Chanka–Inca War

The exact date of the conflict is unknown; it potentially took place at the beginning of the 15th century.

The Chanka confederation was a loose defensive alliance of various independent chiefdoms, while the Cusco confederation, which later became the Inca Empire, was a unified, hierarchically structured polity with a ruling elite and a cultural identity.

After a victory during the Chanka attack of Cusco, the Inca armies marched into Chanka territory and defeated them at the Battle of Yahuarpampa.

The war was an important event to the geo-politics of the region, and opened the way for the creation of the Inca Empire. Because of his victory, Cusi Yupanqui, whose later name was Pachacuti, gained universal recognition, overthrowing his father, the ruler of Cusco, and his brother Urco, the co-ruler and designated heir. Through his new found prestige he rapidly initiated the Inca expansion.

The effects of the war were exaggerated by the Inca ruling class, which made Cusi Yupanqui the archetype of its philosophical principals. The historical accuracy of the story told by colonial documents of the episode of the Chanka attack against Cusco is regularly questioned.

Historicity

The historicity of the traditional story told by the Incas of Cusco is regularly called into question, because of similarities with other cyclical stories of Inca mytho-history and a lack of alphabetically written sources. Transmitted through quipus (knotted cords), linked to oral texts and pictographic images, Inca historiography was separated into various genres, and each lineage had its own version of Inca history. Archeological evidence sometimes contradicts, and sometimes complements the traditional story.

According to the archaeologist and anthropologist Gary Urton, two historiographical traditions exist; one considers Spanish colonial sources reliable and supports that the Chanka attack on Cusco represented the moment Inca myth became history, while the other thinks that the Chanka–Inca War was semi-legendary, but contained historical details, including the occupation of former Wari lands. Since the early 1980s, following the publication of a paper by the French anthropologist Pierre Duviols, the academic consensus has seen the war as a largely mythical event. The Peruvian ethno-historian María Rostworowski thought the Chanka–Inca War to be the Incas' explanation for their rapid ascension. According to her and González Carré, the Chankas were warrior hordes who defeated the Wari State in the 11th century, and Yupanqui's imperial title, Pachacuti, was an ancient title formerly used by Wari rulers. Reiner Tom Zuidema and Clementina Battcock consider the event to have been linked to conflicts between the religious ruling class and the warrior chieftains ("sinchis") who, according to Battcock, would have taken power following the news of a Chanka attack. Franck Garcia indicates that archeological research in the Andahuaylas region supports the existence of a powerful polity, while for Frank Meddens and Cirilo Vivanco Pomacanchari, the Chanka confederation was a loose defensive alliance of various independent local chiefdoms, while the Inca chiefdom of Cusco had a ruling elite, a unified cultural identity, and was in the process of developing a state structure. According to them, the expansionist Inka state either invaded a Chanka chiefdom "ripe for conquest" and used the narrative of a Chanka attack to justify the conquest of territories northwest of Cusco, or started hostilities with the Chanka prior to the attack. For Luis Millones and Brian Bauer, the war was a "legendary saga" conceived to explain Inca ascension to power, which would have been of part of ancient Wari tradition. For Terence N. D'Altroy, while the Chankas might have been an important adversary of the Incas in the early years of expansion, the "sagas of the Chanka wars may still be mostly a glorious epic invoked to burnish the image of the emperor's father", Viracocha Inca. According to him, scepticism also arises from the confusion in the Inca ruler list, as Urco, usually represented as Viracocha Inca's favourite son and heir to the throne, was described by the colonial chronicler Pedro Cieza de León as an independent ruler of Cusco, during the Viracocha Inca's life. This assertion was later refuted by the indigenous chronicler Yamqui Pachacuti. For María Rostworowski, Urco was co-ruler of Viracocha Inca while the latter still lived, and was supposed to succeed him. To take power from Urco, a short civil war occurred between Pachacuti and Urco following the Inca victory over the Chankas. According to Cieza de Leon, the Incas removed Urco from the list of Inca rulers. This inconsistency has been linked to a general debate between academics on Inca succession customs, some finding the Incas to have had concepts of absolute monarchy and primogeniture, others judging the latter two to be euro-centric concepts, believing the Incas to have evaluated the capacities of the successor by naming him co-regent of the Inca ruler, and others think a "generational succession" was also observable in the Andes.

For the Inca lineages (panakas), who, according to their ascent, attributed the war to either Viracocha Inca or Pachacuti, the Pachacuti-Viracocha era was an explanatory unit used to describe the ascension of the Inca State, and Pachacuti became a national hero and an archetype of good government.