All language subtitles for PBS Nova - The Great Inca Rebellion

On the outskirts of Lima, Peru, bodies
emerge from the sand.

Their wounds are horrific.

This person died a very violent death.

These skeletons may revolutionize our
understanding of one of the pivotal

of world history.

The Spanish conquest of the Inca.

For 500 years, we have had to rely on
chronicles written by the Spanish

conquistadors to understand what
happened.

Those chronicles tell us how in 1532,
Francisco Pizarro arrived at the

of the Inca Empire with fewer than 200
men.

Ever since, historians have puzzled with
the events that followed.

As Inca messengers spread news of the
tiny invasion around the empire, why

didn't the huge Inca armies mobilize?

How could a handful of Spanish
adventurers bring the greatest

civilization of South America to its
knees?

Was it the vast superiority of the
Spanish weapons?

Was it European diseases to which the
Inca had no resistance?

Or was it something else?

These skeletons may hold the answers.

For the first time, science can open a
window on the real events of the

of Peru.

The discoveries are amazing.

I think we're looking at the first
gunshot wound in the new world.

A story of the conquest never told
before.

A story of secret alliances and
betrayal.

A great cover -up that took place in the
16th century.

The story of the Great Inca Rebellion.

Right now on NOVA.

For 3 ,000 years, the mountains and
coasts of Peru were home to the most

advanced civilizations of South America.

The Inca Empire was the last of many to
rise and fall in Peru, but it was

the greatest.

The Inca were the Romans of the New
World.

Incomparable builders and engineers,
they created Machu Picchu, the most

sophisticated road system of the
Americas, and countless masterpieces of

But their real genius was for conquest.

In the 15th century, they used it to
conquer the entire Andean region.

The ghosts of that fierce Inca empire
still haunt Peru's modern capital, Lima.

21st century Lima is a teeming city of
nine million.

But beneath its sprawling shanty towns
lie layer upon layer of Peru's ancient

dead.

For over 20 years, Peruvian
archaeologist and National Geographic

Guillermo Carr, has been working to
unravel the mysteries of these Indian

sites.

Nobody knows more about the ancient
burials of Lima.

At the beginning of March of 2004,

the city was going to open a new highway
in the area that we suspected that had

a cemetery.

Now we decided to put a trench.

in order to test if it was or wasn't a
cemetery.

The site Guillermo was investigating was
an apparently unremarkable hillside in

a suburb of Lima called Puruchuco.

He set to work with his colleague of
many years, archaeologist Elena

Very quickly, their test trench yielded
results.

The result of the test was about 20
graves in a trench that was 2

by 8 meters.

That finding led us to conclude that
that little ravine was in fact a

At first, the Puruchuko graveyard seemed
very similar to others Willie and Elena

had excavated.

Bodies were buried at regular intervals
in a crouched sitting position facing

the rising sun.

This is the classic pattern of
incubaries.

But before long, strange anomalies began
to appear.

Very soon, when we were into the
excavation, we noticed that there was a

of individuals that they didn't conform
to the standard, to what we may call the

burial pattern.

In the lower layers of the cemetery,
everything seemed to be as Willie would

expect in a well -organized Inca
graveyard.

But on top of these was a layer of
bodies buried near the surface, which

like nothing he or Elena had ever seen.

The body is stretched out this way,
facing west.

Normally, it should be facing that
direction east.

The orientation is all wrong, just like
the others.

The more they uncovered, the more
surprises they found.

On top of the corpses of the traditional
Inca graveyard, Bodies had been thrown

in chaotically.

Instead of the usual careful wrapping of
the body with cotton stuffing and

woolen fabrics, these had been hastily
wrapped in simple cloths called telas.

They were stretched on their side or
back, some faced up, some to the west.

None. were crouched and facing east in
the traditional Inca way.

It was evident that they didn't follow
the burial rites. They were without the

proper offerings.

The question is, why?

These individuals have been buried in
such an unusual way.

To someone who knows the Inca world as
well as Willie and Elena, this was

mystifying.

Reverence for the dead was at the core
of Inca culture.

Properly performed death rituals were
crucial to ensuring the rebirth of the

dead in the spirit world.

Hence their burial in a crouched
expectant pose facing the sunrise,

rebirth.

Against this backdrop, the treatment of
the bodies at Puruchuko,

was doubly surprising.

It's as if the moment they died, they
just wrapped them in a cloth, brought

to the cemetery, and stuck them in the
ground chaotically, not the usual Inca

way. When Willie and his team unwrapped
the loosely covered skeletons, what they

found was even more shocking.

Almost all bore marks of extreme
violence.

Skulls had been crushed, and some showed
injuries that had never been seen

before in an Inca cemetery. In fact, in
any Indian cemetery anywhere in Central

or South America.

One skeleton in particular really caught
their attention.

They called him Mochito, the Severed
One, because of his horrific injuries.

The left middle and ring finger on the
left hand then perhaps cut off or

off.

He's clearly received some sort of blow
to the face, a perimortem fracture to

the left first rib, a pretty bad break
to the proximal femur.

All of these injuries together lead me
to believe that this individual died a

very violent death.

Melissa Murphy is a bioarchaeologist
working with Willie to interpret

injuries.

This is a very exceptional skeleton for
a number of reasons.

He's very atypical.

He has a series of perimortem injuries
that I haven't encountered before, in

particular these three quadrangular
defects to his cranium.

One of the defects also has a small
radiating fracture, a hinging fracture,

it looks like something caught.

the outer table of this bone.

I've never encountered this.

And based on documented cases of other
injury that seems consistent with metal

-edged weaponry, something else but not
something you would see among Inca

weapons.

The Inca had few weapons capable of
delivering the clean, piercing wounds

Melissa sees in Mochito's remains.

Their deadliest weapons of war were
stone clubs.

spears, and slings.

The type of weaponry used by Inca
warriors had been obsolete in Europe for

2 ,000 years.

The Inca army would have been totally
beyond the comprehension or historical

memory of the Spaniards.

It's a Chalcolithic army, meaning that
the Andeans could smelt gold, silver,

copper.

But all of their cutting implements, all
of their piercing implements, all their

weapons were stone.

The arrival of Pizarro and his
conquistadors in 1532 brought this Inca

its stone weapons face to face with 16th
century Europe's most advanced military

technology.

It was only 40 years since Christopher
Columbus had claimed his first

discoveries in the New World for Spain.

Since then, indigenous populations of
the Americas had been overwhelmed by the

relentless Spanish expansion.

One reason for that was that the Spanish
brought with them two things the

Indians had never seen before.

The Spanish had enormous advantages of
mobility.

Their horse was perhaps the Second
largest advantage they had, the greatest

advantage was their possession of steel
weapons.

The strange wounds on the top of
Mochito's skull made Willie and his team

of stab wounds delivered from horseback.

Could the bodies in the graveyard be
victims of Pizarro's conquistadors?

If so, they would be the first ever
found.

The injury to another skull seemed to
prove the link to the conquistadors in

even more dramatic way.

What's especially anomalous about it is
that it has a large circular defect on

the left parietal that looks
suspiciously like a gunshot wound.

And it looks like as the projectile
exited the face and exited this area, it

came apart and the entire face was
fragmented.

What's especially exceptional about this
is not only that we have, in fact, the

entrance wound and the exit wound that I
just showed you, but also that I

recovered the plug of bone that actually
was in this position on the inside of

the skull.

This could be a momentous discovery.

It would be the first documented gunshot
wound in the new world.

The primitive but deadly 16th century
guns called arquebuses were just one of

the many terrifying novelties the
Spanish brought with them to South

The Spanish arquebuses of the conquest
were no more awkward than European

infantry muskets 100 years later.

A bit heavier for the projectile weight,
but the Spaniards knew how to use them.

They knew how to use them well.

The combination of guns, steel weapons,
and cavalry had a devastating effect on

native armies.

The Inca had no defense against any of
them.

The European response to a cavalry
charge had been learned over centuries

exposure to mounted combat.

Over the short term, the Inca had no
response whatsoever to cavalry.

And there was yet another deadly cargo
brought by the Spanish which would

eventually decimate the Inca population.

Disease.

But no one is sure exactly when the
first epidemics arrived, so Willie's

concentrate their efforts on the more
obvious injuries to the skeletons.

If the suspected gunshot wound is real,
it would be unprecedented.

So Melissa, needs proof she hopes that x
-rays might

reveal traces of metal around the edges
of the wound here we're seeing really

where the exit was and we were really
expecting to see metal residues really

bright white that's distinct from the
bone and the teeth in the film

but we don't there's nothing there's
nothing in there that suggests that

lighter red residue

Looks like no.

The negative result is a blow.

To Melissa and Willie, the wound clearly
suggests a gunshot.

They just can't prove it.

Perhaps the metal traces left by the
musket ball were too minuscule for the x

-rays to detect.

So Willie decides on a bold course of
action.

He calls on one of the world's foremost
crime labs.

It is 4 ,000 miles away at the
University of New Haven in Connecticut.

With cutting -edge forensic techniques,
if any place can get some results from

the skeletons of Purochuco, it is here.

Top forensic scientists Al Harper and
Tim Palmbach have examined hundreds of

gunshot wounds.

A lot fresher than the one in Peru.

Before long, Al and Tim are in Lima.

The lure of examining what may be the
first gunshot wound in the Americas is

irresistible.

Willie's lab contains the remains of
over 3

,000 Inca burials.

Work on this astonishing collection of
mummies and skeletons has been

temporarily abandoned as Mochito and his
band take center stage.

Al and Tim immediately focus on what
Melissa thought might be the gunshot

Oh, how interesting.

Look at this.

It's almost like they're two separate
entrances. You almost did have a

trajectory line of 30, 45 degrees.

It's hitting at some angle about like
that.

So if we think energy -wise, it's got to
be sufficient enough to pop a hole

through the cranium, but not so
energetic that you bust this up. I mean,

you take a modern 1 ,400, 1 ,500 -foot
energy impact of a normal handgun.

You don't get plugs like that. Those are
fragmented. No, they're completely and

totally fragmented. The bullet simply
punches a hole through the bone, and it

fragments the pieces of the bone as it
goes through.

This isn't the case here.

The intact plug of bone indicates an
impact much less forceful than any

gunshot.

But it might well correspond to the much
weaker impact of a 16th century

octopus.

In fact, the bone plug itself carries a
concave imprint highly suggestive of a

musket ball.

Remarkable. Absolutely remarkable.

Could this be a gunshot?

It could be.

To prove it, they'll have to use more
sophisticated instruments, starting with

scanning electron microscope, or SEM.

What we want to try to do here is we'll
do some scanning electron microscopy

looking at this, and then if we find
some small particulate matter, we can go

ahead and we'll hit it with an X -ray,
and that'll give us the elemental

compositions.

All the inside surface there.

The results go beyond their wildest
dreams.

The edges of the hole in the skull and
the entire surface of the bone plug are

impregnated with fragments of iron.

a metal sometimes used for Spanish
musket balls.

Standard X -ray procedures failed to see
these iron particles because what

ultimately we established through the
SEM is that these were very small

particles that were actually hidden in
these small fissures and fractures in

bone.

Now Tim and Al have an image of what
probably happened.

As the musket ball punched into the back
of the skull and passed through the

head, it left iron fragments deep inside
the bone, which had stayed there for

500 years.

Honestly, when we were first confronted
with the possibility that there was a

gunshot wound some 500 years ago, we
were skeptical.

And as any scientist would do, we sought
to disprove that.

Simply, there's nothing that we have
found or evaluated that is inconsistent

with that having been indeed a gunshot
wound.

It's a remarkable discovery.

Not only the first evidence of a gunshot
wound in the Americas, but support for

Willie's belief that the bodies from the
Puruchuko graveyard could be the first

ever forensic remains.

of the battles of the conquest.

The questions posed by these precious
bones are tantalizing.

What other stories do they have to tell?

Who was Mochito?

How did he and his people die?

As forensic science opens a window on
the Spanish conquest of Peru, what more

will we see through it?

Will it confirm what the Spanish wrote
in their chronicles? That courage, along

with guns and steel swords, gave a tiny
band of conquistadors such an advantage

they could vanquish thousands.

Spanish chronicles of the conquest
underplay one critical fact.

When Pizarro and his conquistadors
arrived in Peru, the Inca Empire was

to pieces.

It had been formed only a hundred years
earlier, when the Inca had spread out

from their capital at Cusco to overwhelm
the many different Indian chiefdoms of

the region.

By 1532,

many of the empire's over 10 million
inhabitants were fed up with Inca rule

all too willing to ally themselves with
the Spanish in a bid to break free of

Inca domination.

For the newly arrived Spanish, this was
a great stroke of luck.

Even with their huge technological
advantages, they were hardly a

fighting force.

It's a mistake to think of the
conquistadors as soldiers. They were not

in the contemporary Spanish sense, let
alone the modern American sense.

They were adventurers.

They were absolutely ruthless, but they
weren't soldiers.

Many of the conquistadors were
illiterate, including Francisco Pizarro

From peasant stock in rural Spain, most
were men of action, not letters.

The task of telling the story of the
conquest largely fell to scribes and

chroniclers.

Over the years, a sort of official
version of what happened was composed.

Historians and archaeologists have long
suspected that in the process, facts

were altered and some conveniently
forgotten.

The chronicles try to justify the
conquest.

And in order to magnify the glory of the
Spaniards, they exaggerate.

The chronicles go to great lengths to
paint a dramatic portrait of Spanish

hardships and heroism, but largely
ignore the help given by their Indian

They recount a series of dramatic
confrontations, in which Pizarro's tiny

confront vast Inca armies and, against
all odds, triumph.

The most remarkable of these takes place
only weeks after the Spanish arrive.

At Cajamarca, in northern Peru, they
come upon the troops of the Inca king

Atahualpa, who are celebrating a
successful military campaign.

The Inca are not prepared for battle.

The Spanish take them by surprise and
massacre them.

In the process, they take the king
hostage.

Pizarro demands a huge ransom of gold
for Atahualpa.

Once it is paid, He executes him anyway.

With the Inca world in shock, Pizarro
pushes on to the capital, Cusco, which

quickly falls to the Spanish.

Within a matter of months, the Inca
empire is theirs.

It takes four years for armed Inca
resistance to materialize.

In 1536, Inca armies mobilize and throw
themselves at the conquistadors both in

Cusco and the newly founded Spanish city
of Lima.

The Great Inca Rebellion has begun.

According to the Chronicles, on August
10, 1536, Francisco Pizarro is in Lima.

He watches in terror as a vast Indian
army sweeps across the coastal plain.

God save us from the fury of the
Indians, is all he can say.

It was during the siege of Lima that
followed that Mochito and his people

probably lost their lives.

The time layering, or stratigraphy, of
the cemetery at Puruchuco tells Willy

that Mochito's remains are from the very
first years of the conquest.

The only event that could explain the
injuries and the

stratigraphic position of this was the
siege of Lima.

In August 1536,

The city of Lima is only 18 months old.

Its few adobe houses are arranged in a
grid system around a central square.

According to the chronicles, on the day
of the battle, a vast army led by the

great Inca general Quiso Yupanqui closes
in on Lima.

They estimate it in the tens of
thousands.

Quiso is carried on a litter surrounded
by his captains.

Pizarro has only a few hundred troops.

With the odds stacked against him, he
decides to gamble everything on one

desperate cavalry charge.

The Spanish always try to kill leaders
first because they know this devastates

enemy morale.

So the cavalry hacks its way through the
Inca troops towards Queso and his

captains.

In front of the Spanish charge, the
captains fall back, exposing Queso.

He is killed in an instant.

The Inca army retreats in disarray.

In the picture painted by the
Chronicles, a handful of Spaniards have

heroically defeated a huge Indian army.

Lima is saved.

But is that really what happened?

Now, for the first time, we will be able
to re -examine the Spanish version of

events.

Billy and Elena believed Mochito and his
people were part of the Inca force that

confronted Pizarro on that fateful day
in August 1536.

The finding of this individual is very
important because we can confront the

descriptions contained in the European
documents with...

material evidence with the reality.

A sort of forensic work in order to
prove or disprove those

narrations.

Of all the burials found at Puruchuko,
Mochito's stands out.

His head had been wrapped in blue cloth.

He was in the center of the cemetery.

The way he was buried make Willie and
Elena sure Mochito had special status.

He was a leader.

As Tim and Al work on Mochito's remains,
they discover that many of his injuries

seem consistent with the classic account
of the siege of Lima.

Perhaps he was one of the captains close
to the Inca general who were cut down

by Pizarro's cavalry charge.

This in itself might explain his
terrible injuries.

The mandible has been fractured with an
incredible amount of force. Normally the

chin bone is very strong and is very
resistant, but this one has been snapped

with the force coming down from the
outside, forcing it apart, breaking off

little piece of bone that's missing.

Who knows where that went?

So some terrible thing has happened
there.

And then, in examining the vertebrae,
find that the thoracic vertebrae are all

intact.

But we look at the ribs. Part of the rib
has been, the first rib has been

snapped off, and we see additional
damage to the inside of the sternum,

or the breastbone, where it's been
snapped, not in one, but two, but in

different places.

An amazing amount of force has been
applied to the outside of this person's

body.

Something very large, very heavy,
perhaps a great big rock or even a

Sharp, piercing wounds to the skull and
crushing wounds to the torso are exactly

what you would expect in somebody killed
in a cavalry charge.

But when Al and Tim come to examine the
remains of the people who died with

Mochito, they seem to tell a very
different story.

It's very unusual to see this kind of
pattern. So many of them have had severe

blunt force trauma, broken the skull
completely apart. You know, you get the

occipital bone broken, plus you get
injuries to the face and orbits.

A lot of it to the left side as if a
blow is coming in to the right.

While a few of the death injuries look
like they were dealt by Spanish steel,

the great majority point to a very
different type of weapon.

And it's an object that's approximately
two to three centimeters in diameter,

and it takes out the left zygomatic
arch, breaks the face, breaks the back

of the skull, breaks the occipital bone,
all in one piece.

Whatever happened to this person was an
extremely violent death.

And the shattered skulls hold yet
another shocking surprise.

A tiny bone beneath the ear indicates
that some are women.

Two or three of them appear to be
female. You can tell by the small

processes. And they've got signs of
injury, too.

Is this evidence that women fought
alongside Mochito and his men?

If so, like many of the Puruchuko finds,
it would be unprecedented.

To look for the weapons that could have
caused these blunt force skull injuries,

Al and Tim head for the gold museum of
Lima.

It has the largest collection of
historic weapons in Peru, both Spanish

Inca.

The steel weapons of the Spanish would
produce either sharp, piercing injuries

or crushing injuries with clean edges.

They would not create the sort of blunt
force traumas Al and Tim have been

examining.

What sort of weapon could have created
those?

Tim and Al go on to look at the Inca
weapons.

Tim, look at this thing. It's really
heavy.

Can you imagine what would happen if
that got swung at somebody?

Yeah, isn't that about the same kind of
configuration as some of the facial and

side, the head injuries you were looking
at? Sure, it's just about the right

size, and certainly if that...

Punch the skull in more than just a flat
kind of fracture. Absolutely.

Fracture all of the flat bones of the
face. Well, that might be why a lot of

skulls weren't finding the small bones,
because they were probably so busted up

that they disarticulated, right?

Absolutely.

Well, that's an incredibly lethal
weapon.

The possibility that the Indians found
in the Puruchuko Cemetery were killed by

stone clubs points...

to a stunning conclusion.

Most were killed not by the Spanish, but
by other Indians.

Of 70 individuals in the Puro Chuco
cemetery, only three show clear signs of

being killed by Spanish weapons.

This directly challenges the account in
the chronicles.

So what really happened at the siege of
Lima?

Willy knows that to get to the bottom of
this mystery, he needs the

collaboration of other disciplines.

Not just forensic scientists, but
historians too.

For 500 years we've been told a handful
of spaniards and their irons and their

horses. were able to take an entire
empire.

Since we historians have gone beyond the
chroniclers in the last three decades,

this official version can be challenged.

Historian Efrain Trelles has been
studying the historical records of the

Spanish colony in Peru.

They are housed in places like this.

the archive of the Franciscans at the
convent of San Francisco de Lima.

Efrain's attention was drawn to a long
-forgotten court case which took place

Lima many years after the siege.

It sheds dramatic new light on the
events of August 1536.

Years after the rebellion, the heirs of
Pizarro were arguing with the crown.

As part of that trial, they contended
that the cost of defending Lima from the

siege had had a heavy impact on the
Pizarro estate.

They had to be rewarded for that.

The Crown disagreed.

They brought Indians in who were present
at the siege.

The Indians testified that the fighting
involved small skirmishes, but no major

battle.

We have references of fighting during
the siege, but mostly Indians against

Indians.

Witnesses also claimed that the Inca
army was in the thousands, not tens of

thousands, that there was no heroic
cavalry charge by Pizarro, and that

Spaniards who did fight were protected
by large numbers of Indians who were

fighting alongside them.

So this leads me to think and believe
that the great siege must have taken

in a very different manner than we have
been told.

Willie's discovery that most of
Mochito's warriors were killed by other

supports the version of events that
emerged at the trial.

It also provides the first scientific
evidence for what historians have long

suspected but could never prove, that
the role of the Indian allies

downplayed by the Chronicles was
critical to the success of the conquest.

It's very clear when you look at the way
the conquest went down, that Pizarro's

allies were very important to his
ultimate victory, not simply in the

line, but for logistical support, they
were enormously important.

It's very clear that their role in the
conquest has been minimized.

No one has found more proof of the
importance of Indian allies to the

than Maria Rostorowski.

At 91,

She is probably the most respected
living historian of the Andes.

The Spanish were massively supported by
their Indian allies.

This fact, overlooked by the chronicles,
completely changes our vision of the

conquest. Without it, the story is
absurd.

Maria has discovered documents that
reveal the true story of the siege of

Found in the archives of the Indies in
Seville, Spain, they show that Pizarro's

survival at Lima depended not on
military prowess, but on an alliance

powerful chiefdom in the mountain
province of Huaylas.

When Francisco Pizarro arrived in Peru,
he was a single man of 54.

Eager to create an alliance with him,
the nobility of Huaylas offered him a

young girl as wife.

She was called Quispecita, and she
became Pizarro's concubine after

baptism.

It's a curious fact that the Spanish had
all the relations they wanted with

Andean women, but only after they were
baptized.

Pizarro's young concubine Kispe Sisa, is
with him in Lima when the Indian armies

lay siege to the city in August 1536.

She is at the center of what really
happens at the siege of Lima.

As the small Inca army approaches Lima,
Pizarro does indeed send out a cavalry

charge to fend it off.

They follow the Inca warriors into a dry
riverbed outside the city, where the

Spanish horses start to break their
ankles on the huge stones.

Having achieved nothing, the cavalry
retreats.

Soon after, the Inca army once again
advances on the city.

And the Inca army was actually entering
the streets of Lima when suddenly they

retreated. And the Spanish said, how
stupid. They walk away when they are on

doorstep?

What had happened?

I found in the archive of the Indies a
document saying that Pizarro's young

concubine sent runners with messages to
her mother in Huayla asking for help.

She asked for an army, and her mother
sent her one.

Quispe Sisa's mother was a chief in her
own right.

As soon as she received news that her
daughter was surrounded in Lima, she

dispatched a large army to relieve the
city.

Lima was saved not by conquistador
heroics, but by the arrival of the army

by the mother of Pizarro's young
concubine.

As the Indians from Huaylas descend on
Lima, the Inca army sees that its

situation is suddenly hopeless.

the balance has tipped in favor of the
Spanish.

The Inca army retreats in disarray.

They are pursued by a few Spaniards,
accompanied and protected by large

of warriors from Huaylas.

The fighting of the siege of Lima takes
place in small skirmishes around the

city.

It was probably in one such skirmish
that Mochito and his people met their

deaths at the hands of the Spaniards and
their Indian allies.

Now, finally, we can tell the story of
that last day of their lives.

We don't know Mochito's real name, but
from the way he was buried, we know he

was a leader, and he was young.

These clavicles, they aren't fused yet,
so that's going to be, put them around

somewhere in the range of 20s, in the
early 20s, late teens, maybe 18 to 22.

Typically, he would have had at least
one wife and children.

He may have known nothing of the
upcoming battle until Inca emissaries

Puruchuco demanding his support for
their fight against the Spanish.

On the morning of the attack, he would
have set out from Puruchuco to cover the

five miles to the new Spanish settlement
at Lima.

He and his fellow warriors would have
been armed with the traditional Inca

weapons, stone clubs, bolas, and spears.

They were accompanied by their women,
not as warriors, but probably as

of food and water for the day's
fighting.

Don't forget that the viruses might have
already arrived and

decimated the indigenous population.

Since they had lost so many warriors, it
was probably women who carried the

supplies.

Mochito and his people were part of the
Inca army that tried to enter Lima and

was forced to retreat by the arrival of
the army from Huaylas.

One likely scenario...

is that as they tried to make it back to
Portuco, they were hunted down by a

small band of Spaniards with their many
Indian allies.

Mochito's people were clearly
outnumbered.

Their deaths came with savage brutality.

So this is another individual who has a
series of blunt force injuries,

perimortem injuries to the left side of
the cranium.

One warrior was killed like no other,
shot in the head by a Spanish arquebus.

The first recorded gunshot victim in the
new world.

It is very clear that everything we've
evaluated is consistent with indeed this

being a gunshot wound.

No one was spared the slaughter, not
even the women.

This is a young woman, and she's been
hit very hard.

As a leader, Mochito would have been
attacked with special ferocity.

He's missing his face, and there are no
facial fragments recovered.

The bones of his limbs and torso were
smashed by club blows, and probably

the hooves of a Spanish horse.

That damage extends all the way up to
the first rib, which has also been

snapped.

If he was not dead already...

The three puncture wounds to his head
would certainly have killed him.

When we have a chance to look at the CAT
scans where we can actually peer inside

the skull, we can see that the inner
layer of the skull is punched out

in all three cases.

That much force pushing into the skull
would have caused death.

Perhaps in a final coup de grace,
Mochito died as a Spanish lance stabbed

three times in the back of his skull.

Sometime later, the people of Purochuco
came to gather their dead.

Perhaps a day or more had passed before
they dared venture out.

Rigor mortis had already set in.

This might explain the unusual sprawled
postures in their graves.

With war parties still in the area,
there was no time for proper death

Mochito and the people who died with him
were hastily buried in their clan

cemetery.

From their remains, the work of
archaeologists, scientists, and

uncovered a long -hidden truth.

The conquest of Peru was a matter of
Indians fighting Indians.

Indians took Cuzco.

Indians defended Cuzco. Indians attacked
Lima.

Indians defended Lima.

Now we have solid evidence.

Why was the massive participation of
Indian armies in the Spanish conquest of

Peru left out of the chronicles?

Very straightforward.

The Spanish were indebted to their
allies. They didn't want to remember

debts.

To gain their support, the conquistadors
promised their Indian allies the

independence and influence they had been
denied by the Inca.

After the conquest, the promises were
all conveniently.

There has been a political interest to
erase from the historical

landscape all the indigenous elements
that helped Pizarro.

The story of the Spanish alliances with
the Andean Indians who fought their

battles for them is the great untold
story of the conquest.

By a strange twist of fate, it is their
victims, Mochito and the people who died

with him at the siege of Lima, whose
bones have borne witness to this long

-forgotten truth.

On NOVA's Great Inca Rebellion website,
see in detail how a Spanish conquistador

and an Inca warrior were outfitted for
battle. Find it on PBF .org.

Educators and other educational
institutions can order this or other

programs for $19 .95 for shipping and
handling.

Call WGBH Boston Video at 1 -800 -255
-9424.