The Question of Slavery in the Inca State

Introduction

The question of whether or not there were slaves and slavery in the Inca state (or Tawantinsuyu) has long been disputed in historiography, as has the general question of the dependence of people in the Inca state and the nature of their dependency. This debate is an expression of the continuous search for theoretical frameworks for Inca history, which have been based largely on various European models and terminologies. The various forms of dependency existing in the Inca state have been interpreted in the context of evolutionary models of economic and social evolution, where one category of dependents, the yanacona, were regarded as possible slaves. According to John Murra,¹ the dispute about the yanacona is as old as the anthropology of the Inca state.²

Yanacona can be defined as people detached from their family group, freed from tribute to the Inca, and serving the Inca and provincial elites. However, this is not the only social and labor-related category of dependency in the Inca state. Other main social and labor categories are mitimaes, camayoc and mitayos. Paraphrased as relocated people (mitimaes), occupational specialists (camayoc), and commoners taking turns of service to fulfill their tribute obligations (mitayos), all of these are deeply rooted, but also historically evolving and intersecting social groups. These categories include men and women, while an additional category, acllacuna/ mamacuna, comprised exclusively women, the first category referring to young, the second to elder women. These are considered very close to the yana category. Given this situation, it is difficult to isolate just one of the social groups to describe, but we will focus our attention on the yanacona as the group that in previous works had been seen as experiencing an especially strong form of asymmetric dependency. However, we will also consider the overlapping of the yana category with other groups. A systematic study of the yanacona, but also of the other social and labor-related categories of the Inca state, i.e., on the dependent population, is still pending. After the seminal works of the so-called Andean Studies of the 1960s to 1980s, established principally by John Murra (1916–2006), no scholars have given much attention to these topics, generally, and also not to the yanacona, in particular.³ We focus here on a source-saturated approach that follows from Andean Studies and incorporates new anthropological, historical, and archaeological perspectives on the Inca state.

All written sources about the yanacona come from the Spanish colonial period. These were eyewitness reports, chronicles, administrative documents as visitation reports (“visitas”), and also early Quechua dictionaries. The meaning of the Quechua word yana in an early seventeenth-century dictionary is given as “criado moço de seruicio” (“servant, servant youth”), yanacona is the plural form.⁴ Generally, Spanish terms like “criado,” “indios de servicio” or sometimes just “servicio” (service), can be assumed to mean yanacona as well, but might also cover other individuals. Not everyone called a “criado” (“servant,” but also “raised”) was necessarily a yana. In addition, yanacona could also be occupational specialists (termed camayoc), and some of them occupied leadership positions and the term was applied to members of local elites. The degree of dependency is therefore not easy to determine, as the yanacona could cover a whole spectrum of different status positions. After a few general reflections on Inca society and economy, we will describe the yanacona as a dependent social group and labor category in three main sections. The first section will examine how people became yana; the second will explore personal service to the ruler, as well as working for the Inca and provincial elites; and the third section will consider how people exited the yana status.

The Inca Rulers

Name	According to Miguel Cabello Valboa [1586]a	According to Juan de Betanzos [1551–57]b
Manco Inca
Sinchi Roca
Lloque Yupanqui
Mayta Capac
Capac Yupanqui
Inca Roca
Yahuar Huacac
Viracocha	?–1438	?–1420/30
Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui	1438–1471	1420/30–1470/75
Topa Inca Yupanqui	1471–1493	1470/75–1485/90
Huayna Capac	1493–1527	1485/90–1525
Huascar	1527–1532	1525–1532
Atahualpa	1532–1533

1. Table (elaborated by Kerstin Nowack)
2. ^aMiguel Cabello Valboa, Miscelánea Antártica, ed. Isaías Lerner (Sevilla: Fundación José Manuel Lara, 2011 [1586])
3. ^bJuan de Betanzos, Suma y Narración de los Incas: seguida del discurso sobre la descendencia y gobierno de los Incas, ed. María del Carmen Martín Rubio (Madrid: Polifemo, 2004 [1551–57])

The Tawantinsuyu encompassed parts of present-day southern Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and from northwest Argentina up to central Chile, making it the largest state in the Americas in terms of geographic extent. Its manifold landscapes ranged from a desert coast through hot and fertile valleys, to arid and cold highlands down to the eastern slopes of the Andes and the eastern rainforest. It was inhabited by between six and thirteen million people under the control of Inca rulers at its peak extent.⁵ The Inca state arose through expansion during the last hundred years or so before the Spanish conquest of Peru beginning in 1532.

How did Inca rulers manage to establish a state of such great dimensions in such a short time? The explanation for this phenomenon lies in the interlocking structures Andean communities, such as the mincca, reciprocal or mutual aid that was inseparably linked to the ayllu, the basic, household-based social organization of hatun runa or “commoners.” Social relations within the ayllu were structured on the basis of collective land ownership and the related principle of reciprocity. Members of local communities benefited from the mincca in agricultural work or, for example house construction. Gradually and in a manner almost imperceptible to Andean peoples, these structures were used to further the Inca state’s interests and transformed into the mita, a system of rotating labor obligations to the state based on the mincca model, for which new redistributive forms and ideological-religious justifications were created. The state needed this form of extended labor obligation of the community members, or mitayos, to expand its productive agricultural base and its infrastructure (e.g., roads, road stations, storehouses, administrative centers).

The Inca succeeded in achieving a subtle balance between diversity through the maintenance of local structures and unification on a higher level. In the diverse Andean ecosystem with its micro-landscapes and micro-climates, local agriculture was not only practiced at a single altitude level, for example growing maize at about 3000 meters or potatoes in the Puna highlands. Instead, local communities often controlled several vertical levels by establishing permanent colonies or “archipelagos” in order to obtain a wider range of agricultural products. These levels were often inhabited by mitimaes, relocated people or “colonists” of different origins.⁶ Inca rulers expanded this institution by systematically relocating and resettling families, or even entire communities to new, strategic locations, thereby developing unused or underused land and other resources, but also contributing to the stability of their rule by dividing conquered polities. In a similar manner, they took the existing practice of having yanacona and expanded and adapted it for the support of their elite and of state-sponsored cults.

Becoming a Yana

The yanacona have their origins in the time before the Inca. There were different ways of falling into this form of dependency. In pre-Inca times, the yanacona were apparently an integrated part of the local social organization. In Inca times, one can assume that the yanacona are to be seen in connection with the wars of conquest of the Inca and generally with the progressive constitution of the Tawantinsuyu. At the same time, the pre-Inca practices continued to exist in the local organizations. That is to say that often different forms of becoming yana were intertwined. During Inca rule, capture in war was probably a common way of becoming a yana. In the main Andean languages, Quechua and Aymara, the words for prisoner of war and their Spanish translations indicate that there was an overlap in meaning between “war captive,” “prisoner,” and “slave.”⁷ Juan de Betanzos, an important chronicler who could communicate in Quechua, mentions that some yanacona had been prisoners of war, mostly men or families abducted from their provinces during campaigns of conquest. He exemplifies this when he describes specific military campaigns and gives examples of people taken as booty and individuals settled as yanacona.⁸ After the initial transformation of war captives into yanacona, the majority of the yanacona was then provided by the local population as part of its tribute obligations after the wars of conquest. These are described as being taken or recruited from the provinces and allocated to the descent groups of the former rulers,⁹ who continued to be present in the life of their descendants as mummified ancestors, and whose land, servants, and buildings remained in their possession, serving to maintain their descent group.

Accordingly, yanacona could be provided for the Inca ruler himself and his family; including the former rulers; the Inca elite; or the local elites of the subjugated provinces—in this last case as a reward for subjugation, but also as part of the existing practices. The Inca elite expected subjugated populations to provide it with yana laborers in a similar manner as provincial lords requested these permanent dependents from their subjects. The yanacona themselves could come from socially completely different status groups, namely both from the local elite of the subjugated region, but also from the group of the commoner population. As yanacona from the elite, they either remained at their status or were able to raise it which was sometimes also true for commoners who became yanacona. Yanacona thus at times were an important instrument of Inca rule and the maintenance of their power in the conquered territories. They could exercise positions of high responsibility as government officials, for example, but the case of the ten thousand Chachapoyas, the “Warriors of the Clouds” on the eastern slope of the northern Andes in Peru, stands out, who due to their military skills were turned into specialized soldiers by the Inca, some of them yanacona.¹⁰ After the Spanish conquest, these military skills could be turned against the Inca. Condorguacho, the female ruler of the Huaylas province, had been given yanacona by her husband, the Inca ruler Huayna Capac, respectively his military leaders. In 1536, she personally led troops to support the Spaniards during their fight against the Inca and “brought many Indians Chachapoyas [and other] with her that were hers.” They might have been the war captives awarded to her as yanacona.¹¹ Other Chachapoya yanacona and/or mitimaes were assigned to the Inca Huayna Capac personal guards and for his son Huascar together with other groups. Especially from mitimaes we know that they were able to maintain their high status during the turbulent times of Spanish conquest, when the Chachapoya became allies of the Spaniards. This guaranteed them a high social status with access to honor and privilege even during the colonial period.¹²

One specific example of becoming a yana is given by don Joan Puyquin during the General Visitation of viceroy Francisco de Toledo, the “reformer” of the viceroyalty of Peru (1570–1575). He described to the Spanish information gatherers that his father had been captured as a child during a campaign against the Chachapoya. While most members of his local group were killed, the father of don Joan Puyquin was allowed to live because he was so young, and was made a servant or yana of Topa Inca.¹³ Later in life, the father married, had children on his own, and even acquired a position of local leadership in the Cusco region. Remarkably, it is documented that the Chachapoya turned war captives into yanacona as well, since Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, famous author of the “Royal Commentaries of the Incas” (1609) mentions a supposed Chachapoya rebellion, where they took Inca soldiers as prisoners “with the intention of using them as slaves.”¹⁴

Although we know something about wars being the context in which people became yanacona, in the other cases we know nothing about the selection process by which yanacona were drafted. Because the sources on the yanacona are so scattered, they seem to give the impression of random decisions. The exception is the yanacona of elite origins who came “from the best people and most [were] children of curacas [local rulers],” as the Spanish administrator Hernando de Santillán explains.¹⁵ They served the Inca ruler in special capacities and progressed to become part of a patronage network in the Inca state. Their fate differed completely from that of yanacona drafted from the commoner population.

The other accounts tell of the way yanacona were chosen in the provinces by the Inca nobles, but not who exactly was chosen. In the Chincha valley in south coastal Peru, Inca officials are reported to have come inspecting the performance of the local rulers, collecting data on the province’s demographics as well as selecting individuals who would become aclla (“chosen women”) and yana. A local ruler in Huanuco in the northern-central Andes reported to the Spanish crown officials about the work his people had done for the Inca state. For example, he sent a number of yanacona to live in Cuzco in service of the Inca ruler. As he underlined, their children as adults continued to serve as yanacona. This is an indication that the status of the yanacona may have been hereditary. If there were no children, the home province had to send a replacement.¹⁶ Nothing is said about the fate of yanacona who had become too old for work.

This form of recruitment explains why even an Inca ruler who had not yet led a successful campaign of conquest could nevertheless distribute yanacona to the descendants of his predecessors, the “dead lords”. Similarly, high-ranking members of an Inca ruler’s family like his mother and principal wife were allowed to get yanacona from the provinces to work on the parcels of land they had been allocated.¹⁷ Possibly, yanacona of the Inca ruler and the Inca elite were selected mostly from small and non-influential kinship groups (ayllus), but it is also imaginable that, as in the case of general labor service (mita), a percentage of every given unit was chosen.¹⁸ The only other information on the origins of yanacona again comes from Betanzos. He provides a list of Inca laws, one of them stating that thieves either had to recompense the owner of stolen property by giving it back in double. If they did not have the means for making amends, they had to become the yanacona of the property owner. Not only would the thief stay the yana of property owner until his death, he would also bequeath his status on his children. A second law implies that unwanted children exposed as infants could be turned into yanacona.¹⁹ In these cases, it is evident that people already marginalized in their societies were in danger of becoming yanacona.

As stated above, the Inca built their institutions and practices on those existing in the Andes prior to their rule. Having yanacona was widely practiced by the local elite in the pre-Inca Andes. Local rulers from highland Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia as well as from coastal Peru describe that they enjoyed the service of yanacona.²⁰ They expected to be provided with yanacona from their subjects. That is to say that, unlike as in the above-mentioned cases, the dependents originated from the same group as the people for whom they worked.²¹ In a village near the Lake Titicaca, one of the Lupaca rulers still powerful in the colonial epoch, explained that he had both Aymaras and Uros in his service, referring categories used to define people around the Lake Titicaca by occupation, lifestyle, and language.²² The ruler governed members of both groups, and both provided him with yanacona. Yanacona could also be “given” within the hierarchy of the provincial elite from one lord to a higher-level lord.²³

A very few examples indicate that yana status could be the result of a breakdown of social relations, as for example in the case of orphaned children who became members of a local elite household, and as adults found that they were ascribed to the yana category for their lifetime. In the aftermaths of the Spanish invasion, documents from the central highlands of Ecuador and Peru refer to individuals and families who apparently accepted yana status in exchange for a livelihood and the protection of local elites.²⁴

While coercion by economic and social circumstances might be a factor in becoming a yana in local social organizations, direct violence is hardly ever mentioned. Although the inhabitants of the central Andes experienced a period of regular conflict among neighboring polities before the Inca ruled, and although warfare was also before the Inca one of the most common ways to acquire dependents, there is little evidence that yanacona in those times were war captives. At the same moment, the testimonies of local elites reflect the situation after one to four generations of Inca rule, and the correlating suppression of conflicts among the Tawantinsuyu’s subjects.

The term yana encountered in the colonial sources thus covers a great variety of statuses and historical developments. What interests here most is the employment of dependents in the Inca empire, starting with the largest group, those working for the Inca elite.

Personal Service to the Ruler: Working for the Inca and Provincial Elites

In the Inca state, the obligation to work applies to all who depended on the Inca state or the local political elites, or a ruler, whether or not they are in servitude. Therefore, most of the population as a whole worked to provide basic subsistence, and this is true for the yanacona as well. Lamentably, the information about the circumstances of their life does not go far beyond these references to their labor obligations. Based on the sources, we can again distinguish between labor and personal services of the yanacona for the Inca ruler and his family as well as for the Inca elite and for the local elites.

Most of the Inca yanacona were workers on the Inca elite’s rural estates.²⁵ These estates, mainly located in the environs of the Inca capital of Cuzco, were settlements and resource systems, created by a ruler and then managed in the name of his descendants. Many of them included more than one palace as well as private lands and resources for their inhabitants and for the sun, the principal deity. They also encompassed storehouses, pastures, forests, gardens or moyas, irrigated fields, coca fields, salt resources, bridges, and villages.²⁶ Sometimes thousands of yanacona worked there, nearly all resettled from other provinces (as were mitimaes), producing resources to maintain the legacy of the deceased nobles. Sometimes, subsequent rulers augmented the number of yanacona of their predecessors in exchange for the political support of the descent group. Machu Picchu, for instance, housed dwellings for 500 to 750 nobles and servants, apparently yanacona. Bioarcheological studies of the laborers at Machu Picchu show that most spent their childhood in remote coastal or high-altitude regions, meaning that they had been resettled from diverse locations of the Inca state.²⁷

On other estates, the yana settlers lived in small villages and were supervised by other yanacona, and sometimes by inhabitants of villages nearby.²⁸ Cheqoq, part of Yucay estate of Huayna Capac’s lineage, for instance, was mostly inhabited by yanacona (who also were resettled, that is, mitimaes) rather than nobles. During Huayna Capac’s rule, 150,000 mita workers were temporarily transferred to channel the river and create irrigable land for maize production in the Yucay valley, as well as 2,000 yanacona, one half coming from the northern and the other half coming from the southern part of the state, with very diverse geographical and cultural origins.²⁹ At the same time, his grandfather Topa Inca’s descendants in Cuzco disposed of the services of another 1,000 yanacona.³⁰ Apart from fieldwork, some yanacona on the estates had specialized occupations and worked as weavers, salt makers, or builders.³¹ In this case, the yana category was overlapping with the camayoc category, occupational specialists. In addition to the dependents in service of the Inca elite, major supernatural beings both in Cuzco and the provinces were endowed with yanacona, although in lower numbers than those serving the Inca elite, together with fields and camelid herds.³²

Service for the Inca elite was not associated with great material benefits, as archaeological studies show.³³ Practically no information is found about the family life, social organization, work conditions, lifestyle, and religious practices of the yanacona on the estates. It was the pre-Inca institution of yanacona that resulted in their being able to marry and form households.³⁴ As we already know that the father of don Joan Puyquin from the Chachapoya region had been captured in war when he was a child, and became a yana, but we do not know anything about don Joan Puyquin’s mother. Was she a captive of the same campaign, the child of a yanacona couple with similar or different regional origins, or did she descent from the local non-yana population? And who became don Joan Puyquin’s wife? Offspring inherited the status of a yana and had to continue working for their elite lords. Were male and female able to find partners among the yanacona of the same master? If marriages between members of different yanacona groups occurred, where did the couple live, and for whom did they and their eventual children work?

As yanacona can be defined as people detached from their kinship group (ayllu), this nearly always meant that they had to leave their homeland and lost their familial and communal networks. They often became members of a larger and more anonymous workforce, and it can be supposed that their quality of life was lowered, and that individuals lost the ability to make choices about significant aspects of their life.³⁵ However, being a yana did not mean that these individuals were publicly degraded. No specific rituals of humiliation are known to mark the transition to yana status and, although the Inca state valued such symbols to make a status visible, no outward signs on the body or a special attire denoted yana status.³⁶ In contrast to mitimaes, no special rules applied to the yanacona, except that legally yanacona fell under the jurisdiction of their Inca superiors, not of provincial rulers.³⁷ Yanacona apparently could not be killed randomly or as sacrificial victims, and no special corporal punishments were reserved for them.³⁸ Most importantly, they retained the right to have a family.³⁹

A very different group of yanacona were those taken from the provincial elites to serve the Inca ruler directly. Their office was to work in ruler’s household, overseeing the preparation of food and caring for his clothes, insignia, and weapons, tasks associated with a great responsibility, since everything in contact with the Inca’s body could endanger his ritual purity and be used for harming him by magical means.⁴⁰ Their relationship with the Inca ruler could become very intimate, best exemplified by one of the already mentioned Chachapoya yanacona, Chuquimis, who sucked blood from a wound of Inca Huayna Capac. As a reward for his service, as it is claimed, Chuquimis later became a local ruler in his home province.⁴¹ It is, however, more likely that the time spent in the Inca ruler’s household prepared young men for future leadership positions in provinces. During their turn in the Inca ruler’s household, they learned how the administration of the empire functioned and acquired valuable contacts among its elite—this is what we understand as patronage. Furthermore, having served the Inca ruler was prestigious and enhanced their status after returning home. For the Inca, the presence of offspring of local elites in the imperial center facilitated the flow of information between them and the provinces, gave the ruler and his advisors insights into the politics and personalities of the local elites, and continued to weave the network what was becoming and strengthening the “fragile” Inca state.⁴²

When local rulers from the central coast of Peru like Taulichusco of the Rimac valley and Francisco Yayvi of the Chillón valley described themselves as yanacona of Inca rulers, they refer to a patronage relationship resulting from their stay at the Inca court. They ended up governing members of their own local group. Most yanacona described as having acquired local rulership were not outsiders, but members of the group they came to rule. There is no clear evidence that the appointment of a former Inca yana as a local ruler can be interpreted as the start of an administration based on merit and abilities.⁴³ A possible exception is the case of don Alonso Condor, interviewed during the General Visitation of viceroy Toledo. His father (or perhaps grandfather?) came from the Soras province (today Ayacucho, Peru) and was brought to the Xaquixaguana valley close to Cusco by the Inca ruler Pachacuti, to become the curaca of Pomaguanca, where mitimaes had been relocated to.⁴⁴ As Pachacuti had subjugated the Soras, don Alonso’s progenitor might have been a war captive. When Alonso Condor’s father was dying, he had entrusted Alonso and his elder brother to the Inca ruler Huayna Capac. Alonso Condor became a page (a term applied to a youth serving a member of the elite) of Huayna Capac, as probably his brother as well. Apparently, the brother was later installed as a curaca in Tomebamba (perhaps heading another group of mitimaes with unknown regional extraction) in Ecuador, while Alonso Condor came to rule Pomaguanca as the successor of his father.⁴⁵ So Huayna Capac took the fatherless sons of a loyal subject lord into his household to serve him and train them for future positions in the Inca hierarchy and administration. In this example, members of the provincial elites advanced from a position in the Inca ruler’s household to local rulership of mitimaes.

The yanacona serving the local elite in the provinces were mostly active in either agricultural work or herding, some were craft specialists (camayoc), and a few supervised specific tasks or people.⁴⁶ Depending on the nature of their occupations, these men and women lived in or near the households of their elite overlords or at separate locations, which probably determined the degree of autonomy they enjoyed. In general, they remained in their homeland, in contrast to Inca yanacona, but like them lost their ayllu affiliation and, possibly, had to identify with the elite’s descent group and very likely participate in its religious practices. The case of Alonso Poma Cochache (see below) shows that some yana superiors physically mistreated their dependents; other hints that (physical?) intimidation was sometimes used can be found as well.⁴⁷

The number of yanacona a local leader could claim depended on mostly unknown historical conditions and customs, and the proportion of yanacona in relation to the number of a leader’s subjects varied. In the Bolivian highlands, the rulers of 10,000 households stated that they had the right to have 50 yanacona, that is half a percent of their subjects became their dependents. Additional yanacona in decreasing numbers were allocated to the lower-ranking leaders of units of 5000, 1000, 500, and 100 taxpaying households, so that the total of yanacona expected to be provided by these leaders’ subjects might have amounted to five percent of all households. It cannot be said if these numbers reflect pre-Inca ratios or if the Inca put a limit on the number of yanacona local leaders could recruit (the decimal units refer to Inca division of the subject population).⁴⁸ In an example from highland Ecuador, dependents constituted up to ten percent of the population, which seems to be on the higher end of the range. Murra discusses the question of the yanacona’s share of the total population in the context of whether they can be considered slaves. According to his calculation using the example of the visitation report of the Lupaca, yanacona made up a share of two to three percent. He left open the question of whether such a society could be referred to as a slave society.⁴⁹

Leaving the Yana Status

As in the case of becoming a yana, which varied depending on whether they were on-going local or regional practices stemming from the pre-Inca period or practices related to the Inca expansion and state-building process, the possibilities for leaving the status, if that was at all possible, varied as well. However, there are even fewer sources on this question than regarding the first two topics. Criteria that determined these differences were the social origins of the yanacona, i.e., whether they were commoners from the communities or belonged to the regional or local elites themselves, and whom they served, i.e., superiors at the level of the Inca state or at a subordinate level of the local political elite.

It is mentioned that yanacona of the Inca elite meant a lifelong service which to our knowledge ended only in the case of severe political upheaval. For the yanacona of Topa Inca’s descendants, the outcome of the succession war between his grandsons Atahualpa and Huascar for the position of Inca ruler resulted in the dissolution of the descent group, and the death of many of their members. Perhaps it also gave some of the yanacona of that kinship group the opportunity to escape their status. In a similar manner, the yanacona on a newly founded estate of Huascar were sent home by the military leaders of the opposite party during that war, so that they could revert to be ordinary community tribute payers.⁵⁰ Other sources referring to yanacona of commoner background serving the Inca elite make clear that people designated to become yanacona remained so for the rest of their lives. This is true for those drafted from the local population as well for example for those punished to become yanacona for criminal offenses as theft, especially toward a property owner, generally a person of higher status.

In general, there was no need for “manumission” for those yanacona of the Inca elite as in the case of slaves in other parts of the world. Yanacona never completely lost their position in their provincial community or the Inca state, and therefore they were not viewed as outsiders. They did not need to be reintegrated into Inca society, as in the case of slaves who were often seen as standing outside of the society where they had brought to serve.

The experience of elite yanacona for the Inca ruler was the opposite. For them, service at the ruler’s court was a transition in their life, a form of training for their future positions as provincial leaders. They continued to refer to themselves as yanacona of the ruler, but this meant a prestigious status denoting their close political ties to the Inca sovereign, not a continuance of personal service. It is not known if this special relationship could be transmitted to the successors of rulers who had been yanacona.

Colonial-era wills of local elite and documents from tribute inspections show that yanacona service to provincial elites—as part of local social organization—was permanent. Only the case of Alonso Julca Guaman, who had been physically mistreated, as mentioned above, indicates that a yana could leave his position. During a quite early Spanish inspection of the local population in central Peruvian Huaraz (1558), the inhabitants were asked if their rulers abused them in any way. Alonso Julca Guaman, one of the witnesses, explained that he had been given by his superior (“principal”) to a higher-level ruler, don Alonso Poma Cochache, as a yana, and complained about his treatment. He had been physically abused by Alonso Poma Cochache, while customary clothing and food were withheld from him.⁵¹ As a consequence, Alonso Julca Guaman left the service of his abusive lord, apparently without any punishment.

The previously mentioned criteria that mark the differences in the possibilities of leaving yana status also make it clear that there are differences in terms of the heritability of that status. These are determined by the same principles. The commoner yana status will have been hereditary. Yanacona lived in families. The children of those families continued to serve as yanacona as adults. As we have seen, if there were no children, the home province had even to send a replacement. It will have been different in cases that we call patronage. Since the yanacona, who came from the provincial elites, went through a kind of educational process at the ruler’s home, it was completed at a certain point. These differences regarding the heritability of the yanacona probably also explain their different, even contradictory presentation in the literature.⁵² The problem is that the differentiations in the large group of the yanacona had not been perceived and therefore was not addressed.

Conclusion

Since the first research on yanacona was based on little and one-sided source material, it had come to the assumption that the yanacona were slaves. In the context of European historical concepts, an Inca state without slaves was inconceivable. More recent research since the 1960s, such as in the Andean Studies initiated by John Murra, based on the analysis of new source material like for example the visitation reports, brought new insights and made clear that the yanacona were subject to a strong form of asymmetrical dependency, but could not be considered slaves according to the terminology and the models of economic and societal evolution developed in European historiography.⁵³ After the 1980s, the topic of yanacona was addressed only sporadically. For example, in the Oxford Handbook of the Incas (2018) the social and labor-related categories of dependency in the Tawantinsuyu, including the yanacona, are hardly dealt with in detail.

Andeanist John H. Rowe clarified that the categories of mitimaes, yanacona, and camayoc were “not three contrasting categories of men,” but that they could overlap. As we have seen, Inca subjects could be everything together, a combination of two or only one category. “Which status or statuses are mentioned, may depend on the context of discourse.” Following Rowe, the difference between them should not be described as a degree of servility or dependency. Rather, the distinction between social and labor-related categories “was not more or less freedom but more or less access to honor and privilege,” the source of which was the Inca government.⁵⁴ Accordingly, it was the status of the dependents in Inca society, not the degree of dependency, that was directly related to the privileges to be transferred by the Inca ruler to his subjects. As we have seen, the line between those who were endowed with privileges and those who were not passed right through the group of yanacona.

Instead of assuming greater or lesser dependency of groups or individuals, they are distinguished by the privileges they have received from the Inca ruler, who else they had to serve like local rulers or supernatural beings, by the respective work they had to perform and by the characteristics associated with the yanacona such as heritability, the possibilities to leave the status or not, i.e., the degree of their separation and uprooting from their original groups, and others.

This makes clear that the complexity and diversity of the dependent population, which was involved in multiple areas of the Inca labor system, implied a whole range of different types of dependency and of different mechanisms of direct and indirect coercion. During the colonial period, the Spanish Crown “saw great benefit in persisting with and resignification servitude practices that were later institutionalized as yanaconazgo,” as Paola Revilla Orías has argued. Thus, the “yanaconazgo institution was preserved and re-signified along colonial period,” colonial yanacona gradually lost their freedoms, like the liberty of movement, in that they found themselves more and more tied to the land for whose owners they worked, and became “almost slaves.”⁵⁵

Notes

• 1. John Murra, Formaciones económicas y políticas en el mundo andino (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1975), 226.

• 2. Karoline Noack, “Mobilization as Dependency: the Case of Mitimaes of the Inka State as a Hotspot of Early Glocalization” in Comparative and Global Framing of Enslavement, eds. Youval Rotman, Ehud Toledano and Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2023), forthcoming.

• 3. For a short summary, see Teresa Vergara, “Tahuantinsuyo: el mundo de los Incas,” in Historia del Perú (Barcelona: Lexus editores, 2000), 282.

• 4. Diego Gonçález Holguín, Vocabulario de la lengua general de todo el Peru llamada lengua Qquichua, o del Inca (Quito: Corporación Editora Nacional, 1993 [1608]), 363-64.

• 5. John Verano and Douglas H. Ubelaker, Disease and Demography in the Americas (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992), 16.

• 6. Murra, Formaciones económicas y políticas en el mundo andino, 59-115.

• 7. Gonçález Holguín, Vocabulario de la lengua general de todo el Peru llamada lengua Qquichua, o del Inca, vol. 3: bk. 1, 286; bk. 2, 450, 512; Ludovico Bertonio, Vocabulario de la lengua Aymara. [Juli (Provincia de Chucuito) (Cochabamba: CERES/IFEA/MUSEF [1612] 1984), vol. 2, 242, 316, 328, and vol. 1, 122, 223.

• 8. Betanzos, Suma y Narración de los Incas, pt. 1, ch. 20, 140; pt. 1, ch. 21, 150, pt. 1, ch. 48, 234; pt. 2, ch. 1, 244; María Rostworowski, History of the Inca Realm, translated by Harry B. Iceland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 176–77.

• 9. Hernando de Santillán, “Relación del origen, descendencia, política y gobierno de los Incas,” in Crónicas peruanas de interés indígena, ed. Francisco de Esteve Barba (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1968 [1563]), núm. 36, 114.

• 10. Terence D´Altroy, “Inca Political Organization, Economic Institutions, and Infrastructure,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Incas, ed. Sonia Alconini and R. Alan Covey (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 218–19. See also Inge Schjellerup, “Inca Transformations of the Chachapoya Region,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Incas, ed. Sonia Alconini and R. Alan Covey (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 435–51.

• 11. Probanza de Martin and Francisco de Ampuero, in: Informacion hecha en cumplimento de una cedula se su magestad en su rreal audiencia de la Ciudad de los Reyes a pedimiento de Francisco de Ampuero vezino della e de Martin de Anpuero y Francisco de Ampuero sus hijos (Archivo General de Indias: Lima, 1572), 38v.

• 12. D´Altroy, “Inca Political Organization, Economic Institutions, and Infrastructure,” 218–19; Carolyn Dean, Inka Bodies and the Body of Christ: Corpus Christi in Colonial Cusco, Peru (Durham, NC; London: Duke University Press, 1999), 186–92.

• 13. Informaciones hechas por orden de don Francisco Toledo [1570–72], in Don Francisco de Toledo. Supremo organizador del Perú. Su vida, sus obras (1515–1582), 2. Sus informaciones sobre los Incas (1570–1572), ed. Roberto Levillier (Buenos Aires: Espasa-Calpe, 1940), 55–57.

• 14. Garcilaso de la Vega, Comentarios Reales de los Incas (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, [1609] 1995), bk. 9, ch. 7, 574.

• 15. Santillán, “Relación del origen, descendencia, política y gobierno de los Incas,” núm. 36, 114.

• 16. Cristóbal de Castro y Diego de Ortega Morejón, “Relaçion y declaraçion del modo que este valle de chincha,” in Quellen zur Kulturgeschichte des präkolumbischen Amerika, ed. Hermann Trimborn (Stuttgart: Strecker und Schröder, [1558] 1936), 237–41; Visita de Huánuco, ed. John Murra (Huánuco: Universidad Nacional Hermilio Valdizán, [1562] 1967), 237–40.

• 17. Betanzos, Suma y Narración de los Incas, pt. 1, ch. 41, 217; ch. 43, 220; “Informaciones hechas por orden de don Francisco Toledo” [1570–72], 112–13, 142; Testimonio dado por Benito de la Peña [1552], in “Documentos sobre Yucay en el siglo XVI” ed. Horacio Villanueva Urteaga, Revista del Archivo Histórico del Cuzco, 13 (1970): 149–52.

• 18. Catherine Julien, “How Inca Decimal Administration Worked,” in Ethnohistory 35 (Summer 1988): 257–79.

• 19. Betanzos, Suma y Narración de los Incas, pt. 1, ch. 21, 148–50; pt. 1, ch. 21, f. 54v.

• 20. Visita de Huánuco [1562], 108, 127, 146, 168. See also John Murra, “New Data on Retainer and Servile Populations in Tawantinsuyu,” in Actas y Memorias, XXXVI Congreso Internacional de Americanistas, vol. 2 (Sevilla: Cathólica Española, 1966), 40–41; Visita de los valles de Songo [1568–70], ed. John Murra (Madrid: ICI/Instituto de Estudios Fiscales, 1991); Testamento de Melchior Carorayco [1565], Estratificación social y el hatun curaca en el mundo andino, in Ensayos de historia andina. Elites, etnías, recursos, ed. María Rostworowski (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1989), 239; Pleitos por los cacicazgos de Torata y Moquegua [1590–94], in La visita de Juan Gutiérrez Flores a Colesuyo y Pleitos por los cacicazgos de Torata y Moquegua, ed. Teresa Cañedo-Argüelles (Lima: PUCP, 2005), 25–47, 148.

• 21. “El Memorial de los Mallku y principales de la provincia de los Charcas,” in Qaraqara-Charka — Mallku, Inca y Rey en la provincia de Charcas (siglos XV–XVII): Historia antropológica de una confederación aymara, ed. Tristan Platt, Thérèse Bouysse-Cassagne and Olivia Harris (La Paz: IFEA, 2006), 834–36.

• 22. Visita hecha a la provincia de Chucuito, ed. Waldemar Espinoza Soriano (Lima: Casa de la Cultura del Perú, [1567] 1964), 111. See also Murra, “New Data on Retainer and Servile Populations in Tawantinsuyu,” 37–39.

• 23. “Visita de los repartimientos de Ichoc y de Allauca Guaraz…” [1558], in Huaraz: Poder, sociedad y economía en los siglos XV y XVI. Reflexiones en torno a las visitas de 1558, 1594 y 1712, ed. Waldemar Espinoza Soriano (Lima: UNMSM, 1987), 113.

• 24. “Pleitos por los cacicazgos de Torata y Moquegua” [1590–94], 25–47, 148; Testamento de Gonçalo Taulichusco, ed. Guillermo Lohmann Villena, Revista del Archivo General de la Nación, 7 (Lima, [1562] 1984), 270–71; Testamento de doña Francisca Sina Sigchi, in Sancho Hacho. Un cacique mayor del siglo XVI, ed. Udo Oberem (Quito: CEDECO / Abya-Yala, [1580] 1993), 137; Visita de Huánuco [1562], 196–201; see Murra, “New Data on Retainer and Servile Populations in Tawantinsuyu,” 41.

• 25. See for example Autos seguidos por el capitan don Martin Garcia de Loyola y la coya doña Beatriz… [1574] 2008), in Imperial Transformations in Sixteenth-Century Yucay, Peru, ed. Alan Covey and Donato Amado González (Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press), 78; and “Informaciones hechas por orden de don Francisco Toledo”.

• 26. Kylie Quave, “Royal Estates and Imperial Centers in the Cuzco Region,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Incas, ed. Sonia Alconini and Alan Covey (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 102–104.

• 27. Lucy Salazar, “Machu Picchu. Mysterious Royal Estate in the Cloud Forest,” in Machu Picchu. Unveiling the Mystery of the Incas Burger, ed. Richard Burger and Lucy Salazar (New Haven: Yale University, 2004); and Lucy Salazar and Richard Burger “Lifestyles of the Rich and the Famous: Luxury and Daily Life in the Households of Machu Picchu’s Elite,” in Palaces of the Ancient New World, ed. Susan T. Evans and Joanne Pillsbury (Washington: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2009), quoted in Quave “Royal Estates and Imperial Centers in the Cuzco Region,” 108–109.

• 28. Betanzos, Suma y Narración de los Incas, pt. 1, ch. 43, 220; for yana as rulers of other yanacona see “Informaciones hechas por orden de don Francisco de Toledo,” 112–18; for adjacent groups overseeing the yanacona see Probanza de Sancho Usca Paucar y Alonso Auca Poma [1569], in “¿Incas de privilegio? La probanza de Sancho Usca Paucar y Alonso Auca Poma, caciques principales de Maras y Mullaca (4–12 de mayo de 1569),” ed. Laurent Segaline, Revista Andina 55 ([1569] 2017): 47.

• 29. Betanzos, Suma y Narración de los Incas, pt. 1, ch. 43, 220; Autos seguidos por el capitan don Martin Garcia de Loyola y la coya doña Beatriz…,” 117, 206–96 y “Testimonio dado por Benito de la Peña” [1552].

• 30. Cabello Valboa, Miscelánea Antártica, bk. 3, ch. 31, 529. See also Sarmiento de Gamboa, “Segunda parte de la Historia general llamada Indica… [1572], in Geschichte des Inkareiches, ed. Richard Pietschmann (Berlin: n.p. 1906) ch. 66, 123; Martín de Murúa, Historia general del Peru, ed. Manuel Ballesteros (Madrid: Historia, [1613] 1987), bk. 1, ch. 57, 202.

• 31. “Autos seguidos por el capitan don Martin Garcia de Loyola y la coya doña Beatriz…,” 78; Informaciones hechas por orden de don Francisco de Toledo, 108–18, 125–33.

• 32. Betanzos, Suma y Narración de los Incas, pt. 1, ch. 11, 89, 91; ch. 45, 226. See also Castro/Ortega Morejón, “Relaçion y declaraçion del modo que este valle de chincha…,” 240–41; John Rowe, “Inca Policies and Institutions Relating to the Cultural Unification of the Empire,” in The Inca and Aztec states The Inca and Aztec states 1400–1800, ed. George A. Collier, Renato I. Rosaldo and John D. Wirth (New York: Academic Press, 1982), 101; Pedro Cieza de León [1548–54], El señorío de los Incas, ed. Manuel Ballesteros (Madrid: Historia 16, 1985) ch. 28, 101–102; Titu Cusi Yupanqui, “Ynstruçion … para el muy ilustre señor el liçençiado Lope Garcia de Castro,” in Titu Cusi Yupanqui, History of how the Spaniards arrived in Peru, ed. Catherine J. Julien (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, [1570] 2006), 128–31; Cristóbal de Albornoz, “Instruccion para descubrir todas las guacas del Piru y sus camayos y haciendas, in Pierre Duviols “Albornoz y el espacio ritual andino prehispánico,” Revista Andina 2, no. 1, [1583–84] 1984: 198; Marco Curatola Petrocchi, “La función de los oráculos en el Imperio Inca,” in Adivinación y oráculos en el mundo andino antiguo, ed. Marco Curatola Petrocchi and Mariusz S. Ziółkowski (Lima: Instituto Francés de Estudios Andinos/Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 2008).

• 33. Di Hu and Kylie E. Quave, “Prosperity and Prestige: Archaeological Realities of Unfree Laborers under Inka Imperialism,” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 59, no. 2 (September 2020): 10.1016/j.jaa.2020.101201; Ian Farrington, Cusco: Urbanism and Archaeology in the Inka World (University Press of Florida: 2013), 234–49.

• 34. Murra, Formaciones económicas y políticas en el mundo andino, 229.

• 35. Noel Lenski, “Framing the Question: What Is a Slave Society?,” in What Is a Slave Society? The Practice of Slavery in Global Perspective, ed. Noel Lenski and Catherine M. Cameron (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 49–53.

• 36. Fernando Santos-Granero, “Slavery as Structure, Process, or Lived Experience, or Why Slave Societies Existed in Precontact Tropical America,” in What Is a Slave Society? The Practice of Slavery in Global Perspective, ed. Noel Lenski and Catherine M. Cameron (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 201–02, 208–15; Christina Snyder “Native American Slavery in Global Context,” in What Is a Slave Society? The Practice of Slavery in Global Perspective, ed. Noel Lenski and Catherine M. Cameron (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 180–82.

• 37. Castro/Ortega Morejón, “Relaçion y declaraçion del modo que este valle de chincha… [ 1558],” 240; José Toribio Medina, “Probanza sobre la forma y orden que los Ingas tenían en el juzgar [1582],” in La imprenta en Lima (1584–1824), 1 (Santiago de Chile: n.p. 1904), 191.

• 38. Noel Lenski, “Ancient Slaveries and Modern Ideology,” in What Is a Slave Society? The Practice of Slavery in Global Perspective, ed. Noel Lenski and Catherine M. Cameron (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018)2018), 139; Catherine M. Cameron, “The Nature of Slavery in Small-Scale Societies,” in What Is a Slave Society? The Practice of Slavery in Global Perspective, ed. Noel Lenski and Catherine M. Cameron (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 162–63.

• 39. “Autos seguidos por el capitan don Martin Garcia de Loyola y la coya doña Beatriz…”; Betanzos, Suma y Narración de los Incas, pt. 2, ch. 9, 267–68.

• 40. Informacion sobre las chacras… que cultivaban los mitimaes … en la provincia de Abancay, in “Colonias de mitmas múltiples en el valle de Abancay. Siglos XV y XVI. Una información inédita de 1575 para la etnohistoria andina,” ed. Waldemar Espinoza Soriano, Revista del Museo Nacional, 39 [1575] 1973), 278; “Informaciones hechas por orden de don Francisco de Toledo,” 78, 113, 115, 152; Pleito de don Pedro Ocxaguaman [1562–64], in La crónica de Ocxaguaman, ed. Jorge Zevallos Quiñones (Trujillo: Fundación Alfredo Pinillos Goicochea, 1994), 61; Primera información hecha por don Juan Colque Guarache, in “El reino aymara de quillaca-asanague, siglos XV y XVI,” ed. Waldemar Espinoza Soriano, Revista del Museo Nacional 45 ([1575] 1981), 241–42.

• 41. Memoriales… de Leimebamba y Cochabamba, in “Los señoríos étnicos de Chachapoyas y la alianza hispano-chacha, siglos XV–XVI,” ed. Waldemar Espinoza Soriano, Revista Histórica, 30 ([1572–74] 1967): 294.

• 42. Norman Yoffee, “Introducing the Conference: There Are No Innocent Terms,” in The evolution of Fragility: Setting the Terms, ed. Norman Yoffee (Cambridge, UK: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 2019), 1–8; Noack, “Mobilization as Dependency,” forthcoming.

• 43. Prouança de don Gonçalo [1555], in Dos probanzas de Don Gonzalo, Curaca de Lima (1555–1559), ed. María Rostworowski, Revista Histórica, 33, 1981–82, 115, 120; Tierras y chacaras de coca del valle de Quivi [1558–1570], in Conflicts over Coca Fields in XVIth-Century Peru, ed. María Rostworowski (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1988), 105; Rowe, “Inca Policies and Institutions Relating to the Cultural Unification of the Empire,” 100–02; Rostworowski, History of the Inca Realm, 148–150.

• 44. Alan Covey and Kylie Quave, “The Economic Transformation of the Inca Heartland (Cuzco, Peru) in the Late Sixteenth Century,” in Comparative Studies in Society and History, 59, no. 2 (2017): 277–309.

• 45. “Informaciones hechas por orden de don Francisco de Toledo,” 108; Betanzos, Suma y Narración de los Incas., pt. 1, ch. 18, 126–31; See also Rowe, “Inca Policies and Institutions Relating to the Cultural Unification of the Empire,” 98.

• 46. Visita de Huánuco [1562], 108, 127, 146, 168. See also Murra, “New Data on Retainer and Servile Populations in Tawantinsuyu,” 40–41; Visita de los valles de Songo [1568–70]; “Testamento de Melchior Carorayco” [1565] 239; “Pleitos por los cacicazgos de Torata y Moquegua” [1590–94], 25–47, 148.

• 47. “Testamento de doña Francisca Sina Sigchi” [1580], 137.

• 48. El Memorial de Charcas [1582], 833–34 y “Probanza de don Fernando Ayavire Cuysara” [1583–84], 885, in Qaraqara-Charka. Mallku, Inca y Rey en la provincia de Charcas (siglos XV–XVII), ed. Tristan Platt, Thérèse Bouysse-Cassagne and Olivia Harris (La Paz: Instituto Francés de Estudios Andinos, 2006); Visita … del valle de los Chillos [1551–59], in Visita y numeración de los pueblos del valle de los Chillos 1551–1559, ed. Cristóbal Landázuri (Quito: Abya-Yala /Marka 1990); and Visita de los valles de Songo [1568–70].

• 49. Visita … del valle de los Chillos [1551–59]. See also Frank Salomon, Native Lords of Quito in the Age of the Incas (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), 127–29 and Murra,”New Data on Retainer and Servile Populations in Tawantinsuyu,” 39–40.

• 50. Información sobre las tierras del inca … en … Pinagua [1571], in El habitat de la etnia Pinagua, siglos XV y XVI ed. Waldemar Espinoza Soriano, Revista del Museo Nacional 40 (1974): 201–203, 206–207.

• 51. “Visita de los repartimientos de Ichoc y de Allauca Guaraz…” [1558], 113.

• 52. Rowe, “Inca Policies and Institutions Relating to the Cultural Unification of the Empire,” 100; Quave, “Royal Estates and Imperial Centers in the Cuzco Region,” 114; D’Altroy, “Inca Political Organization, Economic Institutions, and Infrastructure,” 218–19.

• 53. Paola Revilla Orías, Entangled Coercion: African and Indigenous Labour in Charcas (16th–17th Century) (München: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2021), 119.

• 54. Rowe, “Inca Policies and Institutions Relating to the Cultural Unification of the Empire,” 96–97.

• 55. Revilla Orías, Entangled Coercion, 28 (fn. 86), 120.