This is an extract from:
Native Traditions in the Postconquest World
Elizabeth Hill Boone and Tom Cummins, Editors
Published by
Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection
Washington, D.C.
© 1998 Dumbarton Oaks
Trustees for Harvard University
Washington, D.C.
Printed in the United States of America
www.doaks.org/etexts.html
Litigation over the Rights of “Natural Lords”
Litigation over the Rights of “Natural Lords” in Early
Colonial Courts in the Andes
JOHN V. MURRA
INSTITUTE OF ANDEAN RESEARCH
I
N THE EARLIEST DAYS OF THE EUROPEAN INVASION, when Inka resistance, potentially so threatening, turned out to be virtually absent (Lockhart 1972),
the Pizarros acquired a steadfast ally, the Wanka lords. It was in their territory, Xauxa, that the Europeans established their first capital. Along with thousands of soldiers and bearers, the Wanka provided the newcomers with strategic
information, plus the food and weapons stored in hundreds of warehouses built
by the Inka and filled locally (Polo de Ondegardo 1940 [1561]). In one region
where the Inka had managed to cobble together some resistance, as at Huánuco,
the Europeans had to call on Wanka troops to help them put down “the rebellion.”1
All this assistance provided the Europeans was recorded with care on a khipu
kept by the Wanka lords. This record was first described by Cieza de León,
some fifteen years after the invasion. Such bookkeeping later became the subject of litigation initiated at the viceregal court, at Lima, by one of the lords
who in 1532 had opened the country to the troops of Charles V (Murra 1975).
This man, don Francisco Cusichac, felt betrayed by the ill-treatment of his
people and the neglect of his own privileges. The notion that his Wanka, and
he along with them, were to be granted in encomienda to some European newcomer was shocking; Cusichac reasoned that if there were to be any encomenderos
about, he, Cusichac, was the most appropriate candidate (Espinoza Soriano 1972).
By 1560 the Wanka had made many adjustments to European rule. The
most notable was the intensive training of their sons in the new language and
beliefs. Several of these bilingual young men, accompanied by their own,
European-style notaries, traveled to Spain to petition at court for reward of
1
An Inka “general,” Ylla Thupa, withdrew to the Huánuco region and managed to hold
out there for almost ten years. He was smoked out by Wanka auxiliary troops (Ortiz de
Zúñiga 1967).
55
John V. Murra
past services from the emperor or his son (Espinoza Soriano 1972).2 Some of
these “natural lords” were received by the monarch; some were granted coats
of arms Spanish style. One of the petitioners requested that the crown grant
him the right to sell and buy land, a privilege unknown in the Andes.
By 1570, when the new viceroy, Francisco de Toledo, decided to conduct
an inspection of the crown’s highland provinces, don Francisco Cusichac and
his whole generation was dead. Their sons were now in charge, some of them
very young men who some fifteen years earlier had met Charles V or his son,
Philip, in Europe. The new viceroy called on all native authorities to display
their European credentials and many did. Toledo ordered that the assembled
parchments be burned. This was the beginning of a campaign against those
lineages in the Andean elite that had collaborated with the invaders, an effort
to destroy the European evidence of what the Spanish crown had once bestowed.3
The only other group to be treated so harshly by Toledo were the descendants of another wing of the Andean elite who also sided from the earliest days
with the invaders. These were the “sons” and heirs of Pawllu Thupa, the one
Inka “prince” to make peace, early and openly, with the Europeans. Pawllu
had helped them through extreme difficulties, particularly Almagro’s invasion
of Chile. The efficiency of that thrust south was attributed by many to Pawllu
Thupa’s ability to mobilize the lords of Charcas, the region known today as
Bolivia.4
For his services, Pawllu had been allowed to keep “his Indians,” coca-leaf
terraces, food-producing fields, and much other Inka wealth. A test came in
1550 at Pawllu’s death: various Europeans attempted to deprive the “Indian’s”
heirs of these lands and people, but the emperor’s representative, Bishop LaGasca,
resisted such claims. For the next two decades, Pawllu’s many sons were a
distinguished and rich lineage in Cuzco. They spoke Spanish, invested in the
long-distance coca-leaf trade to the mines at Potosí, and employed Europeans
in their various enterprises. The main heir, don Carlos, was married to a European woman.Thirty-five years after the invasion, Pawllu Thupa’s heirs were the
one group of Inkas at Cuzco who had managed to hang on to both status and
wealth (Glave 1991).
When Toledo reached Cuzco on his way to the mines at Potosí, he selected
Pawllu’s lineage for special attention. As at Xauxa, the lords were ordered to
2
These grants are transcribed from the originals in the Archivo General de Indias,
Seville: section Lima, legajo 567, lib. 8, fols. 107v–108r; see also other grants cited by
Espinoza Soriano (1972).
3
Letters from Francisco de Toledo to Philip II, found in the Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid.
4
See Pawllu Thupa’s testament published in Revista del Archivo Histórico del Cuzco (1950:
275, 286).
56
Litigation over the Rights of “Natural Lords”
display the credentials testifying to their services to the Spanish crown. The
papers were publicly burned. Don Carlos and his kin were accused of maintaining illicit contacts with those Inka who had taken refuge at Vilcabamba, in
the eastern lowlands (Kubler 1946).
Some twenty of Pawllu Thupa’s heirs were put on trial for subversion; during the proceedings, which lasted many months, the princes were kept in animal corrals, exposed to the elements.The testimony was conducted in Quechua
even though many of the accused spoke Spanish; a mestizo, one Gonzalo Gómez
Ximénez, “interpreted” for the only record kept of the proceedings, despite
continuous protests by the accused. Ximénez’s version of what they had “confessed” became the official transcript. The “natural lords” were sentenced by
Gabriel de Loarte to the loss of “their” Indians and of their coca-leaf fields,
which were granted by Toledo to Loarte. Some twenty Inka, including aged
princes, don Carlos, and several children, were deported on foot to Lima.
From there they were supposed to be shipped into exile to Mexico.5 Of the
twenty, seven survived.They were able to rally support from some of the judges
at the Audiencia who were hostile to the viceroy.
Toledo remained in the highlands for almost another decade, the only viceroy to devote such personal attention to the Andean population. He sponsored
many institutional innovations; some of them were consistent with ideas to end
the Las Casas “benevolent” approach to Indian affairs, which he brought with
him from court. He tried to put an end to the influence of Bishops Gerónimo
de Loaysa of Lima and Domingo de Santo Tomás in Charcas, men from another era, who spoke Quechua and had earlier corresponded with Las Casas
(Las Casas 1892).
Of the people Toledo consulted, the best informed were two Salamancatrained lawyers—Juan de Matienzo and Juan Polo de Ondegardo—who gave
him diametrically opposed advice. Matienzo, a crown justice at the Audiencia
of Charcas, was frequently active away from his court. Even before Toledo’s
arrival in 1569, Matienzo had argued for the “extirpation” of the Inka lineage
that had taken refuge in the forest at Vilcabamba. The high court in Lima was
betting on a reduction policy, resulting in the conversion of the refugee princes
and their resettlement at Cuzco. Matienzo thought such a policy was dangerous. Resettlement expanded the number of “natural lords” at Cuzco—a loss of
revenues for the Spanish crown and the threat implicit in an additional focus of
traditional loyalty (Matienzo 1967). After Toledo’s arrival, he and Matienzo
formed an intimate alliance broken only by the judge’s death in 1579.
5
Most of this material comes from the Justicia legajo 465, a three-volume manuscript
record of the litigation in Mexico, Archivo General de Indias, Seville. Some of it is quoted
by Roberto Levillier (1921–26).
57
John V. Murra
Matienzo had provided Toledo with a working understanding of the Andean
system; it was Matienzo who designed the rotative mita system for recruiting
the Andean labor force for the silver mines at Potosí, which was based on the
Inka mit’a set up for the state cultivation of maize (Wachtel 1982). All efforts
now were directed to improve the revenues of King Philip’s armies—be these
active in Flanders or facing Constantinople by sea.
Though trained at the same law school as Matienzo and proceeding from
much the same social background, lawyer Polo de Ondegardo had a very different vision of the Andean world. One dimension of this perception was his
much longer service in the region: he had arrived in 1540, some twenty years
before Matienzo, at a time when Andean society was much closer to its aboriginal condition. He also never joined the court system, but held a variety of
posts that brought him into daily contact with Andean realities: soldiering in
the infantry, administering the newly discovered mines at Potosí, tracing the
royal lineages at Cuzco, facing the dangers of lowland coca-leaf cultivation for
highlanders, recognizing that ethnic groups resident at 3,800 m up in the Andes
would also control people and fields at sea level. He noted the remarkable
warehouse system continuously filled along the Inka highway; in pre-Toledo
times he was frequently consulted by viceroys and settlers alike. He had no
ideological difficulty in recognizing that the descendants of King Thupa or of
Wayna Qhapaq were, according to European rights, “natural lords.”6
While the two Salamanca alumni avoided head-on collisions, Polo did turn
down the nomination by Toledo to repeat as governor of Cuzco. Unhappy
with many of the decrees issued by the viceroy, Polo composed a book-length
memorandum addressed to Toledo: “a report about the premises which lead to
the notable harm which follows when not respecting the fundamental rights of
the Indians . . .” (Polo de Ondegardo 1916 [1571]). In it he also argued against
the resettlement policy dictated by Matienzo and Toledo: when resettled into
compact reducciones, the ethnic groups were impoverished since they lost access
to their outliers located at many faraway resource bases. Even should one want
to make Christians of them, argued Polo, it is best to proceed taking into
account their own “order.”
Further clarification of this transitional period in Andean history came through
my recent, 1990–91, “discovery” in the Archive of the Indies in Sevilla of a
large (3,000–plus pages) set of files recording in detail the minutes of the trial at
Cuzco of the “natural lord” don Carlos Inca.
While this source had been quoted in print as early as the 1920s by the
Argentine scholar Roberto Levillier (1921–26, 7: 192–193), it had remained
6
58
See details in Murra 1991.
Litigation over the Rights of “Natural Lords”
underutilized by anthropologists. It greatly expands our understanding of Cuzco
social structure a generation after the invasion. There is much detail about the
kangaroo court run by Toledo and his chief aide, Judge Gabriel de Loarte. The
doctor “inherited” the estates and subjects of the defendants. The later career of
the interpreter, Gonzalo Ximénez,7 is also noted: a few years later he was burned
at the stake in Charcas, accused of the pecado nefando, the abominable sin of
homosexuality. The Inka princes had raised the issue unsuccessfully throughout their “trial.”
While awaiting his fate in the Charcas jail, Ximénez is said to have expressed
a desire to confess his perjury and to apologize for the harm done to don
Carlos. Ximénez is alleged to have recorded this wish in writing. This confession has not been located in the Audiencia of Charcas papers; Dr. Barros de San
Millán, a judge at that royal court, is said to have expressed a lively, if suspect,
interest in locating this document, without success.
Barros deserves the attention of anthropologists interested in Andean history. Trained at Salamanca, as were our two other lawyers, his American career
spans close to thirty years, serving at the royal courts of Guatemala, Panamá,
Charcas, and Quito. Our first notice of him in Andean scholarship reached us
a few decades ago, when Waldemar Espinoza, a Peruvian colleague, published
an Aviso, author unknown. It was a petition, signed by a dozen or so ethnic
lords of Charcas (today Bolivia) (Espinoza Soriano 1969); addressed to the
king, it seemed to be dated from a moment late in Toledo’s reign. In it the
Andean lords trace their lineages four or five generations back, when the Inka
were alleged to have granted their ancestors lavish textiles and wives from court:
“we were the dukes and the marquesses of this realm.” They offered to assume
additional duties at the Potosí mines but did not care to be assigned only
labor-recruiting duties. The argument that they were “natural lords” was now
restated away from Cuzco and under new colonial circumstances.
The author of the memorandum remained unidentified for decades. It was
clear that he was familiar with both administrative procedures at the mines and
with the ethnic map of the southern Andes; he plainly enjoyed the trust of the
Aymara lords.The memorandum has recently been the object of detailed study
by a Franco-British team preparing a documentary collection to honor don
Gunnar Mendoza, director of the National Archive of Bolivia.They eventually
decided that the author was the very person disguised in the Aviso as the transmitter of the text to the court at Madrid. Between his service at Charcas and
7
Much of this material is to be found in legajo 844A of the branch Escribanía de
Cámara, Archivo General de Indias, Seville.
59
John V. Murra
his return to the Americas as chief judge at Quito, Barros spent some years in
Spain. His activities there and his ideological connections have not been fully
ascertained.
The identification of Barros as the author of the Aviso is reinforced by events
at the royal court of Charcas in the waning years of Toledo’s regime.8 A year or
two before the judge’s return to Madrid, Barros was charged by his fellow
judge at the Charcas royal court, Matienzo, with being a homosexual. At that
point, in the late 1570s, the court was down to just two judges, Matienzo and
Barros. If one of them became the accused, the tribunal would be down to
only one justice. In a plainly illegal maneuver, Matienzo co-opted two residents of Charcas as assistants; Barros took refuge in one of the monasteries at
La Plata, but if that charge had prevailed, the Franciscans could not have protected him.
The testimony was sworn to by a pickup crew: none of the important
encomenderos took part. Witnesses remembered that “the doctor” had freed the
slaves he had brought with him from Panamá; one of the clerks testified that
when he went to the judge’s quarters for a signature, he found el doctor entertaining unceremoniously in his kitchen a group of “Indian” chiefs. The freed
Africans were also about. Another clerk thought the doctor talked too much
and did not keep secret positions assumed about the court in camera.
Other witnesses, from the mining center at Potosí, stressed his homosexuality and his careless approach to His Majesty’s interests at the mines. Barros is
also reported to have searched for interpreter Ximénez’s confession to show
that he had perjured himself during don Carlos’ interrogation at Cuzco. Barros
is quoted as saying that the viceroy had not only appropriated the Inkas’ fields,
but he was now ready to destroy their good name.
While all this was going on, in 1579, Matienzo died. Barros emerged from
hiding and, as sole justice in the region, assumed possession of the royal
Audiencia. An attempt was made by the Potosí miners to continue the trial
somehow, to reach a conviction. They petitioned the viceroy who was now in
Lima, awaiting permission from the crown to return to the peninsula. Toledo
answered that the Charcas court was down to a single justice, Barros. The
proceedings against him were dropped.
As soon as he reached the Charcas court, Barros took an important step.
One of the most resented measures taken by Toledo, with Matienzo’s connivance, had prohibited forwarding on appeal to the peninsula of Andean cases
heard at the Charcas court.Thousands of pages and transcripts of cases pending
8
Details in legajo 844A of Escribanía de Cámara, Archivo General de Indias, Seville.
Also fol. 9r of Charcas 16, ramo 15, fol. 3v.
60
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had not been forwarded to Madrid. All this was now dispatched to the crown.
Soon after, Barros returned to Spain, for the first time in twenty or so years,
presumably carrying with him the Aviso.
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John V. Murra
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ESPINOZA SORIANO, WALDEMAR
1969
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Los Huancas, aliados de la conquista. Anales Científicos de la Universidad del
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GLAVE, LUIS MIGUEL
1991
La hoja de coca y el mercado interno colonial. In Visita de los valles de Sonqo
( John Murra, ed.): 583–608. Instituto de Cooperación Iberoamerica, Madrid.
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1946
The Quechua in the Colonial World. In Handbook of South American Indians,
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LAS CASAS, BARTOLOMÉ DE
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MURRA, JOHN V.
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