Inca Apocalypse The Spanish Conquest And The

Transformation Of The Andean World R Alan Covey

download

https://ebookbell.com/product/inca-apocalypse-the-spanish-
conquest-and-the-transformation-of-the-andean-world-r-alan-
covey-22767318

Explore and download more ebooks at ebookbell.com

Here are some recommended products that we believe you will be
interested in. You can click the link to download.

Apocalypse Unleashed The Earths Last Days The Battle Rages On Mel Odom

https://ebookbell.com/product/apocalypse-unleashed-the-earths-last-
days-the-battle-rages-on-mel-odom-4739332

Agents Of The Apocalypse A Riveting Look At The Key Players Of The End
Times David Jeremiah Jeremiah

https://ebookbell.com/product/agents-of-the-apocalypse-a-riveting-
look-at-the-key-players-of-the-end-times-david-jeremiah-
jeremiah-33457990

The Fanaticism Of The Apocalypse Bruckner Pascal Rendall Steven

https://ebookbell.com/product/the-fanaticism-of-the-apocalypse-
bruckner-pascal-rendall-steven-56015482

Pathfinder 2e Extinction Curse Ap 6 Of 6 The Apocalypse Prophet 2nd

Edition Lyz Liddell

https://ebookbell.com/product/pathfinder-2e-extinction-curse-
ap-6-of-6-the-apocalypse-prophet-2nd-edition-lyz-liddell-42675440
Apocalypse Television How The Day After Helped Save The World 1st
Edition David Craig

https://ebookbell.com/product/apocalypse-television-how-the-day-after-
helped-save-the-world-1st-edition-david-craig-56336556

Ultimate Undead Collection The Zombie Apocalypse Best Sellers Boxed

Set 10 Books Joe Mckinney Bobby Adair Michaelbrent Collings David
Moody Shawn Chesser Sarah Lyons Fleming Timothy W Long Rachel Aukes
Eric A Shelman Armand Rosamilia Tw Piperbrook
https://ebookbell.com/product/ultimate-undead-collection-the-zombie-
apocalypse-best-sellers-boxed-set-10-books-joe-mckinney-bobby-adair-
michaelbrent-collings-david-moody-shawn-chesser-sarah-lyons-fleming-
timothy-w-long-rachel-aukes-eric-a-shelman-armand-rosamilia-tw-
piperbrook-48008806

Ultimate Undead Collection The Zombie Apocalypse Best Sellers Boxed

Set 10 Books Joe Mckinney Bobby Adair Michaelbrent Collings David
Moody Shawn Chesser Sarah Lyons Fleming Timothy W Long Rachel Aukes
Eric A Shelman Armand Rosamilia Tw Piperbrook
https://ebookbell.com/product/ultimate-undead-collection-the-zombie-
apocalypse-best-sellers-boxed-set-10-books-joe-mckinney-bobby-adair-
michaelbrent-collings-david-moody-shawn-chesser-sarah-lyons-fleming-
timothy-w-long-rachel-aukes-eric-a-shelman-armand-rosamilia-tw-
piperbrook-50418920

Only Dead On The Inside A Parents Guide To Surviving The Zombie

Apocalypse Breakwell James

https://ebookbell.com/product/only-dead-on-the-inside-a-parents-guide-
to-surviving-the-zombie-apocalypse-breakwell-james-9617744

Essays In Apocalypse Some Thoughts On The End Of Days Terry James

https://ebookbell.com/product/essays-in-apocalypse-some-thoughts-on-
the-end-of-days-terry-james-46408132
INCA APOCALYPSE
 INCA
APOCALYPSE
The Spanish Conquest and
the Transformation of the
Andean World

R. ALAN COVEY

1
 3
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.

© Oxford University Press 2020

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data

Names: Covey, R. Alan, 1974-​author.
Title: Inca apocalypse : the Spanish conquest and the transformation of
the Andean world /​R. Alan Covey.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019041868 (print) | LCCN 2019041869 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780190299125 (hardback) | ISBN 9780190299149 (epub) |
ISBN 9780197508169 (online)
Subjects: LCSH: Peru—​History—​Conquest, 1522–​1548. |
Incas—​History—​16th century. | Andes Region—​Civilization.
Classification: LCC F3442 .C783 2020 (print) | LCC F3442 (ebook) |
DDC 985/​.02—​dc23
LC record available at https://​lccn.loc.gov/​2019041868
LC ebook record available at https://​lccn.loc.gov/​2019041869

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Printed by LSC Communications, United States of America

For Lauren and Charlotte
 Acknowledgments

Writing this book has been an intimidating opportunity. The story of the
Spanish invasion and colonization of the Inca world is ripe for retelling, but
moving off the well-​worn path forged by previous authors meant charting
a new course through the scholarly thickets that have sprung up in history
and archaeology over the past fifty years. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to
a number of people who convinced me that I could pick my way through
to produce a narrative that asks and answers some new questions, drawing
attention to issues that linger almost five hundred years after Francisco
Pizarro’s first expedition to Peru.
Generous mentors shaped my early intellectual and scholarly develop-
ment, from my parents to my undergraduate professors. Some names that
stand out along the way include Paul Goldstein, Roberta Stewart, Roger
Ulrich, and John Watanabe. When I reached my graduate studies at the
University of Michigan, I had the good fortune to study with Joyce Marcus,
who taught me to read Latin American ethnohistory critically. Sabine
MacCormack offered a pivotal seminar on South American contact-​period
literature, and her work on Inca religion and the apocalyptic worldview
have informed this book in profound ways. Kent Flannery, Jeff Parsons, and
Bruce Mannheim guided me with their Andean expertise as I was learning
to make my way in Peru. Brian Bauer, Chip Stanish, and Mike Moseley gave
me my start in Andean archaeology, welcoming me onto their projects and
helping to steer me toward my own research. Brian in particular has been
an inspiring colleague to work with in the Cuzco region, where I enjoyed
the company of several other excellent researchers, including Kenny Sims,
Véronique Bélisle, Allison Davis, and Miriam Aráoz Silva.
Since leaving Ann Arbor, I have passed through several other anthro-
pology departments as my career has taken its winding journey. In every
department, I have had brilliant colleagues who offered inspiration and sup-
port. At the American Museum of Natural History, Craig Morris supervised
x A c k nowle dg m e nt s

my postdoctoral research, but Bob Carneiro, Elsa Redmond, and Chuck

Spencer generously read early manuscripts and gave important career ad-
vice. At Southern Methodist University, David Freidel and David Meltzer
helped me to get my bearings as an assistant professor, and Deborah Nichols
provided guidance while I was at Dartmouth College. In my current posi-
tion at the University of Texas, I am fortunate to have colleagues whose work
carries from pre-​Hispanic cultures, across the ruptures of European coloni-
zation in the Americas. It has been a pleasure to work with Maria Franklin,
Enrique Rodríguez-​Alegría, Mariah Wade, and Sam Wilson, as well as many
other UT faculty.
The actual work of researching and writing this book took place at UT,
and I am grateful for a semester-​long leave in 2017 that allowed me to pursue
the project full-​time. My editor, Stefan Vranka, has been a patient advo-
cate throughout the process or writing and revision, and I thank the staff
at Oxford University Press for the logistical support during production. As
I have tried to make meaning of a new collection of primary sources and re-
cent scholarship, several colleagues have listened thoughtfully to unprocessed
ideas about the project, including Brad Jones, David Carballo, Kylie Quave,
Steve Kosiba, and my sister Catherine Covey. The anonymous reviewers of
the book proposal and first manuscript draft helped to make a better and
more readable final product, and I thank Brian Bauer and Chris Heaney for
sacrificing huge amounts of their time to read the manuscript and help me
to articulate what the Inca apocalypse was about.
Finally, I thank my wife and daughter for their support along the way.
To Lauren for helping me to find writing time, for listening to “book talk”
that spilled over from the work day, and for reading chapters with a critical
eye and gentle tone that helped me to tell a more coherent story. And to
Charlotte, a child who asks important questions about the world, and is al-
ways up for venturing out on a quest for answers.
 Orthographic Note

Writing across time—​ and multiple disciplines and languages—​ presents

some challenges for spelling different names, places, and concepts consist-
ently, while also trying to produce an accessible narrative. I have chosen to use
the English spellings for some well-​known figures—​Christopher Columbus,
Isabella I of Castile, Charles V—​while using common Spanish renderings of
other names that appear in colonial texts. I use accepted scholarly spellings
for archaeological sites and other places. For key concepts in Quechua, Latin,
and Spanish, I use modern versions of terms in the text, but usually preserve
the original spelling when quoting from primary sources. Throughout the
book, all quotes from non-​English sources are my own translations, unless
the citation indicates a translated edition.
 Maps

Map 1. The Andean world, showing the approximate territory of the Inca Empire,
with major roads, administrative centers, and frontier outposts.
xiv M ap s

Map 2. The Mediterranean world, showing the territories of Castile and Aragón in
1492.

Map 3. The Atlantic world, showing the routes of Columbus’ four voyages
(1492-​1504).
 M ap s xv

Map 4. Spanish Peru, showing important places (squares) and early Spanish towns
with their founding dates.
Timelines
xviii T i m e l i ne s
T i m e l i ne s xix
 Introduction
Revelations of the Spanish Conquest

O n March 23, 1833, an American naval surgeon named William

Ruschenberger sat down to drink chicha—​home-​brewed maize
beer—​with a colorful Peruvian friar named Tomás.The two men had met by
chance in a ramshackle bar at the edge of Lambayeque, a dusty trading town
in the coastal desert of northern Peru. Ruschenberger had arrived there the
day before with a group of sailors from the USS Falmouth, a newly commis-
sioned American warship that was on a three-​year mission to cruise the coast
of South America. It was only a decade since a wave of determined indepen-
dence movements had toppled anemic Spanish colonial governments across
Latin America, and the Falmouth was visiting the waters of new Andean
nations—​Chile, Bolivia, Peru—​to look after the interests and well-​being of
American citizens living there.To defray the costs of the voyage, the warship
also took on freight from towns like Lambayeque, where the local customs
house oversaw the export of profitable commodities, including silver bul-
lion, sugar, and tobacco.1
Having arrived in Lambayeque on one of the hottest days of the year,
Ruschenberger fled the unforgiving sun during the day. He visited the
town’s small adobe church and sweated through an afternoon of small talk in
the home of a local matron. By the time the heat broke, in the late afternoon,
he had a thirst for Lambayeque’s famous chicha, and a desire for more stimu-
lating conversation. Ruschenberger and his companions made their way out
onto the streets and soon found themselves at a rundown establishment at
the outskirts of town, where they met Fray Tomás, who was drinking from a
large gourd and smoking cigars with some friends.

1 Ruschenberger (1835:366–​368).
2 I nca A p ocaly p se

The surgeon and the friar were a study in contrasts.The son of a sea cap-
tain, Ruschenberger was a young military man with a medical degree from
the University of Pennsylvania. He was a nonreligious ascetic whose sole
passion was natural history, and during the Falmouth’s voyage, he labored
tirelessly to collect specimens that could be used to name and organize the
world’s flora and fauna. Later in life, he would author books on botany, orni-
thology, mammalogy, herpetology, ichthyology, and conchology and a two-​
volume natural history.2 Ruschenberger’s new acquaintance, Fray Tomás,
was a “merry son of the church,” a stout fifty-​year-​old who carried a gold-​
handled walking stick and wore a flamboyant outfit made of silk and velvet,
adorned with ruffles, black ribbons, and gold buckles. When not holding
Mass, Fray Tomás enjoyed smoking, drinking, and playing cards.
Over foamy gourds of chicha, the two men fell into conversation and soon
found that they shared an interest in huacas, the ancient mud pyramids that
could be found scattered amid the green farmlands of Peru’s coastal valleys.
The friar was a passionate antiquarian who loved to talk about the Incas, and
he told the American surgeon that the huacas were storehouses for ancient
treasure, places shrouded in local legends of enchantment. Ruschenberger
had already visited huacas in other parts of the Peruvian coast, and he
knew that some of them were tombs used by the Incas and their ancestors.
Ruschenberger said that he would like to see the huacas of Lambayeque, and
Fray Tomás offered to guide him around the area (Figure I.1). In the days that
followed, the two men visited several of the adobe structures, but they found
neither treasure nor Inca bones in the mysterious ruins. The men parted
as friends, the friar returning to his duties as a small-​town clergyman, the
naval surgeon boarding his warship to continue his mission for country and
science.

Lost Legends and Modern Myths

This unlikely encounter between an antiquarian and a natural historian
occurred almost 200 years ago, but it illustrates the changing mindsets of the
people who rediscovered the Incas, and the story of the Spanish conquest of
Peru, during the nineteenth century. By the end of Spain’s nearly 300 years

2
Nolan (1895). Ruschenberger’s travels on the South American coast coincided with
those of Charles Darwin, who was sailing with the HMS Beagle at that time.
 I nt roduc tion 3

Figure I.1. Eroded huaca pyramids at Túcume, a coastal site located thirteen miles
(21 km) north of Lambayeque.

of colonial rule in the Andes, the story of the last days of the Incas was known
primarily through a small number of published accounts that had stayed in
print over the years. Antiquarians like Fray Tomás knew this literature, but
some also searched for unknown manuscripts and collected legends, hoping
to discover “new” details about the well-​known conquest story. For example,
the Jesuit monk Juan de Velasco composed a new chronicle of the ancient
kings of Ecuador in 1789, describing a local dynasty that had never been
mentioned in any published work.3
As antiquarians labored to recover lost myths and legends, natural
historians pursued the scientific documentation of the Andean world that
fell to Francisco Pizarro and his fellow Spaniards. While Velasco was busy
writing his manuscript, Baltasar Jaime Martínez Compañón was serving as
the bishop of Trujillo, a city on the north coast of Peru, where his broad
interests in natural history led him to excavate and illustrate pre-​Inca tombs

3 Velasco, Historia del reino de Quito en la América meridional [1789], Real Academia de
la Historia.
4 I nca A p ocaly p se

from the Chimú civilization.4 As Spanish religious men documented Andean

antiquities and natural history, foreign researchers, such as the Prussian ex-
plorer Alexander von Humboldt, were beginning to visit South America and
to describe the continent from the perspective of modern European science.
By the time Dr. Ruschenberger met Fray Tomás in Lambayeque in
1833, Western geopolitics and scientific values were already changing how
antiquarians and natural historians interpreted the Andean past. For Latin
American antiquarians, the disintegration of the Spanish Empire stimu-
lated the urge to discover new national histories.The Inca Empire became
the ancestral realm of modern Peruvians, a civilization that Spanish colo-
nialism had overturned and then dominated until the moment of national
independence. The eclipse of Spanish dominance coincided with a flurry
of work in European archives and libraries, and by the 1840s, a vast body of
colonial chronicles and administrative documents was appearing in print.
As we will soon see, Peruvians were not the only ones interested in telling
the story of the Spanish conquest of the Incas. The story held a fascination
for many American and English readers, including Ruschenberger, who was
already familiar with many of the published sources on Peruvian history
when he sailed the South American coast.When he visited Lima for the first
time, Ruschenberger made repeated visits to the city’s cathedral, where ac-
cording to colonial-​era sources, Francisco Pizarro’s remains had been placed
centuries earlier.The surgeon convinced the sacristan to open the cathedral’s
crypt and accompany him downward into the darkness, candle in hand, to
search for Pizarro’s bones amid the jumbled remains of the illustrious dead
of Spanish Peru.5 Although Pizarro fascinated him, Ruschenberger consid-
ered the conquistador to be a brutal, ignorant, and wicked man, a view of the
Spaniard that had long dominated the literature of Protestant Europe.
As Spain’s changing imperial fortunes were reshaping the significance of
the antiquarian narratives, scientists were introducing modern approaches
that placed humanity in a new context of space and time. Astronomy and
geology had advanced rapidly, and naturalists and explorers around the world
worked to classify plants, animals, and people. When it came to the scien-
tific organization of our own diverse species, Europeans invented a new sci-
ence of race, building on their belief in the superiority of their own nations,

4 Martínez Compañón, Trujillo del Perú [1781–​

1789], Biblioteca del Palacio Real,
Madrid, Manuscript 343.
5 Ruschenberger (1835:56ff.).
 I nt roduc tion 5

which they considered to be enlightened, modern, and civilized. In 1735, the

Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus proposed four races or subspecies of humans
in the first edition of his Systema Naturae: the pale Homo Europaeus albus
(“Whites”), the reddish Homo Americanus rubescens (“Indians”), the brown-​
skinned Homo Asiaticus fuscus (“Asians”), and the black Homo Africanus
niger (“Blacks”).6 Decades later, the German naturalist Johann Friedrich
Blumenbach expanded this taxonomy to five races, adding a race of “Malay”
peoples living in Southeast Asia and Polynesia. He proposed that the com-
parative study of skulls would help to articulate the differences between the
races, if only an adequate global sample could be collected for study.7
The emerging “skull science” of the early 1800s was far from a neutral de-
scription of human variation. European writers claimed that their race had
either been created separately from the others or had maintained its divine
qualities after the Flood, as Noah’s other descendants degenerated into lesser
forms. To establish these claims as scientific fact, they turned to the human
skull, reducing its diversity of sizes and shapes to fit racial taxonomies, a cor-
respondence that supposedly demonstrated differences in intelligence. The
collection and study of human skulls took off as Western nations built impe-
rial colonies around the globe, an expansion process validated by scientific
claims of natural differences in the characteristics and intelligence of human
races.The debate over race was particularly important in the United States at
this time, as the young country considered its policies regarding the displace-
ment of a large Native American population and the continued enslavement
of millions of African Americans.
By the time William Ruschenberger asked Fray Tomás to guide him to the
huacas near Lambayeque,Western scientists had already spent a century framing
their claims of racial self-​importance as scientific fact. Ruschenberger was an
enthusiastic contributor to that work, and he was hoping to collect “Inca”
skulls that he could ship to Dr. Samuel Morton, a friend from the Philadelphia

6 Linnaeus tied these skin colors to the four humors of medieval medicine, which he

treated as evidence of intellectual qualities.White,“phlegmatic” Europeans were “inven-

tive” and “governed by laws”; red, “sanguine” Indians were hot-​headed and “regulated
by customs”; pale Asians had an abundance of yellow bile, making them proud and mel-
ancholic and “governed by opinions”; while black bile characterized Africans, whom
Linnaeus saw as sneaky, lazy, and “governed by caprice” (Jablonski 2012:128).
7 See Bieder (1986); Fabian (2010).
6 I nca A p ocaly p se

medical community.8 Morton, a rising figure in the world of scientific race-​

making, had begun to collect skulls three years earlier, when he found himself
unable to buy or borrow crania of each race to illustrate a public lecture.9 To al-
leviate this problem, Morton invested considerable time and money in building
a world-​wide network of more than 100 donors, who quickly helped him to
assemble a collection of roughly 900 non-​European skulls. Morton’s contacts
in Latin America included American expatriates and military physicians like
Ruschenberger, collectors who moved across Spain’s former colonies, exca-
vating and purchasing more than 200 ancient Andean crania.
Ruschenberger did not find any ancient skulls in the ruined huacas of
Lambayeque, but he had considerable success elsewhere on the Peruvian
coast. In recently plundered burial grounds in the Atacama Desert, he exca-
vated and dissected cloth-​wrapped mummies that the salty sands had hidden
for centuries.10 Near Lima, he acquired twenty-​three “adult skulls of the pure
Inca race” from the ruins of the creation shrine of Pachacamac.11 In the Santa
Valley, the surgeon picked up the bleached skull of a child off the ground in
a disturbed desert cemetery and added it to his collection. In his travels along
the Pacific coast, Ruschenberger acquired dozens of ancient crania, which
he spirited aboard the USS Falmouth until he could ship them northward to
Morton in Philadelphia.12 As he wrote Morton just weeks before visiting
Lambayeque, the chief obstacle in obtaining Inca heads came not from the
Peruvians, but from the superstitions of his fellow American sailors, who
believed that having dead bodies aboard a ship would bring bad luck.13
Using his huge sample of ancient Peruvian skulls, Morton advanced
hypotheses about diversity within the “Indian” race, which he tried to eval-
uate based on cranial differences between the “demi-​civilized” Incas and

8 Ruschenberger’s 1835 memoir repeatedly describes contemporary Peruvian

“Indians” as an “ugly race,” and he believed them to be dishonest and intellectually

simple.
9 Bieder (1986:59).
10 Ruschenberger (1835:242–​243, 307).
11 Morton (1839:132).
12 Morton corresponded with Ruschenberger while he was on the voyage. Just be-

fore visiting Lambayeque, the naval surgeon wrote to Morton from Callao (Lima’s port),
sending him a box containing shells, minerals, the bodies of several native birds and a
sloth, and numerous human skulls that he had excavated in Arica several weeks earlier
(American Philosophical Society Library, Samuel George Morton Papers Mss.B.M843,
March 3, 1833).
13 Ruschenberger (American Philosophical Society Library, Samuel George Morton

Papers Mss.B.M843, March 3, 1833).

 I nt roduc tion 7

other “barbarous” natives of the Americas.14 In his influential book Crania

Americana (1839), Morton argued that the skulls of Andean peoples held
larger “moral and intellectual organs” than those of the indigenous groups
that resisted the Spanish conquest; but he also believed that the Incas were
able to be defeated and colonized because of their “inferior aggregate de-
velopment of brain.”15 To Morton, the Incas were the most civilized ex-
ample of what he considered to be a lower race, but they were conquered
by Pizarro and his conquistadores, a “handful of brigands” who represented
the worst of the Caucasian race.16 Despite his belief that Caucasians had the
greatest intellectual capacity of any human group, Morton looked down on
the Spaniards who conquered the Inca world, declaring that he took some
consolation “in knowing that all the leaders in the atrocities which were per-
petuated in the conquest [of the Incas], died violent deaths.”17

Inca Revelations
By opening ancient Andean tombs and revealing the imperishable dead who
lay within, Morton’s skull hunters helped to usher in a new era of redis-
covery in which long-​lost bodies, manuscripts, and sites promised to reshape
long-​held interpretations of the Spanish conquest of the Incas. As we will
see, much was lost in the decades following Francisco Pizarro’s invasion of
the Andes in 1532. Many Inca cities and shrines were abandoned, as were
countless scattered villages where the declining indigenous population once
lived. Over time, memories of the conquest faded and eyewitnesses to the
clash of civilizations passed away, their bodies and possessions left to deterio-
rate in the ground. Few of the men and women who saw the last days of Inca
splendor ever produced a written account of those times, or of the night-
mare that followed. Most of those early manuscripts remained unpublished
and eventually disappeared into inaccessible archives and private libraries,

14 See Bieder (1986). Morton (1839:118) mistook Andean practices of deliberate cra-

nial modification for the existence of two races: an “Inca” race, and a lower, more “de-
graded” race of commoners who served them.
15 Morton (1839:282).
16 Morton cited the published chronicles of Cieza de León (1553), Acosta (1590),

Herrera y Tordesillas (1615), and, of course, the chronicle of Garcilaso de la Vega (1609),
the most widely published work in the previous 250 years.
17 Morton (1839:124).
8 I nca A p ocaly p se

where few could consult their content. Although Spanish printers eventu-
ally published several accounts of the conquest of Peru, most of them were
written by men who had not been present, and who had a very different
sense of what Pizarro’s invasion signified.18
By the early 1600s, the last eyewitnesses of the Inca world were dead,
and the monuments of the empire were in ruins, many of them hidden in
Andean landscapes where Spanish priests still did battle with demonic forces.
Even though there was general agreement that the Inca dynasty was lost, the
Spaniards continued to contemplate the meaning of the conquest of Peru.
The conquest narrative changed during the first century of European colo-
nization; and Spanish writers incorporated it into a diverse array of emerging
written genres.They told the story as a medieval romance, laid it out in verse
as a heroic poem, and staged it as a tragedy.They placed into the broader con-
text of Inca, Spanish, and universal histories. The fall of the Incas illustrated
philosophical and moral arguments surrounding religious power, sovereignty,
and race. The story contained material that authors shaped in different ways
to illustrate opposing sides of important debates. The Incas were portrayed
as depraved and justly conquered tyrants, as well as peace-​loving sovereigns
whose good government was usurped by the bloodthirsty Spaniards. The
main characters and events were made to carry values and meanings that were
important to the changing world in which the story continued to be retold.19
Like Spanish plundering and the excavations of early natural historians,
scientific grave robbing in the early 1800s brought out long-​hidden bodies
that could be treated as physical evidence that the Spanish conquest of Peru
proved the superiority of the Caucasian race over the Indian.20 The distur-
bance of Peruvian huacas also exposed artifacts that lay buried with the dead,
which were taken as evidence of daily life and technological advancement.
While skull-​hunting natural scientists remained primarily interested in an-
cient human remains, antiquarians in the new Andean nations began to col-
lect, display, and study their ancient relics, helping to extend the Peruvian
sense of history deep into the past.21

18 This includes the published works of Francisco López de Gómara (1552), Pedro de

Cieza de León (1553), Agustín de Zárate (1555), Diego Fernández (1571), Garcilaso de la
Vega (1610), and Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas (1615).
19 See Cañizares-​Esguerra (2001) and Thurner (2011) on eighteenth-​century histories.
20 Heaney (2016a, 2016b).
21 Gänger (2014).
 I nt roduc tion 9

As Peruvian antiquarians worked to situate the Incas within their own

emerging narratives of national origins, the rediscovery of lost chroni-
cles and archival documents led to the production of new accounts of the
Spanish conquest.The most important to appear in English was History of the
Conquest of Peru, by the American writer William Prescott, published in 1847.
To set up the clash of civilizations, Prescott produced a thorough overview of
Inca society and biographical information about Pizarro and other leading
Spaniards. His story followed the Pizarro expedition well past the famous
1532 victory at Cajamarca, charting the struggles that Spanish officials faced
in governing the Andes. In addition to the published colonial-​era sources,
Prescott also unearthed arcane and rare ones, long forgotten. He sought
out long-​lost documents the way Samuel Morton had pursued forgotten
Inca skulls a decade earlier. In his quest for unknown material, Prescott
corresponded with the London bibliographer Obadiah Rich and consulted
with Charles Folsom, a well-​known librarian at the Boston Athenaeum.
He got to know the French publisher Henri Terneaux-​Compans, who had
begun to print a series of previously unpublished Andean chronicles. Unable
to travel to distant collections, Prescott established relationships with experts
in the European archives, who provided him with copies of important
manuscripts from collections that they knew intimately. Prescott described
this growing body of documentation as an embarrassment of riches, one that
made interpretation more difficult, since multiple sources often contradicted
one another.22 Prescott shared the antiquarian’s hunger to discover obscure
sources, but his critical approach and commitment to determining the most
factual reconstruction of the past were more akin to the work of modern
historians.
In the decades following the publication of Prescott’s conquest history,
naturalists and explorers continued to traverse Andean landscapes for science.
Like William Ruschenberger, they collected native plants and animals, and
they described ancient ruins and the lives of native Andeans. The published
accounts of these expeditions were popular, especially the serialized narrative
by Ephraim George Squier describing his travels in Bolivia and Peru, which
appeared in Harper’s Magazine in 1868. Squier was an amateur archaeologist
who had traveled to South America as a commercial attaché, an appointment
that Prescott had helped him to obtain. He had with him a photographer,

22 Prescott (1847:x).
10 I nca A p ocaly p se

whose images Harper’s reproduced in vivid engravings, allowing hundreds of

thousands of ordinary Americans to see the Inca world, including glimpses
of its ruined monuments and noteworthy artifacts. The success of Squier’s
expedition inspired others to follow in his footsteps across the Inca world,
seeking lost cities, spectacular landscapes, and other uncharted wonders.
As antiquarians and natural historians collected skulls and ancient pots,
published lost manuscripts, and captured photographs of Inca ruins, what they
found did little to alter their impression of Francisco Pizarro, whose body had
eluded William Ruschenberger when he visited the crypt of the Lima cathe-
dral in 1833. English-​language accounts continued to interpret the Spanish
conquest of Peru through the lens of the Black Legend, a nightmare vision of
the European invasion of the Americas that emphasized the devastating cru-
elty inflicted by men like Pizarro. For example, even though Prescott voiced
his belief in the superiority of the “white man” over other races, he depicted
Francisco Pizarro as a leader whose character left much to be desired.23 The
Pizarro in Prescott’s history was crude, rapacious, inflexible, and treacherous,
qualities that proved to be disastrous for the civilized natives of the Inca world.
Pizarro and his men encountered a tranquil and prosperous realm—​one that
was well-​governed and “prepared for the reception of a higher and a Christian
civilization”—​but through their brutality, lust, and greed, they turned that
Andean utopia into a desert.24 Although Prescott felt comfortable chronic-
ling Spanish depravity “as a warning to mankind,” he declined to issue a ver-
dict on Pizarro’s moral failings, a task that he said was God’s alone.

Discovering Pizarro
In the decades following Prescott’s restrained academic judgment, a new
wave of scientific and social thought sought to wrest the ultimate reckoning
of character and criminality from the hands of the Almighty. Following in
Samuel Morton’s footsteps, researchers from across the medical and social
sciences amplified the work of scientific race-​making. To collect data, they
jury-​rigged an odd assortment of devices—​encephalometers, mandibular
goniometers, stereographic craniometers—​which they used to measure the

23 Prescott (1847:254). Prescott repeatedly used “white man” as a contrast to the lesser

races and civilizations of the Americas.

24 Prescott (1847:197).
 I nt roduc tion 11

skulls of the living and the dead.25 Over time, their zeal for quantifying the
physical features of race extended to the whole body. In the name of sci-
ence, nineteenth-​century researchers visited indigenous populations living
on reservations and subjected European convicts to their metric scrutiny.
They measured cadavers and bodies excavated from archaeological sites,
which yielded evidence of human evolution and prehistoric technological
developments. The now discredited work of phrenologists and eugenicists
inspired new theories of social evolution that dominated scientific thought
in the last years of the nineteenth century.26
On the morning of June 24, 1891, Francisco Pizarro’s grave was opened
so that his mummified body could stand judgment in the court of the new
science. In celebration of the 350th anniversary of Pizarro’s death, a group
of leading Peruvians—​Catholic officials, politicians, intellectuals, and med-
ical men—​gathered in the crypt of Lima’s cathedral to exhume and study
what they believed to be his mortal remains. Led into the crypt by the dean
of the cathedral, the men removed an ordinary black-​painted coffin from a
wall niche.The members of the commission identified the coffin as Pizarro’s,
based on the “unquestioned tradition extending over many years and by the
constant care exercised during all this time by the Ecclesiastical Chapter.”
A priest gave a blessing, and Pizarro’s body crossed over from the domain of
religion to that of science.
Two of Peru’s most prominent doctors took custody of Pizarro and
began a full autopsy of what remained of his body after centuries of de-
terioration. When the medical examination was complete, the doctors
carried out an anthropometric study “with the aid of instruments of pre-
cision and in conformity with scientific rules.” In total, they took more
than 100 measurements of Pizarro’s trunk, limbs, and skull. Based on their
calculations, the men of science concluded that their subject was an older
man of above-​average height, who “appears to have belonged to a supe-
rior (white) race.”27 The dimensions of the skull confirmed the favorable

25 Serletis and Pait (2016); see Gould (1993).

26 For example, Morgan (1877). These global frameworks inspired Marxian thought,
but they also informed government policies in the United States: assimilationist man-
agement of Native American reservations, the segregation of the Jim Crow era, and the
race-​based exclusion of immigrants.
27 The account of the exhumation and study of the body comes from the commission’s

translated report, reproduced by the American anthropologist W. J. McGee (1894); cf.

Maples et al. (1989).
12 I nca A p ocaly p se

assessments of Pizarro’s character published in the Peruvian historical liter-

ature: his skull showed the “cerebral capacity of a superior man”; the lack of
wounds on his back proved that he went to his death “attacking boldly and
in front, like a lion”; his prognathic chin indicated “a persevering man, tena-
cious in his ideas”; and the high instep of his foot was evidence of a tireless
warrior.
Following the scientific analysis, Pizarro’s remains underwent their final
transformation, a political apotheosis. The surgeons cleaned his body with
chemicals, and they stitched up old wounds and the new incisions they had
made for the autopsy.The conservation work reversed some of the effects of
centuries of decay. They stuffed the body with carbolized cotton and rein-
forced it with wire to maintain its future integrity. They delicately painted
the skin with a fine varnish. When all was complete, the conqueror of Peru
was transferred to a glass casket set atop an ornate marble pedestal, which was
placed prominently in the Lima cathedral. Pizarro would remain on display
there for nearly a century, viewed by hundreds of thousands of worshipers
and tourists.
The conversion of a body thought to be the “immortal captain” Pizarro
into a national icon was a deliberate collaboration of religion, science,
and politics. The men of the Lima commission treated the body as phys-
ical evidence not only of Pizarro’s character, but of the history in which
he played a complicated role. His body was the epic personification of
the Spanish conquest, material proof of a “series of events which would
seem to belong rather to the domain of fable than to that of history.” The
body could teach Peruvians their past, but it also exhorted them to build
a country that would fulfill a race-​based mission of civilization in South
America: “the gradual and certain change, in which we are yet assisting,
in the religion, languages, races, institutions, and customs of the powerful
empire of the Incas.”
Shortly after the rehabilitation of Pizarro’s body, the chief surgeon
of the Peruvian army sent a copy of the Lima commission’s report to
W. J. McGee, a senior ethnologist in the Bureau of American Ethnology,
an organization tasked by the United States government with studying
the bodies, customs, languages, and artifacts of Native Americans.
McGee was devoted to craniometric research, and when he received the
Peruvian report, he saw the positive identification of Pizarro in the Lima
crypt as an unusual opportunity to compare the biographical record of
a famous man against biometric data from the prevailing methods of
 I nt roduc tion 13

Figure I.2. Illustration of “Francisco Pizarro’s” skull in W. J. McGee’s 1894 report

in American Anthropologist.The Peruvian commission that analyzed the body saw
it as an epic of the Spanish conquest, but McGee viewed the skull as that of a
common criminal.

anthropometry.28 Working with the report and illustrations from Lima,

the American anthropologist scrutinized the skull and reached starkly
different conclusions from those of the Peruvian commission. At the risk
of offending his hero-​worshipping colleagues in South America, McGee
concluded that Pizarro’s skull was “that of a typical criminal of to-​day”
(Figure I.2).
McGee noted that his finding would not surprise modern historians,
whose enlightened sensibilities led them to “follow the bloody career of the
conqueror with pain and revulsion.” Pizarro was a great leader who had de-
served to be admired in his day, but he fell short of the standards of modern
civilization. McGee argued that “in this age of human progress, minds and
manners are changing with unprecedented rapidity, and the quality of

28 Hodge (1912).
14 I nca A p ocaly p se

greatness is not what it was even in the middle of our millennium; the hero
of history in earlier centuries is of rugged mold, and the heroism of the olden
time is the crime of our softened lexicon. So Pizarro may well be judged as
the representative of a class necessary and good in its age but not adjusted
to the higher humanities of the present day.”29 This was a common sen-
timent among authors of the many biographies of Francisco Pizarro that
were in circulation in English during the late 1800s. As one 1890 book for
young readers reasoned, modern people should be thankful “that such ruth-
less, defiant, selfish characters as the adventurer are not in this day needed to
sustain our civilization and promote our progress . . . the world’s heroes to-​
day must not only be brave, ambitious, progressive, but they must be withal
gentle-​men.”30
This self-​identification of Western people as enlightened, civilized, and
modern was expressed even more boldly in another celebration that was
being prepared at the time Lima’s leading men went looking for Francisco
Pizarro’s body in 1891. As Peruvian leaders burnished the legacy of their
national hero, the world was preparing to mark the 400th anniversary of
the first voyage of Christopher Columbus, the first centennial celebration
since the disintegration of the Spanish Empire. In the United States, the most
important commemoration of the event was the 1893 World’s Columbian
Exposition in Chicago. To the organizers of the exposition, the young city
symbolized American progress, and the spectacle assembled there was in-
tended to provide material evidence of everything contributing to human
progress, prosperity, and peace.31 Science, technology, and cultural expression
from the United States and other nations marked the path of human civiliza-
tion to its enlightened stage.
To provide a contrast to these modern attainments, the exposition’s
organizers sent expeditions out to collect archaeological artifacts, human
remains, and ethnographic performances from indigenous societies
around the world, displaying them to depict the twilight of “uncivilized”
races. Native Americans were relegated to the American past, their biology
portrayed as inferior in the Anthropology Building, which displayed tools
and data from recent anthropometric research alongside descriptions of the

29
McGee (1894). The prognathic jaw that McGee used to identify criminality was
taken by the Peruvian scientists as a sign of Pizarro’s tenacious and persevering character.
30 Pratt (1890:17).
31 White and Igleheart (1893:19).
 I nt roduc tion 15

attributes of different human races.32 The Andean past was well-​represented

in Chicago: 125 mummies from the Peruvian cemetery of Ancón had trav-
eled north for the ethnology exhibit, and the government of Peru donated
$30,000 (worth about $800,000 today) to ensure that its display was well-​
stocked with antiquities, including recently excavated pottery, metal artifacts,
and fine cloth. Much of this “Inca” material came from cemeteries and huacas
in Peru’s coastal desert, where antiquarians and natural historians had been
prospecting for decades.

Machu Picchu and the Mysterious Inca

During the Columbian Exposition, nearly thirty million visitors had the op-
portunity to see Andean bodies and artifacts on display. One of those visitors
was Hiram Bingham III, the teenage son of American missionaries in Hawaii.
Bingham met his parents in Chicago in the summer of 1893, a year before
beginning his undergraduate studies at Yale.33 The exposition made an im-
pression on the young man, who went on to take degrees in Latin American
history, before setting off on a South American expedition, in 1908. The
continent’s new railroads and steamships made travel easier, and Bingham
was able to journey from Buenos Aires to Lima. In Cuzco, he visited Inca
monuments and viewed ancient artifacts held in the private collections of
local antiquarians. On his way out of the region, Bingham trekked to the re-
mote Inca site of Choquequirao, where he looted cliff tombs to collect skulls
and assorted grave goods to take back to Yale’s Peabody Museum. This taste
of jungle exploration inspired Bingham to return to search for Vilcabamba,
the legendary last refuge of the Incas.34
With support from Yale, Bingham organized a second expedition, which
had the scientific goal of exploring of the Peruvian Andes along the seventy-​
third meridian. Bingham made his way back to Cuzco and out into the
unknown lowlands to the northwest of the ancient Inca capital. Pursuing

32 Starr (1893) described the somatology laboratory at the World’s Fair, directed by the
famous anthropologist Franz Boas.
33 Bingham took a macabre detour on his way to college. He visited his grandmother’s

grave in Massachusetts and disinterred her bones, which he carried with him to Yale
(Heaney 2010:16).
34 See Bingham (1911). Heaney (2010) is a key source on Bingham’s Peruvian travels

and discoveries.
16 I nca A p ocaly p se

Figure I.3. Photograph of Machu Picchu from Hiram Bingham’s Yale expedition,
published in National Geographic Magazine in April, 1913.

his personal ambition of discovering the lost stronghold of Manco, the

last Inca to rule in Cuzco, Bingham journeyed into the humid jungles of
the Urubamba River canyon. He asked local farmers if they knew of any
ruins, and then paid them to guide him there. On July 24, 1911—​exactly
two decades after the Lima commission had entered the cathedral crypt to
claim Pizarro’s body for modern science—​the farmers led the American up
treacherous cliffside trails to the spectacular site of Machu Picchu, a place
that Bingham was soon promoting as the key to unlocking all mysteries sur-
rounding the Inca civilization (Figure I.3).
At first, Bingham limited the discovery of the site to a couple of dry
paragraphs toward the end of his expedition report.35 His tone quickly
changed to breathless hype in 1913, when his article in National Geographic
Magazine brought Machu Picchu to the world’s attention. Bingham now
suggested that the site “might prove to be the largest and most important
ruin discovered in South America since the days of the Spanish conquest.”36
The New York Times heralded the discovery of the lost city as “the greatest
archaeological discovery of the age,” repeating Bingham’s conviction that

35 Bingham (1912:239).
36 Bingham (1913).
 I nt roduc tion 17

the Inca dynasty had its origins there, and that the site was their final refuge,
so secluded that the Spaniards never discovered it.37 Like Pizarro’s lacquered
corpse in Lima, Machu Picchu came to stand for something greater than its
physical reality. The site was treated as no less than the alpha and omega of
the Inca race, and it cast a long shadow over Inca archaeology in the century
following its rediscovery.

Anthropological Incas
Bingham soon left the study of the Incas behind, parlaying his fame into
a political career. In the decades that followed, he authored several pop-
ular books about his exploits at Machu Picchu, coasting on his reputation
as an explorer. Meanwhile, his protégé, Philip Ainsworth Means, emerged
as a prominent Andean scholar. Means labored to organize and categorize
the growing record of the rediscovered Inca past. He identified the Spanish
chroniclers he thought to be reliable and built a master sequence for the ar-
chaeological record of the Incas and their ancestors.These efforts ultimately
had only fleeting success. After Means’s death in 1944, the archaeologist
Samuel Lothrop wrote in an obituary that Means’s work, once considered
authoritative, was now under critical assault by a researcher from “a younger
and perhaps better-​informed generation.”38
That young critic was the archaeologist John Howland Rowe, the first of
three great mid-​century Inca scholars who turned their backs on Means and
Bingham to develop a new paradigm that situated Inca studies firmly in the
domain of American anthropology. From his first articles in the 1940s, Rowe
treated the Incas as a short-​lived historical dynasty whose material remains
could be used to link their empire to local sequences and the vestiges of
earlier Andean civilizations.The ethnohistorian John Murra complemented
Rowe’s approach, emphasizing the continuity of timeless Andean values held
by ordinary households. Murra advocated the combined use of archaeology,
Spanish chronicles, and modern ethnography to understand Andean soci-
eties. He shared this integrated approach with the Dutch anthropologist
Tom Zuidema, whose theoretical stance and critical approach to colonial

37 New York Times, June 15, 1913.

38 Lothrop (1945:110).
18 I nca A p ocaly p se

texts were often at odds with Rowe’s treatment of documents and artifacts.
Although they did not agree entirely on the use of colonial sources or the
right balance of the historical and the conceptual in Inca studies, Rowe,
Murra, and Zuidema became the godfathers of an anthropological approach
to Inca studies in the United States.39 Zuidema was particularly vocal about
claiming the Incas for anthropology. When the American historian Burr
Brundage published a book on the Incas in 1963, Zuidema wrote a highly
critical review in which he argued that purely historical studies of the Incas
had reached an interpretive dead-​end. Historians could work productively
on the colonial-​era Andes, but archaeology and anthropology would take
the lead in the study of the native societies that had thrived before Pizarro
invaded Peru.40
In effect, academic trench warfare created a divide that relocated the story
of the Spanish conquest of Peru to a sort of intellectual “no man’s land” be-
tween history and anthropology. The 1970 publication of John Hemming’s
monumental history The Conquest of the Incas helped to fix that boundary in
place. A Canadian-​born explorer, Hemming approached the Spanish con-
quest of Peru as an outsider, but his book was received by historians as the
first worthy successor to Prescott’s monumental 1847 book. Hemming drove
his narrative quickly to the remarkable Spanish capture of the Inca prince
Atahuallpa at Cajamarca on November 16, 1532, leaving out the kind of de-
tailed description of Inca society that took up hundreds of pages in Prescott’s
history. Hemming did this so that he could give greater attention to Inca
resistance in the forty years that followed Cajamarca, dispel the idea that the
Incas fell to the Spaniards without a fight, and “remove the Incas from the
realm of prehistory and legend, and to show them as men struggling against a
terrible invasion.”41 This deliberate shift—​using the chronicles to assemble a
narrative in which the indigenous voice can be heard—​was an approach that
professional historians were only just beginning to embrace.42
Hemming’s new reading built on a painstaking review of thousands of
archival manuscripts and published documents, and he incorporated the

39 The importance of Peruvian historians like María Rostworowski, and archaeologists

like Luis Lumbreras should not be overlooked (Tantaleán 2014), and Inca specialists out-
side of North America have made important scholarly contributions.
40 Zuidema (1966:231).
41 Hemming (1970:17–​18).
42 Gibson (1972:69).
 I nt roduc tion 19

growing secondary literature from multiple fields, including the work of

Bingham, Means, Rowe, and Zuidema. Piecing this huge body of informa-
tion together, Hemming brought the accounts of indigenous writers to the
foreground, departing vividly from the long-​standing “great man” historical
tradition that emphasized Pizarro’s victories, if not his character. Hemming’s
passion for exploring “unknown” corners of the globe framed his narrative.
He introduced the Inca world as “the last advanced civilization completely
isolated from the rest of mankind,” and he ended his account of the last
days of the Inca dynasty with a chapter on the ongoing explorations of the
jungles near Cuzco, including those of Hiram Bingham. But if Bingham had
promoted Machu Picchu as a symbol of all things Inca, Hemming placed
the site into the broader context of the discovery and domestication of un-
known lands, the last days of an era of conquest and exploration that had
begun centuries earlier.

Pizarro’s Second Coming

Soon after the publication of Hemming’s influential history, the body of
Francisco Pizarro made an unexpected reappearance. In 1977, four workers
who were cleaning the crypt beneath the altar in the Lima cathedral made
an accidental discovery. Working around a large column at the center of the
crypt, they discovered a bricked-​over niche.As they removed the bricks, they
found two wooden boxes. The larger one was still adorned with the tat-
tered remains of a brown velvet cover and marked with the cross of Santiago,
the symbol of the famous Spanish knightly order. Inside lay the jumbled
bones of several people and the rusty remains of a sword. The smaller box
was painted light green on the outside and covered with red plaster on the
interior. Inside were more human bones and a small box made of lead, which
bore a hastily executed inscription in Spanish: “Here is the head of the lord
marquis don Francisco Pizarro, who discovered and won those kingdoms of
Peru and placed them under the Royal Crown of Castile.”43 Inside the lead
box was a human skull.
When the cathedral workers brought their discovery to the atten-
tion of church officials, they quickly reached out to a historian and several

43 Maples et al. (1989); and Maples and Browning (2001:215ff.) provide the details on
the rediscovery of Pizarro described here.
20 I nca A p ocaly p se

medical doctors, who inspected the bones and concluded that the skeleton
of Francisco Pizarro was among them.This meant that the body displayed as
Pizarro for more than eighty years was someone else, a conclusion that many
Peruvian scholars found difficult to accept. To resolve the lingering contro-
versy, a biological anthropologist and a forensic specialist from the United
States were invited to conduct their own analysis. In 1984, they studied
the newly discovered remains, as well as the body still publicly displayed as
Pizarro in the cathedral.
The methods the researchers used were very different from the “modern”
anthropometric work carried out in 1891. They did not take large numbers
of skull measurements to determine the race and character of the deceased.
Instead, they scrutinized the bones for marks of trauma, and identified more
than two dozen stab and cut marks, evidence that the individual had died
from “extreme homicidal violence.” There were no such marks on the
mummified body that had long been treated as the physical symbol of Peru’s
conquest, and the investigators concluded that it probably belonged to an
unknown Spanish functionary or priest. When the American researchers
returned to Peru in 1985 as special guests for the celebration of Lima’s 450th
anniversary, they were struck by the consequences of their work.The bones
discovered in 1977 were now on display in the elaborate sarcophagus in the
cathedral, while the mummy that had rested there for generations was now
in the crypt, laid out on a crude table fashioned from a sheet of plywood and
two sawhorses. The researchers noted that this change of fortune raised an
important thought for all to contemplate: “fame is fleeting, not only for the
living, but also for the dead.”44
This observation is a fitting way to address the changes occurring in
the last decades of the twentieth century, as the world prepared to mark
500 years since the first voyage of Columbus. The years leading up to that
new centennial contrasted powerfully with the celebrations of a century ear-
lier. Whereas the run-​up to 1892 had celebrated the ideology of progress
and a racist pseudoscience that justified the spread of Western empires and
industrial capitalism, the last decades of the twentieth century were no less
remarkable for the decolonization of colonial empires, global recognition
of the rights of indigenous peoples, and advances in a broad array of civil
rights movements. The flawed men who a century earlier had been treated

44 Maples et al. (1989:1035).

 I nt roduc tion 21

as a necessary evil for the progress of Western civilization and the white race
were inevitably cast in a darker light as the interpretive focus shifted to the
devastation inflicted on native populations.
Hemming’s 1970 book was prescient of this interpretive turn, and in
1992, when Hemming published an article on Francisco Pizarro in National
Geographic Magazine, he focused far more attention on the Inca realm than
on the invading Spaniards. Hemming spoke not of progress, but of Peru’s
contemporary struggles in the world that global capitalism was shaping after
the end of the Cold War: “There will be little celebration of the fifth cen-
tenary of Columbus or of the conquistadores who followed him. Peruvians
are too busy surviving and trying to build a great nation.”45 Visiting the Lima
cathedral, Hemming observed that few visitors stopped to look at the scien-
tifically validated bones of Pizarro, a sign of his fading relevance. Even among
Peruvian historians who grudgingly acknowledged Pizarro’s determination
and military instincts, there was a sense that many were ready to forget him.

The Modern Myth of Cajamarca

As Francisco Pizarro’s historical legacy faded among professional historians
in Peru and elsewhere, an American ornithologist restored his larger-​than-​
life status, elevating a legendary moment from the conquest of Peru to a
turning point in human history. In 1997, Jared Diamond published Guns,
Germs, and Steel, a book that charted the human past from the Pleistocene
world of hunter-​gatherers to the present. Diamond wrote the book to ex-
plain how the inequalities experienced by humans today came to be. Why
were Western societies so affluent and powerful, while people living in other
parts of the world had so much less? After years of thought, Diamond con-
cluded that these differences grew out of social and ecological patterns that
had accumulated in the long arc of human development. To demonstrate
this, Diamond divided world history into two developmental periods. The
first began with the onset of the warmer, wetter conditions of the Holocene
epoch, about 11,700 years ago. From this common “starting line,” human
populations in different regions set off on different developmental trajec-
tories. Over thousands of years, western Europeans gradually borrowed

45 Hemming (1992:121).
22 I nca A p ocaly p se

new technologies and social practices—​ horses, writing, centralized

governments, steel weapons, guns, and resistance to Old World diseases—​
from more-​innovative neighbors, eventually building a critical advantage in
their encounters with non-​Western peoples around the globe. Diamond’s
second historical era traced a sequence of contacts in which these European
advantages made the modern destruction of indigenous societies almost
certain.
To illustrate the moment that the West’s advantages became insurmount-
able, Diamond turned to Francisco Pizarro’s ambush of the Inca warlord
Atahuallpa at the highland Andean town of Cajamarca on November 16,
1532, an event that he describes as “the most dramatic and decisive mo-
ment” in the face-​off between the Old World and the New.46 A century
after Peruvian elites promoted Pizarro’s body as the personification of the
Spanish conquest, Diamond portrayed the encounter at Cajamarca as the
instant when Europeans conclusively defeated the most powerful and civi-
lized indigenous society, making the spread of Western dominance seem in-
evitable. Diamond devoted an entire chapter of the book to an account and
analysis of the battle. For the book’s cover art, he selected a dramatic painting
of Atahuallpa’s capture that the English artist John Everett Millais produced
in 1846, the year before William Prescott published his classic Inca history
(Figure I.4).
In many ways, the portrayal of Cajamarca in Guns, Germs, and Steel shares
many of the values that nineteenth-​century writers wove into their own
versions of the story, albeit without the emphasis on an innate racial su-
periority.47 Like many authors before him, Diamond asked how Pizarro’s
contingent of fewer than 200 Spaniards prevailed against an Inca army that
numbered in the tens of thousands. The mismatch itself served to demon-
strate European social and technological superiority, as Pizarro’s small force
defeated and captured Atahuallpa, whom Diamond described as “absolute
ruler of the largest, richest, most populous, and administratively and tech-
nologically most advanced Native American state.”48 Diamond argued that
Pizarro’s victory was due to civilized European weaponry: “steel swords
and other weapons, steel armor, guns, and horses.” Inca foot soldiers had

46 Diamond (1997:354).
47 Morton (1839) also remarked on the superiority of Spanish weapons, although he
considered Cajamarca to be a far less decisive Spanish victory.
48 Diamond (1997:354).
 I nt roduc tion 23

Figure I.4. John Everett Millais, Pizarro Seizing the Inca of Peru (1846).The sixteen-​
year-​old painter was inspired by an 1814 English account of the Battle of Cajamarca
in a universal history by John Luffman. Copyright Victoria and Albert Museum,
London.

little chance for victory using their clubs and slingshots, barbarian tech-
nologies made of inferior materials: stone, wood, and bronze.49 Presented
thus, Cajamarca became a powerful metaphor, conveying values and ideas
that drove Diamond’s argument about the march of Western progress.
Atahuallpa’s capture represented European conquests across the Americas,

49 Diamond (1997:74). Diamond also observes that Old World domesticated plants and

epidemic diseases served as powerful auxiliaries in European conquests at Cajamarca and

elsewhere. Consciously or not, he reproduces the technological hierarchy articulated by
the nineteenth-​century social evolutionist Lewis Henry Morgan (1877), who used the
Stone and Bronze Age designations of early European archaeologists to classify non-​
literate societies as “savages” and “barbarians.” Like Diamond, Morgan pursued the goal
of tracing the universal human experience deep into prehistoric times using European
measures of technological progress. Morgan restricted the term “civilization” to socie-
ties with writing, a distinction that Diamond identifies as a clear Spanish advantage over
the Incas.
24 I nca A p ocaly p se

reducing centuries of hemisphere-​wide conflicts to a single world-​changing

event.50 This image has proven to be powerfully accessible for millions of
readers, as well as academic writers, who have cited Guns, Germs, and Steel in
more than 10,000 articles and books.
But there are some loose threads in Diamond’s representation of
Cajamarca, and tugging at them reveals some important flaws in this version
of the event and in the modern-​world paradigm that drives Guns, Germs, and
Steel. Diamond describes the conquest of the Inca Empire as made quick and
easy by Atahuallpa’s capture, since he was an “absolute monarch . . . revered by
the Incas as a sun-​god and exercised absolute authority over his subjects.”51
As we will see, the Spaniards of Pizarro’s company knew that Atahuallpa was
not these things, and Diamond himself mentions that Pizarro took advantage
of the disorder and factionalism of a still-​simmering Inca civil war to build
alliances and avoid direct engagements with a unified Andean military force.
Shortly after describing Cajamarca as a decisive Spanish victory, Diamond
refers to a “determined” Inca military resistance that coalesced in the years
that followed.52 He says that horses and steel gave the Spaniards an absolute
military advantage over Native Americans, but he acknowledges that indig-
enous people quickly acquired and learned to use these to kill Europeans.
By 1536, the Incas had solved the challenge of fighting the Spanish cavalry,
and were killing hundreds of horsemen in ambushes along narrow Andean
passes.53
Diamond argues that Pizarro held another distinct advantage over
Atahuallpa. Although the Spaniard could not read or write, he belonged to a
“literate tradition” that could get written information to Europe in a “mere”
nine months.54 In contrast, Diamond claims that Atahuallpa walked into the
Spanish trap at Cajamarca because he remained in the dark about Spanish
intentions and military capabilities, even though Spanish eyewitnesses men-
tion the presence of Inca spies and emissaries in their camp, and describe
how Atahuallpa continued to issue orders through his chain of command
even during his captivity.55

50 Diamond (1997:354).
51 Diamond (1997:68).
52 Diamond (1997:75).
53 Diamond (1997:76).
54 Diamond (1997:78–​79).
55 Diamond (1997:79).
 I nt roduc tion 25

Despite these inaccuracies, Diamond’s portrayal of Cajamarca as a wa-

tershed moment in world history has promoted the misconception that a
single confrontation brought the entire Andean world completely under
Spanish rule.56 The metaphorical representation of Cajamarca reduced a
decades-​long struggle for control of the Andes to a play in which Francisco
Pizarro embodied Spain and Atahuallpa represented the Inca Empire—​an
encounter in which the fate of the world hung in the balance. Since the
publication of Guns, Germs, and Steel, this outsize significance has captured
the imagination of popular writers, and the Battle of Cajamarca has been
cited for its “amazing” outcome. One recent book marvels that “less than
200 Conquistadors overthrew some tens of thousands of armed Incas in
something like one hour, seizing the Inca emperor and his entire empire.”57
Another has enshrined the Spanish ambush among history’s most significant
battles, describing it as a pivotal engagement, whereby Pizarro “conquered
more than half of South America.”58

Miraculous Cajamarca
Diamond’s portrayal of the Battle of Cajamarca shares important assumptions
that nineteenth-​century Western authors made about the spreading domi-
nance of their societies. As we have already seen, these were written into the
story of the conquest of the Incas at a time when the United States and Great
Britain (and other empires) were incorporating new territories around the
world, and using scientific racism to proclaim biological superiority over
the people they were displacing or colonizing. But the conquest stories of
Morton and Prescott did not consider Cajamarca a decisive moment, so it is
worth considering whether Guns, Germs, and Steel captures how the Spanish
writers of the colonial era described the battle.
As it turns out, Spanish Golden Age literature did not treat the Battle
of Cajamarca as the historical triumph of Western modernity. Many writers

56 Restall (2003) has debunked the myths of the Spanish conquest of the Americas,
many of which are contained in Diamond’s treatment of Cajamarca.
57 Raudzens (2003:32).
58 Lanning (2005:21) presents the Battle of Cajamarca at the beginning of his 100 great

battles, just after the battles of Yorktown (1781), Hastings (1066), Stalingrad (1942–​1943),
Leipzig (1813), and Antietam (1862).
26 I nca A p ocaly p se

acknowledged it to be an important victory in the conquest of Peru, but not

all knew enough about the battle to date it correctly to 1532.59 One reason
Cajamarca did not serve as the symbol of inevitable European conquest was
because indigenous populations in many parts of the Americas continued to
resist Spanish conquest and colonization successfully for more than a century
after the capture of Atahuallpa. In the places where the Spaniards were unable
to capitalize on the infrastructure, governing hierarchies, and internal faction-
alism of the native empires, they enjoyed far less success in expanding their own
territory.
By the late 1500s, attempts to conquer frontier areas in the Andes had ground
down to stalemates, and few believed that guns, germs, and steel made for easy
victories. Like many Spanish writers, the Jesuit natural historian José de Acosta
believed that it was God’s judgment—​not Spanish superiority—​that opened
the Inca world and allowed the Spaniards to conquer it. Acosta, who wrote in
1590, felt that Spain’s zeal had faded since then, and its successes were few and far
between. Throughout the Americas, from Florida to Brazil to the Amazonian
lowlands, there had been no great victories for fifty years.Acosta noted that the
native peoples of Chile had lost their fear of guns and horses,“knowing that the
Spaniard, too, falls to the slingstone and the arrow.” Although the Europeans
were hard to kill in battle, they remained vastly outnumbered in many places,
and native groups organized themselves in new ways and developed effective
strategies to resist them. The Jesuit Acosta warned that “those who underesti-
mate the Indians . . . fool themselves greatly.”60 Some territories claimed by
Spain in the late 1400s remained unconquered until genocidal wars decimated
their independent populations in the 1800s.
Spaniards were already witnessing the slow fade of their world empire
in the first half of the 1600s, a time when the advances of the Scientific
Revolution were beginning to inform Enlightenment thinkers across
Europe.61 But Spanish writers who played up the significance of the victory
at Cajamarca continued to express it in terms of miracles: Pizarro’s unlikely
victory demonstrated God’s support for Spain’s mission to propagate the

59 In 1598, Jerónimo de Oré stated that the encounter at Cajamarca took place in 1533,
and that Pizarro captured “the Inca, King of Peru, Atahuallpa,” pacified and conquered
his realms, and passed them over to the Spanish crown, “although those same Spaniards
overturned and upset all the land with banditry and civil war” (f. 27v).
60 Acosta (1590:531–​532, bk. 7, chap. 28).
61 Barrera-​ Osorio (2006) and Cañizares-​Esguerra (2006) describe Spanish empire-​
building and the Scientific Revolution.
 I nt roduc tion 27

Catholic faith. For example, Prudencio de Sandoval’s biography of Charles V,

from 1615, states that Pizarro’s victory at Cajamarca was “one of the greatest
and most important things that any Captain ever did in the world,” not just
because it made the conquistadores rich, but because it cast Satan out of a vast
territory and led to the conversion of millions.62
If we are tempted to dismiss this kind of exaggeration as an isolated relic
of the medieval Catholic mindset, it is worth noting that scientists and
philosophers writing in Protestant countries displayed equal ease in mixing
religion with more “enlightened” modes of thought. The English philoso-
pher Francis Bacon helped to promote the scientific method, but he also
believed in miracles and divine revelation, and he structured his great sci-
entific treatise Instauratio Magna (1620) in six parts, modeling it after the six
days of biblical creation. Hugo Grotius, a Dutch legal theorist who advanced
new concepts of international law, also produced On the Truth of the Christian
Religion, in 1627, in which he described the preservation of state governments
as “proof of the Divine Providence over human affairs.”63 Later in the 1600s,
Isaac Newton made groundbreaking contributions in physics and mathe-
matics, but he also spent years tinkering with biblical prophecies, calculating
several possible dates for Christ’s return, which he thought would occur at
some point between the late 1800s and the twenty-​fourth century.64 Even
Linnaeus, the botanist who helped to develop binomial taxonomy—​and
the foundations of race-​based skull science—​also wrote “Nemesis Divina”
(1740), an essay in which he sought spiritual “signatures” in the world, in-
cluding “portents, dreams, hauntings, ghosts, spell-​binding, and clairvoy-
ance.”65 The scientists and philosophers who promoted a world governed by
natural laws still acknowledged a place for metaphysical forces that did not
play by their modern rules.

The Inca Apocalypse

This book, a retelling of the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire, takes its
inspiration from the observation that Western versions of the story have

62 Sandoval (1634:689). Sandoval excerpted this claim from a 1578 Catholic world his-
tory (Illescas 1578:337). Cf. Herrera y Tordesillas (1615, década V, bk. 2, chap. 11).
63 Grotius (bk. 1, pt. 12).
64 Snobelen (2003).
65 Schuchard (2012:xv).
28 I nca A p ocaly p se

changed over time, and that they have used the narrative to express different
values and attitudes. Spanish writers cited the defeat of the Incas as evidence
that God had selected their nation to bring Catholicism to the Americas. By
describing miraculous military victories, they could show other Christians
that Spain was divinely ordained to colonize the New World.To that end, the
Incas also served as a philosophical test for Spanish imperial rule over Native
Americans. Since most Europeans acknowledged the Incas to be the most
civilized “Indians,” Spain could claim dominion over all Native Americans if
it could justify overturning the Inca imperial order and its natural lords.
Following the fall of the Spanish Empire, English-​language accounts of
the conquest of Peru abandoned the supernatural rhetoric of the original
sources, and used instead the language of science to describe the Spanish
victories as evidence of Caucasian racial superiority. As they replaced the
religious contrast that Spanish writers made—​ between Christians and
pagans—​American scientists like Ruschenberger, Morton, and McGee also
distanced themselves from the conquistadores of that earlier time. To them,
the Incas were civilized, but their race was tragically limited, which had
allowed it to be thrown down by a small band of uncivilized men from a su-
perior race. By denouncing Pizarro and his men as brigands and criminals,
Western men of science sought to distinguish themselves as rational and
modern. Researchers today reject the scientific racism that grew throughout
the nineteenth century, but Diamond’s emphasis on European social and
technological advantages in Guns, Germs, and Steel reflects an uncomfortable
legacy from those scientific claims of modernity.
Mindful of how beliefs in divine mandates or racial superiority shaped
the narratives of the Spanish conquest and colonization of Peru, this book
approaches the same story as the collision of two worlds that had their own
beliefs and social logics.The entangling of those worlds was a process whose
results were not predictable in 1532, and whose progression over the decades
was shaped by the participants, often thwarting the strategies and claims of
both religious and political elites. Rather than treat the invading Spaniards
as the vanguard of modern civilization—​and the Incas as the last bastion of
barbarian antiquity—​this book will explore a much more interesting story
about the changing world of the sixteenth century, one that shows both
societies to be immersed in their own distinct beliefs about the ultimate fate
of humanity.
I turn to the theme of apocalypse as a central concept that bridges us
from “ancient” modes of thought to our current anxieties about where
 I nt roduc tion 29

humanity is headed. I use the term broadly, sometimes invoking it to de-

scribe cataclysmic events, and at other times staying closer to its original
Greek meaning: an uncovering or revelation, or even an enlightenment.This
approach makes it possible to represent ways of thinking in which religion
and science remain entwined, where both the fulfillment of prophecy and
the discovery of once-​lost texts, bodies, and sites could constitute revelations
that shaped the understanding of the world.To develop this apocalyptic story,
I include the supernatural elements that flow through European and Andean
narratives, treating both sides as belonging to a different world than the one
we occupy today, but one that is familiar to us in some surprising and unset-
tling ways. An apocalyptic history of the Spanish conquest of Peru helps to
reveal how different people interpreted the world-​changing events in which
they participated, and how those responses in turn reshaped attitudes about
the world it brought into being.
An apocalyptic account of the fall of the Inca Empire helps to dispel some
of the myths of modern civilization that persist today. The rationalism of
Enlightenment thought did not expel religious belief from Western minds.
It merely reinforced the idea that scientific reasoning could be found seated
within the skulls of certain men, and that others were not destined to be the
masters of the modern world. Even if religion was banished to metaphor-
ical and metaphysical places—​hearts and souls—​it continues to guide social
actions in significant ways, both positive and negative. Belief remains partic-
ularly powerful in the United States, where there have been repeated his-
torical waves of spiritual fervor since colonial times, “awakenings” in which
charismatic religious leaders galvanized new support among people who felt
alienated or left behind by the changes of their day.66 Even today, almost all
Americans believe in some form of higher power, and an overwhelming ma-
jority thinks that angels exist and that miracles still occur. Three-​quarters of
Americans talk to God, and almost one-​third say that God communicates
with them. Most of the US population accepts demonic possession as real,
and almost half believe that Jesus Christ will return to the earth by the year
2050.67

66 See Morris (2019).

67 In a 2018 Pew survey, 90% of adults expressed belief in God or some other higher
power or spiritual force (Pew Research Center, April 25, 2018, “When Americans Say
They Believe in God,What Do They Mean?”). Around 29% of those surveyed said God
talked to them. In 2008, the Pew Forum on Religion found that nearly 80% of Americans
believe in miracles (Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, February 2008 “U.S.
30 I nca A p ocaly p se

To understand the apocalyptic mindsets of the Andean and Iberian socie-

ties, we will cover a great deal of ground in the next few chapters, painting a
large-​scale portrait of the two worlds where the Inca and Spanish dynasties
came to build world empires amid widespread concerns about the world’s
end. As we will see in ­chapters 1 and 2, religion shaped the political expres-
sion of mythical and historical pasts, and rulers in the Andes and the Iberian
Peninsula claimed that their growing empires were engaged in critical acts of
civilization affecting the great arc of universal creation.
The collision of these two worlds came as the convergence of Inca
and Spanish imperial growth, through generations-​ long processes that
transformed Spanish and Inca identities and presented challenges to the sov-
ereign claims of rulers who pursued world-​changing ideologies. In the more
detailed historical narratives in ­chapters 3 and 4, we will see how imperial
conquests were catastrophic to millions of previously independent people,
many of whom saw their communities devastated, their freedoms curtailed,
and their core beliefs and values assailed. A ruler’s progress toward building
a utopian empire was also a world-​ending experience for countless ordi-
nary people who saw their bodies and possessions swept away in civilization’s
rising tide. Resistance to imperial encroachment provoked responses that the
universe-​binding superpowers struggled to justify as humane. The bloody
encounter in 1532 between Pizarro and Atahuallpa at Cajamarca, described
in ­chapter 5, was part of a broader pattern of devastation—​epidemic disease,
widespread famine, crippling warfare, and mass enslavement—​that began
years earlier and continued in the decades that followed.
In their own distinct ways, the Incas and Spaniards who were present at
Cajamarca believed in the eventual destruction of their worlds. They also
expected the dawning of a new era to follow the catastrophes and suffering,
and we will see how the disruptive changes that ripped the Inca world apart
also created new spaces for those who survived to make sense of the emer-
ging modern world that they were a part of. Chapters 6 through 9 trace
the decades of turmoil that followed Cajamarca and eventually gave birth
to colonial Peru. These were drawn-​out conquests that took many forms.
The Spaniards introduced a prolonged chaos to the Andes, and the royal

Religious Landscape Survey”). In that poll, 68% of respondents answered “completely

agree” or “mostly agree” to the statement “Angels and demons are active in the world.”
The 2018 Pew survey found that 41% of Americans believe that Christ will “definitely”
(23%) or “probably” (18%) return to earth by 2050.
 I nt roduc tion 31

subjugation of faithless subjects and bad Christians required new forms of

sovereignty and belief, which shaped how Europeans and Native Americans
understood their roles in world history. We will see that while most Incas
embraced Christianity and a new identity as noble Spanish vassals, the Inca
legacy remained central to ongoing debates over Spain’s right to remake the
Andes into a colonized domain of converted Indian subjects. Chapter 10
details the philosophical and administrative transformations that truly
imposed Spanish colonial government in the Inca world during the 1570s,
an effort celebrated in 1572, in the public beheading of Tupa Amaru, a man
forced to play the role of the last Inca king. Even after that execution, Spanish
officials struggled to rule Inca territory and extend its frontiers. Chapters 11
and 12 describe attempts to conquer Andean landscapes and their sacred
landmarks as indigenous people gradually converted the Inca legacy from
an imperial title to a symbol of resistance to Spanish rule and Christian
conversion.
Describing the transformation of the Inca world as an extended series of
different kinds of conquests—​military, political, religious, ecological—​makes
it possible to consider how generations of Europeans and Andeans made
new meanings of the Spanish conquest and of the modern era that it was
bringing into being. Framed this way, our story cuts across several periods
that are celebrated in the West as the advent of modernity: the Renaissance,
the Scientific Revolution, and the earliest stirrings of the Enlightenment.
Although there were significant developments in philosophy, technology,
and government, this reading of the conquest of Peru highlights the con-
tinued significance of religion in shaping the hopes and fears of modern
Europeans and their growing new world of colonized subjects, some of
which have survived up to the present.
 1
Assembling Inca History

[Inca Yupanque] let them know that . . . after the days of his grandson Huayna
Capac, there would be pachacuti, which means “change of the world.”Those lords
asked him if the change of the world would be from floods, fire, or pestilence. He told
them it would not be for any of those reasons, but, rather, because white, bearded, and
very tall men would come.They would go to war with these men and in the end these
men would subjugate them.There would be no more Inca lords like them.
—​Juan de Betanzos, c. 15501

W e have followed modern scientists into Lima’s cathedral crypt—​to re-

cover Francisco Pizarro’s body and mummify it as a physical representa-
tion of the Peruvian past. It now seems fitting to enter the Inca world at another
moment of ancestral history-​making.We begin in Cuzco, the majestic Inca cap-
ital city, which lies in a warm valley in the highlands of southern Peru. It is around
ad 1500, a Christian date whose fuzziness reflects a key difference between the
flow of Spanish time and the flow of Inca time, a theme that runs through the
chapters of this book.When it came to governing their mighty empire, the Incas
developed the technology and an administrative hierarchy to collect and main-
tain detailed census and tribute accounts, but they did not consider it necessary to
extend this precise record keeping to their dynastic history or to build a common
chronology that clearly linked their royal ancestors with Andean myths of uni-
versal creation. It was enough that the line of Inca emperors could claim a dozen
generations of history, a legacy that reached a few centuries backward into a past
that became increasingly shrouded in legend.This might seem like a short time to
us, but it was more history than any other Andean dynasty possessed at that time,

1 Betanzos (1996 [1550s, 1:29]).

 A sse m bl i ng I nca H i story 33

and the royal Inca narrative was still growing as new generations of rulers passed
on their titles and joined their ancestors in death.2
Around ad 1500, the Inca emperor Huayna Capac was in the early years
of his reign, and he entered Cuzco at the head of a massive army, prepared to
stage a funeral that would add to his ancestral history.The young Inca was re-
turning victorious from his first military campaign—​a years-​long invasion of
the rugged cloud forests inhabited by the fierce Chachapoyas—​but he and his
soldiers marched into the capital weeping, with their faces painted black and
their garments arranged in an aspect of mourning. For three years, Huayna
Capac had grieved the death of his mother, Mama Ocllo, an empress who for
a decade was the most powerful person in the Americas (Figure 1.1).3 When
he had first learned of his mother’s passing, the Inca was so devastated that he
shut himself in his palace for a month before finally emerging to preside over
six months of public mourning. After that, Huayna Capac went off to battle,
not to prove himself as a military commander worthy of his legendary father
and grandfather, but for the purpose of acquiring the things he would need
to stage an elaborate public funeral for his mother: coca leaf, ceremonial
foods, plunder, and captives who would become servants of Mama Ocllo’s
mummy. As Huayna Capac’s army carried these things into Cuzco, the city
was already preparing for an event that would live on in Inca memories and
elevate Mama Ocllo’s body to a material symbol of imperial history.4
The following day, thousands of people flocked to the Haucaypata,
Cuzco’s central plaza, flowing into the vast open space from the four im-
perial roads that led into the city from the provinces. The crowd included
men and women from the city’s Inca nobility, accompanied by their servants
and retainers; a host of religious officials; and perhaps even some ordinary
farmers and herders from nearby villages. Huayna Capac himself oversaw the
proceedings from a platform near the center of the plaza, where he appeared
alongside sacred objects representing the most powerful forces in the Inca
pantheon: the Sun, the Moon, and the creator Viracocha. When everyone
was in place, Huayna Capac called for silence, and then ordered the cere-
mony to begin.

2 By comparison, the dynastic history off the coastal Chimú Empire probably reaches

no deeper than the 1300s (Rowe 1948:39–​40), although the king list has approximately
the same number of rulers.
3 Throughout the book, I refer to Inca monarchs as the Inca and the Coya, titles that

roughly correspond to emperor and empress.

4 Betanzos (1996 [1550s, 1:44]) describes this ceremony.
34 I nca A p ocaly p se

Figure 1.1. Mama Ocllo, tenth Coya of the Inca Empire. Felipe Guaman Poma
de Ayala (c. 1615): El primer nueva corónica [y buen gobierno conpuesto por Don
Phelipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, señor y príncipe], GKS 2232 folio, Royal Danish
Library, p. 138[138]/​drawing 48.

Women were the principal performers, probably selected from the

priestesses who lived in the Hatun Cancha, a cloister located on the plaza,
where the empire’s most talented and well-​born young women learned sa-
cred practices.Three groups of women came out dancing into the plaza and
slowly made their way around the space, performing scenes that celebrated
Mama Ocllo’s life and represented the deceased empress as a symbol of female
 A sse m bl i ng I nca H i story 35

power, generosity, and virtue. The first group displayed golden weaving
tools to commemorate how Mama Ocllo transformed ordinary wool into
fine cloth, a key gift that Inca rulers used to reward their faithful subjects.
A second group brought out golden pitchers and cups, and then poured and
distributed chicha maize beer.This served as a reminder that Mama Ocllo and
other Inca women chewed raw maize, their saliva catalyzing the fermen-
tation process that transformed the most important Inca crop into the po-
tent brew that fueled state festivities.The final group bore golden vessels and
utensils to recall the Inca empress’s role in feeding her husband, a metaphor
for the food that Inca officials provided to the tributary laborers who built
the imperial roads, irrigation works, and buildings across the Andes.5
Mama Ocllo’s funeral celebrated the female aspect of Inca imperial power,
which complemented the male military and political hierarchies.6 The gath-
ering also literally established Mama Ocllo’s place in Inca history. When
the Inca nobility arrived in the Haucaypata plaza for the celebration, they
brought the mummies and images of other deceased Inca kings and queens.
The royal dead formed a procession of powerful bodies dressed in fine cloth
and borne in elaborate litters that were shaded by retainers carrying colorful
feather parasols.The royal dead were arranged in chronological order in the
plaza before sharing food and drink with their descendants, who toasted
them with maize beer that they poured into large golden vessels. Assembled
here, at the center of the empire, the dead sovereigns served as the material
representation of Inca dynastic history. By this time, Mama Ocllo’s preserved
mummy was probably among them, seated with her long-​dead husband,
Tupa Inca Yupanqui.
After the ceremony, Mama Ocllo’s descendants created a golden statue
of the empress and placed the remains of her womb in its hollow interior.
They consecrated her house, where her mummy was to reside, as well as
springs and fountains and a ceremonial field of maize that they associated
with her. Preserved as a mummy and as a statue—​with physical reminders
of her marking Cuzco’s landscape—​Mama Ocllo attained the status of
a royal ancestor, extending her power and influence into the afterlife. Her
body and image continued to participate in imperial conquests and noble

5 See Betanzos (1996 [1550s, pt. 1, chap. 44); cf. Cieza de León (1880 [c. 1553, chap. 11]).
6 Betanzos (1996 [1550s, pt. 1, chap. 31) also describes the first royal funeral (purucaya),
instituted by the ninth Inca, Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui; the ceremony featured men and
women who performed interpretive dances celebrating his sovereignty and military
conquests.
36 I nca A p ocaly p se

Inca gatherings for the next sixty years, when Spanish officials finally hunted
down and confiscated all the surviving Inca mummies.7

Ancestral Origins
The performances surrounding Mama Ocllo’s funeral blended royal biog-
raphy with values the Inca nobility considered essential for building and
maintaining an empire. The colorful procession of royal mummies and
golden statues celebrated the dynasty, but it also distracted from some of the
gaps in the links between the imperial lineages and their mythical origins.
When Cuzco’s royal households assembled their mummies and statues into
a dynastic line, the descendants of the earliest Incas—​a group called Hurin
(Lower) Cuzco—​had no bodies to contribute.8 Their ancestors had mold-
ered into bare bones, so they brought something more durable to remind
their imperial relatives of a legendary time when the Incas were nothing
more than petty rulers in the CuzcoValley.The descendants of Manco Capac,
the founding Inca, brought a four-​foot-​tall stone that they considered to be
their ancestor, while the lineage of the second Inca, Sinchi Roca, carried a
fish-​shaped stone that they said was his brother.9 These powerful talismans
reflected a progression of the human life force after death, from a desiccated
and concentrated mummy to a durable but less-​human stone.

7
See MacCormack (1991:134) on Mama Ocllo’s statue. For the shrines and mummy,
see Bauer (1998; 2004:178–​179).The discussion of the mummies and estates of royal Incas
should be approached cautiously. Betanzos says that the ninth Inca first created ancestral
statues when his father died, establishing the noble Inca houses and the order of dynastic
history (1999 [1550s, pt. 1, chap. 17]). Mama Ocllo’s mummy was confiscated around 1560
and displayed publicly in Cuzco and Lima for decades until it was finally buried (Bauer
and Rodríguez 2007).
8 The Hurin Cuzco Incas marked their descent from Manco Capac, the first Inca;

whereas the Hanan Cuzco Incas were descendants of the sixth Inca and had clearer kin
ties to one another. See Molina (2011 [c. 1575]) for how the two groups complemented
one another; and Bauer and Smit (2015); Covey (2006a); Morris and Covey (2003).
9 Sarmiento de Gamboa (1572) describes the statues and mummies of Inca kings. The

earliest Spanish eyewitnesses mention the veneration of royal Inca women, at least some
of whom received purucaya ceremonies and had “sister” statues made after their deaths. By
the late 1500s, most sources were emphasizing the royalty of Inca men as peerless rulers.
Sarmiento de Gamboa presents the material evidence of Inca talismans and mummies
as consistent with the historical development of the dynasty (cf. Cieza de León 1880 [c.
1553, chap. 11]).
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
young, had for him no charm; and he repulsed with horror the
poisoned cup to which so many open eager lips. My dear young
friends, if you only knew what this bitter cup contained, you would
all dash it, far from you, for in drinking it to the dregs, you will
sometimes find crime, always remorse, a weariness of all things, and
a premature old age.

Robert was spared from falling into the snares which are set to allure
youth, which blessing can only be attributed to the pious education
he had received. First impressions are never effaced, they take deep
root in a child's heart, and if good, become the fruitful germs of
many virtues; if they are bad, they are the source from which vice
and passion flow. In his tender years Robert had loved God and his
works; later, when the good curé had revealed to him the sublimity
of religion, the orphan was penetrated with a great love for that God
who is goodness itself; and when reason and experience confirmed
all which his mother and his protector had taught him, he believed
more firmly still, and found in all nature visible proofs of the
grandeur and power manifested by the Sovereign Ruler of the
universe. When his companions were convinced that they could not
make him one of their band of idlers, they let him alone, and treated
him with the most contemptuous indifference, which was a great
happiness to him, for he was no longer disturbed in his studies, and
applied himself with such ardor and perseverance that his master
was enchanted with his progress, and prodigal of his praises and
encouragement, his counsels and lessons; and aided to the utmost
of his ability this rare talent, which only demanded for its perfection
aid and good direction. Not a day passed without his looking over
Robert's studies, correcting them, and stimulating the generous
emulation of the young artist. Robert proved his gratitude by his
devotion to his studies, and if on the one hand the master was
proud of his pupil, on the other so sincere, exalted, and just was his
respect for him, that he would have considered it but a small
sacrifice to have given his life for a man who was so liberal of his
time and knowledge to him. This tribute which his warm heart gave
so willingly, was not the only one Robert received. Madame Gaudin
made a duty of continuing the charitable work of the Abbé Verneuil,
who had shown so sublime and disinterested an affection for Robert.
She spent without regret the sayings of twenty years, and, although
an old woman, she worked like a young girl, inventing the most
ingenious means for hiding the sacrifices she was obliged to make.
She exhausted herself by her labor; but she loved Robert, and said,
with a just pride, "He will be a great painter, and will repay me a
thousand times for all I do for him now. What is a little trouble?
Fatigue soon passes over. I am only an old woman, and have no
need of anything, but he is so young, so good and easily contented,
that if he only has air and sunshine he is happy. He never spends a
cent improperly, and is economical, charitable, and polite. I could
not love him more if I were his mother; and all I ask of God is, that
he will spare me yet a while, that I may work for him." Robert had
not the least idea of the expedients she employed for dissimulating
the privations she each day imposed upon herself, but he worked
with devouring energy night and day, and nothing is a trouble to
him, nothing a fatigue, which brings him nearer to that glorious end,
an artist! a true, soul-inspired artist! But material life and its
necessities must be provided for; yet he thinks not of privations, so
{837} completely is he fascinated with art and dreams of fame. It
soon became difficult for Madame Gaudin to hide from Robert her
almost penniless position, which was all the harder because of her
excessive tenderness and love for him. She seemed to have but one
thought, and that was to spare him all trouble. The courage of
women has its source in the heart, and if they have love as an
incentive, they can accomplish ends that place them far above men.
So she kept from Robert the knowledge of the obligation he was
under to her, and for three years struggled with energy and
constancy to give the young painter, not only the necessaries, but
also an appearance of luxuries, which deceived him to the last
degree. Up to this time her heroic courage was the same, but her
health failed suddenly, and religion alone sustained her, with a firm
and consoling hand, when misfortunes came. Robert also needed it
to keep up his spirits, for he felt a keen anguish when he saw her
extended on a bed of pain; but his faith gave him supernatural
strength, and he struggled victoriously with poverty, abandoning for
a time his loved art to attend to the smallest details of material life,
dividing his time between the sick friend whom he surrounded with
delicacies, and upon whom he lavished his tenderest care, and work;
monotonous, but productive work; and with his money he procured
remedies which he hoped would bring back her health who had
done so much for him. In this hour of trial he never despaired, and
spent sixteen hours out of the twenty-four often in copying
miserable and ill-drawn pictures, and all for a salary. But he would
exclaim, "I will be an artist." He returned sacrifice for sacrifice, and
while Madame Gaudin was in danger, he had not a moment of
repose, and only found calmness and tranquillity when
convalescence came. The rôles were changed. The protector
became the protected; the kind guardian of the orphan became the
object of his earnest solicitude. He became a man during her
sickness; rendering her the attentions of a devoted son, and
providing for the expenses of the household. Brought down from his
fairy land of dreams by the realities of life, he is neither less amiable
nor less good, but stronger, braver, more faithful than ever. The
wings of the child have been folded; he is only a man, that is all.

From All the Year Round.

 "INCONSOLABILE."

I am waiting on the margin

Of the dark, cold, rushing tide;
All I love have passed before me,
And have reached the other side:
Only unto me a passage
Through the waters is denied.

Mist and gloom o'erhang the river,

Gloom and mist the landscape veil.
Straining for the shores of promise,
Sight and hope and feeling fail.
Not a sigh, a breath, a motion,
Answers to my feeble wail.

{838}

Surely they have all forgot me

'Mid the wonders they have found
In the far enchanted mansions;
Out of heart and sight and sound,
Here I sit, like Judah's daughters,
Desolate upon the ground.

Strangers' feet the stream are stemming,

Stranger faces pass me by,
Willing some, and some reluctant,
All have leave to cross but I—
I, the hopeless, all bereaved,
Loathing life, that long to die!
 Be the river ne'er so turbid,
Chill and angry, deep and drear,
All my loved ones are gone over,
Daunted not by doubt or fear;
And my spirit reaches after,
While I sit lamenting here.

Happy waters that embraced them,

Happier regions hid from sight,
Where my keen, far-stretching vision,
Dazed and baffled, lost them quite.
Dread, immeasurable distance
'Twixt the darkness and the light!

And I know that never, never,

Till this weak, repining breast
Still its murmurs into patience,
Yonder from the region blest
Shall there break a streak of radiance,
And upon the river rest.

I shall hail the mystic token

Bright'ning all the waters o'er,
Struggle through the threat'ning torrent
Till I reach the further shore;
Wonder then, my blind eyes opened,
That I had not trusted more.

{839}

ORIGINAL.
 CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI.
[Footnote 241]
[Footnote 241: Poems, by Christina G. Rossetti. Boston:
Roberts, Brothers. 1866.]

We had heard some little of Miss Rossetti, in a superficial way,

before reading this her book. Various verses of hers had met our eye
in print, and if they themselves left no very decided mark upon the
memory, yet we had the firm impression, somehow, that she was
one more of the rising school of poets. Accordingly we thought it
well to take a retrospect of a few post-Tennysonians—Mrs. Browning,
Owen Meredith, Robert Buchanan, Jean Ingelow, and so on—
supposed fellow disciples—so as to be tolerably sure of ranking the
new-comer rightly. On reading this volume, we find our labor lost
through an entirely unforeseen circumstance. Unfortunately, it does
not appear that Miss Rossetti is a poetess at all. That there are
people who think her one, we infer from the fact that this is in some
sort a third edition; why they think so, we are at a loss to see. The
book will not answer a single test of poetry. The authoress's best
claim to consideration is, that she sincerely, persistently, fervently
means to be a poetess. Only the most Demosthenian resolve could
have kept her writing in face of her many inherent unfitnesses. For
imagination, she offers fantasy; for sentiment, sentimentality; for
aspiration, ambition; for originality and thought, little or nothing; for
melody, fantastic janglings of words; and these, with all tenderness
for the ill-starred intensity of purpose that could fetch them so far,
are no more poetry than the industrious Virginian colonists' shiploads
of mica were gold.

The first cursory impression of this book would be, we think, that its
cardinal axiom was "Poetry is versified plaintiveness." The amount of
melancholy is simply overwhelming. There is a forty-twilight power
of sombreness everywhere. Now, criticism has taken principles, not
statistics, to be its province; but we could not resist the temptation
to take a little measurement of all this mournfulness. Limiting our
census strictly to the utterly irretrievable and totally wrecked poems,
with not a glimmering of reassurance, we found no less than forty-
nine sadnesses, all the way from shadow to unutterable blackness
—"nfernam Iumbram noctemque perennem." There is the
sadness decadent, the sadness senescent, the sadness bereft, the
sadness despondent, the sadness weary, the sadness despairing, the
sadness simply sad, the grand sadness ineffable, and above and
pervading all, the sadness rhapsodical. They are all there. Old
Burton will rise from his grave, if there be any virtue in
Pythagoreanism, to anatomize these poems. What it is all about is
strictly a secret, and laudably well kept; which gives to the various
sorrows that touching effect peculiar to the wailings of unseen
babies from unascertained ailments. So sustained is the grief,
indeed, that after protracted poring, we hang in abeyance between
two conclusions. One is that Miss Rossetti, outside of print, is the
merriest mortal in the United Kingdom; the other, that her health is
worse than precarious. That one or the other must be right, we
know. There is no other horn to the dilemma, no tertiary quiddity,
no choice, no middle ground between hilarity and dyspepsia.

Perhaps the reader can judge for himself from these lines, which are
a not unfair sample:

{840}

"MAY.

I cannot tell you how it was;

But this I know: it came to pass
Upon a bright and breezy day,
When May was young; ah, pleasant May!
As yet the poppies were not born,
 Between the blades of tender corn;
The last eggs had not hatched as yet,
Nor any bird foregone its mate.
I cannot tell you what it was;
But this I know: it did put pass.
It passed away with sunny May,
With all sweet things it passed away,
And left me old and cold and gray."

We may be very unappreciative, and probably are sinfully suspicious,

but the above sounded at the first and sounds at the present
reading, exactly like a riddle. We certainly don't know how it was nor
what it was. There is a shadowy clue in its passing away with sunny
May, but we are far too cautious to hazard a guess. If there be any
conundrum intended, all we have to say is, we give it up.

We do but justice, however, in saying that amid much mere

lugubriousness there is some real and respectable sadness. The
following, in spite of' the queer English in its first lines, sounds
genuine, and is moreover, for a rarity of rarities, in well-chosen and
not ill-managed metre:

"I have a room whereinto no one enters

Save I myself alone:
There sits a blessed memory on a throne,
There my life centres.

While winter comes and goes-Oh! tedious comer!

And while its nip-wind blows;
While bloom the bloodless lily and warm rose
Of lavish summer;

If any should force entrance he might see there

One buried, yet not dead,
Before whose face I no more bow my head
Or (sic) bend my knee there;
 But often in my worn life's autumn weather
I watch there with clear eyes,
And think how it will be in Paradise
When we're together."

Here is one of a trite topic—nearly all the good things in this book
are on themes as old as moonlight—but with a certain mournful
richness, like autumn woods:

"Life is not sweet. One day it will be sweet

To shut our eyes and die:
Nor feel the wild flowers blow, nor birds dart by
With flitting butterfly;
Nor grass grow long above our head and feet,
Nor hear the happy lark that soars sky high,
Nor sigh that spring is fleet, and summer fleet,
Nor mark the waxing wheat,
Nor know who sits in our accustomed seat.

Life is not good. One day it will be good

To die, then live again;
To sleep meanwhile: so not to feel the wane
Of shrunk leaves dropping in the wood,
Nor hear the foamy lashing of the main,
Nor mark the blackened bean-fields, nor where stood
Rich ranks of golden grain,
Only dead refuse stubble clothe the plain:
Asleep from risk, asleep from pain."

This is one of her best poems in point of style. The "waxing wheat"
we are just a shade doubtful about; but the mellowness of the
diction is much to our liking, and it is unmarred by any of the breaks
of strange ill taste that flaw nearly all these poems. If not poetry nor
novelty, at least we find it sadly agreeable verse.
Our professor of rhetoric once astonished his class by a heterodoxy,
which we have since thought sound as well as neat. "Walter Scott,"
said he, "writes verse as well as a man can write and not be a poet."
We are sorry we cannot say as much for Miss Rossetti; she has
considerable faults as a writer. The chief of these has elsewhere
been carped at—her laborious style of' being simple. The true
simplicity of poets is not a masterly artifice, but a natural and
invariable product where high poetic and expressive powers
combine. The best thought is always simple, because, it deals only
with the essences of things: the best expression—the machinery of
thought—is simple, just as the best of any other machinery is. But
the grand, obvious fact to the many is that the best poetry is
admired for being simple. Writing for this market, Miss Rossetti and
unnumbered others have more or less successfully attempted to
achieve this crowning beauty of style by various processes that are
to the inspiration of' real simplicity as patent medicines to vigorous
vitality. Almost all hold the immutable conviction that Saxon words
are an infallible recipe for the indispensable brevity. Accordingly the
usual process is by an elaborate application of' Saxon—if rather
recondite or even verging on the obsolete, so much the more
efficacious—to a few random ideas. Of course, with such painful
workmanship, one must not expect the best material. Original, or
even well {841} defined thought seldom thrives in the same hot-
house with this super-smoothness. But without pursuing the process
into results at large, we have only to take Matthew Arnold's
distinction as to Miss Rossetti:—she tries hard for simplicité, and
achieves simplesse. But there is no such thing as hard work
without its fruits. This straining after effect crops painfully out in a
peculiar baldness and childishness of phrase that is almost original.
The woman who can claim The Lambs of Grasmere as her own has
not lived in vain. This production, with its pathetic episode of the
maternal

"Teapots for the bleating mouths,

Instead of nature's nourishment,"
has already been noticed in print, and duly expanded many visages.
We pause rapt in admiration of the deep intuition that could select
for song the incident of feeding a sheep with a teapot. It carries us
back, in spirit, to the subtle humor and delicate irony of Peter Bell,
and We are Seven. What a burst of tenderness ought we to expect,
if Miss Rossetti should ever chance to see stable-boys give a horse a
bolus! . . . . . We shall not cite examples of this simplesse; those
who like it will find it purer and more concentrated in the bard of
Rydal; or if they must have it, they are safe in opening this book
almost anywhere.

Of the individual poems, the two longest, The Goblin Market and
The Prince's Progress, are rivals for the distinction of being the
worst. All the best poems are short, excepting one, Under the Rose.
The story is of an illegitimate daughter, whose noble mother takes
her to live with herself at the inevitable Hall, without acknowledging
her. There are able touches of nature in the portrayal of the lonely,
loving, outlawed, noble heart, that, knowing her mother's secret,
resolves never to betray it, even to her. In the following passage, the
girl, alone at the castle, as her mother's favorite maid, describes her
inner life:

"Now sometimes in a dream,

My heart goes out of me
To build and scheme,
Till I sob after things that seem
So pleasant in a dream:
A home such as I see,
My blessed neighbors live in;
With father and with mother,
All proud of one another,
Named by one common name;
From baby in the bud
To full-blown workman father;
It's little short of Heaven.
.....
 Of course the servants sneer
Behind my back at me;
Of course the village girls,
Who envy me my curls
And gowns and idleness,
Take comfort in a jeer;
Of course the ladies guess
Just so much of my history
As points the emphatic stress
With which they laud my Lady;

The gentlemen who catch

A casual glimpse of me,
And turn again to see
Their valets, on the watch
To speak a word with me;—
All know, and sting me wild;
Till I am almost ready
To wish that I were dead,—
No faces more to see,
No more words to be said;
My mother safe at last.
Disburdened of her child
And the past past."

The Convent Threshold—the last words of a contrite novice to her

lover—has touches of power. There is an unusual force about some
parts, as for example here:

"You linger, yet the time is short;

Flee for your life; gird up your strength
To flee; the shadows stretched at length
Show that day wanes, that night draws nigh;
Flee to the mountain, tarry not.
Is this a time for smile and sigh;
For songs among the secret trees
 Where sudden blue-birds nest and sport?
The time is short, and yet you stay;
To-day, while it is called to-day,
Kneel, wrestle, knock, do violence, pray;
To-day is short, to-morrow nigh:
Why will you die? why will you die!
.....
How should I rest in Paradise,
Or sit on steps of Heaven alone?
If saints and angels spoke of love,
Should I not answer from my throne,
'Have pity upon me, ye, my friends,
For I have heard the sound thereof?'
Should I not turn with yearning eyes,
Turn earthward with a pitiful pang?
Oh! save me from a pang in heaven!
By all the gifts we took and gave,
Repent, repent, and be forgiven!"

The lines called Sound Sleep, p. 65, we like very well for very slight
cause. It says nearly nothing with a pleasant flow of cadence that
has the {842} charm of an oasis for the reader. Much better is No,
Thank You, John! which strikes into a strain of plain sound sense
that we could wish to see much more of. The style, as well as the
sense, seems to shuffle off its affectations, and the last two stanzas
especially are easy, natural, and neat.

A strange compound of good and bad is the singular one called

"TWICE.

I took my heart in my hand,

O my love, O my love!
I said, "Let me fall or stand,
Let me live or die;
But this once hear me speak,
 O my love, O my love!
Yet a woman's words are weak;
You should speak, not I."

You took my heart in your hand,

With a friendly smile,
With a critical eye you scanned,
Then set it down
And said: "It is still unripe—
Better wait a while;
Wait while the skylarks pipe,
Till the corn grows brown."

As you set it down it broke—

Broke, but I did not wince;
I smiled at the speech you spoke,
At your judgment that I heard:
But I have not often smiled
Since then, nor questioned since,
Nor cared for corn-flowers wild,
Nor sung with the singing-bird.

I take my heart in hand,

O my God, O my God!
My broken heart in my hand:
Thou hast seen, judge thou.
My hope was written on sand,
O my God, O my God!
Now let thy judgment stand—
Yea, judge me now.

This, contemned of a man,

This, marred one heedless day,
This heart take thou to scan
Both within and without:
Refine with fire its gold,
 Purge thou its dross away;
Yea, hold it in thy hold,
Whence none can pluck it out.

I take my heart in my hand—

I shall not die, but live—
Before thy face I stand,
I, for thou callest such;
All that I have I bring,
All that I am I give,
Smile thou, and I shall sing,
But shall not question much."

This poem, we confess, puzzles us a little to decide upon it. The

imitation is palpable at a glance, but it is a very clever one: the first
three stanzas above all catch the mannerism of their model to
admiration. But the whole, is a copy, at best, of one of the
archetype's inferior styles; and yet we fancy we can see, under all
the false bedizening, something of poetry in the conception, though
it is ill said, and only dimly translucent. There is art, too, in the
parallelism of the first and last three verses. But we do not like the
refrain in the fourth verse—somehow it jars. Perhaps the best we
can say of it is, that Browning, in his mistier moments of
convulsiveness, could write worse.

There is another imitation of Browning in this book, that is the most

supremely absurd string of rugged platitudes imaginable—Wife to
Husband, p. 61. The last verse is sample enough:

"Not a word for you,

Not a look or kiss
Good-by.
We, one, must part in two;
Verily death is this,
I must die."
The metre generally throughout this book is in fact simply execrable.
Miss Rossetti cannot write contentedly in any known or human
measure. We do not think there are ten poems that are not in some
new-fangled shape or shapelessness. With an overweening ambition,
she has not the slightest faculty of rhythm. All she has done is to
originate some of the most hideous metres that "shake the racked
axle of art's rattling car." Attempting not only Browning's metrical
dervish-dancings, but Tennyson's exquisite ramblings, she fails in
both from an utter want of that fine ear that always guides the
latter, and so often strikes out bold beauties in the former. Most of
Miss Rossetti's new styles of word-mixture are much like the
ingenious individual's invention for enabling right-handed people to
write with the left hand—more or less clever ways of doing what she
don't wish to do. What possible harmony, for instance, can any one
find in this jumble, which, as per the printer, is meant for a "song:"

"There goes the swallow—

Could we but follow!
Hasty swallow, stay,
Point us out the way;
Look back, swallow, turn back, swallow, stop, swallow.

{843}

There went the swallow—

Too late to follow,
Lost our note of way,
Lost our chance to-day.
Good-by, swallow, sunny swallow, wise swallow.

After the swallow—

All sweet things follow;
All things go their way,
Only we must stay,
Must not follow; good-by, swallow, good swallow."
Where on earth is sound or sense in this? Not a suggestion of
melody, not a fraction of a coherent idea. People must read such
trash as they eat meringues à la crême: we never could
comprehend either process.

Truth to tell, we have in this book some of the very choicest

balderdash that ever was perpetrated; worthy to stand beside even
the immortal Owl and Goose of Tennyson. There is a piece at p. 41
which we would give the world to see translated into some foreign
language, we have such an intense eagerness to understand it. Its
subject, so far as we have got, seems to be the significance of the
crocodile, symbolically considered. We glanced over, or rather at it
once, and put it by for after reading, thinking the style probably too
deep for love at first sight. On the second perusal we fell in with
some extraordinary young crocodiles that we must have missed
before. They had just been indulged in the luxury of being born, but
Miss Rossetti's creative soul, not content with bestowing upon them
the bliss of amphibious existence, made perfect their young beauty
by showing them "fresh-hatched perhaps, and—daubed with
birthday dew."

We are strong of head—we recovered from even this—we became of

the very select few who can say they have read this thing through.
There was a crocodile hero; he had a golden girdle and crown; he
wore polished stones; crowns, orbs and sceptres starred his breast
(why shouldn't they if they could); "special burnishment adorned his
mail;" his punier brethren trembled, whereupon he immediately ate
them till "the luscious fat distilled upon his chin," and "exuded from
his nostrils and his eyes." He then fell into an anaconda nap, and
grew very much smaller in his sleep, till at the approach of a very
queer winged vessel (probably a vessel of wrath), "the prudent
crocodile rose on his feet and shed appropriate tears (obviously it is
the handsome thing for all well-bred crocodiles to cry when a
Winged ship comes along) and wrung his hands." As a finale, Miss
Rossetti, too nimble for the unwary reader, anticipates his question
of "What does it all mean?" and triumphantly replying that she
doesn't know herself, but that it was all just so, marches on to the
next monumentum aere perennius. In the name of the nine
muses, we call upon Martin Farquhar Tupper to read this and then
die.

There are one or two other things like this longa intervallo, but it
is reserved for the Devotional Pieces to furnish the only poem that
can compete with it in its peculiar line. This antagonist poem is not
so sublime an example of sustained effort, but it has the advantage
that the rhyme is fully equal to the context. Permit us then to
introduce the neat little charade entitled

"AMEN.

It is over. What is over?

Nay, how much is over truly!—
Harvest days we toiled to sow for;
Now the sheaves are gathered newly,
Now the wheat is garnered duly.

It is finished. What is finished?

Much is finished known or unknown;
Lives are finished, time diminished;
Was the fallow field left unsown?
Will these buds be always unblown?

It suffices. What suffices?

All suffices reckoned rightly;
Spring shall bloom where now the ice is,
Roses make the bramble sightly,
And the quickening suns shine brightly,
And the latter winds blow lightly,
And my garden teems with spices."

Let now the critic first observe how consummately the mysticism of
the charade form is intensified by the sphinx-like answers appended.
Next note the novelties in rhyme, The rhythmic chain that links
"over" and and "sow for" is the first discovery in the piece, closely
rivalled by "ice is" and "spices" in the last verse. But {844} far above
all rises the subtle originality of the three rhymes in the second. A
thousand literati would have used the rhyming words under the
unpoetical rules of ordinary English. Miss Rossetti alone has the
courage to inquire "Was the fallow field left unsown? Will these buds
be always unblown?" We really do not think Shakespeare would
have been bold enough to do this thus.

But despite this, the religious poems are perhaps the best. They
seem at least the most unaffected and sincere, and the healthiest in
tone. There are several notably good ones: one, just before the
remarkable Amen, in excruciating metre, but well said; one, The
Love of Christ which Passeth Knowledge, a strong and imaginative
picture of the crucifixion; and Good Friday, a good embodiment of
the fervor of attrite repentance. The best written of all is, we think,
this one (p. 248):

"WEARY IN WELL-DOING.

I would have gone; God bade me stay;

I would have worked; God bade me rest.
He broke my will from day to day,
He read my yearnings unexpressed
And said them nay.

Now I would stay; God bids me go;

Now I would rest; God bids me work.
He breaks my heart, tossed to and fro,
My soul is wrung with doubts that lurk
And vex it so.

I go, Lord, where thou sendest me;

Day after day, plod and moil:
But Christ my God, when will it be
 That I may let alone my toil,
And rest with thee?"

This is good style (no simplesse here) and real pathos—in short;
poetry. We do not see a word to wish changed, and the conclusion
in particular is excellent: there is a weariness in the very sound of
the last lines.

It is remarkable how seldom thought furnishes the motive for these

poems. With no lack at all of intelligence, they stand almost devoid
of intellect. It is always a sentiment of extraneous suggestion, never
a novelty in thought, that inspires our authoress. She seems busier
depicting inner life than evolving new truths or beauties. Nor does
she abound in suggestive turns of phrase or verbal felicities. In fact,
as we have seen, she will go out of her way to achieve the want of
ornament. But there is one subject which she has thought out
thoroughly, and that subject is death. Whether in respect to the
severance of earthly ties, the future state, or the psychical relations
subtly linking the living to the dead, she shows on this topic a vigor
and vividness, sometimes misdirected, but never wanting. Some of
her queer ideas have a charm and a repulsion at once, like ghosts of
dead beauty: e.g. this strange sonnet:

"AFTER DEATH.

The curtains were half-drawn, the floor was swept

And strewn with rushes; rosemary and may
Lay thick upon the bed on which I lay,
Where through the lattice ivy-shadows crept.
He leaned above me, thinking that I slept
And could not hear him; but I heard him say,
"Poor child, poor child!" and as he turned away
Came a deep silence, and I knew he wept;
He did not touch the shroud, or raise the fold
That hid my face, or take my hand in his,
Or ruffle the smooth pillows for my head;
 He did not love me living, but once dead
He pitied me, and very sweet it is
To know he still is warm though I am cold."

There is some chiaro-oscuro about this. Under all the ghastliness

of the conception, we detect here a deep, genuine, unhoping,
intensely human yearning, that is all the better drawn for being
thrown into the shadow. We do not know of a more graphic
realization of death. Miss Rossetti seems to be lucky with her
sonnets. We give the companion piece to this last—not so striking as
the other, but full of heart's love, and ending with one of the few
passages we recall which enter without profaning the penetralia of
that highest love, which passionately prefers the welfare of the
beloved one to its own natural cravings for fruition and fulfilment:

"REMEMBER.

Remember me when I am gone away,

Gone far away into the silent land;
When you no more can hold me by the hand
Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more, day by day,
You tell me of our future that you planned;
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray,
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve;
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had.
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.

{845}
Another marked peculiarity often shadowed forth is our authoress's
sharply defined idea that the dead lie simply quiescent, neither in joy
nor sorrow. There are several miserable failures to express this
state, and one success, so simple, so natural, and so pleasant in
measure, that we quote it, though we have seen it cited before:

"When I am dead, my dearest,

Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress-tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dew-drops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows;

I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on as if in pain;
And dreaming through that twilight
That doth not rise not set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget."

Such bold insight into so profound a subject says more for the soul
of an author than a whole miss's paradise of prettinesses.

In singular contrast with this religious fervency and earnestness, the

sincerity of which we see no reason to impeach, comes our gravest
point of reprehension of this volume. We think it fairly chargeable
with utterances—and reticences—of morally dangerous tendency;
and this, too, mainly on a strange point for a poetess to be cavilled
at—the rather delicate subject of our erring sisters. Now, we are of
those who think the world, as to this matter, in a state little better
than barbarism; that far from feeling the first instincts of Christian
charity, we are shamefully like the cattle that gore the sick ox from
the herd. The only utterly pitiless power in human life is our virtue,
when brought face to face with this particular vice. We hunt the
fallen down; hunt them to den and lair; hunt them to darkness,
desperation, and death; hunt their bodies from earth, and their souls
(if we can) from heaven, with the cold sword in one hand, and in the
other the cross of him who came into the world to save, not saints,
but sinners, and who said to one of these: "Neither do I condemn
thee. Go, and now sin no more."

But there is also such a thing as misdirected mercifulness; a

dangerous lenity, all the more to be guarded against for its wearing
the garb of charity; and we think Miss Rossetti has leaned culpably
far in this direction. Two poems are especially prominent examples—
Cousin Kate, and Sister Maude. In each the heroine has sinned, and
suffered the penalties of discovery, and in each she is given the
upper hand, and made a candidate for sympathy, for very bad
reasons. There is no word to intimate that there is anything so very
dreadful about dishonor; that it may not be some one else's fault, or
nobody's fault at all—a mere social accident. A few faint hinting
touches there may be of conventional condemnation, but somehow
Miss Rossetti's sinners, as sinners, invariably have the best of the
argument and of the situation, while virtue is, put systematically in
the wrong, and snubbed generally. The Goblin Market too, if we read
it aright, is open to the same criticism. We understand it, namely, to
symbolize the conflict of the better nature in us, with the prompting
of the passions and senses. If so, what is the story translated from
its emblematic form? One sister yields; the other by seeming to
yield, saves her. Again there is not a syllable to show that the
yielding was at all wrong in itself. A cautious human regard for
consequences is the grand motive appealed to for withstanding
temptation. Lizzie tells Laura, not that the goblin's bargain is an evil
deed in the sight of God, but that Jennie waned and died of their
toothsome poisons. She saves her by going just so far as she safely
can. What, if anything, is the moral of all this? Not "resist the devil
and he will flee from you," but "cheat the devil, and he won't catch
you." Now, all these sayings and silences are gravely wrong and
false to a writer's true functions. With all deference then, and fully
feeling that we may mistake, or misconstrue, we sincerely submit
that some of these poems go inexcusably beyond the bounds of that
strict moral {846} right, which every writer who hopes ever to wield
influence ought to keep steadily, and sacredly in view. We are
emboldened to speak thus plainly, because we have some reason to
believe that these things have grated on other sensibilities than our
own, and that our stricture embodies a considerable portion of
cultivated public opinion.

In conclusion, we repeat our first expressed opinion, that Miss

Rossetti is not yet entitled to take a place among today's poets. The
question remains, whether she ever will. We do not think this book
of hers settles this question. , she has done
nothing in poetry yet of any consequence. These verses may be as
well as she can do. They contain poetical passages of merit and
promise, but they show also a defectiveness of versification, a
falseness of ear, and occasionally a degree of affectation and
triviality that, we can only hope, are not characteristic. To borrow a
little of the style and technology of a sister branch of thought, the
case, as now presented, can be accounted for as in essence a simple
attack of the old and well-known endemic, cacaethes scribendi.
Probably it befell her at the usual early age. Only instead of the run
of gushing girls, we have Dante Gabriel Rossetti's sister, Jean
lngelow's intimate friend, and a young lady of intelligence and
education, constantly in contact with real literary society, and—what
is thoroughly evident in this book—read in our best poets. Add all
these complicating symptoms, and is there not something plausible
about the diagnosis? We do not say, observe, and do not mean to
say, that this is Miss Rossetti's case; only all she has done so far
seems explicable on this hypothesis. For ourselves, we lean to the
view that she will do more. We judge hers a strong, sensuous,
impulsive, earnest, inconsiderate nature, that sympathizes well, feels
finely, keeps true to itself at bottom, but does not pause to make
sure that others must, as well as may, enter into the spirit that
underlies her utterances, and so buries her meaning sometimes
beyond Champollion's own powers of deciphering. But her next book
must determine how much is to be ascribed to talent, and how much
to practice and good models; and show us whether genius or gilt
edges separate her from the

ORIGINAL.
 THE TEST.

She stands with head demurely bent,

A village maiden, young and comely,
And he beside her, talking low
And earnestly, is Lord of Bromleigh.

"Now raise thine eyes, and look at me,

And place thy little hand in mine,
And tell me thou my bride will be,
And I and Bromleigh shall be thine;
In richest silks thou shalt be drest—
Have diamonds flashing on each hand,
And in all splendor shalt outshine
The proudest lady in the land.

{847}

On softest carpets thou shalt tread,

On velvet cushions shalt recline;
Whatever is most rich and rare
That thou mayst wish for shall be thine."

"I do not covet silk attire,

Nor glittering gold, nor flashing gem;
There is no longing in my heart
To change my simple dress for them.
A village maiden I was born—
A Village maiden I was bred—
A happy life for eighteen years
In that low station I have led.
How do I know if I should change
 My state for one so high, but then
The world might change, and never be
The thing it is to me again;
But from the field, and from the sky,
The glory and the joy would go;
The greenness from the meadow grass,
The beauty from all flowers that blow;
The sweetness from the breath of spring,
The music from the skylark's song:
Content, and all sweet thoughts that bring
A gladness to me all day long?"

"Thy fears are idle fears," he said;

"Love, loyal heart, and generous mind,
Can happiness in lordly halls
As well as in a cottage find.
For this is of the soul, and bound
To no degrees of wealth or state:
Then put thy little hand in mine
And speak the word that seals my fate!
I love thee, Marian, more than life—
Have loved thee, ah! thou dost not guess
How long, unknown to thee, my soul
Hath shrined in thee its happiness.
More precious than the light of day,
Thy beauty is unto mine eyes;
More sweet than all earth's music else
Thy voice that now to me replies.
Oh! would it speak the words I long
More than all other words to hear,
I were the happiest man this day
That breathes the breath of earthly air."

She raised her head, and in her eyes

A tender look his glances met,
But 'twas not love—though kin to it—
 A look of pity and regret.

"It pains me more than I can tell

To speak the words I ought; but yet
They must be said; and for your sake
I would that we had never met

{848}

For if you love me as you say,

I can conceive how great the pain
I give when I declare the troth,
I cannot love you, sir, again.
And I should sin a grievous sin,
Should do a grievous wrong to you,
If I should put my hand in yours
Unless my heart went with it too.
Not joy and pride, but grief and shame,
Go with the bridegroom and the bride
Into the house where they shall dwell,
Unless love enter side by side.
And I, because my heart is given
To one I love beyond my life.
Could find no joy in Bromleigh Hall
Am all unfit for Bromleigh's wife:
But did I love you, then, indeed,
Although my state be poor and mean,
I were as worthy Bromleigh Hall,
As were I daughter of a queen.
For love hath such divinity
That it ennobles every one
That owns its mast'ry, and can make
A beggar worthy of a throne.
This I have learned—love taught me this;
The love that is my breath of life:
That will not leave me till I die,
 That will not let me be your wife.
Forbear to urge me more, my lord;
It gives me pain to give such pain;
Here let us part, and for the sake
Of both, to never meet again."

"Stay yet a little, Marian, stay!

My heart was wholly thine before.
Or what thou sayst would make me swear
That now I love thee more and more.
A beauty brighter than a queen's,
A mind with noble thoughts so graced.
Among the highest in the land,
Were best esteemed, and fittest placed.
Yes, there thy rightful station is.
Amongst the noble of the earth:
And 'twere a sin unto a clown
To mate such beauty and such worth.
Thou could'st not live thy truest life;
Thy fullest joy thou could'st not find.
Chained to a poor cot's drudgery.
Wed to a dull, unlettered hind."

Then flushed her face with maiden scorn.

And thrilled her voice with proud disdain;
And proudly looked her eyes at him
Who dared not look at her again.

{849}

"For shame! my lord; for shame! my lord;

You shame your rank to slander so
A man, I doubt if you have seen;
A man I'm sure you do not know.
The man I love is no base churl,
No poor unlettered village hind;
But in my soul he lives and reigns,
The wisest, noblest of mankind.
I grant him poor; I know he works
With head and hands for daily bread;
And nobler so in my esteem
Than if a useless life he led.
'Tis not the accident of birth
Though with the flood the line began,
Nor having lands and countless wealth,
That makes and marks the gentleman.
For these are earthly, of the earth,
And by the vilest oft possessed;
But 'tis the spirit makes the man,
The soul that rules in brain and breast:
The generous heart, the noble mind,
The soul aspiring still to climb
To higher heights, to truer truths,
To faith more heavenly and sublime.
These make the noble of the earth;
And he I love is one of these:—
And shall I for a title fall
From such a soul and love as his?
Believe me, no! Ten thousand times,
A cot with him I'd rather share
Than yonder hall with you, my lord,"
And then she turned and left him there.
Off fell the curls and thick moustache
That hid the true look of his face.
A step—and ere she was aware
She struggled in a strong embrace;
Whilst kisses rained on cheek and lips,
She would have cried for help; but, lo!
The voice was one she knew so well,
Not that which spoke awhile ago.

"Forgive me, oh! my dear, true love,

 If I have seemed thy love to test;
I knew 'twas good, and pure, and true,
As ever filled a maiden's breast:
But I had something to reveal,
And so I put on this deceit.
Deceit! not so—for now I'm true,
The past it is that was a cheat;
For I this happy twelvemonth past,
This year that gave thy love to me,
Have lived a life not truly mine,
Have lived it for the sake of thee.

{850}

And though I Harry Nugent am,

The master of the village school,
So am I Harry Nugent Vane,
Lord of a higher rank and rule,
The which I left to win thy love;
And now I know that it is mine,
I take it back, my own true wife.
And Bromleigh Hall is mine and thine.

ORIGINAL.
 WHAT I HEARD ABOUT RITUALISM IN A CITY
CAR.

"It ought to be stopped, and it's all nonsense."

"It is all very well to say 'it ought to be stopped,' and that 'it is all
nonsense,' but, my dear sir, we cannot stop it, for the people will
have it; and I beg leave to differ with you, for I think it is very far
from being nonsense."

It was in a Seventh Avenue railway car, and as I sat next to the last
speaker, a clerical-looking person, I could not help overhearing the
conversation. The other appeared to be one of those old gentlemen
who are positive about everything—who, even in the tie of their
cravat, say as plain as can be, "This is the way I intend to have it,
and I will have it."

"I perfectly agree with the Bishop of Oxford," said he. "See here"—
and he opened a newspaper and read as follows: "'I have no great
fear that as to the majority of the people there is any tendency
toward Rome; and, on the contrary, I believe that in many cases this
development of English ritualism tends to keep our people from
Rome. It may, however, happen that the tendency of these things is
to what I consider to be at this moment the worst corruption of the
church of Rome—its terrible system of Mariolatry.' There, you see
what it tends to, and it is plain enough, although the bishop did not
like to say so, of course, that ritualism in our churches will educate
our people to become Catholics; and so he adds, very properly: 'I
regard it with deep distress. My own belief is that to stop these
practices it will only be necessary for the bishop to issue an
injunction to the clergymen to surcease from them—to surcease
from incensing the holy table—to surcease from prostration after the
Welcome to our website – the perfect destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. We believe that every book holds a new world,
offering opportunities for learning, discovery, and personal growth.
That’s why we are dedicated to bringing you a diverse collection of
books, ranging from classic literature and specialized publications to
self-development guides and children's books.

More than just a book-buying platform, we strive to be a bridge

connecting you with timeless cultural and intellectual values. With an
elegant, user-friendly interface and a smart search system, you can
quickly find the books that best suit your interests. Additionally,
our special promotions and home delivery services help you save time
and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Join us on a journey of knowledge exploration, passion nurturing, and

personal growth every day!

ebookbell.com