The Inca and the Europeans
Francisco Pizarro’s first scouting trip to Peru was in 1525. He got as far as present-day Tumbes in northern Peru, saw and appropriated some llamas and some gold, and took or was given as food two young boys, one later named Martinillo and the other Felipillo or Francisquillo. They became interpreters, even though they were not native speakers of Quechua but had learned it as a second language, as all the inhabitants of the Inca empire were required to do. The death of Atahualpa is sometimes attributed to calculated mistranslation by Felipillo, who is said to have lusted after one of Atahualpa’s wives. There are a few culinary points of interest in the reports on the villages seen on this first voyage.
It is very flat country, they live by irrigation, it does not rain here. They raise many llamas, they raise many ducks and rabbits [cuy?]. The meat which they eat they do not roast or cook, and the fish they make into pieces and dry in the sun, and the same thing with the meat. They do not eat bread as we do, the maize they eat toasted and cooked, and that is their bread. They make wine in great quantities from this maize. (Ruiz de Arce in Biblioteca Peruana 1968:420)
Pizarro returned to Spain in 1528 to seek official appointments for himself and for his companion in arms, Diego de Almagro. He returned governor-designate and a knight of Santiago, but there were no such plums for Almagro. If the struggle for the throne between Atahualpa and Huascar caused destructive divisions among the Inca, the absolute power that Charles V gave Francisco Pizarro was to be equally damaging, as it led to protracted infighting among the Europeans and inflicted another dose of bloodshed on the Indians.
By the time Pizarro got back to Peru, in 1532, Huaina Capac was five years dead and the succession was being fought over. He stopped at an island off the north coast and found five extremely fat llamas, so fat that they couldn’t multiply, according to his half-brother Pedro. Pedro also mentions seeing a storehouse full of dried lizards, which he was told was part of the tribute that was going to Cuzco. These lizards, and the techniques for catching, drying, and eating them, have been described with some care by a modern ethnographer (Holmberg 1957). Dicrodon holmbergi, the lizard, lives in holes in the ground under guarango trees, and the fruit of these trees is the only thing that the lizard eats. The tree is also called algarroba, mesquite, or Prosopis juliflora, and human beings eat the pods as well. From April to November the lizards hibernate, and we presume that the tree has no ripe fruit. As the fruit matures, the lizards emerge from their holes and sometimes even climb the trees to get it. The lizards are trapped, and their front legs and backs are broken to paralyze them. They are then thrown on the embers of a fire and scorched until their scaly skins may be removed by hand. Once skinned, they are buried in a shallow depression in the heated sand and covered with hot ashes. Ten minutes of cooking, followed by cooling off and gutting, makes a product that may be stored for a year or consumed immediately. Holmberg said that it could be eaten in seviche, the dish of fish marinated in lime juice, as well as in soups, stews, and omelets.
As the Europeans went on they were twice visited by Apoo, the Inca lord. The second time he brought another gift, but to figure out what it was gives an example of the difficulties of culinary history. Pedro Pizarro laconically records “some dried ducks” and goes on to tell how Apoo asked to see the Europeans’ swords, counted the men and the horses during the banter, and returned to his leader to report 190 men, thieves and braggarts, nothing to fear.
Juan de Betanzos (1987), a European chronicler who was married to a noble Inca woman and whose narrative in its complete version was only recently discovered, tells us that Apoo brought back a great deal more than military information. Atahualpa was not only interested in weapons, he wanted to know what manner of men the strangers were. And the first questions that he asked to elicit this knowledge were about their food. Did they eat their meat raw or cooked, he asked? Atahualpa was told that sometimes the strangers ate it cooked in their ollas and very well done, and sometimes they ate it roasted, and also very well done. The next question was, Did they eat human flesh? Apoo and his companions were cautious. They had not seen any human flesh consumed, but they had seen llamas, alpacas, ducks, pigeons, and deer being eaten, as well as some maize tortillas. The latter are not described more completely, and we are left wondering if they were Mexican-type tortillas, a hitherto unknown breadstuff from the north coast of Peru, or some other maize product.
Apoo’s gifts are mentioned by other sources besides Pedro Pizarro, but they are all mutually inconsistent. Zarate (1968: 79) says that there were two loads of dried geese and that they were used as incense by the lords of the country. Cieza de León (Cantù 1979: 241) says that the gift consisted of some little baskets of fruit, ten or twelve ducks badly roasted with the feathers on, and three or four quarters of “sheep,” so roasted that there was no goodness in them. Diego de Trujillo says, “And the present was some ducks dried and full of wool, which looked like decoys to kill birds; and asking him what this was he said—Atahualpa said that this ought to be done with your hides, if you do not return what you have taken from this country” (Trujillo 1948: 55). Francisco de Xerez (1988, 6: 732), an eyewitness, said that dried ducks were made into powder and then used as seasoning by the lords of the country. What are we to make of this? Possibly the ducks were used for all of the above. We have descriptions of llama meat being burned as incense; there is no reason why duck meat could not have been used in the same way. After reading how the dried lizards were used, crumbling dried ducks into stews and soups seems plausible. We do not know if the dried ducks could also have been a threat or an insult, telling the Europeans that they were dead ducks, as it were.
Atahualpa sent more messengers with llamas, cooked llama meat, maize bread, and vessels of chicha. The Europeans directed their march toward Cajamarca, where he was reported to be, and investigated some storehouses that they found along the way. They were full of footwear, loaves of salt, and a food that looked like dried meatballs, possibly the dried fruit of cayua (Cyclanthera pedata) stuffed with meat; all stored to supply the army.
The town now named Cajamarca was empty, except for the women who made the chicha and the guards guarding them. Atahualpa and his court were at the baths of Cajamarca, some distance away, and Francisco Pizarro sent his brother Hernando and some other men to coax him to Cajamarca. Atahualpa said that he was fasting, but on the next day, after he had drunk, he would come. The Europeans were offered food, which they refused, saying that they were also fasting. Offered drink, some of them accepted. The Inca, however, was interested in something else.
The Inca told Unan Chullo to bring the chicha in vessels of fine gold, because he wanted to see if the Spaniards, as he had been told, would take the vessels because they were of gold, he had been told that they were fond of gold, and the chicha was soon gotten and given to the Spaniards, who took the golden vessels in their hands, and some of them fearing that some poison might be given to them in the chicha did not wish to drink it, and others drank it without fear, and after they drank they returned the vessels to the Indians who had given them to them. (Betanzos 1987: 270)
On the next day, the Europeans concealed themselves around the square of Cajamarca and awaited the arrival of Atahualpa. They had a long wait. Atahualpa had finished his fast, and having been told that the Europeans were wetting themselves from fear, he proceeded to have a meal with his entourage.
These lords had the custom of eating in the mornings, as had all the natives of this kingdom; the lords, after having eaten as I have said, spent all the day until nightfall drinking, when they had a very light supper, while the poor Indians spent the time working. (Pizarro 1978:36)
Juan de Betanzos (1987: 275–276) presents another version of Atahualpa’s last repast as a free man. According to Betanzos the Inca awoke late, after a night of consultations with his military commanders. He asked for food and then for drink, and drank so much that he was drunk. He was in this condition when a messenger came from Cajamarca who told him, “Capa Inca, you must know that those people have gotten into the houses of your father and divided everything among them.” The Inca set out, and he had not gone half a league when another messenger came. “Capa Inca, you must know that those people have entered the houses of the sun, and everything there they have divided between them.” The procession continued, with frequent pauses for the Inca to drink, while the dancers danced and the drummers and musicians played. Halfway to Cajamarca a third messenger met them. “Capa Inca, you must know that those people have entered your house and taken everything there, and they have also taken your women and raped them.” This messenger suffered the usual fate of those bringing bad news. The Inca ordered his head cut off.
Once in Cajamarca, the Inca all crowded into the square. The religious of the expedition, Vincente de Valverde, Bible or breviary in hand, went out to convert the pagan monarch. He gave a long harangue, and when Atahualpa asked through the interpreter where he had heard all that, handed him the book. The Inca had no writing, only their accounts on knotted cords, and one story has Atahualpa listening to the book and throwing it down when it said nothing to him. Vincente de Valverde considered this sacrilege and gave a signal to the concealed Europeans for the slaughter to begin. An Inca account conflates the visit and ceremonial toasting at the baths of Cajamarca with the throwing of the book in the square of Cajamarca and says that the Europeans had spilled some of the drink that they had been offered, and this angered Atahualpa so much that he threw away the book.
Whatever precipitated the attack, Atahualpa was tipped out of his golden litter and captured by Francisco Pizarro, who put his left hand on him and said “Santiago.” Saint James, who had earned the epithet of matamoros, or killer of Moors, during the battles to expel the Moors from Spain, acquired a new role in the New World, that of Santiago mataindios, or Indian slayer. The rest of the story of the captivity—the room filled with silver and gold as ransom, and the death of Atahualpa, who as a convert was granted the privilege of being garroted rather than burned at the stake—is too well known to need repeating here.
Before the final act of the tragedy, however, there was a brief period of coexistence. The captive Atahualpa learned to play chess, and Pedro Pizarro observed some things of interest.
The ladies already mentioned brought him the food, and put it before him on some little green reeds, very small and thin. This lord was sitting on a wooden stool, little more than a palma high. This stool was made of very fine painted wood, it was always covered with a very fine cloth, even when he was sitting on it. The reeds above mentioned were always before him when he wished to eat, and there they put all the dishes of gold and silver and clay, and that which appealed to him he signaled to be brought to him, and one of the ladies held it in her hand while he ate. Eating in this manner, while I was present, lifting a slice of food to his mouth, and spilling a drop on the clothes he had on, he gave his hand to the female Indian, arose, and went into his room to change his clothes. (Pizarro 1978: 67)
Pedro Pizarro later discovered that everything Atahualpa had touched or worn was stored in a special warehouse. This included the green reeds put before his feet, the bones of the birds and animals that he had eaten, and the cobs of maize that he had held in his hands. Everything thus accumulated was burned every year, and the wind blew the ashes away so that no one could touch them.
The captivity of Atahualpa. From Guaman Poma de Ayala 1936: 387.
Martín de Murua (1962, 2: 30), who was not an eyewitness, said that all the food was chopped so fine when it was cooked that there was no need of carvers. This makes the presence of bones and maize cobs in Atahualpa’s trash hard to explain. Murua also contradicts the story of the Spaniards being given chicha in golden goblets, saying that the Inca did not drink from gold and silver but from wooden vessels called keros, which had medicinal and poison-preventing qualities. If they did use gold and silver, it was only for pomp and show, and after use the gold and silver vessels were melted down, it being considered wretched and despicable to drink out of the same vessel twice. Murua says that the wives did not cook for their husbands, but this may have been a regional difference.
They [highlanders] ate, seated on their low stools, which they always carried with them, many foods cooked in many different ways, being served by their own wives, which the lords of the coast did not do, having their cooks and servants for that. For bread the people of the highlands ate maize kernels toasted and cooked, and they drank chicha with other dishes and drinks that their wives made. (Las Casas 1958:416)
According to Murua the cooking for royalty was done in the establishments that the Spaniards called “nunneries.” There were three grades of these nunneries, where girls selected from the general population could spend anything from a short period to the rest of their lives. The virgins of the sun were the most exalted. Murua says that they made excellent chicha, superior to that drunk by the Inca and only used for sacrifice. These ladies were so refined that when they left their house they carried a piece of fruit with them to nourish themselves on the scent. A disagreeable odor might prove fatal. The cooks of the Inca were earthier. They worked in the garden plots, made many different kinds of chicha for the Inca to drink and to offer as sacrifice, and cooked the other food. Murua says they themselves ate “meat cooked with nettles” (Murua 1962, 2: 75).
It is hard to ascertain whether the Inca court was fed from the general warehouses or if there was a separate supply system. Garcilaso de la Vega thought that the Inca, at least as far as meat was concerned, just took his share from the communal hunts.
The expenditure on food of the royal house was very great, especially the expense of the meat, because the house of the Inca provided it for all those of the blood royal who resided at the court, and they did the same wherever the person of the king might be. Maize, which was the bread they ate, was not consumed in such quantity, except for the servants of the royal house, because those outside were given enough to support their establishments. Game like deer . . . guanacos or vicuñas, was not killed especially for the royal house or any other lord, except for birds, because the animals were reserved for the regularly scheduled hunts . . . and then they divided the meat and the wool among the poor and the rich. The drink consumed in the house of the Inca was in such quantity that there was no keeping track of it. The main privilege of all those who came to serve the Inca was to be given drink, whether they be chiefs or not, whether they came to visit him, or bring tribute for peace or war, it is incredible how much was spent on it. (Garcilaso de la Vega 1945, 2:14)
Pedro Pizarro claimed that the lords had a special slaughterhouse where the cattle of the country were killed daily and their meat divided among the nobility. Guaman Poma de Ayala, an Indian who wrote a long illustrated book on the Inca early in the seventeenth century, also seemed to think that the Inca got special supplies, not just a share of the pooled goods.
The Inca . . . ate selected maize which is capya utco sara, and papas manay [early potatoes], . . . and llama called white cuyro, and chiche [tiny fish], white cuy, and much fruit and ducks, and very smooth chicha which took a month to mature and was called yamor aca. And he ate other things which the Indians were not to touch on pain of death. (Guaman Poma de Ayala 1980, 1: 306)
Whoever cooked for the Inca and however the food supply was organized, the household did not come to a halt with the Inca’s death. Although many of the household staff accompanied their dead lord or lady to the underworld, they must have been replaced, because the important dead were mummified and continued their daily routines in this condition. They were cooked for, and the meals either were burned before the mummies or were eaten by the attendants after being shown to the mummies. Chicha was made for them, so that the dead could drink with the dead or with the living. The immense expense of supporting the households of an ever-increasing number of revered dead has led some modern authors to speculate that the Inca state would have shortly collapsed of its own accord because of this drain on the economy.
The sources are unsatisfactory as to what actually constituted a meal for the Inca and the nobility. A sacrifice offered, presumably daily, by the virgins of the sun might be the equivalent of the Christian bread and wine. At noon every nun took a plate of maize, a plate of meat, and a jar of chicha and offered it to the image in the middle of the patio. The maize and the meat were burned in a great silver brazier afterward, and the chicha was poured into the adjacent fountain. Maize and meat were the food of the gods, and bones and maize cobs were the remnants of Atahualpa’s meal. The meals of the poor would have left little to be stored in a ceremonial warehouse.
The food of the poor was roots and greens, but the actual roots and greens eaten varied according to the residence of the eater. Guaman Poma de Ayala (1980, 1:55) gives two lists of edibles, one for the highlands and one for the lowlands. The highland list includes six kinds of maize, three kinds of potatoes, oca, ulluco, and añu, both fresh and preserved, quinoa and lupines, three kinds of mushrooms, and at least nine named greens. For the occasional meat he gives all four camelids, two kinds of deer, cuy, ducks, “partridges,” water flies, fish, shrimp, and crabs, presumably from fresh water or brought fresh or dried from the coast. For the lowlands he starts with maize of the hot country, sweet potatoes, racacha, pumpkins, achira, llacon, yuca (sweet manioc), lima beans, cayua (Cyclanthera pedata), peanuts, jicama, four kinds of chiles, pepinos, lucumas, pacayes, and avocados, plus a catchall category for other herbs and small stuff. He does not mention any meat or fish. According to him the diet of the under-thirties was restricted, with fat, honey, vinegar, chile, and certain delicacies being prohibited.
There were inspectors who visited all the houses to make sure that everybody was properly provided for. Not only did they have to have a stock of dried greens and other dried plants, but they were also required to possess a battery of clay and wooden vessels for food preparation and storage.
Whatever fish and meat was available in both the highlands and the lowlands was often eaten raw or dried. Zarate recorded it on the coast: “They eat fish and flesh always raw, and maize either boiled or toasted” (Zarate 1968: 80). Fernández de Oviedo repeats this for the highlands: “The highland people often eat meat raw, especially when they find themselves in a place where they can’t have a fire” (Fernández de Oviedo 1959, 5:106).
The nobility ate more meat; the plebeians ate more green stuff. The consumption of maize seems to have taken place at all social levels. What is difficult to explain is the sparse mention of the potato and the lack of agricultural rituals connected with it. A clue to this anomalous situation might be found in some archaeological work done in the upper Mantaro valley (Earle et al. 1987). There the excavators found that in the Wanka II period, A.D. 1300 to 1470, the population lived in compact settlements high up in the mountains. Carbon pathway analysis of their bones shows that they ate mostly tubers and Chenopodium, that is to say quinoa. After the Inca conquest they were moved down into the valley, where maize would grow more successfully. The bones, especially those of the males, show that maize became a major portion of their diet, presumably in the form of chicha. Not even carbon pathway analysis can tell us the geopolitical considerations that led the Inca to resettle the population in this manner and presumably downplay the potato.
A large portion of the maize was consumed as chicha. The rest was eaten in many different ways, all of which the Spaniards called pan, bread in the broadest sense of the word, meaning the staple carbohydrate. Nixtamalization was unknown. Garcilaso de la Vega, the son of a Spanish soldier and an Inca princess, describes his early diet in the years immediately following the conquest:
Until I was nine or ten years old I lived on sara, which is maize. The bread made of it has three names, sanco was the bread for sacrifices, huminta was for feasts and as a treat, tanta . . . was the daily bread; the toasted maize was called camcha . . . and the cooked sara was called muti. (Garcilaso de la Vega 1945, 2:177)
Cobo gives us much more material, but it must be remembered that he wrote later. There is some suspicion that the huminta is not a native Peruvian dish but an offspring of the Mexican tamale.
After the maize is dry the Indians boil it in water, and so cooked it is called muti, and is the daily bread of the plebeians. Sometimes when it is half-cooked they dry it in the sun to keep as we do biscuits, and they call that cocopa, and put it in their stews. They also eat it toasted [which is called in Quechua camcha and hancca], and the Indians who go traveling take no other supplies than a little bag of it, or flour made from it, which they eat dissolved in cold water, and it serves them as food and drink. This flour of toasted maize is called pito. (Cobo 1890–1893, 1: 343)
There is a certain kind of maize that they toast until it bursts, and they call it pisancalla, and they use it as a snack and a confection. Aside from the tortillas and cakes, which they make of maize flour, and which they call tanta, as a delicacy they make some dumplings of this flour which they put in the pot and call huminta . . . In ancient times their soups and stews were very few: of whole maize with some greens and chile they make a dish called motepatasca, cooking the maize until it bursts. (Cobo 1890–1893, 4:173)
Cobo gives us the best description of the Inca kitchen. The maize was ground by putting it on a flat stone slab and then rocking another stone shaped like a half-moon over it. A mortar and pestle took care of grinding lesser quantities of smaller things. Every house had a tiny clay stove with a little opening for stoking the fire and two or three holes where the pots could be put to heat. It was extremely economical of fuel, which made it suitable for this fuel-poor region, and Cobo said that one Spanish kitchen used more fuel than twenty Indian ones.
The grinding system seems highly inefficient, but very little maize dough was made. Garcilaso de la Vega implies that it was only for ceremonial use.
The women of the sun spent that night making a great quantity of maize dough called sanco. They made round loaves of it, the size of a common apple, and one must remember that these Indians never ate their grain as dough made into bread except on this feast [Raimi] and another called Citua, and they did not eat this bread during the whole meal, but only two or three mouthfuls at the beginning. Their ordinary food, in the place of bread, is sara [maize], toasted or cooked in the grain. (Garcilaso de la Vega 1945, 2:48)
To search for what was actually in the pots and pans we must turn to the early dictionaries.
The Quechua dictionary of Diego González Holguín (1952), first published in Lima in 1606, starts out with a long list of words having to do with aka or asua, the Quechua word for what we have been calling chicha. The words go from “he who makes or sells chicha,” to “he who is very given to drinking chicha to the final step, “he who is so very given to drinking chicha that he dies crazy from it.”
Tupa cocau was the “royal food that the Inca gave to the people that he sent abroad; it was a small bag of maize, and because it was a gift from the Inca it was most sustaining, and eating just one grain a day was enough to assuage one’s hunger” (González Holguín 1952: 369). Could this have been grain from the very sacred, and very limited, crop of maize that was grown on an island in Lake Titicaca?
There was a drink seasoned and sweetened by adding maize dough that had been boiled and rested, and there was also a fermented maize dough, but we are not told how it was used. Mutti, an alternative spelling for muti, was cooked maize or cooked grain of any sort, and the impoverished eater said, “Muttillacta micupayani” (I always eat mutti, it’s all I have). Motepatasca was grain cooked so long that it burst open, with greens, chile, and dried meat added. Maize could also be partially cooked, dried, and then added to stews. According to González Holguín rokro or locro was a stew of chile and potatoes, meat, maize, and beans. For Cobo it contained both meat and potatoes in their fresh and dried forms, and no maize.
There were also many stewlike dishes containing quinoa. It could be cooked with fresh and dried potatoes and chile. Kispino seems to have been both a “rustic bread” made of quinoa and steamed balls of ground quinoa with condiments, fat, and salt. Quinoa leaves could be made into a soup with other leaves and chile. Cakes could be made of cooked potato or ground quinoa and then dried for storage, or quinoa could be an ingredient of a sweet gruel, along with dried potatoes, toasted flour, and sweet dried oca roots. The Aymara dictionary of Ludovico Bertonio (1879), originally published in 1612, gives many words for quinoa gruels and also a name for a cake made of quinoa flour mixed with snow as a leavening. Snow has a lot of air in it and has been used as leavening in other snowy parts of the world, including New England, where there are recipes for snow-leavened pancakes.
The Aymara dictionary contains more on potato usage because Aymara speakers lived in the highland province of Collao and were only conquered by the potato-suppressing Inca in the fifteenth century. Tunta were potatoes aged in water, which were either used to make gruel or cooked whole like the freeze-dried potatoes, chuño. The right varieties of potatoes could also be roasted in the little ovens or out in the fields during the harvest, using dried potato stalks as fuel. There are endless stews and gruels combining potatoes, sometimes in many different forms, with meat and greens. Even periods of time were defined with reference to the potato. Luki huaycu was one hour, the time necessary to cook potatoes.
The Aymara also ate locro, a thick stew, and they ate it out of a vessel called a chua, made of reeds. It was apparently the most common eating vessel, which gives us a hint as to what the most common food was. “Are you a great lady, that you are always seated with your chua, and never doing any work?” Bertonio asks.
What we have been told about the consumption of meat raw in Peru is borne out by the Aymara dictionary, which gives us the name for a dish of raw liver with chiles, as well as raw llama entrails with the same. But then everything was eaten with chile, and there was a saying to prove it. “Am I your salt or chile that you always have me in your mouth and speak ill of me?”
Llama blood was important as food, as well as having ritual uses. There are hints that sophisticated means were used to keep the blood from clotting, including the use of the fruit of various species of papaya (Carica papaya and Carica candicans), today known for their tenderizing enzymes. The blood could be cooked to eat, or a gruel could be made with it. The sacred bread mixed with blood was a form of communion, not nourishment. Blood dishes appear in the Quechua word lists as well. Blood could be eaten with pressed potatoes and in a stew with viscera, potatoes, and fresh and dried meat.
The definition of eating splendidly was to have many dishes together. One who had five dishes at one meal was a high-status person indeed. Quechua speakers differentiated between chupe and locro, both being stews, but the former containing more liquid than the latter. They also used more seafood than the Aymara because of their conquest of the coast and their system of chasqui runners. The cuy, the guinea pig, could be cooked with dried seaweed, as well as with fresh and dried potatoes or chopped dried potatoes and vegetables. Fish could also be cooked with dried potatoes or made into a stew with small peeled potatoes, greens, and chile.
The Quechua ate their meat grilled, as well as stewed and raw. It was cooked over the coals with the omnipresent salt and chile, and the virgins of the sun ate grilled meat called hanchasca, but we are not told what distinguished it from the ordinary form. If the meat was not grilled it could be cooked in a pachamanca, an oven dug in the earth and lined with leaves that produced a fragrant steam. Pots of stew, and tubercules, could be included in the earth oven along with the meat. A meat dish which sounds vaguely familiar was lagua, consisting of cooked, sun-dried, unskinned guano birds. Perhaps the birds Apoo brought Pizarro were the makings for lagua.
The statement is often made that the American Indians knew no other spices besides chile. This is true only if you define spices as products of the East Indies: black pepper, cloves, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, mace, and the rest. We have already mentioned muña (Minthostachys setosa), which was used as a flavoring as well as a means of keeping the stored potatoes free of insect infestation; paiko (Chenopodium ambrosioides); a species of Tagetes, or New World marigold; and something like an onion. There were many others, including what the Europeans used as a replacement for saffron, possibly Buddleja utilis.
One Inca spice really unleashed the cupidity of the Europeans. From our viewpoint, it seems absurd that Europeans, awash in the silver and gold from the Peruvian mines, should have wasted their time pursuing a rumor of cinnamon. But spices were the original cause of the discovery of the New World and enormously valuable commodities. In a letter of July 28, 1533, to Charles V, one Licenciado de la Gama runs on in his excitement:
They say that there is cinnamon, and the chief Atabalica [Atahualpa] that they hold prisoner says that they bring it from beyond, and he says that he has eaten it, and held it in his hands. (De la Gama in Porras Barrenechea 1959: 63)
Other reports were glowing:
The fruit, leaves, bark, and root of the tree all taste and smell and have the substance of cinnamon, but the fruit are the best. In shape they are like the acorns of the cork tree, but bigger. Although there are many of these woodland trees throughout the land, which seed themselves, and bear fruit without cultivation, the Indians also have many on their plantations, which they cultivate, and which yield far finer cinnamon than the others. They value it highly, and barter it with the neighboring countries for provisions and clothes and everything else that they require for their subsistence. (Zarate 1968:192)
Gonzalo Pizarro, another brother, set off with his men to find this treasure, leaving Quito in 1541 with 6,000 pigs, 300 horses, 900 dogs, and many llamas and alpacas. All this livestock had gone astray, died, or been eaten by the time the starving expedition staggered back to Quito. Spurred by the rumors of El Dorado, the man gilded with gold dust, some of them had deserted earlier and made their way down the Amazon and into the Atlantic. It was a disillusioned Gonzalo Pizarro (in Porras Barrenechea 1959: 460–461) who wrote Charles V on September 3, 1542. There were very few trees, and they were far apart, he reported. The buds and the leaves tasted like cinnamon, but the rest of the tree had no taste whatsoever. There was no profit to be found among the “cinnamon” trees of the eastern slopes of the Andes.
Little remains to be said about the Inca after the European conquest. Despite the bloody internecine feuding of the Europeans, disease and demoralization had taken such a toll of the Inca that their resistance collapsed. The warehouses which might have supplied an Inca resistance were looted by the Europeans, who sold the contents for their own profit.
. . . someone in Cuzco had gathered from the Indians 200,000 hanegas of maize and was selling it on the market, and that in this way the soldiers and inhabitants bring all the clothing and food of the Indians and sell it in the square for prices so low that they give a llama for half a peso, and kill all they wish for no other reason than to make candles, and as if this was not bad enough there is worse to come, because the Indians have nothing to plant, and no cattle, or any way of getting some, and they have no alternative but to die of hunger, because there is only one maize crop a year here. (Pascual de Andagoya in Porras Barrenechea 1959: 371)
That was in July 1539. By September of that year things had gotten worse. People were dying of hunger in Cuzco; tens of thousands of Indians were marching in the streets with crosses, begging for food. It made a striking contrast to the orderly and equitable distribution of food under the Inca.
This was not lost on some of the conquerors. Years later, their last survivor, his great age perhaps inclining him toward an Edenic fallacy that what he had participated in was the destruction of a perfect paradise, wrote his will and prefaced it with an anguished appeal to Philip II. The writer was Captain Mancio Sierra de Leguizamo, who won fame during the conquest and place in a proverb because the great golden sun from the main temple in Cuzco had been his share in the division of the spoils, and he had gambled it away before sunrise. The will was written in Cuzco on September 18, 1589 (Calancha 1974: 221–222). The Inca, he said, governed his country so that everything was divided by lot. War did not impede commerce or agriculture, and the Inca was a very capable ruler, whereas the Europeans with their bad example had destroyed these well-governed people and made them from a population who did nothing bad into a people who did little or nothing good. It was up to his majesty to do something about this, to cleanse his conscience.
It is an unexpected source for a commentary on the Inca system, and one wonders if Philip II ever heard of the request made by his aged captain. Meanwhile, the looted warehouses stood empty on the mountain ridges where they had been built to take advantage of the ventilation air currents provided. Informal trade networks grew up to replace the Inca system but without the guiding hand of the Inca accountants, who no longer kept track of goods on the quipus, the knotted string records. But even with a looser organization the incredible variety of animals and plants that originated in one of the world’s most diverse ecosystems continued, and continues, to be exploited.
The recent interest in some Inca crops and the many others that still await discovery in their valleys leads us to hope that this extraordinary people still have many foodstuffs to contribute to the world’s diet.