Pachacuti Founds the Inca Empire
Pachacuti turned a small Andean kingdom into the largest empire in the Americas in about thirty years. The traditional account has him seizing power during a crisis: the Chanka confederation attacked Cusco around 1438, his father the Sapa Inca and the designated heir fled, and Pachacuti stayed, organised the defence and won — in the legend with stones on the battlefield turning into warriors. He took the throne and the name, which means something like earth-shaker or he who overturns the world. What he built was an administrative system rather than a set of conquests. Conquered lords were left in place if they submitted and their sons were taken to Cusco for education, populations that could not be trusted were moved wholesale to distant provinces as mitmaqkuna, and everyone owed labour rather than tribute in goods — the mit'a, worked on state lands, roads and buildings, and recorded on knotted cords. Some 40,000 kilometres of road were built or absorbed, with storehouses and relay runners. He rebuilt Cusco itself on a plan said to be shaped like a puma, raised the Coricancha temple, and is credited with Machu Picchu as a royal estate. His son Tupac Inca extended the empire to Ecuador and Chile. By 1525 it held perhaps ten to twelve million people over 4,000 kilometres. It had no writing, no wheeled transport and no money, and Pizarro took it in 1532 with 168 men, a civil war and smallpox. The empire's name for itself was Tawantinsuyu, the four regions together, and Inca was the title of its ruler rather than the name of a people. Almost everything we know about Pachacuti comes from oral traditions written down by Spaniards decades after the conquest, which is a warning about the details rather than the outline.
- Year: 1438 CE
- Category: Political
