Inka

The Inka are a Quechua-speaking people of the Peruvian highlands with sacred capital Cusco. By tradition Manco Cápac founded the city early in the thirteenth century, his successors ruling a small city-state through repeated wars; in 1337 the Inka were still one local power among many in the Andes.

The turning point came in 1438, when Prince Cusi Yupanqui routed the Chanka besieging Cusco and ruled as Pachacuti, building the city-state into Tawantinsuyu, the Realm of the Four Parts. Within a century it stretched from Quito to central Chile under the Sapa Inca, through mit'a labour and royal roads.

Pizarro's men captured the Sapa Inca Atahualpa in 1532 and killed him in 1533; Manco Inca's Neo-Inca state held out at Vilcabamba until 1572, when Túpac Amaru was killed. In 1780 the kuraka Túpac Amaru II led a Quechua-Aymara revolt, the last major Inka revival before 1837.