Obsessed with a treasure city, conquistador Francisco Pizarro captured the Inca emperor Atahualpa. To spare his life, the emperor offered up the largest cache of gold the Spanish ever acquired in the Americas
BPK/Scala, FlorenceThe Inca emperor Atahualpa received warning that Spanish invaders were on their way. Because there were so few Spanish and Atahualpa commanded an army of 5,000, the Inca did not seem to consider the Europeans a serious threat. Atahualpa boldly invited Pizarro’s men to Cajamarca, but he’d made a serious miscalculation. The conquistadores exploited local conflicts to recruit allies from among Atahualpa’s enemies.
That same day, Pizarro took Atahualpa to his estate and invited him to dinner. The Inca emperor was given his own quarters and allowed to move around freely there, although a soldier stood guard outside. Atahualpa knew that Pizarro had recruited troops from among his enemies, including backers of his brother Huáscar, who had fought him for the throne of Tahuantinsuyu and lost. Atahualpa had imprisoned his brother and knew how his supporters sought vengeance.
Fearing for his life, the next morning Atahualpa made a proposal to Pizarro that appealed to the conquistador’s greed. Atahualpa promised that within 40 days he would amass so much gold that it would fill the room the size of the one he was being held in, and twice that volume in silver. Some historians have estimated that the space could have been as big as 2,900 square feet. The gold would be heaped to the height of a man with his arms stretched above his head.
The treasure was being transported on stretchers, each carried on the shoulders of four Incas. The weight of this gold was said to be so great that it would take a month to arrive all the way from Cusco. Meanwhile, Hernando Pizarro was heading back from Pachacamac with 27 loads of gold and 2,000 silver marks.This section of Diego Gutiérrez’s map of America was published in 1562. It represents the area visited by Spaniards Núñez de Balboa and Pizarro from 1513.
Finally, Pizarro decided to honor the demands of his own men so he could get on with the march toward Cusco. On June 17, he ordered all the gold and silver collected to be melted down, weighed, and shared, which was carried out with scrupulous attention to the rules of Castilian warfare.
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