The two reigns covered by this chapter — Topa Inca Yupanqui (approximately 1471–1493) and his son Huayna Capac (approximately 1493–1527) — were, between them, the period during which the Inca state grew from a substantial Andean regional power into the largest empire in pre-Columbian American history. The territorial expansion of these fifty-five years was several times that of the preceding thirty years under Pachacuti. By the time of Huayna Capac's death in 1527, the empire controlled approximately two million square kilometres, perhaps ten million subjects, and approximately eighteen thousand kilometres of paved imperial road. The political and demographic shock of the conquest, which is the subject of Chapter VII, occurred when this enormous state was struck simultaneously by a smallpox epidemic and a succession crisis. The reigns that produced the state — the expansion of 1471–1527 — are the subject of this chapter.
Topa Inca's campaigns
Topa Inca (also Tupac Yupanqui in the spelling used by some chroniclers) was Pachacuti's chosen son and successor. He had commanded armies on his father's behalf for at least a decade before his accession, and continued the expansion immediately on taking the throne. The principal campaigns of his reign:
The conquest of Chimú (approximately 1470) was the campaign that established the Inca state as the dominant power of the central Andes. The Chimú Empire on the north Peruvian coast was, at the time, the largest and most institutionally developed state in the Andean world. Topa Inca, commanding for his father in the final years of Pachacuti's reign, defeated the Chimú forces, captured the capital Chan Chan, and integrated the entire Chimú coastal strip into the Inca administrative system. The Chimú king Minchançaman was deported to Cuzco; his successors became Inca-appointed governors of the conquered region.
The northern campaigns (1471–1480) extended Inca control into what is now Ecuador, conquering the Cañari (in the southern Ecuadorian highlands) and the Quitu (in the northern Ecuadorian highlands around modern Quito). Quito itself was made a major secondary capital of the empire — the so-called "second Cuzco" — with a substantial royal residence, garrison, and ceremonial complex (the site of which is partly preserved under the colonial city). Quito's importance is significant for what would happen at the end of the next reign.
The southern campaigns (1480s) extended Inca control southward through what is now Bolivia, Chile north of the Bío-Bío river, and north-western Argentina. The southern frontier was eventually fixed in central Chile at the Bío-Bío, where the Inca army was held by the Mapuche under Lautaro and his predecessors — a frontier that the Spaniards would similarly fail to push southward for the next three centuries.
The eastern frontier was the Inca empire's least successful expansion. The Antisuyu — the eastern quarter, sloping down into the Amazon basin — was never effectively pacified beyond the cloud-forest fringe. The Inca state operated outposts at Vilcabamba and a few other sites east of the Cuzco region, but lowland Amazonia was beyond its operational reach. This is significant for the post-conquest story: the survival of the Inca puppet state at Vilcabamba (Chapter VIII) was made possible by terrain that the Inca state itself had never effectively administered.
Huayna Capac
Huayna Capac succeeded Topa Inca around 1493 (the exact dates are uncertain) and reigned for approximately thirty-four years. He was the last Sapa Inca to rule an undivided empire. His reign is associated with the consolidation of the imperial administrative system, substantial monumental construction (particularly in the northern provinces around Quito), and a series of further campaigns:
The Ecuadorian campaigns (1490s and 1510s) extended Inca control further north, eventually as far as modern southern Colombia, where the Inca army reached the Ancasmayo river — the empire's northernmost permanent frontier.
The Chachapoyas pacification (early 1500s) brought the highland forest peoples of the modern Amazonas department of Peru under Inca control after a long and brutal campaign. The Chachapoyas resistance, which involved fortress sites such as Kuélap (a substantial pre-Inca walled urban centre, now a major Peruvian archaeological tourist site), required several years of sustained Inca operations to overcome.
The Caranqui campaigns (1510s) in northern Ecuador were the empire's last major expansion, against a confederation of polities that had resisted Topa Inca's earlier advance. The campaign reportedly culminated in the massacre of the surviving Caranqui warriors at the lake of Yaguarcocha ("Lake of Blood," in Quechua) — an event commemorated, in the present, by the name of the lake itself.
The administrative consolidation
Huayna Capac's reign was the period during which the imperial administrative system took final form. The empire was now sufficiently large that the centralised governance from Cuzco was logistically strained. Huayna Capac spent substantial periods of his reign in the northern provinces (Quito, Tomebamba in modern Cuenca), suggesting that he was developing the northern territory into a co-equal seat of imperial authority. The construction of substantial royal residences in the north — the palace at Tomebamba was reportedly built to plans modelled on Cuzco — is consistent with this interpretation.
The administrative system that was fully extended in this reign — the system the Spaniards would encounter and partially document in the 1530s and 1540s — is the subject of the next chapter. Its principal institutions were: the mita labour-service system, by which each subject household owed a fixed period of work to the state each year; the qollqa storehouse network, which held the in-kind state revenue and distributed it according to need; the Qhapaq Ñan road system, with its tampu way-stations; the chasqui courier service, which carried messages on relay along the road system at speeds the European observers found astonishing; and the khipu record-keeping system that allowed the bureaucracy to function without writing.
The succession problem
Huayna Capac, like his father and grandfather, had numerous sons by his various wives and concubines (the Inca royal household was substantial, and royal succession was not strictly primogenitary; the system permitted any son of the principal wife to be designated as successor, with the Sapa Inca's preference and the political position of the major Cuzco lineages determining the outcome). The principal candidates at the time of his death were Huáscar (born to the principal wife and brought up in Cuzco) and Atahualpa (born to a secondary wife of high status — possibly a daughter of the conquered Quitu king — and brought up in Quito as his father's principal lieutenant in the northern provinces).
Huayna Capac died, by the chronicle accounts, of an epidemic disease — almost certainly smallpox, which had spread southward from the Caribbean through indigenous American population networks well in advance of the Spaniards themselves. The dates given are approximate (probably 1525-1527; sources disagree). His designated successor, Ninan Cuyuchi, died of the same epidemic shortly afterwards. The throne went, by Cuzco court decision, to Huáscar; Atahualpa, in Quito, did not accept the decision. The civil war that followed — and that left the empire fatally weakened on the eve of the Spanish arrival in 1532 — is the subject of Chapter VI.
First, however, the next two chapters describe the administrative and religious systems that the empire had developed at its full territorial extent — the system that Atahualpa and Huáscar were fighting over.
End of Chapter III