Chachapoya culture

The Chachapoyas, also called the "Warriors of the Clouds", was a culture of the Andes living in the cloud forests of the southern part of the Department of Amazonas of present-day Peru. The Inca Empire conquered their civilization shortly before the Spanish conquest in the 16th century. At the time of the arrival of the conquistadors, the Chachapoyas were one of the many nations ruled by the Incas, although their incorporation had been difficult due to their constant resistance to Inca troops. Since the Incas and conquistadors were the principal sources of information on the Chachapoyas, there is little first-hand or contrasting knowledge of the Chachapoyas. Writings by the major chroniclers of the time, such as Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, were based on fragmentary second-hand accounts. Much of what is known about the Chachapoya culture is based on archaeological evidence from ruins, pottery, tombs, and other artifacts. Spanish chronicler Pedro Cieza de León noted that, after their annexation to the Inca Empire, they adopted customs imposed by the Cusco-based Inca. By the 18th century, the Chachapoyas had been devastated; however, they remain a distinct strain within the indigenous peoples of modern Peru. The name Chachapoya was given to this culture by the Inca; the name that these people may have actually used to refer to themselves is not known. The meaning of the word Chachapoya may be derived from the Quechua sach'a phuyu (sach'a = tree, phuyu = cloud) meaning "cloud forest". Another possibility is that it may derive from sach'a-p-qulla (sach'a = tree, p = of the, qulla = the name of a pre-Inca kingdom from Puno) that the Incas used as a collective term for the many kingdoms around Lake Titicaca, the equivalent of "qulla people who live in the woods". The Chachapoyas' territory was located on the eastern slopes of the Andes, in present-day northern Peru. It encompassed the triangular region formed by the confluence of the Marañón River and the Utcubamba in Bagua Province, up to the basin of the Abiseo River where the Gran Pajáten is located.

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Related concepts (10)

Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire

The Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire, also known as the Conquest of Peru, was one of the most important campaigns in the Spanish colonization of the Americas. After years of preliminary exploration and military skirmishes, 168 Spanish soldiers under conquistador Francisco Pizarro, along with his brothers and their indigenous allies, captured the Sapa Inca Atahualpa in the 1532 Battle of Cajamarca. It was the first step in a long campaign that took decades of fighting but ended in Spanish victory in 1572 and colonization of the region as the Viceroyalty of Peru.

Department of Amazonas, Peru

Amazonas (amaˈsonas) is a department and region in northern Peru bordered by Ecuador on the north and west, Cajamarca on the west, La Libertad on the south, and Loreto and San Martín on the east. Its capital is the city of Chachapoyas. With a landscape of steep river gorges and mountains, Amazonas is the location of Kuelap, a huge stone fortress enclosing more than 400 stone structures; it was built on a mountain about 3,000 meters high, starting about 500 AD and was occupied to the mid-16th century.

Inca army

The Inca army (Quechua: Inka Awqaqkuna) was the multi-ethnic armed forces used by the Tawantin Suyu to expand its empire and defend the sovereignty of the Sapa Inca in its territory. Thanks to the military mit'a, as the empire grew in size and population, so did the army, reaching 200,000 men in a single army (during the reign of Huayna Capac). The soldiers were provided with food, clothing and state aid in replacing their family in regard to the agrarian activity that the recruited should be fulfilling, in such a way that being a permanent soldier was not a bad position and even occupied its own space in the political-social pyramid.