Atahualpa

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Atahualpa : biography

March 20, 1497 – July 26, 1533

Atahualpa, Atahuallpa, Atabalipa, or Atawallpa (March 20, 1497 in Quito – August 29, 1533), was the last Sapa Inca (sovereign emperor) of the Tawantinsuyu (the Inca Empire) before the Spanish conquest. Atahualpa became emperor when he defeated and executed his older half-brother Huáscar in a civil war sparked by the death of their father, Inca Huayna Capac, from an infectious disease (possibly smallpox).Hemming, The Conquest, p. 28.

During the Spanish conquest, the Spaniard Francisco Pizarro captured Atahualpa and used him to control the Inca Empire. Eventually, the Spanish executed Atahualpa, effectively ending the empire. (Although a succession of several would-be emperors, who led the Inca resistance against the invading Spaniards, claimed the title of Sapa Inca ("unique "), the empire began to disintegrate after Atahualpa’s death.)

Notes

Legacy

After Pizarro’s death, Inés Yupanqui, the favorite sister of Atahualpa, who had been given to Pizarro in marriage by her brother, married a Spanish cavalier named Ampuero and left for Spain. They took her daughter by Pizarro with them, and she was later legitimized by imperial decree. Francisca Pizarro Yupanqui married her uncle Hernándo Pizarro in Spain, on October 10, 1537— they had a son, Francisco Pizarro y Pizarro. This son, in turn, married twice and had offspring, the Marqueses de La Conquista. The Pizarro line survived Hernando’s death, although it is currently extinct in the male line. Pizarro’s third son, by a relative of Atahualpa renamed Angelina, who was never legitimized, died shortly after reaching Spain., chapter 28 Another relative, Catalina Capa-Yupanqui, who died in 1580, married a Portuguese nobleman named António Ramos, son of António Colaço and wife Violante Fernandes Veloso. Their daughter was Francisca de Lima, who married Álvaro de Abreu de Lima, another Portuguese nobleman, and had issue in Portugal.

Prison and execution

On November 17 the Spaniards sacked the Inca army camp, in which they found great treasures of gold, silver, and emeralds. Noticing their lust for precious metals, Atahualpa offered to fill a large room about long and wide up to a height of once with gold and twice with silver within two months.Hemming, The Conquest, pp. 39–40. It is commonly believed that Atahualpa offered this ransom to regain his freedom; however, it seems likelier that he did so to avoid being killed, as none of the early chroniclers mention any commitment by the Spaniards to free Atahualpa once the metals were delivered.Hemming, The Conquest, pp. 49, 536.

After several months in fear of an imminent attack from general Rumiñahui, the outnumbered Spanish saw Atahualpa as too much of a liability and decided to execute him. Pizarro staged a mock trial and found Atahualpa guilty of revolting against the Spanish, practicing idolatry, and murdering Huáscar, his brother. Atahualpa was sentenced to execution by burning. He was horrified, since the Inca believed that the soul would not be able to go on to the afterlife if the body were burned. Friar Vicente de Valverde, who had earlier offered his breviary to Atahualpa, intervened, telling Atahualpa that if he agreed to convert to Catholicism, he would convince Pizarro to commute the sentence. Atahualpa agreed to be baptized into the Catholic faith. He was given the name Juan Santos Atahualpa in honor of the feast day of the beheading of St. John the Baptist, which falls on August 29. In accordance with his request, he was strangled with a garrote on August 29, 1533. Following his execution, his clothes and some of his skin were burned, and his remains were given a Christian burial.Hemming, The Conquest, p. 79. Atahualpa was succeeded by his brother, the puppet Inca Túpac Huallpa, and later by another brother Manco Inca.

Depictions in popular culture

Atahualpa Inca’s conflict with Pizzaro was dramatized by Peter Shaffer in his play The Royal Hunt of the Sun, which originally was staged by the National Theatre in 1964 at the Chichester Festival then in London at the Old Vic. The role of Atahualpa was played by Robert Stephens and by David Carradine (who received a Tony Award nomination) in the 1965 Broadway production. Christopher Plummer was Atahualpa in the 1969 movie version of the play.