Reading Inca History (review)

Catherine Julien has written an important book about how to read Inca history—a history we have come to assume was mostly told and only belatedly written down by others. She focuses on a methodology that she describes "as a kind of archaeology of the source materials" that is meant to help students explore colonial sources to identify and retrieve the native voice and vision. She applies this method to analyze Spanish chronicles that drew on Inca genres (life history and genealogy) for the themes and messages they contain. In other words, the technique is a way to find pathways to native history through the manipulations of Spanish and Hispanicized compilers and interpreters.

A central focus of the book is the meaning of the word capac, with which Julien begins and ends. It is used often to designate the leading dignitary of a group of affiliated people, as in Chimu Capac and Colla Capac. In addition to serving as a title of a hereditary ruler, Julien identifies capac as a quality connected to and responsible for the success of a dynastic group. This status, Julien writes, waxed with Inca power and waned as the dynasty lost control to European invaders.

Capac referred to a power that could be diluted or concentrated. The power of an individual was reinforced if he or she was the son or daughter of parents who both claimed descent from Manco Capac, usually accepted as the founder of the Inca line. It was diluted if only one, usually the father, was a direct patrilineal descendant of Manco Capac. "Capac" status was important because it legitimated, at least in part, claims to sovereignty, hence, the importance of marriage partners and the reason why the Incas kept detailed accounts of dynastic descent.

Julien's other findings are equally important. She shows that expansion began before the Chanca attack and Pachacuti's rise. She determines that the group identified as Hanan Cuzco was made up of descendants of Manco Capac who could trace their descent backward through both male and female lines. Those of Hurin Cuzco were identified as descendants of Manco Capac in the male line alone. Finally, her analysis of Inca origins shows how the earliest stories were the histories of the rise to power of the descent group of Manco Capac. They explained why he and his descendants were uniquely destined to rule.

Other parts of Julien's text merit more attention. In one place toward the end, she mentions Juan Ossio's critique of the "historicist" interpretation's lack of values. She wonders whether this is indeed possible. I think that it is possible, and her book brings us right up to the brink of doing so. For example, "capac" meant "very much more than king" (28). It also meant "rich." By extension, since rich was measured in terms of people, a ruler of capac status would be the king of all of a given group of people or even its creator (or heir to the creator). Both these definitions, put into a wider context and taking into account the symbolism of imperial inauguration ceremonies, point to a divine status, signaled by an energy or power that was inherited from generation to generation, going back to their mythical father, the sun. The candidate for Inca-ship inherited this energy and mandate only after having shown aptitude, especially on the battlefield, and being chosen by the ancestors through divination. It could be accumulated and concentrated; but it also could be lost, just as the sun's favor could be lost for inappropriate behavior (e.g., Huascar's iconoclasm). In another place, Julien too facilely accepts the hypothesis first advanced by John Rowe that Cristóbal Molina's lost history (1573) was the source for both Miguel Cabello Valboa's and MartÌn Morúa's narratives. Both include material not in the other. They undoubtedly used myriad sources, including...