Chinchaysuyu — The Northwestern Region of the Inca Empire

Chinchaysuyu (Quechua for “the region of the Chincha” or “the region of the cats/ocelots”) was the northwestern quadrant of Tawantinsuyu and, by most demographic and economic measures, the most important of the four suyus. It extended along the northern and central coast of Peru, through the northern highlands, and into the Andean portions of modern Ecuador and southern Colombia, encompassing a population of several million people drawn from at least a dozen major ethnic groups, including the Chimú, Moche, Chachapoya, Cajamarca, Pasto, and Cara. The principal trunk road of the empire ran through Chinchaysuyu from Cusco to Quito, a distance the chroniclers put at roughly 1,800 kilometers (though the routed highland road in modern reconstructions is closer to 3,500 to 4,000 kilometers), and the wealth of the region made it the principal economic engine of the late Inca state.

Territorial Extent and Provinces

The provinces that the early colonial sources group under Chinchaysuyu occupied a vast and ecologically diverse territory. From south to north, the principal provinces included the coastal valleys of Huaura, Chancay, and Lima; the northern coastal valleys of the Moche, Chicama, and Lambayeque; the highland basin of Cajamarca; the cloud-forest province of Chachapoyas; and the highland and coastal provinces of what is now Ecuador — Quito, Tumebamba (modern Cuenca), Cañar, Puruhá, and Pasto. The boundary between Chinchaysuyu and the western suyu Cuntisuyu is not recorded with precision in the colonial sources, but most scholars place it along the latitude of Chincha on the coast. The northern frontier, at the headwaters of the Cauca and Magdalena, marked the limit of effective Inca expansion in the early sixteenth century.

Brian Bauer and R. Alan Covey have estimated that Chinchaysuyu contained perhaps 35 to 40 of the empire’s 80 to 100 provinces, and that it supported a population of more than 6 million people on the eve of the Spanish conquest. Density of population was particularly high in the northern highlands of Ecuador, where the agricultural settlements of the Caranqui, Cayambe, and Otavalo supported populations that the Spanish chroniclers described as equivalent to small cities.

Historical Formation

The consolidation of Chinchaysuyu as an Inca region was a process that spanned more than a generation of imperial expansion. The southern and central Peruvian provinces were incorporated under the reign of Pachacuti and Topa Inca in the mid-fifteenth century, while the northern highland and coastal provinces — particularly the Kingdom of Chimor, the Kingdom of Cajamarca, and the Cara and Pasto polities of the Ecuadorian and Colombian Andes — were conquered under Topa Inca and especially Huayna Capac in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The conquest of the northern highlands, particularly the defeat of the Caranqui and the incorporation of Quito, was described in detail by the chroniclers Pedro Cieza de León and Garcilaso de la Vega.

The province of Chachapoyas, in the cloud forest east of the Marañón River, was incorporated by Huayna Capac in the 1470s. Its peoples supplied a large contingent of soldiers to the Inca armies and contained some of the best-preserved Inca-period archaeological sites outside of Cusco, including the cliff-tomb complex of Kuelap and the rock shelter of the Laguna de los Cóndores, where a famous collection of quipus was discovered in 1997.

Economy and Tribute

The economy of Chinchaysuyu was extraordinarily varied. The northern coast, before its conquest by the Inca, had been dominated by the Kingdom of Chimor, a coastal empire that controlled more than 1,000 kilometers of Pacific coastline. The Chimú had built an elaborate network of irrigation canals and cities, the most famous of which was the capital of Chan Chan, and the Inca incorporated this infrastructure directly into their provincial economy. Maize was the principal staple of the northern coast, and the imperial state continued to rely on Chimor for large quantities of maize, cotton textiles, and the products of coastal fisheries. Gold and silver, mined in the highlands of northern Ecuador and southern Colombia, were another major component of Chinchaysuyu’s tribute to Cusco.

The highland provinces of Chinchaysuyu produced potatoes, quinoa, oca, and other tubers, together with the products of llama and alpaca herding. The highland basins of Ecuador — particularly the region around Cuenca, Latacunga, and Riobamba — were among the most productive agricultural regions of the empire, and the imperial state invested heavily in road and terrace construction there. Garcilaso de la Vega, himself a descendant of Inca nobility, recorded that the royal estates of the northern highlands produced such abundance that the harvests of a single year could sustain the army for several months.

Administrative Centers

The administrative geography of Chinchaysuyu was organized around several major centers. The most important were:

Tumebamba (modern Cuenca, Ecuador), the regional capital of the southern Ecuadorian highlands, which the Inca rebuilt in the imperial style with polygonal masonry, ceremonial plazas, and a great palace. The site is now incorporated into the Pumapungo Museum.
Quito, the northern highland capital that the Inca rebuilt on the site of an older pre-Inca city. Garcilaso de la Vega reports that Huayna Capac spent long periods in Quito, and that the city became a second capital of the empire in the generation before the Spanish conquest.
Cajamarca, the highland city in northern Peru famous for its hot springs and for the later Spanish encounter with Atahualpa. The Inca had built a ceremonial complex there, of which the famous Ransom Room (Cuarto del Rescate) survives.

Roads, Tambos, and Connectivity

The road that connected Cusco to Quito through Chinchaysuyu was the longest continuous road segment in the pre-Columbian Americas. Leaving Cusco by way of the Anta plain and ascending the Vilcanota valley, the road crossed the puna at La Raya pass (4,313 meters) and descended into the basin of Lake Titicaca, then climbed again into the northern Peruvian highlands. Modern reconstructions of the routed highland road place the total distance closer to 3,500 to 4,000 kilometers (the chroniclers’ figure of roughly 1,800 to 2,000 kilometers is essentially a straight-line measurement), and tambos are documented at intervals of approximately 20 to 30 kilometers along the entire length.

Historical Significance

Chinchaysuyu was the most populous of the four suyus and the one in which Inca state power was most directly visible in monumental architecture, large-scale road construction, and dense agricultural terrace systems. The region was also the stage for the final consolidation of the Inca Empire under Huayna Capac, his death around 1527, and the civil war between his sons Atahualpa and Huáscar that immediately preceded the Spanish conquest. The capture of Atahualpa at Cajamarca in 1532 effectively ended the independent political life of Chinchaysuyu, although many of its provinces retained their identities into the colonial period and beyond.