The Social Composition of the Tahuantinsuyo
The elite
Andean society was very hierarchized. It included on the lower scale the hatun runa or common man and immediately above extended a range of lords.
During the government of Tupac Yupanqui, the sovereign ordered the division of the population into an incipient decimal system. The first grouping was of ten common men or chunga (ten) lead by one of them; ten of these small groups made up a pachaca (hundred individuals) with their own chief; ten of those pachacas formed a guaranga (thousand men) also with their lord.
Several guarangas of the same ethnic composition were united in a macroethnicity or great seņorio with its own myths of origin, traditions, customs and language. To these macroethnicities, the Spanish vaguely gave the name "provinces" without indicating their detailed geographic area. Therefore we know, for example, that there was the Lord of the seven guarangas of Cajamarca, the seventh was formed by an entire guaranga of mitimaes from different places and imposed and formed by the Incas. This system has the great advantage of permitting a permanent accounting of the population, necessary to know on one hand, the superpopulated places from which people can be taken out to form armies and, on the other hand, those which have a labor shortage and require mitimaes.. The accounting was carried out thanks to the quipus, those cords of different colors, lengths and knots that were managed by specialists called quipucamayos.
At the head of every macroethnicity was placed a Hatun Curaca or great lord who in turn governed the several lords in a guaranga (thousand) and thus lowered the chiefs on the social scale.
Now, in all of Tahuantinsuyo there were dual lords, one for the Upper half and the other for the Lower half. With the formation of the Inca State there arose contingent curacas, in general proteges or servants of the sovereign or persons whom the sovereign wanted to distinguish. An example of that kind was the two curacas of the little seņorio of Lima at the time of the Spanish foundation of the City of Kings. One was called Taulichusco and he belonged to the yana category or servant of Mama Vilo, a secondary wife of Huayna Capac; the second chief, Caxapaxa, settled in Cuzco and he was a yana of Huayna Capac. The Incas liked to have one or two dual chiefs in the capital to control the lords in case of rebellion.
These great signories or macroethnicities were destructured very early in order to create the system of colonial encomiendas. Moreover the lords who governed the large signories, the State needed a large number of dignitaries to make the government more nimble. It was a matter of administrators, judges, visiting inspectors, Apos or chiefs who went into the "provinces" choosing maidens for the Aclla huasi. Many of the personages who fulfilled some role in the administration of such a great State were members of the panacas or from the custodian ayllus .
A line apart was the quipicamayos or state accountants who carried in the quipus population numbers and also the amounts stored in the government warehouses. Given that in the Inca state the use of money was unknown, the warehouses full of manufactured and subsistence goods represented the wealth of the State. With these goods the Inca could show himself to be generous and the government was able to confront the rites of reciprocity.
Another important functionary was the overseer of the roads and bridges who controlled that the local people maintain the road network in good shape.
The priests
After the various lords and administrators came the important priests. There were many distinct categories; at the head, the supreme priest of the Sun was always a close relative of the Inca.
In the Andean sphere there was great enthusiasm for oracles and the future was predicted in many different ways. No important act was carried out without consulting with the calpa beforehand. It was a question of extracting the palpitating heart of a camelid and reading the auguries in it.
Avila's informants recount one augury about the worship of the god Pariacaca, an imposing snow peak in the province of Huarochiri, coming to an end. To honor this huaca a group of priests from Hanan Yauyos was established, dedicated to his cult. One of them exclaimed "What a misfortune! The auguries are ominous. Brothers, our father Pariacaca will be abandoned!"
Furious, the rest of them insulted him but a few days later they learned of the events of Cajamarca and the priests scattered and returned to their ayllus.
Among the priests there were those who spoke with the huacas and those who spoke with the dead. Also there were ones who predicted the future with maize kernels, coca leaves and hairy black spiders enclosed in hollow human bones, in order to find out the future they would open the bone tubes and the way the arachnids fell out and whether or not their legs broke foretold the future.
The merchants
In the Andes on the coast there was a social class dedicated to barter and exchange. These were called by the Spanish "Indian-style merchants" because they did not use money, although there were of different kinds of them.
In the seņorio of Chincha, these "Indian-style merchants" formed a separate class composed of six thousand people. They maintained exchanges in two directions, a northern route with rafts to Puerto Viejo and Manta in what is now Ecuador, and an overland route with herds of camelids to the altiplano and to Cuzco.
These traders took copper for marine exchanges with the north and on their return they brought mullu, red seashells (Spondylus) from the lukewarm waters of the northern seas. The importance of Spondylus was in being the favorite offering of the huacas and gods; they were used for propitiatory rites to bring rain. Archaeologists have found Spondylus from the epoch of Chavin de Huantar, that is to say, in much earlier times than the Late Intermediate with which we are dealing here.
But "merchants" prospered not only in Chincha. In the north there were two social categories. On one hand there was a barter of salted dried fish carried out by groups of fishermen specialized in this work. They exchanged in their own valley and the surplus they took to the contiguous highlands. The second level of "merchants" corresponded to the "lords" that possessed neither lands nor water-they affirmed this-they concerned themselves with maintaining exchanges that consisted of camelid fiber clothes, beads, cotton, beans, fish and other things. The more modest chiefs exchange salt.
The popular classes
The craftspeople
On the coast, the craftspeople had a special situation since they worked only at their craft. In the highlands, on the contrary, they did not stop tending to agriculture. The yunga or costal characteristic was specialized labor.With the passage of time, the government found it necessary to accede to a greater number of sumptuary objects, which required exclusive dedication of those who created them. For this reason, groups of ayllus of artisans began to be moved to Cuzco with the objective of satisfying state demands. The most sought after were the coastal silversmiths or goldsmiths and we find in Cuzco ayllus natives of Ica, Chincha, Pachacamac, Chimu and Huancavelica of Ecuador. Other required artisans were the potters and the painters of coastal mantles. In 1566 we find them in the northern part of the country requesting authorization to go from town to town fulfilling their functions.
The hatun runa
They were the common man. They made up the great mass of the Andean population. The majority performed agricultural tasks, whether in their fields or in those of the lords or those of the State. From among them were taken men to fulfill the warrior mita and different governmental works such as construction of roads, bridges and buildings for the government.
The fishermen
They lived on the seashore forming a distinct social class separate from farmers. They lived in their coves and ports in the vicinity of the coastal lakes that existed at that time in all the valleys. In the Andean sphere the beaches were not, like in Europe, open to all, but rather each ayllu had access to a zone of the littoral that was their own. Fishermen had no cultivable lands, a fact which did not prevent them from maintaining a close relationship with the farming towns, rather they found themselves subject to the great lords of the valleys.
The mitimaes
They were groups sent together with their families and their own ethnic chiefs to different places with the aim of fulfilling different objectives. Some defended the frontiers while others cultivated land a labor force was lacking, as did the fourteen thousand sent by Huayna Capac to Cochabamba. The great variety of tasks entrusted to the mitimaes could show confidence or be a distinction or be a punishment infringed on ethnicities that deserved punitive action. Finally, there were mitimaes with religious objectives to honor and serve important sanctuaries.
The yanas
The term slave cannot be used for the yanas since they made up a complex category within the Andean social context. On the contrary of what happened to the mitimaes, they lost all communication with their ayllus of origin. For the Inca, the yanas represented a work force that was not solicited through the ancestral customs of reciprocity. We have seen that there were curacas or lords with yana status, which would be servants directly under the Inca or his wife.
The mamacona
They were the feminine counterpart of the yanas. The young women were taken from their places of origin to live in the Aclla Huasi or House of Chosen Women. Their main task was to perform textile labors and prepare drinks for rites and ceremonies. There were several categories of them, the sisters or daughters of the Inca served the solar cult and enjoyed privileges; others were chosen for secondary wives of the sovereign and to be given to lords and chiefs with whom the Inca wanted to ingratiate himself. Finally there were singers, who animated ceremonies and parties.
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Administrative Centers
Due to great development and expansion, the Inca state needed administrative centers for their socioeconomic organization.
In these administrative centers rites and ceremonies of reciprocity were celebrated and the harvests from the so-called Inca's lands and products made by the various ethnicities were stored. Reciprocity was, in effect, the main gears and the basis of the organization of a country that did not know the use of money. In the beginning of the Inca state the then curaca of Cuzco met in the plaza of Aucaypata with the neighboring lords and after celebrating their meeting with festivities and public meals, the Inca offered them gifts and exchanged women to create kinship ties. Only after this delivery the Inca expressed his "plea" to the lords so they would perform various communal labors with their people or provide soldiers for the army. The ethnic chiefs were dealt with using the same procedure to get them to annex to the State without the necessity of going to war.
The system made possible the rapid growth and expansion of Tahuantinsuyo, but at the same time it imparted a certain fragility to the bases because all the ethnic lords had to do was accept the "plea" of another personage to annul any former reciprocity agreement. With the development of the sovereign's power, the Inca could no longer meet with the curacas in Cuzco and for that reason he had to build places all across the country for representation of the Inca with the Andean authorities. The centers were characterized by having a main plaza of exceptional dimensions and for numerous warehouses for storing products.
Huanuco Pampa
Huanuco Pampa, place studied by Craig Morris, is the best and largest example of Inca administrative centers. The site covers an area of 2 square Km, it possesses between three thousand five hundred and four thousand visible structures and was built on virgin land during the first half of the fifteenth century.
Its main plaza measures five hundred fifty meters by three hundred fifty meters, an enormous extension with an imposing ushnu (small stone structure situated in the middle of the plaza which served as a throne for the Inca during certain ceremonies). Streets go out from the plaza, the most important being the trunk route which united Cuzco with Quito and the road divided the city into halves, Hanan-upper- and Hurin-lower. Another two streets subdivide the whole into four sectors or barrios and they were related with the typical fractionation of space, indispensable for the Inca organizational system.
A characteristic of the administrative centers is the high number of warehouses for the conservation of supplies not necessarily originating from the zone, but rather brought from places sometimes very distant. Numerous documents from archives coming from the central coast indicate that products were transported sometimes to Cuzco and sometimes to Huanuco Pampa, where there are more than two thousand warehouses.
Other centers
The majority of administrative centers were situated in the mountains along the main road which joined Cuzco with Quito.
In the south, Inca builders opted to take advantage of existing buildings limiting themselves to remodeling them. Places like the sanctuary of the Sun on the island of Lake Titicaca and that of the Moon on the island of Coata were important religious centers and they also served as administrative centers like the Chamber of the Day in Pachacamac.
On the Chinchaysuyu route, Vilcas Huaman-in the present province of Cangallo, Ayacucho-was an important center.
In Ecuador, Tumibamba was, at its beginning, only one of those centers. However, it acquired importance during the government of Huayna Capac who because he was born there, transformed it into a city, and embellished it. Outstanding was the temple of Mullu Cancha whose walls were covered with red Spondylus shells of high religious value.
On the central coast, the Sanctuary of Pachacamac was another administrative center and, farther south, Tambo Colorado; in Humay, Pisco was built for the same purpose, but unfortunately it has not been as thoroughly investigated by archaeologists as it deserves because of its state of conservation.
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Economic Models
In treating economic models in prehispanic Peru, we must take into account that the country was not organized for the institution of the market and the use of money was unknown.
The Inca model has been qualified as redistributive due to the functions which the government itself fulfilled since a great part of the production was gathered up by the State, which in turn, distributed according to its obligations and its interest.
In societies dominated by redistribution, production and distribution of goods are organized based on a center-whether of a chief, a lord, a temple or a despot- the same one who gathers the products together, accumulates them and redistributes them to repay his agents, ensuring the maintenance and defense of common services and for preserving the social and political order. For many years Inca organization was praised and considered the materialization of a Utopia admired by Europeans. It was thought that storing products of all kinds had humanitarian objectives. This appreciation only demonstrates a lack of understanding of the economic mechanisms of the State.
A large part of redistribution was consumed by the reciprocity system, for the reason that the government saw itself obligated to constantly renew the great "donations" to the various signories, military chiefs, and to the huacas, among others.
The southern highlands
The beginnings of the study of highland economy have been investigated by John Murra and, according to him, to obtain products from different environments, the indigenous people made use of the system of enclaves. The highland nucleus controlled, by means of multiethnic colonies, zones situated in various microclimates distant from each other. We emphasize the word distant to indicate these enclaves were found at several days walk from the central nucleus, such as, for example, the enclaves of the altiplano dominated those situated on the coast or in the jungle. The problem that arises is how these enclaves began and through what documents we arrive at the conclusion that they are due to a previous conquest. On the southern coast it is possible that the inhabitants of the highlands did not find a yunga hegemony on the coast sufficiently powerful and organized to reject any attack from the people of the cordillera.
The central highlands
In ancient Peru the situation in the maritime cordillera was very different from that of the southern altiplano. Environmental conditions were totally different and made indigenous people seek their own model.
We obtained this information thanks to some documents about the zone of Canta, in the province of Lima from 1549 and 1532, when the indigenous organizational apparatus was still functioning. The terrain of the zone of Canta is quite steep and enjoys different climates within a relatively short distance, which allows the production of varied resources. We will explain its original organization which presents a new situation.
The Seņorio of Canta included eight ayllus. To take care of crops located at different ecological levels one or two days walking distance away, they planned rotational, seasonal communal work for the eight ayllus. When they were performing communal tasks, they moved from one place to another with the objective of carrying out determined agricultural jobs. This limited transhumance lead them to possess, in addition to their permanent towns, some communal hamlets temporarily inhabited while they were performing agricultural work in the zone, for example, when they went to the puna to sow and harvest a high altitude plant called maca (Lepidium meyenii) or to shear their herds of camelids. At another time of the year they went down to the chaupi yunga or middle-altitude coastal region to the areas planted in coca or maize. Also for making objects needed by the community they used this rotational system, such as for weaving, making pottery or ojotas (Andean footwear) or the preparation of charqui, dried and dehydrated meat.
The coastal economic model specialized labor
We have seen that highland economic specialization kept a necessary relationship with the environment characteristic of the Andean ravines and the plateau of the altiplano. It is natural that the different geography of the coast furnished a different economic model.
The yunga zone, in spite of its vast deserts, was a region rich in natural resources. Their main source of wellbeing came from the sea, a sea which was extraordinarily abundant in ichthyologic fauna.
Unlike other places in the world, at the beginning of civilization in ancient Peru there was no need for agriculture for the formation of a numerous population, not even for the creation of remarkable ceremonial centers (Mosley). These circumstances for development owing to the exploitation of resources from the sea marked subsequent coastal development.
Thus, since early times, two different activities were established on the coast, fishing and agriculture. Separate groups with their own chiefs formed and exchanges of products began between them. However, the fishermen, limited to their beaches, coves and coastal lakes, remained subordinate to the lords of the macroethnicities of yunga agriculturalists.
The first news of the extension of the coastal model of specialized labor following the division between fishermen and farmers, we have through the document from Chincha mentioned earlier in which it is indicated that the population of thirty thousand men is divided into ten thousand fishermen, twelve thousand farmers and six thousand merchants. The evolution of yunga society followed the same model and gave rise to a diversification of occupations. Thus we have dyers, salters, carpenters and cooks, among others, the most prestigious being the silversmiths. The Incas made use of the craftspeople of the coastal valleys by sending them to Cuzco to work for the State.
An example of yunga customs was the chicheros or brewers of drinks, especially reserved for the men of the north coast. In the highlands, the women prepared the drink for the family in their homes. For State needs, the mamaconas were the ones entrusted with production for religion and the Inca's ceremonies. On the other hand, on the coast it was a matter of a masculine craft requiring exclusive dedication.
There was the coastal prohibition against fulfilling a job that was not one's own, from there the need for constant exchanges arose on two levels, one internal within the seņorio and the other of the curacazgo which was then in the hands of the persons dedicated solely to the work of exchanges like the specialists from Chincha or the northern lords.
Exchanges were based on equivalences and the mercantilist idea of profit did not predominate. Gold only had an aesthetic value. They offered it to their gods, lords and priests for its beauty.
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Revenue-Yielding Resources of Tawantinsuyo
A country has to possess gold in the vaults of its banks to back up its currency, but in the Inca state money was not used and gold held only aesthetic value and served to adorn the temples, lords and gods.
The question commands our attention: What then was the patrimony which allowed Tahuantinsuyo to meet its needs, to dominate and control economic and political aspects? For us, there were three sources of revenue in the Inca state, to have an available labor force and to possess state lands and livestock. The result of these three tenures was shown by goods in accumulated in warehouses. These goods in the power of the State were the most valuable wealth since they signified that a series of advantages were available, the main one being the control of reciprocity, the key to the whole Andean system, which allowed them to maintain the gears of the regime. Without possessing great quantities of accumulated goods the State could not have met administrative needs or the constant "donations" demanded by reciprocity.
All the chronicles point out the Spanish astonishment at the immense quantity of warehouses crowded with goods available all over the territory.
The labor force
The enormous interest of the Inca state in having access to the work force is expressed in their populational computations preserved on the quipus and in the division of their inhabitants in the incipient decimal system of ten, hundred and thousand. It is incredible the way in which the State, despite not possessing writing was able to reap the benefits of statistics and bookkeepers in the persons of quipucamayos.
Murra postulated that the so-called "tribute" according to the Spanish conception, did not exist in the Inca state. The common man had a parcel of land and all its income belonged to him without his having to give up any of it. In the Andean sphere the equivalent of tribute was the work force or labor which a man provided in the mita or in turn, whether it is for his ayllu, the local curaca, the lord of the macroethniciy or the huacas or the State. It is a matter of the indigenous concept of the minka, the system of work in fulfillment of an obligation by substitution based on an agreement.
State lands
The possession of land was one of the most esteemed forms of wealth in the Andean sphere. The chroniclers indicate that lands were divided into lands of the Inca, of the Sun and of the hatun runa or common people. In reality it was a more complex situation.
The second source of power in the Inca state was the State lands, also called the Inca's lands. These lands, scattered all over Tahuantinsuyo, were cultivated by local people according to their turns or mita. The dimensions of the lands varied according to the size and population of the ayllus. With the development of the Inca state, their needs increased and there was greater demand for agricultural production and therefore for more lands.
In certain archival documents mention is made of how the government of each of last Incas increased the size of the state lands, which indicates a growth in the central power to be able to impose a surely unpopular measure on a par with a need of greater income for the government.
The Inca's private lands
The Cuzco panacas and the royal ayllus possessed their own lands on the outskirts of Cuzco. This situation left the sovereign without lands of his own, that is to say without a personal income or revenues which he could freely dispose of. For this reason arose the tenure of private lands for the last sovereigns.
In documents recently found in Cuzco, we know, for example, about Pachacutec's lands, obtained by him through the conquest of neighboring peoples. Thus, Machu Picchu belonged to this Inca. Other documents mention the properties of Viracocha Inca in Caquia and in Jaquijaguana; Pachacutec took Ollantay Tambo and Pisac for himself; Tupac Yupanqui made himself owner of Chinchero, Guaillabamba and Urcos; Huayna Capac took possession of Yucay and of Quispi Guanca and, finally, Huascar took Calca and Muyna for himself.
The coyas or queens had access to private property to a very small extent.
Lands of the Huacas or religion
In the Andean sphere it was a very old custom that each huaca or god, however small it was, have a piece of land assigned to it. The usufruct served above all for the preparation of drinks made on the basis of maize for the celebration of festivities, rites and celebrations.
The lands were worked by the local people, but in the case of the Sun, being of a larger dimension, his lands were worked by mitimaes or yanas.
Ayllu lands
Every ayllu possessed lands for cultivation, for pastures, and their waters. The chroniclers inform us that all common men possessed a tupu of land and with each child he was given an additional parcel. However, the tupu, a surface measure, had a relative size, since the quality of the land and the time it needed to lie fallow were taken into consideration. Therefore it could vary in size but it was enough to feed a couple.
State livestock
Camelids played a very important role in the development of Andean cultures. The two domesticated species were the (Lama glama) and the (Lama paco) and another two wild species were the vicuņa (Lama vicugna) and the guanaco (Lama guanicoe). The vicuņa had a highly valued silky fiber and to take advantage of it they carried out chacos, a kind of hunt in which they sheared the animals to later set them free in order not to diminish their number. The guanaco, on the other hand, was hunted and valued for its meat.
The camelid herds were extremely numerous. The animals were divided by color; there were white, black, brown and moromoro, as they called the ones of several colors. In the quipus, the cords that counted the flocks had the same color as the herds they were registering.
The possession of flocks and pastures followed the same divisions as the land. Each one of the highland ayllus had grasslands and animals at is disposal.
Also there were grasslands and animals belonging to local ethnic chiefs, to great lords of the macroethnicities, to the huacas, to the Sun and finally the moyas or pastures were consecrated to the flocks of the Sun and the State. The animals were taken from among them for the numerous sacrifices.
Camelids on the coast
Archeological work and archival documents show the presence of herds of camelids raised on the coast since long ago. In order to subsist they made use of the green season of the lomas and of algarrobo or carob (Prosopis chilensis) and guarango beans.
The state warehouses
The manual labor which worked on the lands and extensive pastures and which labored in the manufacture of a wide variety of objects arrived at a substantial production which served the redistribution on a state scale and covered the needs for manufactured products such as arms, rustic and fine clothes and foods. For their accounting, different devices were used such as small trunks, baskets, bundles and large earthen jars which facilitated accounts; the sums were noted in the quipus and a numerous personnel took care of the colcas. Coca leaf, for example, was preserved in baskets of a determined size, the same with charqui, the dehydrated meat of partridges and doves, which was kept in small reed trunks like dried fruits and shrimp.
Later, in spite of the civil wars between the Spaniards, the indigenous people continued filling the warehouses in reserve for any request of subsequent accounts. It is how La Gasca on entering Jauja pursuing Gonzalo Pizarro, was able to feed his troops with the provisions from the warehouses.
Craig Morris's study of the colcas of Huanuco Pampa is interesting since it brings up information about this Inca administrative center. The warehouses, more than two thousand of them, built in rows, followed the contours of the hills at a distance from the city. The storage demonstrates a lot of sophistication.
The structures were divided between circular and rectangular shapes, the circular ones generally being reserved for the preservation of maize. In six of them some carbonized kernels of maize were found. On the ground paved with stones were found fragments of great vessels which indicate the maize was stored shelled.
In three rectangular warehouses were found carbonized tubers. The form of storage differed from the technique used for grains since tubers were spread out on layers of straw lightly woven into small mats with fine small cords. Then several were tied together with a larger cord to form loose bales or bundles.
Also were found some channels lined with stones for ventilation which could be closed if desired. Food products keep better at high altitude which protected foods from funguses and insects. Covered vessels kept the contents free from the presence of rodents
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