FAMILY POSSESSIONS AMONG THE INCA PEOPLE

A family did not have many possessions. The housewife needed only a few simple cooking utensils for the meals she cooked – some blackened pots, a clay plate or two and clay spoons. She used the large gourds or clay pots she had made to store her water, corn, beans dried potatoes and peppers.

The hut had not furniture. Everyone sat on mats on the earth floor. As the thatching of the roof dried, it shed dust and bits of dried vegetation into the room, so the house was never completely clean and free of dust. Bits of thatching were forever getting lodged in the Indians’ clothing and in their long hair.

With so few articles of housekeeping, the Inca People hut was almost bare. The walls had wooden pegs in them, on which the family hung any clothing they took off at night. Niches built into the walls served as shelves for household goods, tools, yarn, spindles, musical instruments, toys and neatly folded festive clothing.

Outside the hut pens and corals for llamas and Alpacas, a few ducks and guinea pigs. These animals were the responsibility of the housewife and the children who were too young to in the fields. Because space was so precious, related households used the same corral for their few animals and shared the small pens.

The Inca people lived and worked outdoors most of the time. During the day it was pleasant and warm outside. The woman of the house sat on a mat working on her simple loom, spinning wool, or combing the wool for spinning. She boiled vegetable dyes in a pot in the cooking shed, soaked the wool in a large pot besides her, then washed it and laid it out to dry in the sun.

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CLOTHINGS OF THE INCA PEOPLE

The peaked wool caps with ear flaps, which men and boys wore outdoors, were woven of colored thread and decorated with tassels. A woven or plaited cotton band kept the men’s long hair in place. Everyone had a shoulder bag or two, since there were no pockets in the clothing. These were also woven.

Until a boy reached 14 or 15 years, he wore only a knee-length shirt and a hair band, both modeled after his father’s. Girls wore the same garments their mothers wore. These were very simple – a loose, long dress that left the arm bare, and a cape-like shawl held together  in front by a copper pin.

A housewife on the coast wove her family’s clothing of cotton with wool added. The coast men also wore breechcloths, kilts, shirts and hair bands, but they did not need capes or wool caps to keep warm.

The Inca People always went barefoot at home. A way from home they wore sandals – heavy pieces of llama hide cut to the shape of the foot. Thongs of bast fiber or leather, tied at the heel, over the instep, and between the toes, held the sandals in place.

Like all weavers, the Indian women tried their best to make the clothing not only durable but attractive. Each village had its own styles and weaving designs. Inca people could tell where a man and his family came from by looking at the style of their clothing.

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Inca Woman

An Indian woman made all the family’s clothing. She wove the long, narrow piece of cotton cloth that her husband used as breechcloth. The cotton came from the coast, where it grown in the warm valleys, and the Indians who lived in the mountains traded their wool yarn for it.

The Inca woman also wove her husband’s long sleeveless shirt, a square piece of cloth with a slit in the center. It reached to his knees, and the sides were either tied with cords or sewed together. She used the wool of alpaca and a llama to weave the shirt in stripes of brown and black.

 If she was weaving a shirt for festive occasions, she might mix the black with some white wool, to make a shirt of gray and brown stripes.

The woman also wove the wrap – around skirt or kilt her husband wore over his breechcloth. Her husband’s cape had to be long warm. Since she could not weave a wide piece of cloth on her narrow loom, she wove several strips and sewed them carefully together.

A well – made cape lasted a lifetime. Her husband wore it and used it as a blanket at night. When he needed as additional bag to carry produce home from the field, he scooped the ends of the cape together and it served as a basket.

In addition to cooking and making clothes for the family, the Indian housewife had the job of repairing cracks in the walls of her house and replacing the thatching on the roof. Adobe did not last very long in this land of bitter winds and rain and extreme daily changes in temperature, so repairs went on endlessly. Anything that was too hard for the women to do was done by her husband when he came home.

The life of the wife of a curaca – who was responsible for 100 farming families – was not as full of toil as that of a farmer’s wife. A curaca’s home, which was built of stone, was sturdier, roomier and better situated than a farmer’s hut, and mita labor kept it in better condition.

 The interior of the house was almost as simple as the farmer’s.  There were mats on the floor, and sometimes there were low platforms for the beds. A three-legged clay oven burned during the cold nights, so the sleeping family was comfortable and warm. The house had either windows or chimney, but it had a good solid door that shut out the night’s cold.

The curaca wife did not have to get up at dawn in freezing room and rush to grind corn for the morning meal. There were women to help her with the grinding, cooking and serving. She had a stove all to herself too, and she did not have to share her cooking shed with anyone.

Servants tended the plants, the herbs and the fruit trees in the courtyard garden. Men worked the curaca’s field and helped to herd the livestock. There was more food in the curaca’s house, and the two daily meals, which regularly included meat, were more ample and varied.

The curaca’s family also owned more than one change of clothing. His wife spent many hours at the loom, but she had women helping her with the spinning and weaving. The clothing her family wore was more carefully made, and she used finer wool – sometimes the wool of the vicuna – for the festive clothes.

In the days of the Inca vicunas ran wild in the highlands of Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Bolivia and the tropics. Their coat, tawny brown in color with a white or orange bib, was not thick, but their wool was of the finest quality. The Inca people were forbidden to kill vicunas. Villages organized hunts for vicunas, however, and sheared them and then release them.

The higher nobility lived in towns. There were many towns in Inca times, towns in the valleys and towns in the highlands. In a typical town the temple was in the center of a spacious plaza. But all roads leading to the plaza were very narrow- just wide enough for a litter and carriers. Homes and government buildings presented solid walls to the street, as they still do in many parts of central and South America today. Behind the walls were patios or courtyards with gardens and flowers.

A woman of higher nobility lived in greater comfort than the wife of a curaca did, but even the noblewoman worked at their looms, weaving and embroidering the finest and laciest textiles. They wove capes trimmed with the colorful feathers of tropical birds. They worked gold and silver threads into garments, giving them a beautiful sheen. They also prepared food for their families with the help of servants.

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THE HOME OF AN INCA FARMER

The home of an Inca farmer was a square, single – room hut. Together with a few of his relatives and friends, the farmer gathered stones for the foundation of his home. He grooved and fitted them into place. The walls of the hut were built of adobe brick. The men worked together to make the brick, usually making enough to build more than one hut. They dug up the clay dirt, poured water into it and mixed it with a spade.

The roof was supported by five thin poles, one at each corner and one in the center. It was made of thatch and covered with pebbles and mud to keep the thatch in place.

There were no windows or smoke holes in the hut. The only opening was the doorway, which faced east, toward the rising sun. Most doorways were covered with a blanket or a piece of hide.  Wood was sometimes used for doors, but not very often, because most of the trees had been cut down centuries before. The Inca administrators in an effort to conserve the few wooded areas that still remained, did not allow anyone to chop down a tree without special permission.

In those high altitudes it is hot during the day when the sun shines. As soon as the sun sets, however, it grows bitterly cold. Men and boys stripped to the waist as they worked outdoors in the sun.

At night the Inca Farmer slept on grass mats, which rested directly on mud – packed floor, and covered themselves with animal skins and wool capes to keep warm.


There was no stove or fire inside the hut. It was customary to have a cooking shed, spate from the living quarters, which two, three or even four neighbors shared. The stove the Indians used was something like a camp stove. It was small, round, and made of clay, with three openings at the top for cooking. Since a meal was usually made in one pot, three women could cook their meals on the stove at the same time. Dried llama dung and grass were used for the fire, which was built through an opening in the side of the stove.  This convenient, economical clay stove seems to have been an Andean invention.

The farmer’s wife rose before dawn to grind corn for the morning meal. Huddling in her woolen shawl eh ran the short distance from her house to the cooking hut. There she put some llama dung into the side opening  of the little clay stove and blew on the embers from last night’s fire to start a new fire going.

On one of the burners she set a pot of water to boil. While it heated, she ground dry corn on large, three-legged, sloping slab of stone. On the stone the woman threw corn kernels, a handful at a time, and with a large handstone, crushing them into flour. She poured the flour into the pot of boiling water, added some peppers, and let the mixture boil into mush.

When the food was ready, the woman carried the hot pot back into the hut. The family hunched over the meal and ate it quickly. The Indians believed in witchcraft, and they were afraid that a witch might get to their food and sicken them, so they tried to eat it as fast as possible. Often, when a man was among strangers, he ate his food facing a wall, to hide him from anything evil.

There were only two meals a day and they varied little from day to day. The Indians ate orn meal, other cereal and beans, or a simple stew of potatoes and beans. After a harvest, corn was sometime boiled in its husk. A few times a month, on festive occasions, the Indians ate duck, guinea pig, or occasionally, the meat of an old llama or alpaca. Whatever meat was left over was pounded and dried carefully in the sun.

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HOME OF THE INCA PEOPLE

The ways of the land and of men change very slowly. Watching the people in a Peruvian highland village today, you can see many faces that resemble those carved in ancient stone and molded in clay. In the towns there are many people of Spanish descent and still more who are cholos – a mixture of Indian and Spanish - but in the villages the majority of the people are still Indian. They make up more than 60% of the population.

The Inca Indian, like the average Peruvian farmer today, did not want to leave his Inca village. He came to town to trade, to attend festivals, and to see the sights, but he regards the town as a noisy, hustling place and was always glad to get back to the familiar, to the quiet and peace of his Inca village.

The size of a village usually depends on its location. High up in the mountains, where the land was poor and rocky, a family or two might live alone in their huts, in the midst of their fields, Sometimes an Inca village was built up in two sections with fields in the center and a few homes at either end. In the valleys, however, where the land was more fertile and able to support a greater number of farmers, the villages were larger.

A man chose as the site for his home a place where sometimes good or fortunate had happened to him. The Inca called such a place a Huaca. Perhaps a mountain ridge or a ledge of a particular shape inspired a feeling of awe and so became Huaca to him.

Nothing was too small or too steep to build a hut on. Provided that water was nearby or could be brought in artificially in a man-made aqueduct. In time the area around the house was leveled and built with boulders to make a terrace. This provided room for another hut, which could house a newly married son or brother. Since farming land was so precious, the sited for the huts were usually on a barren, steep ground which was unsuitable for farming. As a village grew, people crowded their huts together until the village became a jumble of houses, corrals, pens and patios. Paths between houses were very narrow – just wide enough for a man and his burden or a llama with a pack on its back.

When a hut crumbled with age, the owner’s heir’s built another but atop the old foundations, and after several generations a village tended to rise many feet above its original site. Archeologists find the remains of generations of householders in these abandoned village sites: pottery fragments, pieces of leather and cloth, old toys, stone tools, knives, animal bones, corncobs, gourds, and human burials. Skillfully interpreted, these become a history book for the archeologist to read, and, in turn, to interpret to us. Thus we are unable to learn something of the lives of these people, who had no written history.

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Stations Along The Inca Highways

Along the Inca highways, every 4-8 miles, were small stations called tampus. Inside them were places where noblemen could spend the night.  Next to the tampus were storage rooms where an army could quickly get any additional food that they need. Most important of all, however, was the use of tampus in the Inca’s messenger system.

The Inca’s system of runners, or chasquis, was remarkable. Messengers ran day and night along the highway. They were given right of way by other travelers. Two runners were always stationed at a tampu, and they kept constant watch for messengers. When a runner was sighted, the watchman sprinted out of the tampu and continued running with the new arrival, who did not lessen his pace. 

As they ran, the tired messenger turned over the bundle or message he was carrying to the fresh runner. The fresh runner continued on; the tired turned back to the tampu to eat, sleep, and await his turn to make the return journey.

Men were trained to become runners for the government. This job was part of the village mita – the labor each man had to give to the community. A man worked as a runner for some 15 days the returned to his family, his farming and other household activities – till his next turn came.

Relay runners could carry a message across the length of the Empire from Cuzco to Quito – a distance of over 1,200 miles – in 5 days. The Inca boasted that within 3 days a fisherman caught a fish at the port of Callao, near Lima on the Pacific coast; the fish would be cooked by one of the emperor’s wives and served up, still fresh on a gold platter on the emperor’s table at Cuzco. 

This was not an idle boast, for the Inca amazing system of roads had made such rapid travel possible. The Inca Highway was one of the greatest achievements of the Inca Empire, an achievement that road builders and engineers still marvel today.

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The Inca Nobilities And Warriors On The Highways

The common people walked along the highway, but the Inca nobility were carried in litters. The floor of the litter was made of boards which rested on two long poles. The poles, in turn, rested on the shoulders of four men. The litters were enclosed by curtains, and inside there were low stools on which the travelers sat.

 The litters of the emperor’s household glittered with gold and jewels, and were sometimes preceded and followed by a retinue of a few thousand warriors, armed and ready for combat.

The sight of Inca warriors marching down the highways must have been dazzling. Although the soldiers averaged no more than five feet, three inches in height, their headdresses, painted with geometric figures and topped with shiny decorations of hammered copper, added at least eight inches to their height. The few hairs they had on their faces were plucked out with tweezers.

They wore straight hair long. The faces of the Inca soldiers – with its high cheekbones, arched nose, and low forehead – were painted with heavy black, red and yellow stripes. Each soldiers carried a shield made of boards covered with skins and decorated with cloth or feathers.

 Despite their simple weapons – clubs, spears, slings, shields, and a sharp knife for hand to hand combat – the Inca soldiers awed their enemies with their fierce appearance.

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llamas and Alpacas

Although IIamas and Alpacas were seen on the highways, no one rode them – not even small children. These animals, natives of the Peruvian highlands, carry smaller loads than a man does.

 They are not as hardy as burros, donkeys or camels, although IIamas, like camels, can get along without water for a long time.

Llamas can travel only 15 miles a day in the high altitudes of 12,000 – 16,000 feet. Sure-footed, they follow their leaders over the steepest trails, but when they get tired, they simply sit down and refuse to budge.

If a llama is urged or whipped, it will turn its long neck and spit at the driver. At the day’s end, llamas are lead out to graze in the highlands meadows, where they feed contentedly on the tough ichu grass, which is so dry that all other animals refuse to eat it.

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Inca Market

Inca craftmen turned out small articles of wood, which they exchanged for pieces of IIama hide or some produce their family needed. Good potters, both men and women, traded their wares for the gourds that Indians raised.

Highland women traded IIama and alpaca wool for cotton grown in the valleys, and the fishermen in the coastal towns dried their catch and carried it in baskets to the highlanders. A family with a few extra ducks carried them alive to market to exchange for cloth or fish, sandals or copper pin.

When ducks were brought to market, the Inca woman of the household did the trading, and her husband went with her to make sure that she was well treated.

Since the ducks really belonged  to the little daughter, who, with her mother’s help, had raised them, fed them, and watched over them, she came along to watch the trading and learn how it was done.

The son went to market too, to watch and learn. And so, at down, entire families set out along the village paths and made their way to the highway.

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Inca Administrators And Common People

The Inca administrators attempted to restrict the movement of the common people by allowing them only three markets days a month, but trading went on all the time, because the people enjoyed it.

Always there was an exchange of artifacts; and people, carrying bundles, went back and forth along the highways.

An Indian man placed his bundle in a sack and tied the ends of the sack across his chest. Heavier bundles were supported by a band across the forehead. A woman wore a shawl, fastened in front with a pin, and wrapped her bundle inside it.

She sometimes slipped the shawl over her head when she did not want to be stared at. Both men and women used the walking time to spin thread.

The Men, huddled inside their wool capes, kept a steady pace despite worn sandals and rough, wet stone pavements.

A woman walked behind her husband, her spindle twirling, and her baby secure on her back. The child, lulled to sleep by the rhythm of his mother’s walking, was no trouble at all.

When he asked for food, the mother either nursed him or fed him some corncake, which she carried in a bag across the chest.

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Legends About The Beginnings Of The Manco Capau ayluu

There are two legends about the beginnings of the Manco Capau ayluu. One says that Manco Capac and his family of three brothers and four sisters came out of a cave in the southwest of Cuzco. According to the other version, Manco Capac and his sister, Mama Ojllo were children of the sun and were sent down by the sun to an island in Lake Titicaca.

After searching for a suitable place to live, they founded the town of Cuzco, which became the capital of Inca dynasty. They taught the people they found around Cuzco to raise corn and leave to weave cloth. Their first son, Sinchi Roca, began the conquest of Peru.

Legends have it that under the first three rulers who came after Sinchi Roca, Inca rule was extended to Lake Titicaca, to Tiahuanaco – which was then a very important town  - to the headwaters of the coastal rivers, and to some of the coastal fishing villages. The next three rulers continued the expansion of the Empire.

In the early days of the Inca, conquest and expansion were not accomplished by means of huge armies. Probably the small Manco Capac ayllu allied with a neighboring Inca ayllu and moved against still another neighbor. After conquering them, the Inca let the people remain on their land and allowed the craftsmen to continue their pottery making, weaving and metalwork.

 Inca soldiers returned at each harvest to collect an annual tribute of corn and llamas. The pottery, weaving and metalwork of some of these conquered people were superior to those of the Inca, but the Inca were ready to learn from them.

As the might of the Inca increased, they began to take advantage of each warring group outside their borders. Weaker nations often asked their help against a strong enemy aggressor and in exchange for this help, the Inca received tribute in produce from both the weaker nation and the newly conquered aggressor.


There were always struggles for power within the royal house – Manco Capac had found it necessary to kill his three brothers – and there were threats from the outside, too. As the territory under Inca control grew larger, the danger of rebellion among the conquered people increased.

Therefore, they were no longer permitted to live as they had before the conquest, merely paying tribute in men and produce. The Inca often issued orders to kill all the men in a newly conquered village and to escape this fate the defeated mean fled to the mountains or into the jungle immediately after battle.

Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui, the ninth ruler of the Inca, is the first emperor for whose reign we have exact dates. By this time (1438 -1471) the Inca Empire was well established. To insure obedience to himself, Pachacuti ordered all the people of Cajamarca, a newly conquered province in the northern highlands, to move south.

He moved to Cajamarca people who had been living longer under Inca rule and could be trusted not to rebel. This was the beginning of enforced mass migrations. Any village that seemed rebellious or refused to turn over the produce tax imposed by the Inca was resettled elsewhere in the empire.

This was not done without struggle, since the farmers loved their homes and their land. But the Inca won, and the rebels were moved away from their relatives and friends and made to live among strangers. Indians do not trust strangers whose ways and language are unfamiliar to them, and Pachacuti knew that people who were suspicious of each other would not plan revolt together.

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