Spanish Conquest
In 1534, at the time of the arrival of the first columns of Spanish conquistadores, the population of the present day territories of Ecuador is believed to border the figure of one million inhabitants. This might have been a result of epidemics of smallpox and diphtheria that spread in the Andes after the first contacts with Spanish explorers and their livestock. According to early Spanish chronicles the Inca Huayna Capac died of smallpox and then the territories of Collasuyo and central Peru so a period of civil war for the control of the royal household between two brothers each an heir to the dominions of their respective maternal feudal lands.
Huáscar was a prince born to a noble family of Cuzco and Atahualpa was a son from a noble family of the Quitus. The quitus were a tribe that formed an aliance with the Incas during the conquest of Huayna Capac. Most important in this civil war was the participation of Huyna Capac generals on the side of Athaulpa's faction, probably due to the late sovereign wish.
Read more about this topic: Indigenous Peoples In Ecuador
Famous quotes containing the words spanish and/or conquest:
“Ferdinand De Soto, sleeping
In the river, never heard
Four-and-twenty Spanish hooves
Fling off their iron and cut the green,
Leaving circles new and clean
While overhead the wing-tips whirred.”
—Mark Van Doren (1894–1973)
“Marriage is like a war. There are moments of chivalry and gallantry that attend the victorious advances and strategic retreats, the birth or death of children, the momentary conquest of loneliness, the sacrifice that ennobles him who makes it. But mostly there are the long dull sieges, the waiting, the terror and boredom. Women understand this better than men; they are better able to survive attrition.”
—Helen Hayes (1900–1993)