Along the Royal Road: A Journey Through the Inca Empire

The Royal Road, 1520s–1530s

1By about 1500, the Inca ruled the largest empire in the Americas. They called it Tawantinsuyu, "the land of four parts." It stretched more than 2,500 miles along the Andes Mountains, and historians estimate it held about 10 million people. To hold it together, the Inca built the Qhapaq Ñan, or royal road, a network that historians estimate ran about 25,000 miles.

2On this route map, the main mountain road runs north and south through the Andes. Cusco, the capital, sits at the southern end of the map. Going north from Cusco, the road soon drops into the deep gorge of the Apurímac River, which travelers crossed on a bridge of woven grass rope. Farther north lies Huánuco Pampa, a town built by the state, and farther north still is Cajamarca. Quito stands at the northern end of the road. Tumbes lies on the Pacific coast, northwest of Cajamarca.

3In about 1525, an official in Cusco who had to send orders to Quito did not carry them himself. Chaskis, young relay runners, waited at posts along the road. Each ran a few miles, then passed a spoken message and a khipu, a record of knotted cords, to the next runner. Historians estimate that a relay could carry a message about 150 miles in a day. Ordinary people needed permission to use the road. Most travelers were soldiers, officials, chaskis and llama caravans, since the Inca had no horses or wheeled carts.

4About every day's walk, travelers reached a tambo, a way station with rooms and food. At Huánuco Pampa, hundreds of storehouses called qollqa held maize, potatoes, cloth and weapons. Villages along the road owed the state mit'a, a labor tax: for a set time, families farmed state fields, carried loads or repaired the road. One grass bridge over the upper Apurímac, Q'eswachaka, is still rebuilt with fresh rope by Quechua communities every year.

5In the late 1520s, a disease brought by Europeans, probably smallpox, spread into the Andes ahead of the Spanish. It likely killed the emperor Huayna Capac. Two of his sons, Atahualpa in the north and Huáscar in Cusco, then fought a civil war for the throne. In 1532 Francisco Pizarro landed near Tumbes with fewer than 200 soldiers and climbed inland to Cajamarca, where Atahualpa was camped after winning the war. In November 1532 the Spanish attacked Atahualpa's mostly unarmed attendants in the town square and took him prisoner. Atahualpa offered a room full of gold and silver for his freedom. The Spanish took the treasure and executed him in 1533.

6Then the Spanish turned south toward Cusco. They crossed the Inca bridges, slept in tambos and took food from the storehouses. Some Andean peoples who had resisted Inca rule, along with supporters of Huáscar, joined them. In November 1533 they entered Cusco. Inca leaders kept resisting for decades. Today millions of people speak Quechua, the Inca language, and in 2014 the Qhapaq Ñan was named a World Heritage Site that crosses six countries.