The destinations, culture, archaeology and history of Peru

Much has been learned in the intervening years to correct many of the classic historical misnomers that appear in this 1942 book review of BROTHERS OF DOOM, a biography of the Pizarro brothers, by Hoffman Birney, an independent scholar and prolific pulp fiction writer.
For one thing, we now know that the Spanish Chroniclers perpetrated a self-aggrandizing myth that fewer than 200 conquistadors — “quite unaided by native allies” — defeated tens of thousands of Inca warriors, purely by virtue of superior nerve, military prowess and armaments. In fact, Francisco Pizarro and his cohorts deftly won over indigenous groups who resented Inca control and gladly bore arms alongside the Spanish to wage war against the Inca Empire.

The Inca dynasty’s rule over a vast empire did not last five centuries, but rather little more than a hundred years. And sociopolitical comparisons between the Inca Empire and modern socialistic societies and Marxist utopian ideology are overwrought, at best.

Still, it’s a fun read…

The Windsor Daily Star ~ May 30, 1942

By H.L. MacPherson

Long before Columbus discovered America, even before the Norsemen are supposed to have touched these shores, and empire mighty for its times was taking form in the Western Hemisphere. It was the Land of the Four Corners, the Inca Empire of Peru. Its area was approximately that of Ontario.

“No nation in 16th century Europe even approached the Land of the Four Corners in size or potential strength; none approached it in wealth or in the number of trained soldiers it could push to the field, yet it was conquered by a few hundred desperate adventurers quite unaided by native allies such as those thousands who Cortez had found waiting only a leader to rebel against their Aztec overlords in Mexico. Read More »