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INCA & SPANIARD (PIZARRO & THE CONQUEST OF PERU): Book Two: The Gold of Cuzco
Describes the world of the Incas and how it was changed forever when the Spanish expedition under Pizarro conquered Peru.
- GenresHistory
211 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1989
14 people want to read
About the author
Albert Marrin
58 books82 followersAlbert Marrin is a historian and the author of more than twenty nonfiction books for young people. He has won various awards for his writing, including the 2005 James Madison Book Award and the 2008 National Endowment for Humanities Medal. In 2011, his book Flesh and Blood So Cheap was a National Book Award Finalist. Marrin is the Chairman of the History Department at New York's Yeshiva University.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
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July 13, 2023A realistic, violent, often gruesome account of the conquest of the Inca Empire. Pizarro was definitely a bad dude. He was a distant cousin of Hernan Cortez. He spent some time under the leadership of Balboa. Hernando de Soto assisted him and later discovered the Mississippi River.
Pizarro imprisoned Atahuallpa, vowing to release him only when he filled a room with a certain level of gold. When that was eventually accomplished Pizarro had him executed. But while imprisoned Atahuallpa learned to play dice and chess and soon could beat them. He also learned to read a little which was more than the illiterate Pizarro could do.
Pizarro imprisoned Atahuallpa, vowing to release him only when he filled a room with a certain level of gold. When that was eventually accomplished Pizarro had him executed. But while imprisoned Atahuallpa learned to play dice and chess and soon could beat them. He also learned to read a little which was more than the illiterate Pizarro could do.
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August 3, 2011Albert Marrin has written some 30 history books for young readers - a category that seems to be melting away with each passing year. School history texts certainly arouse little desire to dig further, with chapters that function essentially as bags of narrative crumbs at the expense of even a few complete morsels.
Inca civilization was, in many ways, more impressive than that of its conquerors, Catholic Spain. It was an empire at high-elevation, often more than two miles above sea level, stretching across the mountain peaks of the rugged Andes, through all of what we now call Peru and bits of neighboring Columbia, Ecuador, Chile and Bolivia. The Inca organized and built amazing religious and bureaucratic palaces of stone, surpassing the Egyptians in the level of engineering and masonry with stones many multiples of the size and weight the Egyptians worked with. Not to mention at mountain altitude.
The Inca even developed a communications system with perfectly level stone roads that united the distant cities of Cuzco and Quito by a series of runners who would cover short distances and verbally pass on the urgent message to the next runner, relay style. Messages thus traveled at the amazing rate of 250 miles per day, covering the 1,250 miles between Cuzco and Quito in a mere five days. These roads were off-limits to the average citizen; they were available only to marching armies and the “Chasqui” who conveyed messages.
This was essentially an early Communist society with a leader believed to be a god, the Sapa Inca. Everything produced was shared, and everyone had a defined place in society from which there was no budging. The basic rules were: do not steal, lie or be lazy. A zero-tolerance situation, with death or dismemberment the typical punishment. Human sacrifice functioned as a method of gaining favor with their gods. War-making was a tool for empire building, used only when diplomacy could not convince a neighboring people to join. Suffice it to say that the Inca, even without writing, were a highly-functioning civilization, not at all “primitive,” in any sense.
Geographical isolation, along with fewer native continental grains and animals, and a disinterest in trade outside the empire, differentiated how early American societies developed both socially and genetically. Marrin doesn’t bring this anthropological information into the picture - which is fine considering his target reader. (Jared Diamond in his adult book “Guns, Germs and Steel,” explains how civilizations arranged on a North-South axis, such as those of the Americas, were at a decided disadvantage compared those on an East-West axis in terms of the dissemination of techniques of animal husbandry, crop domestication and general trade. The genetic consequences of this difference were lack of immunity to the myriad diseases and plagues that circulated throughout Western societies. And another fatal consquence: no steel.) The Inca had never seen a horse, or a sword, when the first Conquistador touched the edge of the Inca empire in 1526.
Marrin devotes the first 50 pages explaining the prehistory of the area, how the Inca civilization evolved and worked. He then explains how the Spanish empire worked, and the background of Francisco Pizarro, whose cousin, Hernán Cortés had earlier conquered the Aztecs. He makes it clear that the Spanish were driven by the unshakable belief that they must Christianize the so-called pagan world. But every historian must take a side, and it is clear that the Spanish are the bad guys. They were cruel and ruthless in their dismantling of the Inca empire; they did not try to appreciate or comprehend its accomplishments, its culture and art, its precision and strategic organization. The imposition of Christianity upon others was but a thin excuse for what they were really after: gold, silver and land. A very few were able to conquer millions because of a difference in mindset, metallurgy, and resistance to disease.
The Spanish murdered the Inca leadership, destroyed every cultural object, every religious totem, and enslaved those who remained. Of course, nearly all of the Spaniards who played a key role killed each other off in fits of greed and intrigue, more by each other’s hand than by the Inca. Marrin devotes the bulk of the book to telling this part of the story.
It still boggles the imagination that a few hundred thugs could slay an empire of perhaps five million people. Not content to live and let live, the Spanish, driven by ideology and greed, and by a skewed sense of being “chosen” to do “god’s work,” unleashed the mother of all holocausts upon the Americas in the early 16th century. To be fair, they had no idea that they brought smallpox, plague and the other diseases that did most of the destruction. (We now have numerous holocaust museums around the world, and it would be more than fair if they would memorialize the 16th century holocausts of Maya, Aztec and Inca.) This book is a wonderful narrative for any age, but especially for the young adult who needs to develop a perspective about the deleterious role Christianity has played in the world.
Inca civilization was, in many ways, more impressive than that of its conquerors, Catholic Spain. It was an empire at high-elevation, often more than two miles above sea level, stretching across the mountain peaks of the rugged Andes, through all of what we now call Peru and bits of neighboring Columbia, Ecuador, Chile and Bolivia. The Inca organized and built amazing religious and bureaucratic palaces of stone, surpassing the Egyptians in the level of engineering and masonry with stones many multiples of the size and weight the Egyptians worked with. Not to mention at mountain altitude.
The Inca even developed a communications system with perfectly level stone roads that united the distant cities of Cuzco and Quito by a series of runners who would cover short distances and verbally pass on the urgent message to the next runner, relay style. Messages thus traveled at the amazing rate of 250 miles per day, covering the 1,250 miles between Cuzco and Quito in a mere five days. These roads were off-limits to the average citizen; they were available only to marching armies and the “Chasqui” who conveyed messages.
This was essentially an early Communist society with a leader believed to be a god, the Sapa Inca. Everything produced was shared, and everyone had a defined place in society from which there was no budging. The basic rules were: do not steal, lie or be lazy. A zero-tolerance situation, with death or dismemberment the typical punishment. Human sacrifice functioned as a method of gaining favor with their gods. War-making was a tool for empire building, used only when diplomacy could not convince a neighboring people to join. Suffice it to say that the Inca, even without writing, were a highly-functioning civilization, not at all “primitive,” in any sense.
Geographical isolation, along with fewer native continental grains and animals, and a disinterest in trade outside the empire, differentiated how early American societies developed both socially and genetically. Marrin doesn’t bring this anthropological information into the picture - which is fine considering his target reader. (Jared Diamond in his adult book “Guns, Germs and Steel,” explains how civilizations arranged on a North-South axis, such as those of the Americas, were at a decided disadvantage compared those on an East-West axis in terms of the dissemination of techniques of animal husbandry, crop domestication and general trade. The genetic consequences of this difference were lack of immunity to the myriad diseases and plagues that circulated throughout Western societies. And another fatal consquence: no steel.) The Inca had never seen a horse, or a sword, when the first Conquistador touched the edge of the Inca empire in 1526.
Marrin devotes the first 50 pages explaining the prehistory of the area, how the Inca civilization evolved and worked. He then explains how the Spanish empire worked, and the background of Francisco Pizarro, whose cousin, Hernán Cortés had earlier conquered the Aztecs. He makes it clear that the Spanish were driven by the unshakable belief that they must Christianize the so-called pagan world. But every historian must take a side, and it is clear that the Spanish are the bad guys. They were cruel and ruthless in their dismantling of the Inca empire; they did not try to appreciate or comprehend its accomplishments, its culture and art, its precision and strategic organization. The imposition of Christianity upon others was but a thin excuse for what they were really after: gold, silver and land. A very few were able to conquer millions because of a difference in mindset, metallurgy, and resistance to disease.
The Spanish murdered the Inca leadership, destroyed every cultural object, every religious totem, and enslaved those who remained. Of course, nearly all of the Spaniards who played a key role killed each other off in fits of greed and intrigue, more by each other’s hand than by the Inca. Marrin devotes the bulk of the book to telling this part of the story.
It still boggles the imagination that a few hundred thugs could slay an empire of perhaps five million people. Not content to live and let live, the Spanish, driven by ideology and greed, and by a skewed sense of being “chosen” to do “god’s work,” unleashed the mother of all holocausts upon the Americas in the early 16th century. To be fair, they had no idea that they brought smallpox, plague and the other diseases that did most of the destruction. (We now have numerous holocaust museums around the world, and it would be more than fair if they would memorialize the 16th century holocausts of Maya, Aztec and Inca.) This book is a wonderful narrative for any age, but especially for the young adult who needs to develop a perspective about the deleterious role Christianity has played in the world.
August 23, 2020
Decent, short, cursory overview of the interaction of the Incas with the Spanish. Doesn’t end well.
November 8, 2012
This was one of the first books that truly pulled me into reading (and it’s not even fiction).
I procured it when my old middle school was having a book sale. I bought it and it sat on my shelf for awhile. Then one day I picked it up and read it. I have sense read it at least five times, though not in many years.
It’s extremely well written and a fantastic testimony to how reality is sometimes more intriguing than fiction.
I procured it when my old middle school was having a book sale. I bought it and it sat on my shelf for awhile. Then one day I picked it up and read it. I have sense read it at least five times, though not in many years.
It’s extremely well written and a fantastic testimony to how reality is sometimes more intriguing than fiction.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews