Hannah Carney

OUT on the Conquest of Peru

Part 1
December 19, 2016

Opening up the Textbook Lesson Plan: The Conquest of Peru

One of the most puzzling questions of the conquest of Latin America is

how fewer than 200 Spanish soldiers under the command of Francisco Pizarro

could possibly have conquered the Inca ruler Atahualpa and taken control of

one of the most complex empires the world had ever seen. Dozens of

historians have suggested explanations for how this could have happened,

and the popular writer and anthropologist Jared Diamond made his own

contribution with his boldly titled Pulitzer-prize-winning book, Guns, Germs,

and Steel. Every textbook of world history likely makes at least some

reference to the fact that the Spanish conquistadores entering Peru in the

1530s were greatly outnumbered by Inca soldiers and civilians, and most

books compare the conquest of the Incas with that of the Aztecs more than

10 years earlier and just 500 miles to the north.

As tempting as it may be to suggest a simple explanation such as

Diamonds, most textbooks do not even go that far. They simply introduce

the Incas, include a little bit of information about great leaders such as

Pachacutiq and Inca roads and architecture, and then cut to the chase: the

Spanish forces, greatly outnumbered, conquer the Incas and capture the Inca

leader Atahualpa with barely a struggle.

 For this assignment, I examined the textbook that I already use to

teach world history to my ninth grade students: World History: Patterns of

Interaction from Holt-McDougal Harcourt. In this textbook account of the

conquest of the Incas, it sounds almost as though Pizarros victory over the

Incas was a foregone conclusion, in spite of his much smaller force of

soldiers. Two sentences sum up the capture of the Incan capital city, the

strategic prize of the conquest: Pizarro then marched on the Incan capital,

Cuzco. He captured it without a struggle in 1533.

The problem with this textbook account, in addition to the historical

inaccuracies and omissions that it presents as fact, is that it adds to an

insidious narrative of Indian helplessness, navet, or even stupidity when

encountering European invaders in their land. A student reading this passage

might think, why on earth didnt the Incas fight back? Why were they so

helpless and easily defeated by a small force of Spanish soldiers and

explorers? I remember teaching the destruction of Pompeii by Mt. Vesuvius

to sixth grade students a few years ago, and they kept asking why the

residents of Pompeii were so stupid/slow/reluctant to leave the city. One boy

suggested, in all earnestness, that they should have just gotten into a truck

and driven away at top speed! My concern with this lesson on the Incas is

that students, having only read the textbook, would just assume the

conquest was inevitable and that there was no way the Incas could have

retained control of their empire.

 The truth of the Inca conquest is, like most of history, much more

complicated than the textbook implies. The fact is that some Inca factions

heavily resisted the Spanish invasion of their empire, and that other Inca

factions, and Indians from groups that the Incas had conquered, provided

support to Pizarro during the conquest and saw him as a useful ally. Then

there is disease. The journalist Charles Manns (2005) book 1491 does an

admirable job of bringing together recent scholarship on the effects that

European diseases such as smallpox had upon the conquest of both North

and South America. He quotes one Spanish chronicler who stated that a

great plague of smallpox broke out [in 1524 or 1525], so severe that more

than 200,000 died of it, for it spread to all parts of the kingdom (p. 87).

Pedro Pizarro (1921), a cousin of Francisco Pizarro himself, writes a passage

in his book about the death from smallpox of the last Inca ruler before the

Spanish conquest, and states outright that his cousins forces would not have

been able to conquer the Incas had this previous ruler still been in power (pp.

96-99).

As for capturing Cusco without a struggle, the influential book

Conquest of the Incas by historian John Hemming (1970) presents a very

different view of Pizarros entry into the Inca capital city. He describes

intense fighting and the defense of Cusco by a large force of Inca soldiers

under the command of the murdered Inca ruler Atahualpa. As an added

bonus, he nicely captures the mercenary character of at least one of Pizarros

soldiers who laments the loss of his expensive (never mind useful) horse

(1970, p. 110).

The last document that helps to open up the textbook account is in

some ways the most remarkable: an account of the Spanish conquest

dictated by an Inca who was also a ruler: Titu Cusi. Titu Cusi was the son of

Manco Inca, and a half-brother and political rival to Atahualpa. In around

1570 he wrote about his fathers alliance with Francisco Pizarro after

Atahualpas welcome death and, just three years later, the almost-successful

rebellion that his father led against the Spanish. This is one of those

moments of encountering the strange in history (Wineburg, 2010, p. 83),

and what students will learn upon reading my context and source notes is

that earlier, Atahualpa tried to have Manco Inca killed. Manco Inca thus saw

an alliance with Pizarro as a chance to save himself from Atahualpas

surviving followers, and to take the power and Inca capital that he believed

belonged to him. My hope is that in opening up the textbook passage on the

conquest of the Incas with carefully selected primary and secondary sources,

students will understand the complexity of this conquest and of the very

people who were supposedly conquered.

Works cited:
Beck, R., Black, L., Krieger, L., Naylor, P., Shabaka, D. (Eds.). (2010). World
History: Patterns of Interaction. Dumfries, North Carolina: Holt McDougal.
Hemming, J. (1970). The Conquest of the Incas. New York, NY: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, Inc.
Mann, C. (2005). 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus.
New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf.
Pizarro, P. (1921). Relation of the Discovery and Conquest of the Kingdoms of
Peru. (Means, P. A., Trans.). New York, NY: The Cortes Society. (Original work
published 1571).
Titu Cusi Yupanqui (2006). History of How the Spaniards Arrived in Peru.
(Julien, C. Trans.). Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. (Original
Work published in 1570).
Wineburg, S. (2010/2011). Historical thinking and other unnatural acts. Phi
Delta Kappan, 92(4), 81-94.

Hannah Carney
OUT on the Conquest of Peru
Part 2

Central Historical Question: How did Pizarro capture the Inca city of
Cusco?

Background knowledge: Students will know that Francisco Pizarro and a

force of about 168 Spanish conquistadores invaded the Inca Empire in 1532,
kidnapped the current ruler Atahualpa, and then killed Atahualpa in 1533 and
took control of the capital city of Cusco.

Sequence of Activities: (Assuming two 50-minute periods)

1. [2 min.] Introduce the Central Historical Question and briefly review
what we have already studied regarding the Incas rise to power and
the cultural, political, and economic attributes of their empire.

2. [3 min.] Show the image by Millais of Pizarro seizing Atahualpa

(Appendix A). Ask students what they notice in the picture [the
purpose of showing this image is to point out how stories of the
conquest are often romanticized, and that depictions of the Incas are
often negativethey are helpless, bewildered, ungodly, etc.]

3. [10 min.] Students take notes on a brief PowerPoint with basic

information about Pizarro and Atahualpa and the timeline of the
conquest of Peru:
Huayna Capac dies
Succession is uncertain; Atahualpa seizes throne and engages in
a civil war with his brother Huascar whose army is eventually
defeated and who goes on the run
Francisco Pizarro lands in Peru in 1532 and makes his way to
Cajamarca where he meets with Atahualpa and kidnaps him.
While in captivity, Atahualpa orders his men to kill Huascar,
which they succeed in doing
Atahualpa pays his ransom, but Pizarro still has him killed in
1533
Pizarro marches into Cusco and takes control of the city in late
1533. Some historians consider this capture of the capital city to
be the final step in the Spanish conquest of Peru
Remember, the Central Historical Question is: How did Pizarro
capture the Inca city of Cusco?

4. [10 min.] Ask students to review with a partner the textbook passage
and the guiding questions they answered last night for homework.
Elicit 2-3 student responses to the questions.

5. [2 min.] TRANSITION: Now that we have read the textbook account,

explain that we need to gather more evidence in order to be able to
answer our Central Historical question. Hand out Document B and
guiding questions for all documents.

6. [10 min.] Students silently read Document B and then should work in
pairs to answer the questions together.

7. [10 min.] Class discussion:

Have we answered our CHQ yet? Why or why not?

 How reliable are our documents? Which document do you find most
reliable so far? Why?
What other evidence do we need in order to answer the CHQ? [possible
responses are accounts from Pizarro himself on his plans to enter
Cusco, eyewitness accounts of the conquest of Cusco, etc.]

8. [3 min.] Explain that students need to read Documents C and D for

homework, and answer the Guiding questions for them.

The next day

9. [5 min.] Quick summaries of our first two documents; have students

provide these

10. [10 min.] Have students discuss the guiding questions for
Document C in pairs or small groups. Elicit a few responses before
moving on to the last document.

11. [10 min.] Have students review the guiding questions in their
groups and discuss the last document with groupmates. Elicit a few
responses before moving on to one last class discussion.

12. [10 min.] Class discussion:

Have we answered our CHQ yet? How did Pizarro capture the
Inca city of Cusco?
What information did our last two documents provide that helped
us answer the CHQ?
What perspectives did these documents provide? Which of the
four sources do you think is the most reliable or trustworthy, and
why?
What resistance did the Incas offer the Spanish during the
conquest?

13. [15 min.] Exit ticket: In groups of four (pairs pair up with another
group), students are asked to write their own textbook account that
includes information we gained from our OUT exercise. What elements
are essential to include in the textbook account? What can be left out?
Whose perspectives do we need to include?

Assessment: Student understanding will be assessed by their participation

in the class discussions as well as on the content and quality of their exit
ticket rewritings of the textbook passage.
Appendix A
Pizarro Seizing the Inca of Peru, by John Everett Millais, 1846