Not long after his son’s death, Huayna Capac too was on his deathbed.
In Huayna Capac’s case, however, his eldest son, Ninan Cuyochi, is said to have died before him. Traditionally, the Sapa Inca would pass his throne to his eldest son.
The two men had likely succumbed to smallpox, a disease which had spread to the native communities from the Spanish arrival to the continent. The War of the Two Brothers began with the death of the Sapa Inca Huayna Capac, and his heir apparent, Ninan Cuyochi in 1527. This war is known variously as the Inca Civil War, the Inca Dynastic War, the Inca War of Succession, and the War of the Two Brothers. Only a year earlier, Atahualpa had emerged victorious from a bloody civil war to become the Sapa Inca (meaning ‘the only Inca’). This marked the end of the once mighty Inca Empire, and the beginning of the Spanish conquest of that region of South America. On the 26th of July 1533, the last ruler of the Inca Empire, Atahualpa, was executed by the Spanish with a garrotte (a device used to strangle someone).
