An Ethno-Spatial History of Conquest: Using GIS to Reconstruct and Reimagine the Conquest and Colonization of Indigenous Peru

How were so many conquered by so few, so quickly? Much of the research on conquest-era Peru has sought to answer this question. This paper aligns itself with recent ethnohistories of the conquest in arguing that this is the wrong question to ask. It argues that - although the Spanish did have some striking military advantages - the conquest can only be understood within the context of indigenous history. When Francisco Pizarro and his compatriots entered the Andes in 1532, the region was embroiled by a brutal and bloody Inca Civil War. Their march into the heart of the Inca Empire was not a triumphal military accomplishment, as their sources suggest, but rather they were invited, escorted, and assisted by thousands of indigenous people fighting to overthrow their Incan imperial overlords.

To re-examine the conquest and colonization of Peru, this project proposes a new methodology: the use of GIS and spatial history as a means of ethnohistory to reconstruct indigenous contributions to this period. This ‘ethno-spatial history’ is a way to re-imagine lost worlds and all the possibility they held for their inhabitants. This presentation will examine the potential of 'ethno-spatial' history to reconstruct the role of indigenous activity in shaping the events of the early colonial period. Traditional maps showing the Spaniards' intrepid march into the blank spaces of Peru will be replaced by geovisualizations that show that conquest-era Peru was a hive of indigenous activity with tens of thousands of indigenous soldiers and auxiliaries marching to and from various battlefronts, in a war in which most indigenous casualties happened at the point of Andean lances rather than Spanish steel. This ethno-spatial approach is also used to reconstruct post-conquest Andean geographies of power: how colonial power waned in remote places, distant or hidden from Spanish centers of power.