Rumiñahui (Inca)

Rumiñahui Monument in Otavalo

Rumiñahui (also Rumi Ñawi , i. Kichwa for stone face or stone eye ; * end of the 15th century; † June 25, 1535 near Quito ) was an Inca military leader under Atahualpa who, after his execution , resisted the Spanish conquistadors in the north of the Inca Empire.

There is little reliable information about the life of Rumiñahuis. He was a son of the Inca ruler Huayna Cápac and one of the three most important generals of his half-brother Atahualpas, alongside Quizquiz and Chalcuchímac , and distinguished himself in his fratricidal war with Huáscar . During this civil war, Atahualpa's followers admired the unshakable serenity of the stone face, while Huáscar's followers were afraid of the coldness of the stone eye, named after a fixed eye from a lance stab in battle. In the first half of 1532, Quizquiz and Chalcuchímac conquered the south with the capital Cusco and captured Huáscar, while Rumiñahui secured the north of Tahuantinsuyo (the Inca Empire). That ended the civil war.

Rumiñahui accompanied the victorious Atahualpa on his way south. On November 16, 1532, Francisco Pizarro captured Atahualpa in a coup at the Battle of Cajamarca . Rumiñahui, who camped with his troops outside the city, did not intervene so as not to endanger Atahualpa's life. After Pizarro had Atahualpa executed in Cajamarca on July 26, 1533, he withdrew further to the north of the Inca Empire (the Andean region of today's Ecuador ) and resisted the Spaniards. In particular, he tried to stop the advance of Sebastián de Belalcázar , his 200-man army and the Kañari auxiliary troops on Quito. Here he had little success. In a battle near Tiocajas (in today's province of Chimborazo ) his soldiers succeeded for the first time in killing some of the Spanish horses. However, the battle ended in a military defeat in which Rumiñahui's sons were also killed. He then withdrew to the mountains north of Quito, but apparently had the important Inca city destroyed beforehand.

In 1534 and 1535 he made sporadic attacks on Quito, now Spanish, which had been re-founded by Belalcázar. Benalcázar had him pursued. After his capture in the folds of the Rumiñahui volcano in mid-1535, Juan de Ampudia tortured him to find out where the fabled treasure of Atahualpas was hiding and executed him after receiving no information.

literature

contemporary sources:

• Francisco López de Gómara : Historia general de las Indias. 1552. In: BIBL. AUT. ESP. Volume LXII, Madrid 1946.
• Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas : Historia general de los hechos de los Castellanos en las islas y tierra firme del Mar Oceano (1601–1615) In: COL. Classicos Tavera.
• Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés : Historia general y natural de las Indias. 1535 ff. In: BIBL. AUT. ESP. Volumes CXVII-CXVIII-CVIX-CXX-CXXI, Madrid 1992.
• Agustín de Zárate : Historia del descubrimiento y conquista de la provincia del Peru. 1555. In: BIBL. AUT. ESP. Volume XXVI, Madrid 1947.

modern representations:

• Piedad Costales, Alfredo Costales: El Reino de Quito. Cayambe 1992, ISBN 9978-9902-1-6 .
• Reinaldo Miño: Rumiñahui, defensor de Quito. Quito 1994.
• Frank Salomon: Los Señores etnicos de Quito Epoca de los Incas. Otavalo 1980.

Web links

• Rumiñahui , biography at diccionariobiograficoecuador.com (Spanish)