On the Men of Cajamarca

What a fascinating work. Although this is dated, it functions as a cross-section of the 168 men who deposed the Emperor Atahuallpa of the Inca in 1533. Lockhart starts with an introductory chapter on the chronology and narrative of the conquest of Peru, interestingly starting with the moment Balboa and his men encountered the Pacific Ocean in Panama. From there, Spanish conquistadores could take two directions: they could go west and north towards Nicaragua and the rest of central America, or they could go south and east towards Colombia and the Andes. Different groups of men went in both directions, although Lockhart’s study is of the men who moved south into the Andes. This narrative history was really important to me, as I didn’t even know the broad outlines other than a couple basic facts (e.g. “Balboa sees the Pacific,” “Pizarro conquered the Inca,” ???, profit!).

After the narrative chapter, Lockhart spends his time on a few analytical chapters about the backgrounds and factionalization of the men who deposed Emperor Atahuallpa at Cajamarca. Some of this, I had known prior to reading this (for instance, a plurality of the men at Cajamarca came from Pizarro’s home region of Extremadura), but most of it I did not. I was surprised that over half of the members on Pizarro’s expedition were under age 30, and he was the only member who was 50+. As someone who is 26 years old, imagining myself in the position of these conquerors is a bit jaw-dropping, especially given the “low blow” assault they enacted against Atahuallpa. Lockhart looks at a few other aspects of their lives, including occupation (which is probably the most interesting, given the diversity of occupations listed) and social rank (approximately 1/3 were Hidalgos, almost all of the rest were “plebeian”). Finally, he dives into the outcomes faced by those present at Cajamarca. While some retired filthy rich and made their way back to Spain, most who did so were either infirm or on the older side. Most of the rest remained in the Americas. This is especially interesting, as Lockhart spends some time discussing why we should not call these conquerors soldiers and most, after Cajamarca, stayed quite static, ending their expeditions and instead lorded over encomiendas. The remainder of that section deals with the factionalization of the civil wars experienced in the Andes (poor Almagro, Francisco Pizarro really fucked him over)—the prognosis for those who sided with Pizarro were much better than those who sided with Almagro and his son.

The remainder of the book is made up of short biographies of all 168 members of the expedition, although some of the content here is slim due to a lack of information. To me, this almost functioned more as an appendix, but Lockhart’s aim was to have it as a part of the text just as integral as the analytical sections.

This was a really important read for me, given how illuminating it was. I know that this is meant for those who already who work on this sub-discipline, but it was valuable for me as well.