 1532 a well-established tactic of the Spanish troops. So too was the sudden massacre of American forces and their leaders, lured in under the pretext of negotiations. However, on 15 November 1532 in the plaza of Cajamarca, the Spaniards’ gift for treachery and for wholesale slaughter was to achieve its apotheosis. Faced with this unexpected attack, many unarmed Inca attendants rushed towards Atahualpa’s litter in order to protect their emperor, only to be cut down or trampled underfoot. Others, refusing to abandon him, had their hands and arms lopped off as they held him aloft. In an act of sublime futility they then struggled to support the royal person with their bleeding stumps. In only an hour and a half, a crowd of between five and ten thousand was almost completely annihilated. Perhaps only two hundred escaped the carnage. One eyewitness noted that ‘During all this no Indian raised a weapon against a Spaniard.’ It is without question one of the most notorious incidents in the history of Spanish imperialism.
An world-famous slaughter was soon to achieve its world-famous reward. The captured Atahualpa, recognizing the Spaniards’ greed for precious metals, offered to buy his freedom with a spectacular ransom of gold. Over a period of seven months gold and silver were collected throughout the empire and brought to the Spanish camp. A room more than six and a half metres long and five metres wide was filled with gold to a line beyond the reach of the tallest European. Two further rooms were stacked with silver. Many of the art treasures of an entire civilization were then consigned to the smelting furnaces and reduced to standard ingots – an act of cultural destruction commensurate with the earlier crime of human massacre. The total haul included more than six tonnes of 22.5 carat gold and almost twelve tonnes of silver. Pizarro’s personal share was 285 kilos of gold and more than half a tonne of silver.
The emperor’s conversion to Christianity spared him being burnt at the stake. When he had laid his hands on the ransom, Pizarro had Atahualpa garroted.
Source:
Cocker, Mark. “Gold – The Castration of the Sun.” Rivers of Blood, Rivers of Gold: Europe's Conquest of Indigenous Peoples. Grove Press, 2001. 94-5. Print.
Original Source(s) Listed:
Hemming, The Conquest of the Incas, p. 43.
Friede and Keen (eds.), Bartolomé de Las Casas, p. 36.
Further Reading:
No comments, yet...