Pizarro Meets Atahualpa — The First Encounter at Cajamarca

The first meeting between Francisco Pizarro and the Sapa Inca Atahualpa took place on the afternoon and evening of 16 November 1532, in the highland town of Cajamarca in the northern Peruvian Andes, at an altitude of about 2,750 meters. The encounter occurred in two stages: a Spanish embassy led by Hernando de Soto, sent to Atahualpa’s camp at the Baths of Pultumarca on the plain outside the city, and the subsequent visit of Atahualpa to the main square of Cajamarca, where the Spanish laid an ambush and seized the Sapa Inca in what is conventionally known as the Battle of Cajamarca. The meeting was the central event of the entire Spanish conquest of Peru, since it removed the only effective political authority in the northern half of the Inca Empire and opened the road to Cusco. The first meeting has been described in detail by Spanish eyewitnesses — among them Francisco de Xerez, the secretary of Pizarro, and Pedro Sancho, who wrote a Relación of the conquest — and by indigenous informants whose accounts were recorded by the chroniclers Miguel Cabello Balboa and Garcilaso de la Vega in the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

Background of the meeting

The civil war and the political situation

By the autumn of 1532 the Inca Empire had been in the throes of a civil war of succession for about three years. The conflict had broken out after the death of the Sapa Inca Huayna Capac, who had been carried off by an epidemic of smallpox around 1527, and the dispute was between Huayna Capac’s sons Huáscar and Atahualpa. Huáscar, the older of the two, was based in Cusco and represented the southern aristocracy; Atahualpa, the younger, was based in the northern city of Quito and commanded the loyalty of the armies that had fought the recent campaigns in the north. The war ended in 1532 with the defeat and capture of Huáscar at the battle of Quipaipán, near Cusco, and with the installation of Atahualpa as Sapa Inca at a court that he had established at Tomebamba (modern Cuenca, Ecuador) and later at Cajamarca in the northern Peruvian highlands.

Atahualpa had spent the summer and autumn of 1532 at Cajamarca, in the company of his principal generals, Quisquis and Chalcuchima, and an army that the Spanish chroniclers estimated at between 30,000 and 50,000 men. The army was encamped in the open on the plain outside the city, in the traditional Inca manner, and was preparing to descend on Cusco to take possession of the capital. The Spanish arrived in September 1532 and encamped on the outskirts of Cajamarca, aware that they could not defeat the Inca army in open battle. Pizarro had decided to invite Atahualpa to a personal meeting in the town, on the pretext of a friendly parley, and to seize him there.

The choice of Cajamarca

Cajamarca, situated in a highland basin of the northern Andes, was a city of some importance in the Inca provincial system. The Inca had rebuilt the city in the imperial style, with polygonal masonry and a great ceremonial plaza, and the famous Ransom Room — the building in which Atahualpa would later offer his ransom — dates from the Inca period. The basin of Cajamarca, watered by a series of hot springs, was one of the most productive agricultural regions of the northern highlands, and the Inca had established a major administrative and ceremonial center there. The choice of Cajamarca as the site of the meeting was made by Pizarro because the city offered a confined space in which a small Spanish force could use its horses and steel weapons to good effect against an enemy that had not been prepared for them.

The Spanish embassy to the Baths of Pultumarca

De Soto’s mission

On 14 November 1532 Pizarro sent a small embassy to Atahualpa’s camp, consisting of some fifteen to twenty horsemen under the command of the captain Hernando de Soto, one of the most experienced of the Spanish soldiers in Peru. The embassy was instructed to convey Pizarro’s greetings to Atahualpa, to confirm the meeting for the following day, and to gather intelligence on the size and disposition of the Inca army. The Spanish rode out to the plain outside the city and found Atahualpa in a small village called the Baths of Pultumarca, where the Inca was being treated for what appears to have been a skin disease, possibly the aftermath of smallpox.

De Soto’s account, as recorded by Xerez and by later chroniclers, reports that Atahualpa received the Spanish with curiosity and with composure. The Inca, who had been briefed about the Spanish by his scouts, was contemptuous of the small number of them, and he questioned de Soto closely about the purpose of the Spanish visit. De Soto delivered a short speech, prepared by Pizarro, in which he explained that the Spanish had come as friends, that they wished to convert the Inca to Christianity, and that they were the servants of a great lord, the Emperor Charles V, who was the ruler of the world. Atahualpa, who had been told that the Spanish were a small band of adventurers, was unimpressed, and he questioned de Soto about the Spanish manner of life, their marriages, and their weapons. The conversation was conducted through the interpreter Felipillo, an indigenous man from the northern coast who had been taken on board one of Pizarro’s ships and who had a very imperfect knowledge of Quechua.

Atahualpa’s response

Atahualpa, according to the Spanish accounts, replied that he was the ruler of a great empire, that he did not recognize the authority of the Spanish king, and that he would not become a Christian. He refused to come to the Spanish quarters, on the grounds that the Spanish were too few in number to warrant a personal visit. He agreed, however, to visit Cajamarca the following day, on the understanding that the meeting would be unarmed. The agreement was conveyed back to Pizarro, who now had to decide how to lay the ambush. The Spanish accounts report that Atahualpa, on his side, also prepared for the meeting. He left the main body of his army on the plain outside the city and entered Cajamarca the following day with a small retinue of perhaps 4,000 to 5,000 retainers, most of whom were unarmed. The rest of the army, perhaps 30,000 men, remained encamped outside the town.

The decision to enter Cajamarca with a small retinue, against the advice of his generals, has been variously interpreted. The Spanish accounts attribute it to the Inca’s contempt for the Spanish, but the indigenous accounts suggest that Atahualpa was not unaware of the Spanish advantage in horses and steel weapons, and that he entered the town in part to take the Spanish by surprise. The truth is uncertain, but the outcome — the seizure of the Sapa Inca — was the same.

The meeting in the main square of Cajamarca

The Spanish preparation

Pizarro, who had been informed by his scouts of the small Inca force that would accompany Atahualpa, arranged his men in three bodies of infantry in the buildings of the main square of Cajamarca, with the cavalry in reserve. The plan was to provoke a confrontation in the square and to use the surprise, the horses, and the firearms to seize Atahualpa. The Spanish force, which numbered perhaps 168 men with some 62 cavalry and a small number of arquebusiers among them, was distributed in three parties, one under Pizarro himself, one under his brother Hernando Pizarro, and one under Sebastián de Benalcázar. The cavalry, which had been held in reserve, was to charge out of a side street at the moment of confrontation.

The Spanish chaplain, Father Vicente de Valverde, advanced toward the Inca carrying a breviary and a crucifix, and through the interpreter Felipillo read aloud the Requerimiento, the standard Spanish document requiring non-Christians to acknowledge the authority of the Pope and the Spanish king. The text, drafted in 1513, was designed to provide a legal pretext for conquest; the symbolic gesture of handing him the breviary was understood, and Atahualpa rejected it. The Inca, who had been told that the breviary was the god of the Spanish, held the book up to his ear, listened to it, and threw it down on the ground, saying that he would not become a Christian. A scuffle broke out, and Pizarro, who had been watching for a signal, gave the order to attack.

The seizure of Atahualpa

The Spanish infantry, armed with steel swords, pikes, and a few arquebuses, charged the Inca retainers in the square; the cavalry, which had been held back, charged out of a side street. The Inca force, which was unprepared for cavalry and lacked effective weapons against steel, broke almost at once. By the Spanish accounts, several thousand Inca were killed in the square and in the immediate pursuit, and Atahualpa himself was seized and held prisoner in a house in the town. The Battle of Cajamarca is a striking example of the asymmetry of early modern European military technology, in which a small force of heavily armed and mounted soldiers was able to defeat an army perhaps twenty or thirty times as large.

The encounter was decisive in the longer history of the Inca Empire. With Atahualpa in Spanish hands, the political authority of the northern state collapsed. The army that had encamped outside the city withdrew to its base at Quito, and the generals Quisquis and Chalcuchima, who had remained at the Inca camp, were unable to mount an effective rescue. Atahualpa, who had been the victor in the civil war of 1529–1532, was now the prisoner of a small band of Spanish adventurers, and the history of the Inca civilization entered its final phase.