An Analysis of the Creation of Chronology and Genealogy of the Inca Dynasty in a Selection of Early Peruvian Chronicles
In: Doctoral thesis, UCL (University College London).
The major research problem I have addressed in this thesis concerns the level of accuracy present in the various accounts of the history of the Inca empire, as provided by chroniclers such as Cieza de León (1553), 1 Sarmiento de Gamboa (1572), 2 Zárate (1555), 3 Betanzos (1551), 4 and Cabello de Balboa (1602-03), 5 the visitas (visits to a particular area) such as that recorded by Ortiz (1562), 6 the probanzas (legal documents), pleitos (Indians suing comenderos for rights of land), historians' records such as those of Markham 7 and Means, 8 the accounts by ethno-historians such as Rowe, 9 Rostworowski, 10 Murra, 11 Wedin, 12 Pease, 13 and Hiltunen, 14 and the data collected by Late Horizon archaeologists such as Rowe and Menzel, 15 D'Altroy and Hastorf, 16 Kendall, 17 Niles 18 and Julien. 19 Based on various colonial documents describing Inca history, it is claimed by Rowe 20 and subsequently Rostworowski 21 – and a number of others – that the Inca had settled in the Cuzco region circa 1250 AD and that their empire was forged and consolidated in less than seventy years. 22 It is apparent, however, that this claim can be challenged in three ways: by careful analysis of the chronicles, by reappraising the documentation of the ethno-historians, and by reassessing the archaeological evidence. I shall argue that the consolidation of the Inca Empire took considerably longer than has thus far been acknowledged. The core of my research seeks to explore and re-evaluate many of the influential factors which contributed to fundamental discrepancies in accepted interpretations of Inca history. Essential to the content of my thesis is the view that an important part of the problem leading to the many differing conclusions concerning Inca history lies in the way in which the documentary evidence has been assembled (methods of historiography), often with disregard for the socio-political and religious contexts in which such 'historic-laden' texts were constructed by and for Inca and /or Spanish colonial officials and clergy. In order to interpret the various historic documentary evidences and to better assess its value, it has been an essential part of my work to determine who wrote what, for whom it was written, why it was written, and who benefited in any way from its being written. Furthermore, I will assess the effects that special interest groups may have had when constructing – and therefore, to an extent, fabricating – Inca history. In part, the conflict evident in current views is most likely to spring from the inadequate handling of the context in which these documents emerged, that is to say the many different ways in which representations of the Inca past are articulated. In order to address this hermeneutical discrepancy I have conducted a comparative analysis of the relevant Inca/colonial ethno-historical documentation, in particular that of Rowe, 23 Rostworowski, 24 Pease, 25 and Pärssinen. 26 I have also made an independent assessment of the existing archaeological evidence, with special reference to the cases of Jauja via D'Altroy 27 and Chincha via Menzel. 28 References: 1 Pedro Cieza de León, El señorío de los incas (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 1976). 2 Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, Segunda parte de la historia general llamada Indica (Buenos Aires: Biblioteca Emecé,1942). 3 Agustín Zárate, Historia del descubrimiento y conquista del Perú(Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, 1853), Vol. 25. 4 Juan de Betanzos, Suma y Narración de los Incas, ed. Poaria del Carmen Martín Rubio (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1987). 5 Miguel Cabello de Balboa, Miscelánea Antártica: una historia del Perú antiguo (Lima: Universidad Mayor de San Marcos 1951). 6 Iñigo Ortiz de Zuñiga, Visita de la provincia de León de Huánuco, ed. J.V. Murra (Huánuco: Universidad Hermelio Valdizan, 1972). 7 Clements Markham, The Incas of Peru (London: Thomas and Hudson, 1912). 8 Philip Ainsworth Means, Biblioteca Andina: Part One: The Chroniclers, or, the Writers of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries Who Treated the Pre-Hispanic History and Culture of the Andean Countries, Vol 29 (Connecticut: Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1928). 9 John Howland Rowe, 'Absolute Chronology in the Andean Area', American Antiquity, 10.3 (1945), 265-84. 10 María Rostworowski de Diez Canseco, Estructuras andinas del poder: ideología religiosa y política (Lima, Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, IEP, 1983). 11 John V. Murra, 'Las investigaciones en etnohistoria andina y sus posibilidades en el futuro', in Formaciones económicas y políticas del mundo andino (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1975). 12 Ake Wedin, El concepto de lo incaico y las fuentes, Estudio crítico (Uppsala: Historica Gothoburguensia VII, 1966). 13 Franklin G.Y. Pease, Las fuentes del siglo XVI y la formación del Tawantinsuyo. In Del Tawantinsuyo a la historia del Peru, (Lima: Historia Andina 5, Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1978). 14 Juha Hiltunen, Ancient Kings of Perú, The Reliability of the Chronicle of Fernando Montesinos; Correlating the Dynasty Lists with Current Prehistoric Periodization in the Andes, Helsinki, in http://www.lib.helsinki.fi/hiltunen.html, consulted in January 1999. 15 John H. Rowe and Dorothy Menzel, Peruvian Archaeology. Stages and Periods an Archaeological Interpretation (Palo Alto, California: Peek Publications, 1967). 16 Terence D'Altroy and Christine A. Hastorf, 'The Distribution and Contentsof Inca State Storehouses in the Xauxa Region of Peru', American Antiquity, 49.2 (1984), 334-49. 17 Anne Kendall, Aspects of Inca Architecture – Description, Function, and Chronology, British Archeological Reports, International Series, no. 421 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 2 vols. 18 Susan A. Niles, The Shape of Inca History: Narrative and Architecture in an Andean Empire (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1999). 19 Catherine J. Julien, Hatunqolla. A View of Inca Rule from the Lake Titicaca Region (Berkeley: Publications in Anthropology, University of California Press, 1983), vol 15. See also Reading Inca History (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2000). 20 John H Rowe, 'Absolute Chronology in the Andean Area', American Antiquity, 10.3 (1945), 265-84. 21 María Rostworowski de Diez Canseco, Estructuras andinas del poder: ideología religiosa y política (Lima, Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, IEP, 1983). 22 María Rostworowski de Diez Canseco, Historia del Tahuantinsuyu (Lima, Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1988), pp. 96-97. 23 John H Rowe, 'Absolute Chronology in the Andean Area', American Antiquity, 10.3 (1945), 265-84. 24 María Rostworowski de Diez Canseco, Estructuras andinas del poder: ideología religiosa y política (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, IEP, 1983). 25 Franklin G.Y. Pease, Los Incas (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Cátolica del Perú, 1991). 26 Martti Pärssinen, Tawantinsuyu: The Inca State and its Political Organization (Helsinki: Societas Historica Finlandiae, 1992) 27 Terence N. D'Altroy, Provincial Power in the Inka Empire (Washington, D.C: Smithsonian, 1992). 28 Dorothy Menzel, 'The Inca Conquest of the South Coast of Peru', Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 15 (1959), 125-42.