On June 8, 1824, when Lima had fallen to Bolívar, Peru's viceroy had retreated to Cusco, and Spanish rule in the Andes had less than a year to go, Cusco's Inca nobility petitioned the viceregal court that on “… the eve and day of the glorious apostle Lord Santiago the functions of the Royal Standard be celebrated [by] … one of the Indian nobles of the eight parishes of this capital, named by the 24 electors of the [Inca] cabildo; being the said functions, the most vivid demonstration of our fidelity, gratitude, and jubilee, that are performed according to the example of our ancestors.” A reminder of the existence, nearly three centuries after the conquest of the Inca empire in the 1530s, of an indigenous Andean nobility, the request wonderfully captures the complexity of colonial Andean society. The descendants of the Inca royalty whose vast empire had been seized by the Spanish did not simply swear allegiance to Ferdinand VII as the viceroyalty collapsed, but insisted on their right to do so.With them, the highland Indian nobility generally repudiated the creole-dominated drive for independence, just as in the 1780s their fathers and grandfathers had rallied to the defense of the crown against the massive indigenous uprisings of Tupac Amaru and the Cataris. While there is a superficial irony in the transformation, over three centuries, of the descendants of the Inca royalty and other preconquest elites into “Indian nobles and faithful vassals of His Majesty,” their defense of the colonial order underscores how these Indian nobles were, simultaneously, an artifact of preconquest civilization and the continuously evolving creation of Spanish colonialism.