Artisans, engineers, architects, and other skilled workers fell somewhere be-tween the nobles and the peasants. The Chimú, for example, were excellent jewelers and gold- or silversmiths and were honored for their talents.
Although these people were not required to work in the fields, they were expected to contribute two-thirds of their output to the sapa inca and the religious community.
Stonemasons, architects, and engineers worked for the sapa inca. Al-though they did not produce goods, their services were highly valued. Be-cause these services benefited the community as a whole and the sapa inca in particular, architects and engineers were not required to perform other labors or pay taxes.
Commoners
Peasants lived regimented lives; they were destined to be farmers, herders, miners, or fishermen. The civil government watched over their work and provided for them if crops failed, they got sick or injured, or they reached the Inca retirement age of 50 years old. Retirement was not a matter of sleeping late and relaxing in a hammock—older people still worked. They just did not build roads, plow fields, serve in the army, or dig in the mines.
The lives of peasants were as structured as everything else in the Inca Empire; the government planned for every stage of life. If conquered peo-ple had too much free time, the Inca rulers believed, they might become restless. Since there were never more than about 1,000 Incas ruling a region as large as the Roman Empire and populated by dozens of different ethnic groups and millions of people, absolute control became an Inca imperative.
Once a child reached five years old, he or she had jobs. Girls learned to skim kernels from corncobs, dehydrate potatoes, and cook. Boys carried water, shooed pests from crops, and helped with planting and har-vesting. Older girls watched over their younger siblings, fetched water and food for livestock, cooked meals, and weeded fields.
Once girls reached16 to 20 years old, they were married. Wives maintained the house, helped with plowing and planting, processed and stored food, and produced children. Young men married at about age 25 and were immediately enrolled as taxpayers. District governors arranged marriages for people who did not choose spouses on their own; living as a single man or woman was not acceptable.
Formal education was not available to children of peasants or craftspeople. The children learned from their parents, working as ap-prentices in the job they would follow for a lifetime.
The two areas in which there was some upward social mobility were the military and the religious community. A young man who showed
BIGEARS
When the Spanish arrived in the Inca Empire, they called noble males ore-jones, or “big ears.” It was the practice of Inca men to begin wearing earplugs when they reached puberty. The hole in the earlobe was stretched over the years to hold larger and larger earplugs, which were disks that filled the lobe holes like pierced ear-rings.
exceptional skills as a warrior might rise to lead a troop of 10, a battalion of 50 or 100, or become commander of a regiment. In the religious com-munity, attractive girls around 10 years old might be selected to become one of the chosen women. Those girls studied at the Acllahuasi, where they learned expert weaving skills, made chicha for the sapa inca and priests, and participated in religious rites. Some girls would become brides of Woman of Gold
This gold figurine, wrapped in multicolored woven cloth fastened with a gold pin, is an Inca depiction of a chosen woman. Selection as a chosen woman offered upward social mobility for a girl.
nobles or secondary wives of the sapa inca. Others remained in the reli-gious life, eventually becoming teachers in the Acllahuasi. To some, though, fate was not so kind: They became human sacrifices.
Mitmakonas
On occasion, a newly conquered group of people did not fit in well with the structure of the Inca Empire. The solution to this problem was to break up rebellious groups and send the people to work in a variety of locations loyal to the Inca. This left a messy gap in the workforce, which the Inca government filled with mitmakonas.
Mitmakonas were people loyal to the sapa inca, people who fol-lowed the pattern of hard work and paying taxes. It was an honor to be chosen to be a mitmakona, both for the individual and the community. En-tire families, ayllus, or several ayllus moved into the rebellious region and brought order by example. Mitmakonas received special privileges, in-cluding wearing their “home colors”—the dress and headgear of their particular regions—even while living in their new location. They could also follow the ethnic and religious customs of their home regions.
The tribal or ethnic community from which mitmakonas came also benefited since they might be given additional land for crops or other priv-ileges. In Kingdom of the Sun, historian Ruth Karen says, “. . . a loyal high-land people that had furnished an appreciable number of mitmakona might be awarded fields in the lowlands, which its purics (taxpayers) could work to obtain products—fruit and vegetables that could not be grown in their own, colder climate.” Of course, those new products fell under the normal taxation requirements: one-third to the community, two-thirds to the sapa inca and religious community.
Taxes
Workers paid taxes, and loopholes in the taxation system did not exist as they do today. For example, farmers paid their taxes by working the fields and pasturelands owned by the state. One-third of the crop was the ayllu’s to keep. Another third, placed in storehouses for distribution in case of drought or famine, was the property of the sapa inca. The last third be-longed to the priests and religious groups, and was used to feed the people at religious events and for sacrifices to the gods. Other occupations paid tax in a similar way, keeping only one-third of their production.
The Incas did not use currency of any kind, and all transactions used the barter system. Among the most highly valued products was cloth. Every
woman spun cotton or wool into thread and wove cloth in her free time. Cloth could also be used to pay taxes and were stored in gov-ernment warehouses for clothing the poor or the military.
The government was socialist in all regards. Everyone worked, even children and elderly, to the best of their abilities. However, those un-able to work were fed, housed, and clothed at the sapa inca’s expense.
In addition to a share of crops or goods produced, all adult males provided terms of social service, called mit’as, to the government. A farmer, for example, might provide two weeks service in the army, building roads or digging in the mines. While he was gone, the other members of his ayllu worked his fields and made sure his family was fed. Often, if the mit’a duty was mining or construction, the worker could bring his wife and family.
Through the mit’a, the Incas built paved roads, canals, bridges, and agri-cultural terraces. Mit’a labor supported the irrigation program, dug gold and silver from mines, and constructed government storehouses.