Rules of Engagement in Inca Warfare

John R. Topic, Trent University

Presented at
the SAA meeting
March 26, 1999

Theresa Lange Topic, Brescia College

ABSTRACT
The Inca are commonly portrayed as a having built an empire through
conquest. Spanish observers provide descriptions of those conquests that evoke
comparisons to the campaigns of Alexander, the Roman expansion, and the
reconquista. The descriptions of indigenous chroniclers are more inscrutable,
however, emphasizing repeated "conquests" of "rebellious" peoples, alienation of
women (formation of alliances based on affinal relationships), and the importance of
huacas (deities), divination, and even gaming in the process of incorporation. We
draw on historical sources to try to understand how the Incas thought about warfare.

People tend to think of warfare as a struggle that leads to conquest, and conquest is a
word that conjures a form of economic and political domination resulting in the formation of a
subjugated and exploited underclass. On reflection, we can recognize that this is a gross
oversimplification: there are a number of variables that determine the intensity of battle and the
outcomes of victory or defeat in social and political terms.
Certainly one of these variables is the general level of development of the societies
involved: state level societies fight wars in quite different ways than chiefdoms or tribes. But
there are also more specific variations in the ways that different cultures think about warfare. We
are using the concept of Rules of Engagement to try to draw out some of these differences.
The rules of engagement in battle, in fact, define how a culture thinks that a war should be
properly waged. While rules of engagement directly affect strategy and tactics on the field of
battle, they also reflect the broader ethical concerns of the cultures engaged in conflict, and
ultimately are based in cosmology or an understanding of the proper functioning of the universe.
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A couple of examples that we are probably all somewhat familiar with are: The rules of
chivalry, which not only dictated the feudal relationships of vassalage, but also served as a broader
code of conduct in medieval times; and the more modern Geneva convention, which specified the
treatment to be accorded non-combatants and prisoners of war.
Theresa and I have, in two recent papers, talked about Andean warfare in general terms, in
an attempt to understand the underlying concepts. We then applied that understanding to two
specific archaeological examples: Late Formative warfare on the north-central coast and Moche
warfare. We found that the ethnographic information on tinku served as a useful model for
many aspects of Andean warfare in earlier times. Specifically, we found that warfare was
embedded in concepts of divination and sacrifice, fertility and marriage, and the reproduction of
moiety structures.
Recapitulating very briefly: In tinku the battle itself is an act of divination, in which it is
predicted that the winning side will have the better harvest that year. Tinku is also a ritual of
fertility, in which the blood shed and the corpses of the victims feed the earth. Again, the victims
are selected by divine fate, so that the killing is not viewed as murder. Tinku result in the capture
of women from the opposing group and sometimes, through this capture, intermarriage between
the groups. There are many sexual metaphors related to tinku, for example that the violence of
the battle is analogous to sexual intercourse and that the victor and vanquished stand in
relationship to each other as male and female. Through metaphors like these, tinku also serve to
reproduce the moiety structure, emphasizing not only the opposition but also the necessary
complementarity of the two halves of the social whole.
These same concepts underlay Inca ideas of warfare, of course, but there are significant
differences between Inca warfare and either Late Formative warfare or Moche warfare. In the
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Late Formative, it seemed that the scale of warfare was at the community vs. community level,
whereas with Moche, warfare defined a hierarchical relationship among political units that were
large enough to, at times, encompass an entire coastal valley. There was a difference of scale, and
correspondingly one case resulted in the reproduction of social units in which the two halves were
more equal while the other resulted in a distinct ranking of the units involved.
Inca warfare builds on this asymmetrical ranking to institutionalize an inequality of scale.
Before the conquest of the Kingdom of Chimor, warfare seems to have been a matter of the Incas,
and sometimes allies, against an single ethnic group. After the conquest of the Kingdom of
Chimor, there are repeated accounts of battles, conquests, and rebellions, but the protagonists are
always THE INCAS (now writ large and incorporating subject groups into their armies) still
pitted against isolated ethnic groups such as the Chachapoyas, Caaris, Collas, Huancas,
Lambayeques, etc.
So the conquest of the Kingdom of Chimor is a crucial event, since it was possibly the
greatest military opposition to the expansion of the Inca. Unfortunately, the description of the
Inca conquest of Chimor is very confusing in the historic record, and the campaign of conquest is
unrecognizable in the archaeological record.

However, the result of the Inca conquest is

clearer in both the historic and archaeological record: the kingdom was decentralized, the capitol
and the kings court at Chan Chan was depopulated, and the Incas established direct relationships
with the local north coast lords.
Indeed the general process of Inca expansion can be usefully viewed as a process of the
Inca establishing social, and economic, and political relationships with local lords. Lets go
through these relationships one by one:
Social relations were established principally by the exchange of women: daughters of
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local nobles would become concubines of the Inca or acllakona, and some of these were
redistributed as wives to nobles and captains; there are statements that the Inca also gave women
of his own lineage as principal wives of provincial lords and there are also some examples of the
Inca giving daughters that he had sired in provincial noble women as wives. Hence the Incas
bound themselves to provincial lords by ties of marriage, while still maintaining the ranking of
Inca women vis a vis provincial women.
The political relationship was, in many cases, mutually beneficial. It is commonly noted
that the Inca confirmed local curacas in their positions. This confirmation process, however,
very often involved significant realignments of power on the local scene: sometimes several
parcialidades, to use a rather neutral Spanish term for corporate socio-political units, were
recombined to form a larger unit; the curaca of this larger unit gained power and prestige from his
new relationship with the Inca. At other times, as in the case of the Kingdom of Chimor, a
centralized polity was broken down into smaller units, and the lords of the smaller units benefited
by having a more direct relationship with the Sapa Inca.. In fact, the Inca reorganization of the
political landscape was profound, resulting in a series of moderately sized units which can be (and
have been) referred to variously as ethnic groups, provinces, or decimal units of about 20,000
tributaries. In this landscape, the leaders of each of these units were approximately equal to each
other in terms of power and prestige, but patently inferior to the Sapa Inca, who was insulated by
one or two levels of bureaucrats. Still, each of these leaders could be considered segunda
persona to the Inca, as the curaca of Chincha was described in Cajamarca.

Nor was the

economic relationship established between Inca and provincial lord always viewed as exploitative.
Beyond the now familiar idea of state generosity, Salomon has perceptively discussed the
economic reorganization that accompanied Inca expansion in the north. He points out that the
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main theme was the establishment of parallel structures between the Incas, and the Inca state
resources, on the one hand, and the caciques, and cacicazgo resources, on the other. Hence,
caciques and curacas could legitimately view themselves as having access to qualitatively similar
resources as the Incas, although quantitatively these were restricted to a local scale.
The social, political, and economic reorganization of the Andes was not a by-product of
conquest; instead it was expressly a part of the strategy of expansion. We hear, for example,
that in the annexation of a coastal valley, the Inca asks nothing for himself and instead offers to
supply products that they lack. The successful Incas are referred to repeatedly as great
organizers: Inca Yupanque took the name Pachacuti as an indication of the change in world order
that his administration represented. He started at the top, by reorganizing Cuzco, the center of
the world, and the huacas intimately tied to Cuzco. His son, Topa Inca, continued the task of
organizing the secular government.

In turn, his son, Huayna Capac, was called yacha wise,

capable, a good administrator for his work reorganizing the maize production in Cochabamba..
Even today, Incar is viewed as a figure who will renew the world by establishing a proper order.
On the other hand, Incas leaders who were not successful are characterized as feeble or
maladept .

Not surprisingly, there is a correlation between being viewed as a successful

administrator and success in war. We all know that the early Incas were Sinchis strongmen or
leaders in war whereas later Incas, who had the title Capac, were hereditary leaders.
even the Capac had to prove themselves in war.

But

Pachacuti came to power because he was a

better war leader than Inca Urcon; Pachacuti then turned over the responsibility for war to Topa
Inca, while he involved himself in restructuring the world; Topa Inca, of course, is traditionally
credited with accomplishing much of the expansion; Topa Inca tested Huayna Capacs military
abilities by staging a tinku at Sacsahuaman between his adolescent son and soldiers captured in
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the Ecuadorian campaign. Moreover, the initiation ceremony for all Inca boys involved tinku-like
tests of military capabilities.
But, while one could say of the Incas that Nothing succeeds like success, when there
was a lack of success, there was a sharp drop-off of support. Thus, from the time of the capture
of Atahualpa, there began a general decline in the prestige of the Incas, so that even their own
generals, such as Rumiahui, rebelled against the royal caste.

This disillusionment is reflected in

the words of colonial witnesses If an individual of the caliber of the preconquest Inca rulers
should reappear on earth, ... he would still be regarded by the indian peoples as divine (Gibson,
1948: The Inca Concept of Sovereignity and the Spanish Administration in Peru. P. 103).
The case can be made that the Inca kings were considered divine specifically because they
had been successful in war. This is because the outcome of any specific battle was viewed as an
oracle or prognostication of divine favor.

Before battle the Incas consulted oracles and several

types of auguries, and they also brought important huacas to the battle, but the definitive augury
was the outcome of the battle itself.

It was not uncommon for huacas to intervene directly in the

battle: hence Pachacuti had the help of Viracocha against the Chancas; Huayna Capac invoked the
image of his dead mother for help during a revolt of the Inca elite in Tomebamba; Huascars
faction regarded Pizarro as Viracocha, returning to help defeat Atahualpa; and Guaman Poma
reports that the Spanish forces during the siege of Cuzco were aided by the arrival of Santiago
Mayor on a white horse . Santacruz Pachacuti Yamqui, in fact depicts the process of Inca
expansion as a process of capitulation of the huacas of the conquered ethnic groups.

Hence the

direct intervention of the huacas in determining the outcome of battles implies that the winner
enjoys supernatural favor.
While there were rebellions against Inca rule, the Incas, as noted above, had structured
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political relationships in such a way that they always had vastly superior resources.

Hence

rebellions were invariably put down and only reinforced the impression of divine favor. At the
same time, they had also restructured the religious shrines, and the confirmation in battle of divine
favor reinforced the Inca cosmology.

As in modern tinku, repeated battles reproduced and

reaffirmed the relationships between the groups involved and between the huacas and humans.
Some other practices of Inca warfare may relate battles to fertility. Certainly one of the
goals of warfare was the capture of women: This was clearly part of the strategy in the siege of
Lima, where the Inca troops sought to capture the Spanish women and breed with them to create
a new race. When Atahualpa was captured, he gave two of his sisters to Pizarro. The Inca
armies included large numbers of women, who served as porters and in other support positions;
they also entertained the troops, at least after major battles. Guaman Poma lists the soldiers
women as the first, and highest valued, age grade for women. There is, in all of this, some
relationship between battles and, at least, human reproduction.
It is less clear that the Incas shared the idea represented in modern tinku, that the blood
shed in battle feeds the earth.

It is noted that the Incas only fought during the time of the full

moon; the period of the full moon may have been viewed as a time of increased receptiveness of
the earth, Pachamama. We have heard modern statements to the effect that it is better to plant
maize during the full moon, because it grows better, and that it is better to huaquear during the
full moon, because silver burns at that time revealing treasure in the earth. The large numbers of
people killed in battle is emphasized in historic accounts and there are also descriptions of bloody
massacres following battles, and the bodies are sometimes described as left unburied on the field.
But we dont get a direct statement that this bloodshed fed the earth. Indeed the historic
accounts often depict the massacre of survivors as a simple political act of vengeance against
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rebellious factions and ethnic groups. There are some similarities, though, to Moche depictions of
warfare, that may reflect some similar concepts in the two cultures. In both cultures, one goal
was to capture prisoners.

In Moche culture, at least some of these prisoners were killed in rather

horrible ways in ritual spaces. The Incas also killed some prisoners, sometimes making drums,
drinking cups, and other ritual paraphernalia from their body parts. Although Moche prisoners are
often depicted with ropes tied loosely around their necks, we know from the physical evidence
that bones were sometimes pulled through the flesh during the actual sacrifice; interestingly,
Huascar, while depicted by Guaman Poma with a rope tied loosely around his neck, is described
by Spanish sources as being led by ropes tied through his flesh.
The Incas certainly did not kill all prisoners, though, and at least some became yanaconas,
or retainers, of their captors. Having been captured in battle, these felt that they owed their lives
to their captor. There are reports that Atahualpas strategy at Cajamarca was to capture the
Spaniards alive; he would castrate some, and keep others as yanaconas. By the time of the
Spanish conquest, in fact, many of the high- ranking officers in the army were yanacona.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, what we have tried to demonstrate is that some of the rules of engagement
in Inca warfare things like fighting only during the full moon, the importance of capturing
prisoners (both male and female), the fabrication of war trophies from human body parts, and of
carrying huacas into battle reflect a broader cultural understanding of war as one form of divine
intervention in human affairs. The outcome of battle reflects divine favor; but on the other hand,
only a capable person who is adept at human affairs will achieve divine favor. From this
perspective, Inca warfare can be viewed as bringing subordinate curacas and peoples into a
cosmologically and politically proper relationship. This may, indeed, have been the way in which
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the political philosophy of the Incas viewed war.