At the time of the Spanish invasion (c.E. 1532), the Inka ruled the largest empire the New World had ever seen. It extended from the sacred center of Qusqu, now called Qosqo, Cusco or Cuzco, northward along the spine of the Andes through what are today Peru, Ecuador, and southernmost Colombia, as well as southward into Bolivia, northern Chile, and northwestern Argentina (Map 10.1). Its domains also covered the Pacific seaboards of nearly all these lands, and parts of western Amazonia. From a European perspective many areas ruled by the Inka looked inhospitable, even marginal. Yet the Inka controlled a land rich with varied natural resources and domesticated plants and animals. Andean peoples developed the sophisticated management and redistribution mechanisms required to utilize this wealth effectively centuries before the Inka rose to power. Although the Inka based much of what they wrought on technologies and institutions developed centuries earlier, the size of the Inka enterprise made it unique in the Americas.

Inka wealth in its owners’ eyes consisted supremely of richly woven textiles, herds of llamas and alpacas, and thousands of storehouses. To the Spanish invaders, however, gold was the most immediate and measurable sign of Andean wealth. The last Inka emperor, Atawallpa (written Atahuallpa, Atawalpa, etc.; his name may mean ‘Fortunate in Creative Works’), sensed the Spaniards’ gold lust and amassed vast quantities of gold and silver in a vain attempt to buy his freedom. Eyewitnesses recorded the amount of the ransom to have been nearly ten tons of gold and seventy tons of silver. But the Spanish conquistadors, led by Francisco Pizarro, killed Atawallpa shortly after the delivery of the great treasure. Even this was only a fraction of the total amassed by the Spaniards.

The rapid rise of Tawantinsuyu (written Tahuantinsuyu, etc.), as the Inka called their empire, was as spectacular as its geographic extent. The Quechua name could be glossed ‘four parts united among themselves’ or ‘fourfold domain’. From their center in Cusco the Inka built a logistics network of administrative centers, waystations manned by relay runners, storehouses, and religious shrines, all linked by daringly constructed roads. As they expanded, by diplomacy or by force, if necessary, the Inka encouraged ethnic diversity. At the same time, they propagated their administrative language, Quechua, and superimposed their solar religion and their administration onto the older societies whose heterogeneity is emphasized shortly.