Pizarro, after several failures, arrives in northern…
November 1532 CE
The conquistadors are excited by tales of the Incas' great wealth and bent on repeating the pattern of conquest and plunder that is becoming practically routine elsewhere in the New World.
The Incas never seem to appreciate the threat they face.
To them, of course, the Spaniards seem the exotics.
"To our Indian eyes," writes Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, the author of Nueva cronicay buen gobierno (New Chronicle and Good Government), "the Spaniards looked as if they were shrouded like corpses. Their faces were covered with wool, leaving only the eyes visible, and the caps which they wore resembled little red pots on top of their heads."
On November 15, 1532, Pizarro arrives in Cajamarca, the Inca's summer residence located in the Andean highlands of northern Peru, and insists on an audience with Atahualpa.
Guaman Poma says the Spaniards demanded that the Inca renounce his gods and accept a treaty with Spain.
He refused. "The Spaniards began to fire their muskets and charged upon the Indians, killing them like ants. At the sound of the explosions and the jingle of bells on the horses' harnesses, the shock of arms and the whole amazing novelty of their attackers' appearance, the Indians were terror-stricken. They were desperate to escape from being trampled by the horses, and in their headlong flight a lot of them were crushed to death."
Guaman Poma adds that countless "Indians" but only five Spaniards were killed, "and these few casualties were not caused by the Indians, who had at no time dared to attack the formidable strangers."
According to other accounts, the only Spanish casualty was Pizarro, who received a hand wound while trying to protect Atahualpa.
Pizarro's overwhelming victory at Cajamarca in which he not only captures Atahualpa, but devastates the Inca's army, estimated at between five thousand and six thousand warriors, deals a paralyzing and demoralizing blow to the empire, already weakened by civil war.
The superior military technology of the Spaniards—cavalry, cannon, and above all Toledo steel—has proved unbeatable against a force, however large, armed only with stone-age battle axes, slings, and cotton-padded armor.
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