Around 1200, the Incas were an unremarkable sierra people occupying the Cuzco valley in Peru, but when they began large-scale expansion of their territories, through victories over neighbouring tribes in the fifteenth century, they grew into one of the most sophisticated civilizations of pre-Columbian South America. In about 1460, the Inca, Tupac Yupanqui , set out to conquer present-day Ecuador with a force of 200,000 men. He brushed aside the Palta in the south in a matter of months, but met fierce resistance with the Cañari, and the warring left the whole region completely devastated. The Cañari had been so impressive in battle that many were eventually recruited into the Inca professional army, but even they weren't as bellicose as the Cara in the north, who managed to keep the invaders at bay for seventeen years before a terrible massacre at Laguna Yahuarcocha in 1495, led by Huayna Capac , Tupac Yupanqui's son.

 

At its height in the early sixteenth century, the Inca Empire, known as Tahuantinsuyo ("Land of the Four Quarters", after its administrative division into four regions), extended from Chile and the Argentinian Andes to southern Colombia, a total area of some 980,000 square kilometres, linked by some 30,000 kilometres of roads. It was a highly organized and efficient society that built great stone palaces, temples, observatories, storehouses and fortresses using masonry techniques of breathtaking ingenuity.

Just as impressive was their administrative system, which allowed a relatively small number of people to hold sway over huge areas. Indirect rule was imposed on the conquered regions, with the local chief allowed to remain in power as long as he acknowledged the divine sovereignty of the Inca Emperor. The lands were divided between the Incas (for the king, nobility and army), religion (for sacrifices, ceremonies and the priesthood) and the local communities, and tribute was paid in the cultivation of the imperial lands. Each year, subjects also had to honour the mita , a labour obligation which required them to spend a certain amount of time working in the army or on public works. A shrewd policy stipulated that the community could not be taxed on its own produce, a measure that did much to ensure contentment and stability in the colonies. Any troublesome subjects were forcefully resettled many hundreds of miles away - and indoctrinated and acculturated colonists were brought in as replacements. Many Palta, for example, were transported to Lake Titicaca, in Bolivia, and swapping with communities there that had been under the Inca yoke for decades.

Considering that the Incas were rulers in what is now southern Ecuador for no more than seventy years, and in northern Ecuador for only thirty years, they had an enormous impact on the region. New urban and ceremonial centres were built, such as Tomebamba (now buried beneath Cuenca) and Quito , with roads connecting them to the rest of the empire, and fortresses were erected at strategic points across the country, as at Ingapirca . The language of the Incas, Quechua , was imposed on the defeated population and it's still spoken in various forms (as Quichua) by the majority of Ecuador's indígenas . The Incas also introduced sweet potatoes, peanuts and oca, and drove large herds of llamas north from Peru for their wool and meat.

By 1525, Huayna Capac was looking to establish a second capital at Quito or Tomebamba. Before he had a chance to act, however, he was struck down by a virulent disease - probably smallpox , which had been brought to Central America by the Spanish and had swiftly spread southwards through the continent before them. Not only did he die but so too, among countless other thousands, did his likely heir. In the resulting confusion, two other sons took charge of the Empire: Huáscar , who, ruling the south from Cuzco, claimed he was the chosen successor; and Atahualpa , who asserted he'd been assigned the north, governed from Quito. Within a few years, friction between the two brothers erupted into a full-blown civil war , but Atahualpa had the advantage as the bulk of the imperial army was still in the north after the recent campaigns and under his command. Their forces clashed at Ambato, a pitched battle where over 30,000 soldiers from both sides, many of them conscripted locals, were killed. Atahualpa drove his brother south, laying waste to Tomebamba and the Cañari lands in revenge for their support of his enemy. With his superior troops, Atahualpa eventually got the upper hand, but even before he had heard of his generals' final victory over Huáscar in Cuzco, news reached him of a small band of bearded strangers that had landed on the coast nearby, plundering the villages and maltreating the natives.