Reading Inca History Thoughts...

Catherine Julien's Reading Inca History is a work we rather struggled to complete. Due to our difficulties finding physical copies and the time to read, in full, Cabello Valboa and Murua (as well as a few of the hard to find Spanish chronicles), we were unsure how to tackle Julien's work. Her study of Inca historical consciousness and how it manifested in the sources used by the Spanish historical narratives or chronicles is fascinating, but does require a fuller familiarity with more of the Spanish sources. Nonetheless, Julien constructed an intriguing account of how Inca dynastic genealogy and life history of Inca rulers like Pachacuti were major sources of information used by the Spanish chroniclers. Tied to the panacas or descent groups of the Inca, mummies, songs, traditions, and even khipu were all part of the historical records of the Inca past. The use of paintings, ushered by Pachacuti, further establishes his central role in the development of Inca historical consciousness. 

Undoubtedly, an Inca historical consciousness existed. However, it was significantly changed or codified beginning with the reign of Pachacuti. Once Inca imperial expansion began, the need arose to establish descend from the patrilineage of Manco Capac and his sister (though sister marriage was not clearly established until much later) as the elite, power-holding group allegedly descended from the Sun. Using the Spanish chronicles and how they differ or share details about the early Inca past and the peoples of the Cuzco valley, Julien uncovers some hints at how the Incas were, at the beginning, just one of many groups in the Cuzco valley and their rulers engaged in marriage alliances with neighboring groups who even shared descent (or claimed it) from Pacaritambo and the Ayar brothers. But, with the expansion of Inca power and the need for a select group to consolidate its position, history and ritual were used to confer kingship to descendants from a more restricted kinship group that no longer had to rely so extensively on marriage alliances or acknowledge its shared origins with other groups in the valley. While much of the Inca source material that shaped the Spanish chronicles is still obscure, it is clear that historicist approaches to said Spanish chronicles can still be used to gain deeper glimpses of how the Inca constructed their own understanding of their past. The "mythic" elements and aspects that can perhaps be contextualized in the conflict between panacas or the growth of Christian influences on Andean belief may still reveal something of this historical consciousness that has been omitted or forgotten.