Brundage describes Lords of Cuzco as a history of the Inca “caste,” from the beginning of Huayna Capac’s rule to the “ultimate extinction,” set at 1572. As a history of an elite in the last days of its greatness, this volume complements Brundage’s Empire of the Inca (1963), also in the Civilization of the American Indian Series.
A fascinating tale of tyranny, intrigue, internal conflict, and finally dissolution in the face of the Spanish conquerors forms the skeleton of Lords of Cuzco. This historical framework is nearly hidden, however, by fanciful detailing of events and long, unintegrated considerations of Inca customs and beliefs. Brundage has tried valiantly to give the reader a real feel for or intimate understanding of Inca culture. Unfortunately the early documents which he has studied so assiduously are limited in scope. One expects that many readers, being only casually interested in the Inca world, will quickly tire of Quechua terminology, the minutiae of social and ritual organization, and Brundage’s difficult prose. The text often lends itself more to impassioned oral recitation than to rapid silent reading.
Lords of Cuzco is at its best as Brundage dramatically dsecribes the scenes of important events in and around Cuzco, giving the present-day appearance as well as his reconstruction of the sixteenth century vista. He is keenly aware of the importance of physical setting, and he takes great pains to convince the reader that Cuzco was far more than a sacred city. “The Incas of the Capac Ayllu inhabited Cuzco, not because it was a convenient or desirable site, or even because it was traditional to do so, but because they were Incas and Cuzco was in a real sense their whole existence” (p. 150). Such strained reasoning, coupled with an approach which avoids consideration of economic factors or the total cultural system, inevitably brings Brundage’s interpretations into conflict with those of other historians and anthropologists. Similarly, although Brundage disclaims expertise in the Quechua language, he has a good deal to say about Quechua and its importance to history. The beginning sentence of the last major section of the book illuminates some basic problems, both linguistic and syntactical: “An imperial folk who conceive of themselves greatly and who claim for their mission in history a pivotal importance must of course have an adequate language” (p. 263).
Historians, too, may be dissatisfied with the very frequent and not always appropriate references to many fixtures of the Western world: the Flood (p. 17), the Only Lord in the Universe (p. 25), the great and universal Earth Mother (p. 29), free knights, earls (p. 33), pages, ladies-in-waiting (p. 41), communion bread (p. 54), All Souls day (p. 55), Armageddon (p. 114), daemons (p. 148), endowed manors (p. 183), and equerries (p. 227). One also wonders whether other historians, let alone anthropologists, could come to a similar understanding of the course of history and the fate of the Incas. Brundage concludes: “I have found in them what all of us have known since Adam delved and Eve span: that man in his pride will rise up and insult his Creator, that he will refuse to believe heartily in his own creaturehood, and that he will never escape the consequences thereof.. . . These are perhaps the only facts that historians can really report” (p. 319).
In balance, it is to the author’s great credit that, unlike many before him, he has deliberately avoided too much depreciation or adulation of either Inca or Spaniard. Some of his descriptive passages are moving and even beautiful. The careful reader, equipped beforehand with some knowledge of Andean culture and history, can come to a better appreciation of the Incas through this study. Finally, in defense of Brundage, many of the faults of Lords of Cuzco could have been alleviated and even eliminated through more careful editing.
