Page 212 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol V

warfare—pre-columbian south america 1989

north, the old Moche state revived as the expansive through voluntary conversion and indirect rule that, in
coastal empire of Chimor (or Chimú), based at the many cases, offered means of control other than military
metropolis of Chan Chan. Like earlier north coast poli- conquest. In the periods we call horizons, when large
ties, Chimor controlled the crucial maritime trade in parts of the area were well integrated ideologically,
Spondylus shell from Ecuador. whether or not this was achieved with the aid of military
In the Late Horizon (1476–1532 CE), the Inca state force, there was comparatively little warfare, except at the
expanded through a combination of diplomacy and mil- borders of the unified territories. In the intermediate peri-
itarism to create an empire stretching from Ecuador to ods, following the disintegration of such polities, there
central Chile. The military history of this expansion has was much more conflict between different local popula-
been reconstructed in some detail, thanks to native tions and ethnic groups. Conflicts often seem to have
Quechua historiography recorded by sixteenth-century involved rivalry over the control of strategic resources or
Spanish chroniclers and to archaeology. Over the course trade routes. The emergence of new power centers gen-
of less than a century, the Inca were able to assimilate or erally occurred on the periphery of previous polities, chal-
subdue hundreds of states, chiefdoms, and ethnic groups, lenging older centers and contributing to their decline.
including the old kingdoms of the Titicaca Basin, the Warfare, like the nonviolent practice of power it comple-
Chanka and Wanka polities of the Wari heartland, the mented, was always embedded in religious or symbolic
empire of Chimor, and finally even most of modern meanings and often had a ritual aspect, such as head-
Ecuador, the source of the prestigious Spondylus shell. hunting and human sacrifice.This is evident even in the
Further expansion failed when Inca armies faced simpler Inca period, for instance from accounts of divination and
but warlike societies in unfavorable environments in sacrifice in preparation for battle, and from reports that
northern Ecuador, the eastern lowlands, Argentina the skins of defeated enemies (e.g., defiant Kañari war-
(Chiriguano), and central Chile (Mapuche). On the fron- lords from Ecuador or rebellious lords from the Titicaca
tier in northern Ecuador, the Inca used fortresses from area) could be fashioned into drums played at festivals,
earlier polities in the area, while on the southeast frontier and their skulls into drinking cups.The obsession with rit-
in Argentina they built a series of new fortresses to stave ualized warfare, human sacrifice, and cannibalism that
off attacks from the Chaco tribes.When Francisco Pizarro has been attributed to the Chibcha-speaking chiefdoms of
(c. 1475–1541) and his 260 Spanish soldiers arrived, the the Colombian Andes probably had much in common
Inca empire was divided by a civil war between two sons with early instances of theocratic warfare in the central
of the former emperor, of which the victorious Atawallpa, Andes.
destined to be executed by Pizarro in 1533, was based at
Quito. Building on native narratives, the chroniclers’ Amazonia
accounts of this civil war, battle by battle, are the most Our relative lack of information on pre-Columbian war-
detailed description of pre-Columbian warfare in exis- fare in Amazonia is due partly to the very much poorer
tence. Recruitment to Inca armies was by a general draft archaeological record, owing to the tropical climate and
apparently aligned with the decimal administrative sys- the dominance of organic materials in the material cul-
tem, which divided the population into groups of ten, ture of Amazonian groups, and partly to the fact that the
one hundred, and so on.Weapons included slings, bows social fabric of the region was fundamentally transformed
and arrows, bolas, spears, spear-throwers, lances, axes, by European epidemics for over a century before the
and bludgeons. Armor and shields were also used. arrival of potential chroniclers. The little information
Some general conclusions on the occurrence of warfare that we have includes archaeological discoveries of defen-
in the pre-Columbian Andes can be drawn.There seems sive ditches around villages on the Río Negro and the
to have been a distinctly Andean tradition of diplomacy upper Xingú rivers, and the eyewitness account, written