Journal Entry History

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15

Empires and Alternatives in the Americas 1430–1530

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World in the Making Perched on a granite ridge high above Peru’s Urubamba R iver, the Inca site of Machu Picchu continues to draw thousands of visitors each year. First thought to be the lost city of Vilcabamba, then a convent for Inca nuns, Machu Picchu is now believed to have been a mid-fifteenth- century palace built for the Inca emperor and his mummy cult. It was probably more a religious site than a place of rest and recreation.

Many Native Americas FOCUS What factors account for the diversity of native American cultures?

Tributes of Blood: The Aztec Empire, 1325–1521

FOCUS What core features characterized Aztec life and rule?

Tributes of Sweat: The Inca Empire, 1430–1532

FOCUS What core features characterized Inca life and rule?

COUNTERPOINT: The Peoples of North America’s Eastern Woodlands, 1450–1530

FOCUS How did the Eastern Woodlanders’ experience differ from life under the Aztecs and Incas?

backstory By the fifteenth century the Americas had

witnessed the rise and fall of numerous

empires and kingdoms, including the classic

Maya of Mesoamerica, the wealthy Sicán

kingdom of Peru’s desert coast, and the

Cahokia mound builders of the Mississippi

Basin. Just as these cultures faded, there

emerged two new imperial states that

borrowed heavily from their predecessors.

The empires discussed in this chapter, the

Aztec and Inca, were the largest states ever

to develop in the Americas, yet they were

not all-powerful. About half of all native

Americans, among them the diverse peoples

of North America’s eastern woodlands, lived

outside their realms.

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In 1995, archaeologists discovered a tomb on a peak overlooking Arequipa, Peru. Inside was the mummified body of an adolescent girl placed there some five hun- dred years earlier. Evidence suggests she was an aclla (AHK-yah), or “chosen woman,” selected by Inca priests from among hundreds of regional headmen’s daughters. Most aclla girls became priestesses dedicated to the Inca emperor or the imperial sun cult. Others became the emperor’s concubines or wives. Only the most select, like the girl discovered near Arequipa, were chosen for the “debt-payment” sacrifice, or capacocha (kah-pah-KOH-chah), said to be the greatest honor of all.

According to testimonies collected after the Spanish conquest of the Incas in 1532 (discussed in the next chapter), the capacocha sacrifice was a rare event preceded by rituals. First, the victim, chosen for her (and rarely, his) physical perfection, trekked to Cuzco, the Inca capital. The child’s father brought gifts from his province and in turn received fine textiles from the emperor. Following an ancient Andean tradition, ties between ruler and ruled were reinforced through such acts of reciprocity. The girl, too, received skirts and shawls, along with votive objects. These adorned her in her tomb, reached after a long journey on foot from Cuzco.

As suggested by later discoveries, at tomb-side the aclla girl was probably given a beaker of maize beer. In a pouch she carried coca leaves. Coca, chewed throughout the Andes, helped fend off altitude sickness, whereas the maize beer induced sleepi- ness. Barely conscious of her surroundings, the girl was lowered into her grass-lined grave, and, according to the forensic anthropologists who examined her skull, struck dead with a club.

W hy did the Incas sacrifice children, and why in these ways? By combining ma- terial, written, and oral evidence, scholars are beginning to solve the riddle of the Inca mountain mummies. It now appears that death, fertility, reciprocity, and imperial links to sacred landscapes were all features of the capacocha sacrifice. Although such deadly practices may challenge our ability to empathize with the leaders, if not the common folk, of this distant culture, with each new fact we learn about the child mummies, the closer we get to understanding the Inca Empire and its ruling cosmology.

The Incas and their subjects believed that death occurred as a process, and that proper death led to an elevated state of consciousness. In this altered state a person could communicate with deities directly, and in a sense join them. If the remains of such a person were carefully preserved and honored, they could act as an oracle, a conduit to the sacred realms above and below the earth. Mountains, as sources of springs and rivers, and sometimes fertilizing volcanic ash, held particular significance.

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In part, it was these beliefs about landscape, death, and the afterlife that led the Incas to mummify ancestors, including their emperors, and to bury chosen young people atop mountains that marked the edges, or heights, of empire. Physically perfect noble children such as the girl found near Arequipa were thus selected to communicate with the spirit world. Their sacrifice unified the dead, the living, and the sacred mountains, and also bound together a far-flung empire that was in many ways as fragile as life itself.1

But this fragility was not evident to the people gathered at the capacocha sacrifice. By about 1480, more than half of all native Americans were subjects of two great empires, the Aztec in Mexico and Central America and the Inca in South America. Both empires subdued neighboring chiefdoms through a mix of violence, forced relocation, religious indoctrination, and marriage alliances. Both empires demanded allegiance in the form of tribute. Both the Aztecs and Incas were greatly feared by their millions of subjects. Perhaps surprisingly, these last great native American states would prove far more vulnerable to European invaders than their nonimperial neighbors, most of whom were gatherer-hunters and semi-sedentary villagers. Those who relied least on farming had the best chance of getting away.

1. In what ways was cultural

diversity in the Americas related

to environmental diversity?

2. Why was it in Mesoamerica

and the Andes that large

empires emerged around 1450?

3. What key ideas or practices

extended beyond the limits of

the great empires?

OVERVIEW QUESTIONS

The major global development in this chapter: The diversity of societies and states in the Americas prior to European invasion.

As you read, consider:

Many Native Americas

FOCUS What factors account for the diversity of native american cultures?

Scholars once claimed that the Western Hemisphere was sparsely settled prior to the arrival of Europeans in 1492, but we now know that by then the population of the Americas had reached some sixty million or more. A lthough vast open spaces

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remained, in places the landscape was more intensively cultivated and thickly populated than western Europe (see Map 15.1). Fewer records for nonimperial groups survive than for empire builders such as the Incas and Aztecs, but scholars have recently learned much about these less-studied cultures. Outside imperial boundaries, coastal and riverside populations were densest. This was true in the Caribbean, the Amazon, Paraguay-Paraná, and Mississippi R iver Basins, the Pacific Northwest, and parts of North America’s eastern seaboard.

Ecological diversity gave rise in part to political and cultural diversity. A merica’s native peoples, or A merindians, occupied two ecologically diverse continents. They also inhabited tropical, temperate, and icy environments that proved more or less suitable to settled agriculture. Some were members of egalitarian gatherer-hunter bands; others were subjects of rigidly stratified imperial states. In between were traveling bands of pilgrims led by prophets; chiefdoms based on fish- ing, whaling, or farming; regional confederacies of chiefdoms; and independent city-states.

Political diversity was more than matched by cultural diversity. The Aztecs and Incas spread the use of imperial dialects within their empires, but elsewhere hundreds

of distinct Amerindian lan- guages could be heard. Modes of dress and adornment were even more varied, ranging from total nudity and a few tattoos to highly elaborate ceremonial dress. Lip and ear piercing, tooth filing, and molding of the infant skull between slats of wood were but a few of the many ways human appearances were reconfigured. Architecture was just as varied, as were ceramics and other arts. In short, the Americas’ extraor- dinary range of climates and nat- ural resources both reflected and encouraged diverse forms of ma- terial and linguistic expression. Perhaps only in the realm of reli- gion, where shamanism persisted, was a unifying thread to be found.

Canadian War Club This stone war club with a fish motif was excavated from a native A merican tomb in coastal British Columbia, Canada, and is thought to date from around 1200 to 1400 C.E . Such items at first suggest a people at war, but this club was probably intended only for ceremonial use. Modern Tsimshian inhabitants of the region, who still rely on salmon, describe the exchange of stone clubs in their foundation myths.

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Main areas of se�lement, c. 1492

Major trade route

Main Se�lement Areas in the Americas, c. 1492

Principal crops Amaranth

Beans

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Chilies

Co�on

Maize

Manioc

Potatoes, sweet potatoes

Quinoa

Squash, pumpkins, gourds

Sun�owers

Tobacco

Tomatoes

Peanuts

NORTH AMERICA

SOUTH AMERICA

Tropic of Cancer

Tropic of Capricorn

Equator

30ºN

120ºW 90ºW 60ºW 30ºW 0º

30ºS

MAP 15.1 Main Settlement Areas in the Americas, c. 1492 Most native Americans settled in regions that supported intensive agriculture. The trade routes shown here linked peoples from very different cultures, mostly to exchange rare items such as shells, precious stones, and tropical bird feathers, but seeds for new crops also followed these paths.

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Shamanism consisted of reliance on healer-visionaries for spiritual guidance. In imperial societies shamans constituted a priestly class. Both male and female, sha- mans had functions ranging from fortune teller to physician, with women often acting as midwives. Still, most native American shamans were males. The role of shaman could be inherited or determined following a vision quest. This entailed a solo journey to a forest or desert region, prolonged physical suffering, and controlled use of hallucinogenic substances. In many respects Amerindian shamanism resem- bled shamanistic practices in Central Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

Often labeled “witch doctors” by Christian Europeans, shamans maintained a body of esoteric knowledge that they passed along to apprentices. Some served as historians and myth keepers. Most used powerful hallucinogens to communicate with the spirits of predatory animals, which were venerated almost every where in the Americas. Animal spirits were regarded as the shaman’s alter ego or protector, and were consulted prior to important occasions. Shamans also mastered herbal remedies for all forms of illness, including emotional disorders. These rubs, washes, and infusions were sometimes effective, as shown by modern pharmacological studies. Shamans nearly always administered them along with chants and rituals aimed at expelling evil spirits. Shamans, therefore, combined the roles of physician and religious leader, using their knowledge and power to heal both body and spirit.

The many varieties of social organization and cultural practice found in the Americas reflect both creative interactions with specific environments and the visions of individual political and religious leaders. Some Amerindian gatherer-hunters lived in swamplands and desert areas where subsistence agricul- ture was impossible using available technologies. Often such gathering-hunting peoples traded with—or plundered—their farming neighbors. Yet even farming peoples did not forget their past as hunters. As in other parts of the world, big-game hunting in the Americas was an esteemed, even sacred activity among urban elites.

Just as hunting remained important to farmers, agriculture could be found among some forest peoples. Women in these societies controlled most agricultural tasks and spaces, periodically making offerings to spirits associated with human fertility. Amerindian staple foods included maize, potatoes, and manioc, a lowland tropical tuber that could be ground into flour and preserved. With the ebb and flow of empires, many groups shifted from one mode of subsistence to another, from planting to gathering-hunting and back again. Some, such as the Kwakiutl (K WA H-kyu-til) of the Pacific Northwest, were surrounded by such abundant marine and forest resources that they never turned to farming. Natural abundance combined with sophisticated fishing and storage systems allowed the Kwakiutl to build a settled culture of the type normally associated with agricultural peoples.

shamanism  Widespread system of religious belief and healing originating in Central Asia.

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Thus, the ecological diversity of the Americas helped give rise to numerous cul- tures, many of which blurred the line between settled and nomadic lifestyles.

Tributes of Blood: The Aztec Empire 1325–1521

FOCUS What core features characterized aztec life and rule?

Mesoamerica, comprised of modern southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, and western Honduras, was a land of city-states after about 800 C.E . Following the decline of Teotihuacán (tay-oh-tee-wah-KAHN) in the Mexican highlands and the classic Maya in the greater Guatemalan lowlands, few urban powers, with the possible exception of the Toltecs, managed to dominate more than a few neighbors.

This would change with the arrival in the Valley of Mexico of a band of former gatherer-hunters from a northwestern desert region they called Aztlán ( ost-LAW N), or “place of cranes.” As newcomers these “Aztecs,” who later called themselves Mexica (meh-SHE-cah, hence “Mexico”), would suffer humiliation by powerful city-dwellers centered on Lake Texcoco, now overlain by Mexico City. The Aztecs were at first regarded as barbarians, but as with many conquering outsiders, in time they would have their revenge (see Map 15.2).

Humble Origins, Imperial Ambitions Unlike the classic Maya of preceding centuries, the Aztecs did not develop a fully phonetic writing system. They did, however, preserve their history in a mix of oral and symbolic, usually painted or carved, forms. Aztec elders maintained chronicles of the kind historians call master narratives, or state-sponsored versions of the past meant to glorify certain individuals or policies. These narratives related foundation myths, genealogies, tales of conquest, and other important remembrances. Though biased and fragmentary, many Aztec oral narratives were preserved by young native scribes writing in Nahuatl (NA H-watt), the Aztec language, soon after the Spanish Conquest of 1519–1521 (discussed in the next chapter).

W hy is it that the Spanish victors promoted rather than suppressed these narratives of Aztec glory? In one of history’s many ironic twists, Spanish priests arriving in Mexico in the 1520s taught a number of noble Aztec and other Mesoamerican youths to adapt the Latin alphabet and Spanish phonetics to vari- ous local languages, most importantly Nahuatl. The Spanish hoped that stories of Aztec rule and religion, once collected and examined, would be swiftly discredited

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and replaced with Western, Christian versions. Not only did this quick conver- sion not happen as planned, but an unintended consequence of the information- gathering campaign was to create a vast body of Mesoamerican literature written in native languages.

The Aztecs were a quick study in the production of written historical docu- ments, and most of what we know of Aztec history relies heavily on these hybrid, sixteenth-century sources (see Seeing the Past: An Aztec Map of Tenochtitlán). Aside from interviews with the elders, several painted books, or codices, marked with precise dates, names, and other symbols, survive, along with much archaeo- logical and artistic evidence. In combining these sources with Spanish eyewitness accounts of the conquest era, historians have assembled a substantial record of Aztec life and rule.

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TLAXCALAN

COLHUA OTOMI

Chichén Itzá

Tenochtitlán See inset map

TABASCO

By 1440

Added by 1481

Added by 1521

�e Aztec Empire, 1325–1521 Aztec territory

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Xochimilco Coyoacán

Tlacopán

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Tenochtitlán Atzcapotzalco

Xaltocán

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Valley of Mexico

Causeway Dike

MAP 15.2 The Aztec Empire, 1325–1521 Starting from their base in Tenochtitlán (now Mexico City), the Aztecs quickly built the most densely populated empire in the A mericas. Their first objective was the Valley of Mexico itself. A lthough a line of kings greatly extended the empire, not all peoples fell to the Aztec war machine, including the Tlaxcalans to the east of Tenochtitlán and the Tarascans to the west. A lso unconquered were the many nomadic peoples of the desert north and the farming forest peoples of the southeast.

SEEING THE PAST

An Aztec Map of Tenochtitlán Named for Mexico’s first Spanish viceroy, the

Codex Mendoza was painted by Aztec artists

about a dozen years after the Spanish Conquest

of 1519–1521. It was commissioned by the viceroy

as a gift for the Holy Roman emperor and king

of Spain, Charles V. After circulating among the

courts of Europe, the Codex Mendoza landed in

the Bodleian Library in Oxford, England, where it

remains. Much of the document consists of trib-

ute lists, but it also contains an illustrated history

of Aztec conquests, crimes and punishments, and

even a map of Tenochtitlán, the Aztec capital. This

symbol-filled map is reproduced here.

According to legend, the Aztec capital came into ex-

istence when an eagle landed on a cactus in the middle

of Lake Texcoco. This image, now part of the Mexican

national flag, is at the center of the map. Beneath the

cactus is a picture of a stone carving of a cactus fruit, a

common Aztec symbol for the human heart, emblem

of sacrifice. Beneath this is a third symbol labeled after-

ward by a Spanish scribe “Tenochtitlán.”

The city, or rather its symbol, marks the meeting

of four spatial quarters. In each quarter are various

Aztec nobles, only one of whom, Tenochtli (labeled

“Tenuch” on the map), is seated on a reed mat, the

Aztec symbol of supreme authority. He was the

Aztecs’ first emperor; the name “Tenochtli” means

“stone cactus fruit.”

The lower panel depicts the Aztec conquests of

their neighbors in Colhuacan and Tenayuca. Framing

the entire map are symbols for dates, part of an

ancient Mesoamerican system of timekeeping and

prophesying retained by the Aztecs. Finally, barely

legible in the upper left-hand corner is the somewhat

jarring signature of André Thevet, a French priest

and royal cosmographer who briefly possessed the

Codex Mendoza in the late sixteenth century.

Examining the Evidence 1. W hat does this map reveal about the Aztec worldview? 2. How might this document have been read by a common Aztec subject?

Tenochtitlán, from the Codex Mendoza

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The Aztecs apparently arrived in the Valley of Mexico some- time in the thirteenth century, but it was not until the early fourteenth that they established a permanent home. The most fertile sites in the valley were already occupied, but the Aztecs were not dissuaded; they had a reputation for being tough and resourceful. Heeding an omen in the form of an eagle perched on a cactus growing on a tiny island near the southwest edge of Lake Texcoco, the refugees settled there in 1325. Reclaim- ing land from the shallow lakebed, they founded a city called Tenochtitlán (teh-noach-teet-LAW N), or “cactus fruit place.” Linked to shore by three large causeways, the city soon boasted stone palaces and temple-pyramids.

The Aztecs transformed Tenochtitlán into a formidable capital. By 1500 it was home to some two hundred thousand people, ranking alongside Nanjing and Paris among the world’s most populous cities at the time. At first the Aztecs developed their city by trading military services and lake products such as reeds and fish for building materials, including stone, lime, and timber from the surrounding hillsides. They then formed mar- riage alliances with regional ethnic groups such as the Colhua, and by 1430 initiated imperial expansion.

Intermarriage with the Colhua, who traced their ancestry to the warrior Toltecs, lent the lowly Aztecs a new, elite cachet. At some point the Aztecs tied their religious cult, focused on the war god Huitzilopochtli (weetsy-low-POACH-tlee), or “hummingbird-on-the-left” to cults dedicated to more widely known deities, such as the water god Tlaloc. A huge, multilay-

ered pyramid faced with carved stone and filled with rubble, now referred to by archaeologists as the Templo Mayor, or “Great Temple,” but called by the Aztecs Coatepec, or “Serpent Mountain,” became the centerpiece of Tenochtitlán. At its top, some twenty stories above the valley floor, sat twin temples, one dedicated to Huitzilopochtli, the other to Tlaloc. Coatepec was built to awe and intimidate. In the words of one native poet,

Proud of itself Is the City of Mexico-Tenochtitlán Here no one fears to die in war This is our glory This is Your Command Oh Giver of Life

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Great Temple Ritual center Palace Assembly hall

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Lake Texcoco and Tenochtitlán, c. 1500

Lake Texcoco and Tenochtitlán, c. 1500

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Have this in mind, oh princes W ho could conquer Tenochtitlán? W ho could shake the foundation of heaven?2

The Aztecs saw themselves as both stagehands and actors in a cosmic drama centered on their great capital city.

Enlarging and Supplying the Capital With Tenochtitlán surrounded by water, subsistence and living space became serious concerns amid imperial expansion. Fortunately for the Aztecs, Lake Texcoco was shallow enough to allow an ingenious form of land reclamation called chinampa (chee-NA HM-pah). Chinampas were long, narrow terraces built by hand from dredged mud, reeds, and rocks, bordered by interwoven sticks and live trees. Chinampa construction also created canals for canoe transport. Building chinampas and massive temple-pyramids such as Coatepec without metal tools, wheeled vehicles, or draft animals required thousands of workers. Their construc- tion, therefore, is a testimony to the Aztecs’ power to command labor.

Over time, Tenochtitlán’s canals accumulated algae, water lilies, and silt. Workers periodically dredged and composted this organic material to fertilize maize and other plantings on the island terraces. Established chinampa lands were eventually used for building residences, easing urban crowding. By the mid- fifteenth century the Aztecs countered problems such as chronic flooding and high salt content at their end of the lake with dikes and other public works.

Earlier, in the fourteenth century, an adjacent “twin” city called Tlatelolco (tlah-teh-LOLE-coe) had emerged alongside Tenochtitlán. Tlatelolco was the Aztec marketplace. Foods, textiles, and exotic goods were exchanged here. Cocoa beans from the hot lowlands served as currency, and products such as turquoise and quetzal feathers arrived from as far away as New Mexico and Guatemala, re- spectively. Though linked by trade, these distant regions fell well outside the Aztec domain. A ll products were transported along well-trod footpaths on the backs of human carriers. Only when they arrived on the shores of Lake Texcoco could trade goods be shuttled from place to place in canoes. Tlatelolco served as crossroads for all regional trade, with long-distance merchants, or pochteca (poach-TEH-cah), occupying an entire precinct.

Aztec imperial expansion began only around 1430, less than a century before the arrival of Europeans. An alliance between Tenochtitlán and the city-states of Texcoco and Tlacopan led to victory against a third, Atzcapotzalco (otts-cah- poat- SAUL-coh) (see again Map 15.2). Tensions with Atzcapotzalco extended back to the Aztecs’ first arrival in the region. The Aztecs used the momentum of this vic- tory to overtake their allies and lay the foundations of a regional, tributary empire.

chinampa A terrace for farming and house building constructed in the shallows of Mexico’s Lake Texcoco by the Aztecs and their neighbors.

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Within a generation they controlled the entire Valley of Mexico, exacting tribute from several million people. The Nahuatl language helped link state to subjects, although many subject groups retained local languages. These persistent forms of ethnic identification, coupled with staggering tribute demands, would eventually help bring about the end of Aztec rule.

Holy Terror: Aztec Rule, Religion, and Warfare A series of six male rulers, or tlatoque (tlah-TOE-kay, singular tlatoani), presided over Aztec expansion. W hen a ruler died, his successor was chosen by a council of elders from among a handful of eligible candidates. Aztec kingship was sacred in

Aztec Human Sacrifice This image dates from just after the Spanish Conquest of Mexico, but it was part of a codex about Aztec religious practices and symbols. Here a priest is removing the beating heart of a captive with a flint knife as an assistant holds his feet. The captive’s bloody heart, in the form of a cactus fruit, ascends, presumably to the gods (see the same icon in Seeing the Past: A n Aztec Map of Tenochtitlán, page 539). At the base of the sacrificial pyramid lies an earlier victim, apparently being taken away by noble Aztec men and women responsible for the handling of the corpse.

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that each tlatoani traced his lineage back to the Toltecs. For this, the incorporation of the Colhua lineage had been essential. In keeping with this Toltec legacy, the Aztec Empire was characterized by three core features: human sacrifice, warfare, and tribute. A ll were linked to Aztec and broader Mesoamerican notions of cosmic order, specifically the human duty to feed the gods.

Like most Mesoamericans, the Aztecs traced not only their own but all human origins to sacrifices made by deities. In origin stories male and female gods threw themselves into fires, drew their own blood, and killed and dismembered one another, all for the good of humankind. These sacrifices were considered essential to the process of releasing and renewing the generative powers that drove the cosmos.

According to Aztec belief, humans were expected to show gratitude by follow- ing the example of their creators in an almost daily ritual cycle. Much of the sacred calendar had been inherited from older Mesoamerican cultures, but the Aztecs added many new holidays to celebrate their own special role in cosmic history. The Aztecs’ focus on sacrifice also appears to have derived from their sense that secular and spiritual forces were inseparable. A ffairs of state were affairs of heaven, and vice versa. Tenochtitlán was thought to be the foundation of heaven, its enormous temple-pyramids the center of human-divine affairs. Aztec priests and astrologers believed that the universe, already in its fifth incarnation after only three thousand years, was unstable, on the verge of chaos and collapse. Only human intervention in the form of sustained sacrificial ritual could stave off apocalypse.

As an antidote, the gods had given humans the “gift” of warfare. Human captives, preferably young men, were to be hunted and killed so that the release of their blood and spirits might satisfy the gods. Warrior sacrifice was so important to the Aztecs that they believed it kept the sun in motion.

Devout Aztec subjects also took part in nonlethal cosmic regeneration rituals in the form of personal bloodletting, or autosacrifice. According to sources, extrem- ities and genitals were bled using thorns and stone blades, with public exhibition of suffering as important as blood loss. Blood offerings were absorbed by thin sheets of reed paper, which were burned before an altar. These bloodlettings, like captive sacrifices, emphasized the frailty of the individual, the pain of life, and indebted- ness to the gods. Human blood fueled not only the Aztec realm, but the cosmos.

Given these sacrificial obligations, Aztec warfare aimed not at the annihilation but rather at live capture of enemies. Aztec combat was ideally a stylized and theatrical affair similar to royal jousts in contemporary Eurasia, with specific individuals paired for contest. Aztec warriors were noted for their fury, a trait borrowed from their patron deity, Huitzilopochtli. Chronic enemies such as the Tlaxcalans appar- ently learned to match the ferocious Aztec style, and some enemies, such as the Otomí, were eventually incorporated into Aztec warrior ranks.

autosacrifice The Mesoamerican practice of personal bloodletting as a means of paying debts to the gods.

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Mesoamerican warriors considered death on the battlefield the highest honor. But live capture was the Aztecs’ main goal, and most victims were marched naked and bound to the capital to be sacrificed. A lthough charged with religious meaning, Aztec warrior sacrifices were also intended to horrify enemies; visiting diplomats were made to watch them. Aztec imperial expansion depended in part on religious terror, or the ability to appear chosen by the gods for victory.

In addition to sacrificial victims, the Aztecs demanded tribute of conquered peoples. In addition to periodic labor drafts for public works, tribute lists included food, textiles, and craft goods for the empire’s large priestly and warrior classes. Other tribute items were redistributed to favored subjects of lower status to help cement loyalties. Yet other tribute items were purely symbolic. Some new subjects were made to collect filth and inedible insects, for example, just to prove their unworthiness. As an empire that favored humiliation over co-optation and promotion of new subjects, the Aztecs faced an ever-deepening reservoir of resentment.

Daily Life Under the Aztecs Aztec society was stratified, and Mexica nobles regarded commoners as uncouth. In between were bureaucrats, priests, district chiefs, scribes, merchants, and artisans. A lthough elites displayed the fruits of their subordinates’ labors, most Aztec art seems to have been destined not for wealthy people’s homes but for temples, tombs, and religious shrines. Despite heav y emphasis on religious ceremonies, the Aztecs also maintained a civil justice system. Quite unlike most of the world’s imperial cultures, Aztec nobles sometimes received harsher punishments than commoners for similar misdeeds.

Class hierarchy was reinforced by dress and speech codes, along with many other rules and rituals. The tlatoani, for example, could not be touched or even looked in the face by any but his closest relatives, consorts, and servants. Even ranking nobles were supposed to lie face down on the ground and put dirt in their mouths before him. Nobles guarded their own rank by using a restricted form of speech. Chances for social advancement were limited, but some men gained status on the battlefield.

At the base of the social pyramid were peasants and slaves. Some peasants were ethnic Aztecs, but most belonged to city-states and clans that had been conquered after 1430. In either case, peasants’ lives revolved around producing food and providing overlords with tribute goods and occasional labor. Slavery usually took the form of crisis-driven self-indenture; it was not an inherited social status. Slavery remained unimportant to the overall Aztec economy.

Merchants, particularly the mobile pochteca responsible for long-distance trade, occupied an unusual position. A lthough the pochteca sometimes accumulated

tribute Taxes paid to a state or empire, usually in the form of farm produce or artisan manufactures but sometimes also human labor or even human bodies.

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great wealth, they remained resident aliens. They had no homeland, but made a good living supplying elites with exotic goods. Nonetheless, there is no evidence of complex credit instruments, industrial-style production, or real estate exchange of the sort associated with early merchant capitalism in other parts of the world at this time. The Aztec state remained tributary, the movement of goods mostly a reflection of power relations. Merchants, far from influencing politics, remained ethnic outsiders. Thus, both the Aztec economy and social structure reinforced the insularity of Aztec elites.

The life of an Aztec woman was difficult even by early modern standards. A long with water transport and other heav y household chores, maize grinding and tortilla making became the core responsibilities of most women in the Valley of Mexico, and indeed throughout Mesoamerica. Without animal- or water-driven grain mills, food preparation was an arduous, time-consuming task, particularly for the poor. Only noblewomen enjoyed broad exemption from manual work.

Sources suggest that some women assumed minor priestly roles. Others worked as surgeons and herbalists. Midwifery was also a fairly high-status, female occupation (see Lives and Livelihoods: The Aztec Midwife). These were exceptions; women’s lives were mostly hard under Aztec rule. Scholars disagree, however, as to whether male political and religious leaders viewed women’s duties and contributions as complementary or subordinate. Surviving texts do emphasize feminine mastery of the domestic sphere and its social value. However, this emphasis may simply reflect male desire to limit women’s actions, since female reproductive capacity was also highly valued as an aid to the empire’s perpetual war effort.

Indeed, Aztec society was so militarized that giving birth was referred to as “taking a captive.” This comparison reflects the Aztec preoccupation with pleasing their gods: women were as much soldiers as men in the ongoing war to sustain human life. Women’s roles in society were mostly domestic rather than public, but the home was a sacred space. Caring for it was equivalent to caring for a temple. Sweeping was a ritual, for example, albeit one with hygienic benefits. Hearth tending, maize grinding, spinning, and weaving were also ritualized tasks. Insufficient attention to these daily rituals put families and entire lineages at risk.

Aztec children, too, lived a scripted existence, their futures predicted at birth by astrologers. Names were derived from birthdates, and served as a public badge of fate. Sources affirm that Aztec society at all levels emphasized duty and good com- portment rather than rights and individual freedom. Parents were to police their children’s behavior and to help mold all youths into useful citizens. Girls and boys were assigned tasks considered appropriate for their sex well before adolescence. By age fourteen, children were engaged in adult work. One break from the chores was instruction between ages twelve and fifteen in singing and playing instruments,

LIVES AND LIVELIHOODS

The Aztec Midwife In Aztec culture, childbirth was a sacred and ritual- ized affair. Always life-threatening for mother and child, giving birth and being born were both explic- itly compared to the battlefield experience. Aside from potential medical complications, the Aztecs considered the timing of a child’s birth critical in determining her or his future. This tricky blend of physical and spiritual concerns gave rise to the respected and highly skilled livelihood of midwife. It is not entirely clear how midwives were chosen, but their work is well described in early post- conquest records, particularly the illustrated books of Aztec lore and history collectively known as the Florentine Codex. The following passage, translated directly from sixteenth-century Nahuatl, is one such description. Note how the midwife blends physi- cal tasks, such as supplying herbs and swaddling clothes, with shamanistic cries and speeches.

And the midwife inquired about the fate of the baby who was born.

W hen the pregnant one already became aware of [pains in] her womb, when it was said that her time of death had arrived, when she wanted to give birth already, they quickly bathed her, washed her hair with

soap, washed her, adorned her well. And then they arranged, they swept the house where the little woman was to suffer, where she was to perform her duty, to do her work, to give birth.

If she were a noblewoman or wealthy, she had two or three midwives. They remained by her side, awaiting her word. And when the woman became really disturbed internally,

Aztec Midwife This image accompanies a description in Nahuatl, the Aztec language, of the midwife’s duties written soon after the Spanish Conquest. (Firenze, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Ms. Med. Palat. 219, f. 132v. Su concessione del MiBACT)

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such as drums and flutes, for cyclical religious festivals. Girls married at about age fifteen, and boys nearer twenty, a pattern roughly in accordance with most parts of the world at the time. Elder Aztec women served as matchmakers, and wedding ceremonies were elaborate, multiday affairs. Some noblemen expanded their pres- tige by retaining numerous wives and siring dozens of children.

they quickly put her in a sweat bath [a kind of sauna]. And to hasten the birth of the baby, they gave the pregnant woman cooked ciua- patli [literally, “woman medicine”] herb to drink.

And if she suffered much, they gave her ground opossum tail to drink, and then the baby was quickly born. [The midwife] already had all that was needed for the baby, the little rags with which the baby was received.

And when the baby had arrived on earth, the midwife shouted; she gave war cries, which meant the woman had fought a good battle, had become a brave warrior, had taken a captive, had captured a baby.

Then the midwife spoke to it. If it was a boy, she said to it: “You have come out on earth, my youngest one, my boy, my young man.” If it was a girl, she said to it: “My young woman, my youngest one, noblewoman, you have suffered, you are exhausted.” . . . [and to either:] “You have come to arrive on earth, where your relatives, your kin suffer fatigue and exhaustion; where it is hot, where it is cold, and where the wind blows; where there is thirst, hunger, sadness, despair, exhaus- tion, fatigue, pain. . . .”

And then the midwife cut the umbilical cord.

Source: Selection from the Florentine Codex in Matthew Restall, Lisa Sousa, and Kevin Terraciano, eds., Mesoamerican

Voices: Native-Language Writings from Colonial Mexico, Oaxaca, Yucatan, and Guatemala (New York: Cambridge University

Press, 2005), 216–217.

Questions to Consider

1. W hy was midwifery so crucial to the Aztecs? 2. How were girls and boys addressed by the midwife, and why?

For Further Information:

Carrasco, Davíd, and Scott Sessions. Daily Life of the Aztecs, People of the Sun and Earth, 2nd ed. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2008.

Clendinnen, Inga. Aztecs: An Interpretation. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

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At around harvest time in September, Aztec subjects ate maize, beans, and squash seasoned with salt and ground chili peppers. During other times of the year, and outside the chinampa zone, food could be scarce, forcing the poor to consume roasted insects, grubs, and lake scum. Certain items, such as frothed cocoa, were reserved for elites. Stored maize was used to make tortillas year-round, but two

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poor harvests in a row, a frequent occurrence in highland Mexico, could reduce rations considerably.

In addition to periodic droughts, Aztec subjects coped with frosts, plagues of locusts, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and floods. This ecological uncertainty restricted warfare to the agricultural off-season. Without large domesticated animals and metal tools, agricultural tasks throughout Mesoamerica demanded virtual armies of field laborers equipped only with fire-hardened digging sticks and obsidian or flint knives.

Animal protein was scarce, especially in urban areas where hunting opportunities were limited and few domestic animals were kept. Still, the people of Tenochtitlán raised turkeys and plump, hairless dogs (the prized Xolo breed of today). Even humble beans, when combined with maize, could constitute a complete protein, and indigenous grains such as amaranth were also nutritious. Famines still occurred, however, and one in the early 1450s led to mass migration out of the Valley of Mexico. Thousands sold themselves into slavery to avoid starvation.

The Limits of Holy Terror As the Aztec Empire expanded, sacrificial debts became a consuming passion among pious elites. Calendars filled with sacrificial rites, and warfare was ever more geared toward satisfying a ballooning cosmic debt.

By 1500 the Aztec state had reached its height, and some scholars have argued that it had even begun to decline. Incessant captive wars and tribute demands had reached their limits, and old enemies such as the Tlaxcalans and Tarascans remained belligerent. New conquests were blocked by difficult terrain, declining tributes, and resistant locals. With available technologies, there was no place else for the empire to grow, and even with complex water works in place, agricultural productivity barely kept the people fed. Under the harsh leadership of Moctezuma II (“Angry Lord the Younger”) (r. 1502–1520), the future did not look promising. A lthough there is no evidence to suggest the Aztec Empire was on the verge of collapse when several hundred bearded, sunburned strangers of Spanish descent appeared on Mexico’s Gulf Coast shores in 1519, points of vulnerability abounded.

Tributes of Sweat: The Inca Empire 1430–1532

FOCUS What core features characterized inca life and rule?

At about the same time as the Aztec expansion in southernmost North America, an- other great empire emerged in the central Andean highlands of South America. There is no evidence of significant contact between them. Like the Aztecs, the Incas burst

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out of their highland homeland in the 1430s to conquer numerous neighbors and huge swaths of territory. They demanded tribute in goods and labor, along with alle- giance to an imperial religion. Also like the Aztecs, the Incas based their expansion on a centuries-long inheritance of technological, religious, and political traditions.

By 1500 the Incas ruled one of the world’s most extensive, ecologically varied, and rugged land empires, stretching nearly three thousand miles along the towering Andean mountain range from the equator to central Chile. Like most empires ancient and modern, extensive holdings proved to be a mixed blessing (see Map 15.3).

From Potato Farmers to Empire Builders Thanks to archaeological evidence and early post-conquest narratives, much is known about the rise and fall of the Inca state. Still, like the early Ottoman, Rus- sian, and other contemporary empires, numerous mysteries remain. As in those cases, legends of the formative period in particular require skeptical analysis. The Inca case is somewhat complicated by the fact that their complex knotted-string records, or khipus (also quipus, K EY-poohs), have yet to be deciphered.

Scholars agree that the Incas emerged from among a dozen or so regional ethnic groups living in the highlands of south-central Peru between 1000 and 1400 C.E . Living as potato and maize farmers, the Incas started out as one of many similar groups of Andean mountaineers. Throughout the Andes, clans settled in fertile valleys and alongside lakes between eighty-five hundred and thirteen thousand feet above sea level. Though often graced with fertile soils, these highland areas suffered periodic frosts and droughts, despite their location within the tropics. Even more than in the Aztec realm, altitude (elevation above sea level), not latitude (distance north or south of the equator), was key.

Anthropologist John Murra described Inca land use as a “vertical archipelago,” a stair-step system of interdependent environmental “islands.” K in groups occupy- ing the altitudes best suited to potato and maize farming established settlements in cold uplands, where thousands of llamas and alpacas—the Americas’ only large domestic animals—were herded, and also in hot lowlands, where cotton, peanuts, chilis, and the stimulant coca were grown. People, animals, and goods traveled between highland and lowland ecological zones using trails and hanging bridges.

Other Andeans inhabited Peru’s desert coast, where urban civilization was nearly as old as that of ancient Egypt. Andean coast dwellers practiced large-scale irrigated agriculture, deep-sea fishing, and long-distance trade. Trading families outfitted large balsawood rafts with cotton sails and plied the Pacific as far as Guatemala. Inland trade links stretched over the Andes and into the Amazon rain forest. A long the way, coast-dwelling traders exchanged salt, seashells, beads, and copper hatchets for exotic feathers, gold dust, and pelts. The Incas would exploit all

vertical archipelago  A ndean system of planting crops and grazing animals at different altitudes.

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0

0 400 Kilometers

400 Miles

PACIFIC OCEAN

Lake Titicaca

Maule R.

M ad

ie ra

R .

Amazon R.

Negro R.

Mt. Ampato 20,702 ft./6310 m

Machu Picchu

Mt. Chimborazo 20,565 ft./6286 m

Mt. Aconcagua 22,834 ft./6960 m

A n

d

e s

M o

u n

t a

i n

s CHACHAPOYAS

MAPUCHE

CHAN�

CAÑARIS

Chan Chan Cajamarca

Quito

Túmbes

Huarochirí Cuzco

Tiwanaku

By c. 1400

Added by 1471

Added by 1493

Added by 1525

Inca road

Inca site

Mountain

Inca territory

�e Inca Empire, 1325–1521

20ºS

10ºS

Tropic of Capricorn

60ºW80ºW 70ºW

80ºW 70ºW

Equator

MAP 15.3 The Inca Empire, 1325–1521 Starting from their base in Cuzco, high in the A ndes, the Incas built the most extensive empire in the A mericas, and the second most populous after that of the Aztecs. They linked it by a road system that rivaled that of the ancient Romans. Some groups, such as the Cañaris and Chachapoyas, resisted Inca domination for many years, and the Mapuche of Chile were never conquered.

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of these regions and their interconnections, replacing old exchange systems and religious shrines with their own. Around 1200 C.E. they established a base near Cuzco (KOOS-coh), in Peru’s highlands not far from the headwaters of the Amazon, and soon after 1400 they began their drive toward empire (see again Map 15.3).

The Great Apparatus: Inca Expansion and Religion Cuzco, located in a narrow valley at a breathtak ing altitude of over t wo miles above sea level, ser ved as the Incas’ political base and religious center. Like the A ztecs, the Incas saw their capital as the hub of the universe, calling it the “navel of the world.” Paths and roads radiated out in all directions and tied hun- dreds of subsidiar y shrines to the cosmically ordained center. Compared w ith the A ztec capital of Tenochtitlán, however, Cuzco was modest in size, perhaps home to at most fi ft y thousand. Still, Cuzco had the advantage of being stoutly built of hewn stone. W hereas most of Tenochtitlán’s temples and palaces were dismantled follow ing the Spanish Conquest, Cuzco’s colossal stone foundations still stand.

The Incas in the early fifteenth century began conquering their neighbors. In time each emperor, or Sapa (“Unique”) Inca, would seek to add more territory to the realm, called Tawantinsuyu (tuh-wahn-tin-SUE-you), or, “The Four Quarters Together.” The Sapa Inca was thought to be descended from the sun and was thus regarded as the sustainer of all humanity. Devotion to local dei- ties persisted, however, absorbed over time by the Incas in a way reminiscent of the Roman Empire’s assimilation of regional de- ities and shrines. This religious inclusiveness helped the empire spread quickly even as the royal cult of the sun was inserted into everyday life. In a similar way, Quechua (K ETCH-wah) became the Incas’ official language even as local languages persisted.

Inca expansion was so rapid that the empire reached its great- est extent within a mere four generations of its founding. In semi-legendary times, Wiracocha Inca (r. 1400–1438) was said to have led an army to defeat an invading ethnic group called the Chankas near Cuzco. According to royal sagas, this victory spurred Wiracocha to defend his people further by annexing the fertile territories of other neighbors. Defense turned to offense, and thus was primed the engine of Inca expansion.

Wiracocha’s successor, Pachacuti Inca Yupanki (r. 1438– 1471), was more ambitious, so much so that he is widely regarded as the true founder of the Inca Empire. Archaeological evidence

B

D

C A

0

0 250 m

500 yds.

Chunchilmayo R.

Saphy R.

Tullum ayo

R .

Upper Cuzco Lower Cuzco Residential Area Road

Main plaza Temple of the Sun Assembly Hall Palace of the Virgins of the Sun

A B C D

Cuzco, c. 1500

Cuzco, c. 1500

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backs this claim. Pachacuti (literally “ Cataclysm”) took over much of what is today Peru, including many coastal oases and the powerful Chimú kingdom. A long the way, Pachacuti perfected the core strategy of Inca warfare: amassing and mobi- lizing such overwhelming numbers of troops and backup forces that fighting was often unnecessary.

Thousands of peasants were conscripted to bear arms, build roads, and carry food. Others herded llamas, strung bridges, and cut building stone. With each new advance, masonry forts and temples were constructed in the imperial style, leaving an indelible Inca stamp on the landscape. Even opponents such as the desert-dwelling Chimú capitulated in the face of the Inca juggernaut. Just after the Spanish Conquest, Pachacuti was remembered by female descendants:

As [Pachacuti] Inca Yupanki remained in his city and town of Cuzco, seeing that he was lord and that he had subjugated the towns and provinces, he was very pleased. He had subjugated more and obtained much more importance than any of his ancestors. He saw the great apparatus that he had so that whenever he wanted to he could subjugate and put under his control anything else he wanted.3

These remembrances underscore the Sapa Inca’s tremendous power. Pachacuti’s successors extended conquests southward deep into what are today

Chile and Argentina, and also eastward down the slope of the Andes and into the upper Amazon Basin. It is from this last region, the quarter the Incas called Antisuyu (auntie-SUE-you), that we derive the word Andes. On the northern frontier, the Incas fought bitterly with Ecuadorian ethnic groups to extend Inca rule to the border of present-day Colombia (see again Map 15.3). Here the imperial Inca conquest machine met its match: many native highlanders fought to the death.

According to most sources, Inca advances into new territory were couched in the rhetoric of diplomacy. Local headmen were told they had two options: (1) to retain power by accepting Inca sovereignty and all the tributary obligations that went with it, or (2) to defy the Inca and face annihilation. Most headmen went along, particularly once word of the Incas’ battlefield prowess spread. Those who did not were either killed in battle or exiled, along with their subject populations, to remote corners of the empire.

The Incas dominated agricultural peoples and their lands, but they also spread their imperial solar cult. W hatever their motives, like the Aztecs they defined dom- ination in simple terms: tribute payment. Conquered subjects showed submission by rendering portions of their surplus production—and also labor—to the emperor. Tribute payment was a grudgingly accepted humiliation throughout the Andes, one that many hoped to shake off at the first opportunity.

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Inca religion is only starting to be understood. As the chapter-opening description of child sacrifice suggests, spirit and body were deemed inseparable despite per- manent loss of consciousness. Likewise, features in the landscape, ranging from springs and peaks to boulders, were thought to emit spiritual energy (see Reading the Past: An Andean Creation Story). Even human-made landforms, such as irri- gation canals, were described as “alive.” These sacred wakas (or huacas) received offerings in exchange for good harvests, herd growth, and other bounties.

Andeans also venerated their ancestors’ corpses. As long as something tangi- ble remained of the deceased, they were not regarded as entirely dead. It helped that the central Andes’ dry climates were ideal for mummification: preservation often required little more than removal of internal organs. It would have been fairly common in Inca times to encounter a neighbor’s “freeze-dried” grandparents hanging from the rafters, still regarded as involved in household affairs. Andeans sometimes carried ancestor mummies to feasts and pilgrimages as well. Thus, Inca society included both past and present generations.

The Incas harnessed these and other core Andean beliefs, yet like the Aztecs they put a unique stamp on the region they came to dominate. Though warlike, the Incas rarely sacrificed captive warriors, a ritual archaeologists now know was practiced among ancient coastal Peruvians. Cannibalism was something the Incas associated with barbaric forest dwellers. Inca stone architecture, though borrow- ing from older forms, is still identifiable thanks to the use of trapezoidal (flared) doors, windows, and niches (see World in the Making, page 531). Even so, the Incas’ imperial sun cult proved far less durable than local religious traditions once the empire fell. And despite the Incas’ rhetoric of diplomacy, most Andeans appear to have associated their rule with tyranny. Like the Aztecs, they failed to inspire loyalty in their subjects, who saw Inca government as a set of institutions designed to exploit, rather than protect, the peoples of the empire.

Daily Life Under the Incas Inca society, like Aztec society, was stratified, with few means of upward mobility. A long with class gradations tied to occupation, the Incas divided society accord- ing to sex, age, and ethnic origin. Everyday life thus varied tremendously among the Inca’s millions of subjects, although the peasant majority probably had much in common with farming folk the world over. Seasonal work stints for the empire were a burden for men, whereas women labored to maintain households. Unlike that of the Aztec, the Inca legal system appears to have been harder on commoners than nobles. Exemplary elite behavior was expected, but not so rigidly enforced.

At the pinnacle of society was the Sapa Inca himself, the “son of the Sun.” He was also believed to be the greatest warrior in the world, and everyone who came

waka A sacred place or thing in A ndean culture.

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before him was obliged to bear a symbolic burden, such as a load of cloth or large water vessel. Only the Inca’s female companions had intimate contact with him. A lthough the ideal royal couple according to Inca mythology was a sibling pair, in fact dozens of wives and concubines assured that there would be heirs. Unlike monarchs in Europe and parts of A frica, the Sapa Incas did not practice primogen- iture, or the automatic inheritance of an estate or title by the eldest son. Neither did they leave succession to a group of elders, the method preferred by the Aztecs.

READING THE PAST

An Andean Creation Story The small Peruvian town of Huarochirí (wahr-oh-

chee-REE), located in the high Andes east of Lima,

was the target of a Spanish idolatry investigation

at the end of the sixteenth century. The Spanish

conquest of the Incas had little effect on the ev-

eryday life of Andean peasants, and many clung

tenaciously to their religious beliefs. In Huarochirí,

Spanish attempts to replace these beliefs with

Western, Christian ones produced written testimo-

nies from village elders in phonetically rendered

Quechua, the most commonly spoken language in

the Inca Empire. Like the Aztec codices, the result-

ing documents—aimed at eradicating the beliefs

they describe—have unwittingly provided modern

researchers with a rare window on a lost mental

world. The passage here, translated directly from

Quechua to English, relates an Andean myth that

newly arrived or converted Christians considered

a variation on the biblical story of Noah and the

Great Flood. In the Christian story, God, angered

by the wickedness of man, resolves to send a flood

to destroy the earth. He spares only Noah, whom

he instructs to build an ark in which Noah, his

family, and a pair of every animal are to be saved

from the Great Flood.

In ancient times, this world wanted to come to an

end. A llama buck, aware that the ocean was about

to overflow, was behaving like somebody who’s

deep in sadness. Even though its owner let it rest in

a patch of excellent pasture, it cried and said, “In,

in,” and wouldn’t eat. The llama’s owner got really

angry, and he threw a cob from some maize he

had just eaten at the llama. “Eat, dog! This is some

fine grass I’m letting you rest in!” he said. Then

that llama began speaking like a human being.

“You simpleton, whatever could you be thinking

about? Soon, in five days, the ocean will overflow.

It’s a certainty. And the whole world will come to

an end,” it said. The man got good and scared.

“What’s going to happen to us? Where can we

go to save ourselves?” he said. The llama replied,

“Let’s go to Villca Coto mountain. There we’ll be

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Violent succession struggles predictably ensued. Though barred from the role of Inca themselves, ambitious noblewomen exercised considerable behind-the- scenes power over imperial succession.

Just beneath the Inca imperial line were Cuzco-based nobles, identifiable by their huge ear spools and finely woven tunics. Rather like their Aztec counterparts, they spoke a dialect of the royal language forbidden among commoners. Among this elite class were decorated generals and hereditary lords of prominent clans.

saved. Take along five days’ food for yourself.” So

the man went out from there in a great hurry, and

himself carried both the llama buck and its load.

When they arrived at Villca Coto mountain, all sorts

of animals had already filled it up: pumas, foxes,

guanacos [wild relatives of the llama], condors, all

kinds of animals in great numbers. And as soon as

that man had arrived there, the ocean overflowed.

They stayed there huddling tightly together. The

waters covered all those mountains and it was only

Villca Coto mountain, or rather its very peak, that

was not covered by the water. Water soaked the

fox’s tail. That’s how it turned black. Five days later,

the waters descended and began to dry up. The

drying waters caused the ocean to retreat all the

way down again and exterminate all the people.

Afterward, that man began to multiply once more.

That’s the reason there are people until today.

[The scribe who recorded this tale, an Andean

converted by Spanish missionaries, then adds this

comment:] Regarding this story, we Christians

believe it refers to the time of the Flood. But they

[non-Christian Andeans] believe it was Villca Coto

mountain that saved them.

Source: Excerpt from The Huarochirí Manuscript: A Testament of Ancient and Colonial Andean Religion, trans. and ed. Frank

Salomon and George L. Urioste (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991), 51–52.

Examining the Evidence

1. W hat do the similarities and differences between the A ndean and Judeo-Christian flood stories suggest?

2. W hat do the differences between them reveal?

For Further Reading: Spalding, Karen. Huarochirí: An Andean Society under Inca and Spanish Rule. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,

1988. Urton, Gary. Inca Myths. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999.

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Often drawn from these and slightly lower noble ranks was a class of priests and astrologers who maintained temples and shrines.

Many noblewomen and girls deemed physically perfect, like the sacrificial victim described at the start of this chapter, were also selected for religious seclusion. Seclusion was not always permanent, because some of these women were groomed for marriage to the Inca. Still more noblewomen, mostly wives and widows, maintained the urban households and country estates of the Incas, dead and alive.

Next came bureaucrats, military leaders, and provincial headmen. Bureaucrats kept track of tribute obligations, communal work schedules, and land appropri- ations. Following conquest, up to two-thirds of productive land was set aside in the name of the ruling Inca and the cult of the sun. Bureaucrats negotiated with headmen as to which lands these would be, and how and when subjects would be

put to work on behalf of their new rulers. If negoti- ations failed, the military was called in for a show of force. Lower-ranking Inca military men, like bureaucrats, faced service at the hostile fringes of empire. They had little beyond the weak hold of local power to look forward to. As a result, in sharp distinction with the Aztecs, death in battle was not regarded as a glorious sacrifice among the Incas. Furthermore, many officers were them- selves provincial in origin and thus had little hope of promotion to friendlier districts closer to the imperial core.

The Inca and his retinue employed numerous artisans, mostly conquered provincials. Such specialists included architects, record keepers, civil engineers, metalworkers, weavers, potters, and many others. Unlike the Aztecs, the Incas did not tolerate free traders, instead choosing to manage the distribution of goods and services as a means of exercising state power. Partly as a result, market-oriented slavery appears not to have existed under the Incas, although some con- quered young men and women spared from death or exile worked as personal servants. Most Inca subjects were peasants belonging to kin groups whose lives revolved around agriculture and ro- tational labor obligations. For them, the rigors

Inca Mummy The Incas did not sacrifice humans as often as the Aztecs did, but headmen in newly conquered regions were sometimes required to give up young sons or daughters for live burial on high mountains. Such sacrifices were known as capacocha, or “debt payment.” The victims, including this adolescent girl found in a shallow tomb atop twenty-thousand-foot Mount Lullaillaco in the A rgentine A ndes, died of exposure after the long climb, but the Incas believed them to remain semiconscious and in communication with the spirit world.

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of everyday life far outweighed the extra demands of Inca rule. Only in the case of recently conquered groups, or those caught in the midst of a regional rebellion or succession conflict, was this not true. Even then, subsistence remained the average Andean’s most pressing concern.

Artisans produced remarkable textiles, metalwork, and pottery, but the empire’s most visible achievements were in the fields of architecture and civil engineering. The Incas’ extensive road systems, irrigation works, and monumental temples were unmatched by any ancient American society. No one else moved or carved such large stones or ruled such a vast area. Linking coast, highlands, and jungle, the Incas’ roads covered nearly ten thousand miles. Many road sections were paved with stones, and some were hewn into near-vertical mountainsides by hand. Grass weavers spanned gorges with hanging bridges strong enough to sustain trains of pack llamas. These engineering marvels enabled the Incas to communicate and move troops and sup- plies with amazing speed, yet they also served the important religious function of facilitating pilgrimages and royal processions. Massive irrigation works and stone foundations, though highly practical, were similarly charged with religious power. Thus, the Inca infrastructure not only played an import- ant practical role in imperial government, but it also expressed the Incas’ belief in the connection between their own rule and the cosmic order.

The Incas appropriated Andean metalworking tech- niques, which were much older and more developed than those of Mesoamerica. Metal forging was as much a religious as an artistic exercise in the Andes, and metals themselves were regarded as semi-divine. Gold was asso- ciated with the sun in Inca cosmology, and by extension with the Sapa Inca and his solar cult. Silver was associ- ated with the moon and with several mother goddesses and Inca queens and princesses. Copper and bronze, considered less divine than gold and silver, were put to more practical uses.

Another ancient Andean tradition inherited by the Incas was weaving. Inca cotton and alpaca-fiber textiles were of extraordinary quality, and cloth became the coin of the realm. Following Andean norms of reciprocity, co- operative regional lords were rewarded by the Incas with gifts of blankets and ponchos, which they could then redistribute among their subjects. Unlike some earlier

Inca Road Stretching nearly ten thousand miles across mountains, plains, deserts, and rain forests, the Inca Royal Road held one of the world’s most rugged and extensive empires together. Using braided fiber bridges to span chasms and establishing inns and forts along the road, the Incas handily moved troops, supplies, and information across vast distances. The Royal Road had the unintentional consequence of aiding penetration of the empire by Spanish conquistadors on horseback.

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coastal traditions, Inca design favored geometric forms over representations of humans, animals, or deities. Fiber from the vicuña, a wild relative of the llama, was reserved for the Sapa Inca. Some women became master weavers, but throughout most of the Inca Empire men wove fibers that had been spun into thread by women, a gendered task division later reinforced by the Spanish.

With such an emphasis on textiles, it may come as no surprise that the Incas maintained a record-keeping system using knotted strings. Something like an accounting device in its most basic form, the khipu enabled bureaucrats to keep track of tributes, troop movements, ritual cycles, and other important matters. Like bronze metallurgy, the khipu predates the Inca Empire, but it served the empire well. A lthough its capabilities as a means of data management are a subject of intense debate, the khipu was sufficiently effective to remain in use for several centuries under Spanish rule, long after alphabetic writing was introduced.

Throughout the Andes, women occupied a distinct sphere from that of men, but not a subordinate one. For example, sources suggest that although the majority of Andeans living under Inca rule were patrilineal, or male-centered, in their succes- sion preferences, power frequently landed in the hands of sisters and daughters of headmen. Inca descendants described a world in which both sexes participated equally in complementary agricultural tasks, and also in contests against neighbor- ing clans. Women exempted from rotational labor duties handled local exchanges of food and craft goods. Women’s fertility was respected, but never equated with warfare, as in Aztec society. Interestingly, Andean childbirth was almost regarded as a nonevent, and rarely involved midwives.

As in most early modern societies, parents treated Inca children much like miniature adults, and dressed them accordingly. Parents educated children by defining roles and duties early, using routine chores deemed appropriate to one’s sex and status as the primary means of education. Girls and boys also participated in most work projects. The expectation of all children was not to change society but to reproduce and maintain it through balanced relations with deities and neigh- bors. Contact with the Inca himself was an extremely remote possibility for most children living in the empire. A rare exception was capacocha sacrificial victims, such as the headman’s daughter described at the opening of this chapter.

Just as maize was native to highland Mesoamerica and served as the base for urban development, the potato was the indigenous staple of the central Andes. A hearty, high-yield tuber with many varieties, the potato could be roasted, stewed, or naturally freeze-dried and stored for long periods. Maize could also be stored dry or toasted, but among Andeans it was generally reserved for beer making. Along with maize, many lowland dwellers subsisted on manioc, peanuts, beans, and chili peppers.

khipu K notted cotton or alpaca-fiber strings used by the Incas and other A ndeans to record tributes, troop numbers, and possibly narratives of events.

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Andean pastoralism played a critical role in Inca expansion. Domesticated animals included the llama, alpaca, and guinea pig. Llamas, in addition to carrying loads, were sometimes eaten, and alpacas provided warm cloth fiber. Slaughter of domestic animals, including fertilizer-producing guinea pigs, usually accompanied ritual occasions such as weddings or harvest festivals. The average Andean diet was overwhelmingly vegetarian. Nevertheless, a common component of Inca trail food was charqui (hence “ jerky”), bits of dried and salted llama flesh. Llamas and alpacas were never milked. Like many other peoples, Andeans restricted consumption of and even contact with certain animal fluids and body parts.

The high Inca heartland, though fertile, was prone to droughts and frosts. The warmer coast was susceptible to periodic floods. Only by developing food storage techniques and exploiting numerous microenvironments were the Incas and their subjects able to weather such events. Added to these cyclical catastrophes were volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, mudslides, tsunamis, and plagues of locusts. Still, the overall record suggests that subsistence under the Incas, thanks to the “vertical archipelago,” was much less precarious than under the Aztecs.

The Great Apparatus Breaks Down Inca expansion derived from a blend of religious and secular impulses. As in Aztec Mexico, religious demands seem to have grown more and more urgent, possibly even destabilizing the empire by the time of the last Sapa Inca. As emperors died, their mummy cults required extravagant maintenance. The most eminent of mum- mies in effect tied up huge tracts of land. Logically, if vainly, successive emperors strove to make sure their mummy cults would be provided for in equal or better fashion. Each hoped his legacy might outshine that of his predecessor. Given the extraordinary precedent set by Pachacuti Inca, some scholars have argued that excessive mummy veneration effectively undermined the Inca Empire.

Too, as with the Aztecs, rapid growth by violent means sowed seeds of discontent. On the eve of the Spanish arrival both empires appear to have been contracting rather than expanding, with rebellion the order of the day. The Incas had never done well against lowland forest peoples, and some such enemies kept up chronic raiding activities. Highlanders such as the Cañaris of Ecuador and the Chachapoyas of northern Peru had cost the Incas dearly in their conquest, only just completed in 1525 after more than thirty years. Like the Tlaxcalans of Mexico, both of these recently conquered groups would ally with Spanish invaders in hopes of establishing their independence once and for all.

The Inca state was demanding of its subjects, and enemy frontiers abounded. Yet it seems the Incas’ worst enemies were ultimately themselves. A nonviolent means

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of royal succession had never been established. This was good for the empire in that capable rather than simply hereditary rulers could emerge, but bad in that the posi- tion of Sapa Inca was always up for grabs. In calmer times, defense against outside challengers would not have been difficult, but the Spanish had the good fortune to arrive in the midst of a civil war between two rivals to the throne, Huascar and Atawallpa (also “Atahualpa”). By 1532 Atawallpa defeated his half-brother, only to fall prey to a small number of foreign interlopers.

COUNTERPOINT: The Peoples of North America’s Eastern Woodlands 1450–1530

FOCUS how did the Eastern Woodlanders’ experience differ from life under the aztecs and incas?

By 1450 several million people inhabited North America’s eastern woodlands. Forests provided raw materials for building as well as habitat for game. Trees also yielded nuts and fruits and served as fertilizer for crops when burned. The great mound-building cultures of the Mississippi Basin had faded by this time, their inhabitants having returned to less urban, more egalitarian ways of life. Villages headed by elected chiefs were typical (see Map 15.4).

Most of what we know about native eastern North Americans at this time derives from contact-era (1492–1750) European documents, plus archaeological studies. A lthough less is known about them than about the Aztecs or Incas, it appears that Eastern Woodlands peoples faced significant changes in politics and everyday life just prior to European arrival. Climate change may have been one important factor spurring conflict and consolidation.

Eastern Woodlands peoples were like the Aztecs in at least one sense. Most were maize farmers who engaged in seasonal warfare followed by captive sacrifice. According to archaeological evidence, both maize planting and warrior sacrifice spread into the region from Mesoamerica around the time of the Toltecs (800–1100 C.E .). The century prior to European contact appears to have been marked by rapid population growth, increased warfare, and political reorganiza- tion. Multi-settlement alliances or leagues, such as the Powhatan Confederacy of tidewater Virginia, were relatively new. Some confederacies were formed for temporary defensive purposes, and others were primarily religious. Some villages housed over two thousand inhabitants, and confederacies counted up to twenty thousand or more. As in the Andes, clan divisions were common, but population densities were lower.

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Smaller gathering-hunting groups occupied more challenging landscapes, yet thanks to their varied diet, they seem to have suffered fewer vitamin and mineral deficiencies than settled maize eaters. Even maize farmers, however, were gener- ally taller than their European (or Mesoamerican) contemporaries. Throughout the eastern forests, including the Great Lakes region, metallurgy was limited to hammering native copper. Copper was regarded as a sacred substance associated with chiefly power. Beads made from polished seashells, or wampum, were similarly prized.

wampum Beads made of seashells; used in eastern North A merica as currency and to secure alliances.

L. S uperior

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Great Plains

Southwest

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California

Native Peoples of North America, c. 1500 Plateau

Northwest coast

Subarctic

Arctic

Amerindian group, c. 1500CREE

60 ºN

50ºN

40ºN

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90ºW100ºW110ºW120ºW130ºW 80ºW 70ºW

MAP 15.4 Native Peoples of North A merica, c. 1500 To the north of Mesoamerica, hundreds of native A merican groups, most of them organized as chiefdoms, flourished in a wide array of climate zones, from the coldest A rctic wilderness to the hottest subtropical deserts. Populations were highest where maize and other crops could be grown, as in the Mississippi Valley, Great Lakes, and eastern woodlands regions.

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Chiefs, usually warriors or shamans elected by popular agreement, headed most Eastern Woodlands groups. They retained power, however, only by redistributing goods such as surplus food or war booty; generosity was the hallmark of leadership. Few chiefdoms were hereditary, and chiefs could be deposed at any time. Individual Eastern Woodlanders, particularly young men, yearned for independence even as circumstances forced them to cooperate and subordinate their wills to others. If the chief ’s generosity was a centripetal force, egalitarian desires formed a centrifugal one.

Some agricultural peoples, such as the Huron of central Ontario, Canada, had male chiefs or headmen but were organized matrilineally. This meant that society was built around clans of mothers, daughters, and sisters. Matrilineal clans occupied longhouses, or wooden multifamily residential buildings. Elder women consulted with chiefs, and all women played a part in urging men to war. Agriculture was a strictly female preserve among the Huron, closely linked to human fertility. Huron men handled risky activities such as hunting, warfare, and tree felling. Their sphere of influence lay largely outside the village. Men’s exploits abroad, including adolescent vision quests, conferred status. Among all Eastern Woodlanders, public speech making was as prized among adult men as martial expertise. Only the most esteemed men participated in councils.

Children’s lives were difficult among Eastern Woodlanders (keeping in mind that this was true of early modern childhood generally). Due to a multitude of

longhouse A wooden communal dwelling typical of Eastern Woodlands peoples.

Huron Wampum Belt For many Eastern Woodlands peoples such as the Huron, seashells like the New England quahog (a variety of clam) were sacred trade goods. Shell beads, or wampum, were woven into ceremonial belts whose geometrical designs and color schemes represented clans and sometimes treaties between larger groups. The linked-hands motif in this belt suggests a treaty or covenant.

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vermin and pathogens, inadequate nutrition, smoky residences, and hazards of war and accident, relatively few children survived to adulthood. Partly for these reasons, Eastern Woodlands cultures discouraged severe discipline for children, instead allowing them much freedom.

Playtime ended early, however, as children were schooled before puberty in their respective arts and responsibilities. Girls learned to farm and cook, boys to hunt and make war. Soon after puberty young people began to “try out” mates until a suitable match was found. Though this and the seemingly casual practice of divorce among Eastern Woodlanders were considered scandalous by early modern European standards, stable monogamy prevailed.

Warfare was endemic throughout the eastern woodlands in the summer season, when subsistence itself was less of a battle. In form, these wars resembled blood feuds, or vengeance cycles. According to European witnesses, wars among the Iroquois, Mahicans, and others were spawned by some long-forgotten crime, such as the rape or murder of a clan member. As such, they were not struggles over land, but rather male contests intended to prove courage and preserve honor.

Warfare closely resembled hunting in that successful warriors were expected to ambush and capture their equivalents from the opposite camp. These unlucky individuals were then brought to the captor’s longhouse for an excruciating ordeal, nearly always followed by slaughter and ritual consumption. (Female and child captives, by contrast, were “adopted” as replacements for lost kin.) The religious significance of captive sacrifice among Eastern Woodlanders has been less clearly explained than that of the Aztecs, but it seems to have been tied to subsistence anxieties.

Eastern Woodlands religions varied, but there were commonalities. Beyond the realm of everyday life was a complex spirit world. Matrilineal societies such as the Huron traced their origins to a female spirit whose grandsons invented the essential techniques of civilized life. The sky itself was often more important than the sun or moon in Eastern Woodlands mythologies, and climatic events were associated with bird spirits, such as the thunderbird.

Like Andean peoples, many Eastern Woodlanders believed that material things such as boulders, islands, and personal charms contained life essences, or “souls.” Traders and warriors, in particular, took time to please spirits and “recharge” protective amulets with offerings and incantations. Periodic feasts were also imbued with spiritual energy. On the whole, religious life was an everyday affair, not an institutionalized one. Instead of priesthoods, liturgies, and temples, most Eastern Woodlands peoples relied on elders and shamans to maintain traditions and remind juniors of core beliefs.

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Most Eastern Woodlanders did not regard death as a positive transition. They believed that souls lived on indefinitely and migrated to a new home, usually a recognizable ethnic village located in the western distance. Even dogs’ souls migrated, as did those of wild animals. The problem with this later existence was that it was unsatisfying. Dead souls were said to haunt the living, complaining of hunger and other insatiable desires. The Huron sought to keep their dead ancestors together and send them off well through elaborate burial rituals, but it was under- stood that ultimately little could be done for them.

Conclusion By the time Europeans entered the Caribbean Sea in 1492, the Americas were home to over 60 million people. Throughout the Western Hemisphere, native American life was vibrant and complex, divided by language, customs, and sometimes geographical barriers, but also linked by religion, trade, and war. Cities, pilgrimage sites, mountain passes, and waterways served as crossroads for the exchange of goods and ideas, often between widely dispersed peoples. Another uniting factor was the underlying religious tradition of shamanism.

The many resources available in the highland tropics of Mesoamerica and the Andes Mountains promoted settled agriculture, urbanization, and eventually empire building. Drawing on the traditions of ancestors, imperial peoples such as the Aztecs and Incas built formidable capitals, road systems, and irrigation works. As the Inca capacocha and Aztec warrior sacrifices suggest, these empires were driven to expand at least as much by religious beliefs as by material desires. In part as a result of religious demands, both empires were in crisis by the first decades of the sixteenth century, when Europeans possessing steel-edged weapons, firearms, and other technological advantages first encountered them. Other native peoples, such as North America’s Eastern Woodlanders, built chiefdoms and confederacies rather than empires, and to some degree these looser structures would prove more resilient in the face of European invasion.

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Important Events

c. 900–1600 Late Woodland period of dispersed farming and hunting

c. 1200 Incas move into Cuzco region

c. 1270 Aztecs settle in Valley of Mexico

c. 1320 Aztecs ally with Colhua

c. 1325 Tenochtitlán founded at Lake Texcoco’s edge

c. 1437 Incas defeat Chankas

c. 1440–1471 Sapa Inca Pachacuti expands empire into Ecuador and Bolivia

1450–1451 Great famine in Valley of Mexico

1471–1493 Incas conquer northern Chile and Argentina

1487–1502 Aztecs dedicate Coatepec (Templo Mayor) and expand sacrificial wars

1493–1525 Incas conquer northern Peru and highland Ecuador

1502–1519 Reign of Moctezuma II, conquered by Spanish

1525–1532 Inca succession war, followed by arrival of the Spanish

c. 1570 Formation of Huron Confederacy north of Lake Ontario and of Iroquois League south of Lake Ontario

KEY TERMS autosacrifice (p. 543) chinampa (p. 541) khipu (p. 558)

longhouse (p. 562) shamanism (p. 536) tribute (p. 544)

vertical archipelago (p. 549) waka (p. 553) wampum (p. 561)

CHAPTER OVERVIEW QUESTIONS 1. In what ways was cultural diversity in the

A mericas related to environmental diversity? 2. W hy was it in Mesoamerica and the Andes that

large empires emerged in around 1450?

3. W hat key ideas or practices extended beyond the limits of the great empires?

MAKING CONNECTIONS 1. Compare the Aztec and Inca Empires with the

Ming (see Chapter 14). W hat features did they share? W hat features set them apart?

2. How did Aztec and Inca sacrificial rituals differ, and why?

3. W hat were the main causes of warfare among native A merican peoples prior to the arrival of Europeans?

For further research into the topics covered in this chapter, see the Bibliography at the end of the book. For additional primary sources from this period, see Sources for World in the Making.

M a k i n g C o n n e c t i o n s

review The major global development in this chapter: The diversity of societies and states in the Americas prior to European invasion.