Kevin Lane wrote:
CHAPTER THREE
AUTHORITY, RELIGION AND IDEOLOGY
How to rule an empire? Under the Incas, ultimate power lay with the sapa Inca (the unique Inca), a descendant of the Sun and a virtual god-in-being. In an age when the separation of religion and state across the world was non-existent, being a living god ensured that religious, social, political and economic authority ultimately rested on the Inca himself, in much the same way as in feudal Europe it had lain with supposedly god-anointed monarchs sanctioned by the clergy.”
However, given the size of the Inca state it would have been impossible for the Inca to personally control the minutiae of the empire, and as such they relied on a well-organized and oiled machinery of state that percolated from the capital and the Inca godhead to the provinces and villages throughout the empire. Inca rule was an admixture of both direct and indirect forms of government, and although most local people would rarely have seen an ‘Inca’ in the flesh, so to speak, their power encompassed all the nooks and crannies of the empire. In this sense, it is important to highlight that few people would have actually been ‘Inca’; most would have been allied parties that maintained their local identities and ascribed to Inca imperial ideals. In fact, the lineage of the Inca was much reduced, and although this was expanded in time through recourse to the elevation of certain personages to ‘Inca-hood’, their numbers always remained low in respect to the empire’s overall population.
In this chapter we will delve into how religion formed the basis around which to legitimize the Inca state – the state ideology – while also providing a link to long-lasting Andean traditions embedded in ancestor worship and animism. In so doing we will analyse how the empire was managed by close kin of the Inca and organized into ancestral households, known as panacas, which were then overseen by Inca nobles, conquered local leaders who had been elevated to the position of honorary Incas, or Incas-by-privilege, and cadres of local administrators. It is first important to understand Inca religion and where it came from, however. It is crucial to realize that large sections of Inca religion – and, by extension, ideology – were not innovations; rather, the Inca were the culmination of hundreds of years of religious development in the Andean highlands. While certain aspects of Inca religion were probably new, such as the Sun cult of the empire, the main underlying aspects of their belief system had its roots in Andean animist traditions, especially highland ones.
A number of issues arise in any consideration of a past culture’s religion. This is especially so in the case of the Andes, where no writing existed from the indigenous perspective at the moment of Spanish contact; quipu, a mnemonic ‘writing’ device on knotted strings, seems to have been unsuitable for long, elaborate narratives, rather coding short messages and tabulating amounts. The ethnohistoric accounts of Andean folklore, apart from some notable exceptions such as the mestizo and later indigenous chroniclers, were written by Spaniards usually on official engagements, such as tribute or tabulation visitas or officials engaged in the eradication of ‘heathen’ practices through the Extirpacíon de Idolatrías. Furthermore, the indigenous writers of mixed birth, or mestizos, born just after the Spanish conquest, were already somewhat removed from the events and rituals that they describe. Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, for instance, was writing at the end of his life, having left the Andes for Spain almost fifty years previously; he also wrote a highly partisan account. This bias arose from the fact that these learned mestizo chroniclers usually belonged to one or other of the Inca panacas, and thus embellished the accounts of their household and forefathers. In Garcilaso’s case this meant that he unduly praised the deeds of his panaca, that of Túpac Inca Yupanqui, the tenth Inca and his ancestor.
The Spanish accounts, such as those of Juan de Betanzos, Sarmiento de Gamboa, Cieza de León and Bernabé Cobo, similarly suffer from the prejudices and biases inherent to early colonial narratives. Many of these early authors did not know or understand what it was that they were describing; others pandered to a certain viewpoint or perspective that would have been welcomed or expected back in Spain. Sarmiento de Gamboa, for instance, was assigned by the authorities to investigate and discredit Inca claims to long-term suzerainty of large swathes of the Andean region. Nevertheless, for all their problems, early documentary sources remain a crucial tool for disentangling the intricate web of indigenous beliefs. This is particularly true of the set of documents produced as a consequence of the Extirpacíon de Idolatrías. Known as the bastard child of the Spanish Inquisition, the Extirpacíon de Idolatrías collected and collated indigenous accounts of ritual practices and religion.
In sum, while all these accounts – indigenous, mestizo, Creole and Spanish – present invaluable insights into the pre-Hispanic worldview underpinning Inca religion and politics in the Andes, they are flawed and must be taken with a veritable pinch of salt. …
… In so far as religion is concerned, three main themes permeated Andean highland and Inca beliefs: animism, oracular divination and ancestor worship. For a long time, animism was seen as synonymous with primitive religions, but more recently it has been interpreted as a way that certain peoples understood their world without the added appendage of it being more primitive or advanced. As such animism is understood as the interaction or relatedness between people and animals, or environments, emphasizing the real or imagined life force that animates them. In animistic religions, the ‘gods’, spirits or manifestations inhabit, and are represented actively in, the world around them – a veritable holistic living-in-the-world. In this sense, animism opposes the separation that exists between the physical and the metaphysical in many Western religions, such as Christianity.
In the animistic Andes, indigenous communities were an essential component of the living and lived-in environment and landscape; effectively, the whole world was alive and intimately interrelated. In many ways one could call it a ‘religion of space’, emphasizing the truly enveloping nature and reach of Andean religion. Even so, within this landscape approach to religion and animism there were aspects of the world that were more ‘alive’ than others: what the indigenous people termed camac from the Quechua root ‘to animate’, otherwise interpreted as ‘aliveness’. In an Andean world full of camac, the main wellsprings of this aliveness were huacas, and especially their ability to ‘talk’ and, crucially, to engage in oracular divination. While in the Andes all nature was animated, or potentially animated, a huaca was a particular spirit or deity revealed as an object, feature or even natural occurrence. These included such items as mummy bundles (dead ancestors wrapped in woven textiles), trees and naturally occurring free-standing rocks or outcrops, as well as mountains, hills, rivers, springs and all manner of other physical manifestations, including rain, hail, lightning, thunder and wind.
Veneration of these deities and spirits was widespread and conducted in sanctuaries, temples, mortuary monuments and natural locations such as lakes, spring heads and caves. All these locations were also known collectively as huacas. An effigy or idol was a common personification of a huaca, especially if this was of something that was impossible to venerate physically, such as lightning or thunder. Obviously, the term huaca also covered their representations, as they would be imbued with the spirits’ essence. These idols came in many shapes and sizes, from carved stone, wood, dough, ashes or precious minerals, to common rocks and stones (for instance, as conopas or illas – miniature carved representations of crops or animals). The concept of camac underscored the principal characteristic of a huaca, and through that the huaca’s ability to impart oracular wisdom. Indeed, the more powerful the huaca, concomitantly the more camac it had, and the greater the potential truth of its oracular prophecies or predestinations. Camac was a constantly shifting essence, therefore the relationship between people, huacas and the wider animated environment was complex and in constant flux. Interaction with these physical manifestations of Andean – and Inca – animism had to be constantly renegotiated through libation, offerings, consultation, worship or even violence, which could mean a huaca being a friend, kin or an outright enemy.
The power of a huaca derived directly from oracular pre-destination, its strength from the veracity of their divinations. Therefore, a huaca’s power could wax and wane depending on how this ability manifested itself. Conquered people’s huacas became subservient to the main huaca of the conqueror, so much so that the Incas would haul these provincial oracles back to Cuzco as spiritual hostages. In turn this allowed for the realignment of these huacas within the Cuzquenian ideology as well as subordinating them under the central Inca cult. When the huacas were eventually returned to their places of origin they helped perpetuate the ascendency of the imperial cult. Another particularly powerful expression of huaca and wider ideological subjugation can be seen in the capacocha ceremonies, where children from the provinces were sacrificed to, and by, the Inca. These children were selected by regional dignatories and would visit Cuzco with their huacas before being sacrificed as a ritual of affirmation of Inca power, forging a link between their homeland and the imperial capital. This ritual was also a forum whereby provincial huacas could negotiate with the principal Inca huacas residing in Cuzco.
One type of capacocha required children to be sacrificed on mountain summits, as seen with the Llullaillaco mummies found in Salta, Argentina. This type of sacrifice was particularly prevalent in the southern half of the empire. Capacochas could be undertaken for a variety of reasons, including prior to Inca armies marching out to battle. In a society underscored by ties of reciprocity, the capacocha was the ultimate gift-giving token between a ruler, or his representative, and the gods. …
… Andean and Inca spirituality included an elaborate cult to the dead known as mallquis, which generically included real and fictitious ancestral heroes that were often depicted as the founders of lineages, or extended households and communities known as ayllus. They were also often hailed as conquerors. Indeed, death was not the end of someone’s interaction with the living; rather, life and death in the Andes was a complex issue that comprised a series of stages embodying the transition between life and death. So much so that in death there was the possibility of a person becoming a good, locally based camaquen ancestor, or a bad, wandering shadow upani spirit that drifted aimlessly, preying on people. It was this camaquen ancestor that became in turn revered and oracular, in essence a minor huaca. …
… In summary, while it lasted, Inca administration, administrators and the wider population were held together by a binding, though nascent, central ideological ethos. On the back of a pan-Andean animistic tradition, with a strong ancestor-worship cult, the Incas enshrined the divinity of their leader within a state religion that venerated the Sun (Inti), his wife, the Moon (Mama Quilla) and their creator-god Viracocha. Rather than suppress the beliefs of conquered people, the Inca subsumed local gods, holy sites or objects (huacas) and sacred standing stones (huancas) into their own ever-growing cosmological pantheon. These were all physically linked by pilgrimage paths (ceques) that ultimately radiated from the Coricancha (the Sun temple in Cuzco) to encompass the whole empire. Specific feast-days tied local festivals to their central equivalents in Cuzco. One such case is the Yapaquiz, or sowing of the corn, festival, which took place in August and commenced with the Inca symbolically breaking the sod in Cuzco. Local priests would then imitate this Inca action throughout the land, initiating the sowing of one of the most important crops in the Andes and the Inca Empire.
Such religious organization bound the empire together under the Villac Umu, or High Priest of the Empire, answerable only to the sapa Inca himself. Another religious sub-class were the acllas, a group of specially chosen women recruited from communities around the empire that served the Inca and his nobles as second wives, or concubines, among other ritual functions. From their ranks, the most physically perfect were sometimes selected for the ritual sacrifice of the capacocha. The practice of these special human sacrifices (usually of children or teenagers) at special sites such as mountaintops or even alongside lakes helped to link communities (who often offered these sacrifices) to the empire, binding them together around common rites and rituals that helped reaffirm the state in a local context.
In the end, crisis overtook this stressed system, first with the attempted reforms of the twelfth Inca, Huascar, and subsequently in the civil war between him and his brother Atahualpa, ending with the coming of the Spanish conquistadors and the disruption brought in its wake.
The Source:
Kevin Lane, The Inca: Lost Civilizations, Reaktion Books 2022
Evolutions of social order from the earliest humans to the present day and future machine age.