Qualla: Inca-Caranqui https://qualla.com/inca-caranqui en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:12 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/d/2/0/3/inca-caranqui-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Inca-Caranqui https://qualla.com/inca-caranqui Inca-Caranqui: Introduction https://qualla.com/inca-caranqui/ Photo credit Sylvain2803, CC BY-SA 3.0. The lake was named for what happened there. Yaguarcocha means Blood Lake in Kichwa, and the men who gave it that name were not speaking metaphorically. Around 1500 CE, after more than a decade of war, the Inca emperor Huayna Capac finally defeated the Caranqui chiefdoms of northern Ecuador. In retribution for their resistance, he ordered the massacre of the male population on the lake's shores. The Spanish chronicler Miguel Cabello de Balboa, writing decades later, said the water ran red. Today Yaguarcocha sits on the southern edge of the city of Ibarra, ringed by a motor-racing circuit and a small airport. In the village of Caranqui a few kilometers away, a vacant lot holds the stone pool where the Incas performed their rituals after the killing was done.

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]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/2/0/3/inca-caranqui-wp/d203-inca-caranqui-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Inca-Caranqui: The Country of the Mounds https://qualla.com/inca-caranqui/ Photo credit Sylvain2803, CC BY-SA 3.0. Before the Incas arrived, the Ecuadorian sierra between the Guayllabamba and Mira rivers held between 100,000 and 150,000 people organized into small chiefdoms. Caranqui, Cayambe, Otavalo, Cochasqui. The names survive in modern towns scattered around the inter-montane basin of th...

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]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/2/0/3/inca-caranqui-wp/d203-inca-caranqui-the-country-of-the-mounds.mp3 0:06 2 full Inca-Caranqui: Huayna Capac's Campaign https://qualla.com/inca-caranqui/ Photo credit Sylvain2803, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Incas came from the austere high Andes of southern Peru. When they descended into Ecuador, they found lush, lower country, and they wanted it. Topa Inca Yupanqui began the northern conquest sometime after 1471 and hit a wall of local resistance. His son Huayna Capac, ruling f...

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]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/2/0/3/inca-caranqui-wp/d203-inca-caranqui-huayna-capacs-campaign.mp3 0:06 3 full Inca-Caranqui: The Garrison Town https://qualla.com/inca-caranqui/ Photo credit Sylvain2803, CC BY-SA 3.0. After the conquest, Caranqui became a major Inca garrison. In 1544, the Spanish chronicler Pedro Cieza de Leon visited the ruins and described what had stood there: a Temple of the Sun, a central plaza with a large water pool, barracks for Inca troops, and an acllawasi housing 20...

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]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/2/0/3/inca-caranqui-wp/d203-inca-caranqui-the-garrison-town.mp3 0:06 4 full Inca-Caranqui: The Pool That Survived https://qualla.com/inca-caranqui/ Photo credit Sylvain2803, CC BY-SA 3.0. Most of the old Inca center is gone, buried under the urban sprawl of Ibarra. Two stone walls with doors and niches still stand near the center of the village. The remarkable find came in 2008. The town of Caranqui purchased a vacant lot, and archaeologists began digging. They un...

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]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/2/0/3/inca-caranqui-wp/d203-inca-caranqui-the-pool-that-survived.mp3 0:06 5 full Inca-Caranqui: Karanki Now https://qualla.com/inca-caranqui/ Photo credit Sylvain2803, CC BY-SA 3.0. In the twenty-first century, the name is more commonly spelled Karanki. The people who descend from the empire's northern frontier now speak Kichwa and Spanish, farm the same high valleys their ancestors shaped, and live alongside the mounds their great-great-grandparents built. ...

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]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/2/0/3/inca-caranqui-wp/d203-inca-caranqui-karanki-now.mp3 0:06 6 full