Chincha

Chincha was a kingdom in the fertile coastal valleys of southwestern Peru, ruled from the adobe center of La Centinela. Its merchants sailed balsa rafts between Ecuador and Chile, exchanging shells and metals.

By about 1480 Inca armies under Pachacuti and Tupac Yupanqui had absorbed Chincha. Its lord was the only man besides Atahualpa carried in a litter to Cajamarca, where he died in the Spanish ambush of 1532. Spaniards reached the valley in 1534; epidemics and colonial rule devastated its population.