The Inka Ruling Class and its Mythic Foundations
by Anca Szilagyi

Introduction

In Inka society, the upper class consisted of three levels: the Inka, the Inka-by-Privilege, and the kuraka. The Inka were at the top of the hierarchy, descendents of kings who claimed descent from the legendary founder of Cuzco, Manco Capac, ultimately descended from the Sun (Kendall 1973: 55). The Inka-by-Privilege were early supporters of the Inka during the founding of Cuzco and the expansion of the state and retained many of the same advantages as the Inka. Finally the kurakas were local native leaders of conquered areas that were rewarded for compliance with the Inka, but could never call themselves Inka (ibid: 57). All descendants of a dead king, except the living king and queen, formed a panaqa, a royal kinship group, with their own palace and land (owned by the deceased king), leaving each living king with the task of building his own palace and acquiring his own new plot of land. As Geoffery W. Conrad and Arthur A. Demarest put it, they were "kingdoms within kingdoms" (1984: 131). As the ruling class, the Inkas held the most important offices. They therefore protected the rights of their panaqas (Conrad 1981: 18).

Aside from holding high governmental offices, members of the panaqas retained power via religious beliefs and practices. The panaqas served the mummified king who they saw as their founding deity; the mummy was fed, clothed, and moved about for various rituals. It also spoke through a medium, giving an important voice to the panaqa, particularly in ratifying the Inka ruler's choice of successor. This voice, among other things, imbued the Inka with a factionalism that rendered the empire especially fragile during periods of succession. The Spanish chronicles indicate an "election" of sorts among the panaqa leaders in councils to decide on the "ablest" of the king's sons, the winner being whoever had the most weapons or the most political support (Rostworowski 1960: 419). Add to this the Inkas-by-Privelege, and kurakas, who often formed alliances with various panaqas and one can see how the whole of the state can become fragmented as various groups pitted against one another through political intrigue and all-out civil war.

This factionalism may be intimately connected to the Pacariqtambo origin myth. The myth tells the story of the legendary first Inka, Manco Capac, and his siblings, known by the name of Ayar, emerging from caves near Pacariqtambo. They eventually found Cuzco after appropriating the land from people already living there. Was the myth manipulated later in Inka history to reflect the Inka past or did the Inka manifest the myth in their behavior as time went on? This question is addressed both by Gary Urton in History of a Myth and Catherine Julien in Reading Inca History, with opposing views. Urton concludes that the Pacartiqtambo myth probably represents "an old, well-attested mythohistorical tradition of origin [. . .] which was formulated and maintained by populations near Cuzco [. . .] in pre-Hispanic times" (1990: 125). On the contrary, Julien asserts that this story was woven only after imperial expansion began, which, she says, would explain why there are fragments from other origin myths floating about the various chronicles (2000: 293). Because status in Inka society depended so much on a lineage reaching back to the mythical Manco Capac (and perhaps his brothers), an examination of the Inka ruling class's connection to their mythohistory must be conducted.


A Note on Reliability

Prior to departure into a more in-depth analysis, a note on the reliability of available information is necessary. Spanish chroniclers recorded testimonies through "filters of language and culture" (Julien 2000: 4). The profoundly different world-view can never really show Inka testimony as the Inka understood it; it can only show Inka testimony as the Spanish understood it. Therefore, one must read the Spanish chronicles on the Inka with an understanding of the Spanish construction of narrative (ibid: 297).

Had the Inkas kept a written record of their beliefs, myths, and history, the obstacle of decipherment would be step closer to an emic understanding than relying on outsiders' records and contemporary ethnographies. Records kept by the Inka were not written, but kept mainly through a precarious mechanism called quipu.

The nature of the quipu, knotted cords connected to central cord that through color, size, and position could record storehouse inventory and dynastic information, has come into question. It is generally considered a memory aid, lacking uniformity, and requiring interpretation instructions when transported from accountant to accountant (called quipucamayocs). However, the extent of semantic and thus, narrative, information that could be carried has been debated. Urton argues that they could encode grammatical constructions and had "the capacity. . .to denote the temporal relationship between events, which is the basic requirement for establishing a relative chronology" (1998: 410-412, 426-427, in Julien 2000: 11). Perhaps future studies on the quipu will allow for a greater understanding of the Inka. Until then, narrative records spring solely from Spanish chronicles taken from oral testimony. Julien notes that at least one of the chroniclers, Pedro de Cieza de Leon, was conscious of cultural and linguistic barriers to his understanding of the Inka collective memory; Cieza also notes "the controlled, edited quality of the transmissions and the conscious forgetting of individuals whose deeds did not measure up to some standard" (Julien 2000: 11; MacCormack 1997: 288-289 in Julien 2000: 12). Julien makes the interesting distinction between memory and history throughout her book; she takes upon herself an "archaeology of the source materials," attempting to extract new information from the old records (ibid: 12). Her work appears to be nested in a hyper-consciousness.

One must also take into account the fact that different quipuqamayocs representing different individuals, communities, corporate groups, and shrines, gave different testimonies, often at odds with one another (Patterson 1991: 43). These testimonies, which ultimately were to provide the Spanish with an Inka history of sorts, meant they had to provide information on lineage, and therefore, status. This status was supposed to carry over under colonial rule, where nobility were granted tax exemptions, so it is easy to see why some might want to claim high status, whether it was true or not. Urton's discussion of the Callapina document demonstrates this desire to "maneuver" within Inka mythohistory that was being formulated in the mid- to late sixteenth century (Urton 1990: 124-125). In this document lie various testimonies from Rodrigo Sutiq Callapina, a kuraka from Pacarqitambo, attempting to establish his lineage back to Manco Capac, to secure a privileged status under the Spanish for himself and his descendants. Therefore one can see a connection between the Inka origin myths and the structure of that society's upper classes.


Factionalism in the Ruling Classes

Upper class polygamy and polygyny allowed royal corporations to grow rather quickly. For example, even by 1603, after a devastating 75 year period of civil war, conquest, and epidemics, panaqas still had over 500 living members (Conrad 1981:18). Maria Wostworowski de Diez Canseco puts forth the question of succession in such a burgeoning segment of society: is it possible the civil wars erupting at each succession were the cause for reducing the number of possible mothers of the heir to one (1960: 420)? Pachakuti Inka 'Yupanki was both the first expansionist ruler and the first ruler to take his sister as wife since the legendary Manco Capac (Kendall 1973: 63). By referring to Manco Capac as a precedent, he justified this move in securing power in the hands of less people. Subsequent rulers would repeat this practice, making incest a royal privilege of sorts. In a similar vein, high nobility were allowed to marry their half-sisters, reducing a dissipation of wealth among new families, while the rest of the population could marry removed to the fourth generation (ibid: 64).

As was stated before, the panaqas were formed around a deceased, mummified ruler that was worshipped as a deity. Most often the mummies were huacas, described as runapcamac (creator of humanity), rulers whose extraordinary actions turned them to stone allowing them to remain forever connected to their kingdoms as ancestor-deities (Gose 1993: 488-489). In spite of this veneration for ancestors, mummies of hostile neighbors were sometimes kidnapped and held hostage for political reasons during the pre-imperial Inka period (Conrad and Demarest 1984: 105). Obviously, it was not veneration for just any ancestors but those specific to various warring kinship groups in competition for arable land and water resources; it seems as if the competition, aside from obtaining land and resources, was an attempt to prove that a dominating group and its lineage was more worthy than another group and its lineage. Claiming a separate lineage from that of a conquered and subjugated group, then, becomes essential.

Perhaps under the ideological unification of a state religion, the cult of the Sun, which was established by Pachakuti, factionalism among the ruling class, calmed slightly and superficially, and therefore only temporarily. Indeed, Pachackuti was the first ruler to institutionalize the practice of split inheritance (the retention of an estate by the dead king's family) by building estates in Cuzco for the leaders that preceded him (Conrad 1981: 10). This practice no doubt mitigated any ferocious competition between royal descent groups for land and wealth. It was only a few generations later, after access to arable land became seriously limited, when Huascar would look upon this practice with contempt.

Huaca corporations, that is the group of people in charge of caring for their ancestral shrines and serving as oracular media, made strategic alliances with influential provincial oracles to aggrandize their power base outside the Inka court (Patterson 1985 in Gose 1996: 4). Furthermore, panaqa oracles pushed for marriages of their women to the living ruler, in an attempt to be matrilineally related to some potential heirs (Gose 1996: 4). In having potential heirs to the throne matrilineally related, they then could back a candidate that upon achieving the throne could reward them with land and various luxury goods. The most important oracular medium, willaqumu (the priest who recounts) or the high priest of the Sun, had the power of final ratification of the successor to the throne; it appears that this oracle was the only one allowed into the council to elect a new king, a testament to the self-interest of the various panaqas and their oracular spokespeople (Gose 1996: 4,5). Interestingly, the oracles' role in factionalism even continued into colonial times, making predictions in the politics of the conquistadors (ibid: 7). Thus amid these factions, starting with Pachakuti, the Sapa Inka (unique Inka, or ruler) acted an umbrella figure over a segmented population, paralleling the Sun god arching over the segmented identity of the Andean deities (ibid: 17). The ruler could reward or punish the panaqas with rations, land, and goods, just as the panaqas could throw their support to different candidates for the throne or potential rivals to contested kings. As Gose states, the independence of the panaqa oracles were conditional on their political astuteness and was not a sacrosanct rule (ibid: 24). Though volatile, there seems to be sort of a system of checks and balances here; Gose insists that it would be naive to see oracular representation of different groups as democratic. Indeed, the oracles give voice to the subjects in a way that does not challenge the Inka's divine power (ibid: 26). Furthermore the oracular voice representing the various subjects, whether they are members of a panaqa or kin of provincial kurakas, is a voice still protecting the rights and interests of a ruling class only.

In his examination of ritual water control, Gose explores another facet of the factionalism in the Inka ruling class. The act of belligerent ethnic groups passing through neighboring territories and taking land is mirrored in myths where the same kind of appropriation recounts ancestors journeying through a watery subterra to colonize new localities where they emerged, imposed themselves, and turned to stone (Gose 1993: 491). Amidst this intensified pre-imperial competition for access to sacred water (both for the rituals of agriculture and for utilitarian purposes), there arose recognition that irrigation and local control of water would never achieve an ultimate control of their entire world's water supply. Therefore, the individual polity's inability to reproduce themselves in an isolated manner brought about acceptance of a unifying state ideology, where the Sun, controlling the flow of water, would help them acquire control of all water sources, including the ocean (ibid: 503). It seems there was a general acceptance that in order to successfully expand, the ruling classes would have to band together under a certain amount of unity, provided by a living king interacting with their individual king-deities.

Similarly, Thomas C. Patterson, working out of a Marxist framework, indicates with a certain amount of acerbic relish that the upper classes were linked only by their exploitation of peasants and a dependence on them for labor (1991: 104). The fragility of alliances among dominant groups was especially apparent when rates of extortion were too great and subjugated peoples revolted against the imperial state and its rulers, and especially in times of succession (ibid: 97). Indeed, he cites two major cleavages in the history of the ruling class.

The first was that of Pachakuti 'Inka Yupanki against the followers of his father Viracocha and Viracocha's heir of choice, 'Inka Urqon. Patterson remarks that by the time Pachakuti, the most aggressive and expansionist ruler, ascended the throne, "exploitation, alienation, competition, rivalries, conspiracies and plots were already integral aspects of everyday life, at least within the nobility" (ibid: 68). The second cleavage occurred several generations later, between Huascar and Atahuallpa after the death of their father Wayna Qhapaq in 1527 (ibid: 119). Thus the Inka state rose and expanded as result of one civil war, and was decimated and ultimately conquered in its weakened condition by another.

Many sources cite the Huascar-Atahuallpa debacle as the ultimate illustration of factionalism among the Inka ruling class. After claiming the throne, Huascar attempted to radically change the panaqa system, or at least voiced a desire to do so. Pizarro recorded him saying that he ought to order all the mummies buried and take all that they had, "because [the dead] had all that was best in the country" (Conrad 1981: 20). This was obviously an unwelcome sentiment among the panaqas. One corporation that did support Huascar, that of Topa 'Inka, paid dearly: generals destroyed his mummy bundle and the shrine it was housed in, and executed the spokesperson of the shrine as well as all the members of that panaqa (Patterson 1991: 122). With the help of "disaffected ethnic groups chafing under Inca rule," that is, support from outlying provinces, and the disgruntled and threatened ruling class in Cuzco, Huascar's half-brother Athuallpa was able to gain control, albeit only after a devastating civil war and ever so briefly (Conrad 1981: 20). The damage incurred on the state left it quite open to conquest.

Conrad and Demarest argue that factionalism was a built-in feature of the Inka state, and it was also its downfall (1984: 131, 134-139). The crucial ideological element in the transition to an empire, as they call the Inka state, was a reworking of the fundamental religious institution of ancestor worship into a practice of split inheritance, facilitating expansion (ibid: 181-182). The rise of two new classes that aided the upper class lifestyle-- the yana, full-time retainers, and the mitmaqkuna, colonists sent to resettle newly conquered areas and raise more crops for the state-- weakened fundamental Andean values. The yana disrupted the tradition of reciprocity between ruler and ruled and the mitmaqkuna challenged the old tenet of village self-sufficiency (ibid: 133, 184). These new trends highlight the inner contradictions of the state apparatus whereby the Inka sought to appropriate land (emulating their legendary founder, Manco Capac) and establish a (seemingly) mutually beneficial reciprocal relationship with the self-sufficient natives of the conquered area. As the amount of available land to appropriate easily diminished, the more conflicts arose between the panaqas, the provinces, and the current king. Civil unrest prevailed.

The Origin Myth

As was stated before, it seems the appropriation of land was in emulation of (or justified by) the legendary founder of Cuzco, Manco Capac. Gary Urton examines the origin myth centered on Pacariqtambo extensively in History of a Myth. There are, of course, various versions of the myth taken down by different Spanish chroniclers. John Howland Rowe states that the later Inka general creation myth provides an ingenious explanation for the multitude of local origin myths, both of the Inka and of other ethnic groups under Inka rule; he fathoms a deliberate attempt in the general creation myth to reconcile the discrepancies (1960: 411). This would therefore unify warring factions under an umbrella ideology (the cult of the Sun) and figurehead (the king, descendent of Manco Capac and thus, the Sun).

Urton boils down the many versions into one essential outline:

At a place to the south of Cuzco called Pacariqtambo, there is a mountain called Tampu T'oqo (window house) in which there are three windows, or caves. At the beginning of time, a group of four brothers and their four sisters- the ancestors of the Inkas- emerged from the central window. The principal figure was Manqo Qhapaq, the man who was destined to become the founder-king of the empire. One of the first acts of the eight ancestors was to organize the people who were living around Tampu T'oqo into ten groups, called ayllus. The full entourage of ancestral siblings and ayllus set off from Tampu T'oqo to the north in search of fertile land on which to build their imperial capital, Cuzco. Along the way, they stopped at several places to test the soil. At one of these stops, Manqo Qhapaq and of his sisters, Mama Oqllu, conceived a child whom they named Sinchi Ruq'a. After a period of wanderings filled with marvelous events the entourage arrived at a hill overlooking the valley of Cuzco. Recognizing by miraculous signs that this was their long-sought-after home, the Inkas descended from the mountain and took possession of the valley. (Urton 1990: 13-14)

Urton's analytic stance is from a provincial vantage rather than "Cuzco-centric." In this way he hopes to show how the provincial natives of the area used that tradition to their advantage, particularly when seeking tax exemptions under colonial rule (ibid: 14-15).

Urton interprets the myth to be profoundly concerned with geopolitical boundaries, as the siblings move in a three-part journey. At the end point of each stage in their journey, he observes that one of the ancestral brothers was separated from the group (Urton 1990: 121). He states that the death or transformation of each brother symbolizes a "concretization" and "consecration" of divisions within the territory between Pacariqtambo and Cuzco (ibid). He continues in this vein by discussing "border people" and the contradictions of a ruling class claiming descent from outsiders while simultaneously subjugating those outside Cuzco's borders (ibid: 123).

Catherine Julien uses Urton's analysis for a slightly different effect. Urton ultimately concludes that the Pacariqtambo myth probably does represent an old tradition of origin in pre-Hispanic times because the social and geopolitical categories to which the traditions referred remained basically whole until the end of the 1570s; the motivations for recounting the mythohistory, he states, are what changed radically (1990: 125). Julien, on the other hand, grasps onto his "theory of change" to conclude that the myth itself may have changed as Cuzco changed and as the Spanish took over (2000: 271). She suggests searching for a connection between the various versions of the myth (particularly on whether there were three or four Ayar brothers and possibly three Ayar sisters) and the social organization of Cuzco to see if the myth reflects change (ibid: 273). By sifting through various accounts by major Spanish chroniclers Sarmiento, Valboa, Morua, Betanzos, and Cobo, she eventually finds that the myths may have originally been the story of three brothers on relatively equal footing, but quickly changed to reflect the domination of Manco Capac and his descendants on the Cuzco area and eventually beyond (ibid: 275). She suggests the major expansionist leader Pachacuti is responsible for this change, reflecting a perspective on the past that supports the claims to power of the hegemony while systematically undermining the claims of others (ibid: 275, 293).

Patterson identifies several commonalities among the versions of the origin myth that follow this theme of encroachment. They are five-fold: first, the Cuzco valley was inhabited by small relatively autonomous communities of farmers and herders; second, the Inkas saw themselves as outsiders who came to Cuzco to live among, subdue, and civilize the native communities; third, they viewed themselves as an integral part of a wider social entity that included other communities in Cuzco and its surroundings; fourth, there were clearly defined spheres of production for each gender; and fifth, they acknowledged the presence of state-based societies and indicate the imperial organization of the recent and short-lived Inka state, remaining silent on processes involved in the fall of previous states (Patterson 1991: 48-51). This enhances Urton and Julien's interpretations by taking on the idea of geopolitical boundaries and highlighting the theme of outsiders appropriating land and situating themselves in dominant positions over the natives of that land. Patterson seems to lament that both the Inka and Spanish states "rewarded the denial of kinship," as the ruling Inka class claimed descent from outsiders, and as some kurakas followed suite, to justify extorting surplus from their subjects (Patterson 1991: 161).

Conclusion
Status in Inka society was intimately connected to a lineage reaching back to its mythical foundations. As Julien argues, the variations of the Pacariqtambo myth imply changes to the story that may go beyond the expected mutations of orally transmitted stories. If the focus of the story shifts from three brothers and three (or four) sisters to Manco Capac, glorified in the foreground with his three brothers and four sisters playing supporting roles, it could very well parallel a change in power dynamics from viciously competitive but essentially equal kinship groups in neighboring regions to a group of still-competitive kinship groups led under a single leader and unified by a state ideology, working together to increase their power and wealth by subjugating and assimilating other groups that do not claim similar origins. Indeed, claims of descent seem essential in justifying subjugation and extortion of surplus. Therefore, as the political sphere expanded to encompass more villages and more regions forming a pan-Andean complex, motivations for transmitting the origin myth were bound to change. Changes in motivation imply new perspectives and new perspectives eventually alter content. Though it may be near impossible to ever retrieve an "original" version of the origin myth, the various lenses through which we can view the body of texts (supplemented by a growing number of archaeological studies attempting to verify dynastic information through architectural and ceramic styles) certainly give an insight into Inka society (Julien 2000: 8). That insight is crucial to its understanding.

Work Cited

Conrad, Geoffrey W. (1981) "Cultural Materialism, Split Inheritance, and the Expansion of Ancient Peruvian Empires." American Antiquity, 46 (3-26).

Conrad and Demarest. (1984) Religion and Empire: the dynamics of Aztec and Inca expansionism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gose, Peter (1993) "Segmentary State Formation and the Ritual Control of Water Under the Incas." Comparative Studies in Society and History, 35 (480-514).

------------ (1996) "Oracles, Divine Kingship, and Political Representation in the Inka State." Ethnohistory, 43 (1-32).

Julien, Catherine J. (2000) Reading Inca History. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.

Kendall, Ann (1973). Everyday Life of the Incas. London: B.T. Batsford Ltd.

Patterson, Thomas C. (1991). The Inca Empire: The Formation and Disintegration of a Pre-Capitalist State. New York: Beng.

Rostworowski de Diez Canseco, Maria (1960) "Succession, Cooption to Kingship, and Royal Incest Among the Inca" Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 16 (417- 427).

Rowe, John Howland (1960). "Creator Worship Among the Inca" in Culture in History, ed. Stanley Diamond, New York: Columbia University Press.

Urton, Gary (1990). History of a Myth: Pacariqtambo and the Origin of the Inkas. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Back