Center for Latin American Studies

The Inca, an American Indian people of Peru who in the two centuries before the Spanish discovery of America conquered an area stretching from the southern border of present-day Colombia to central Chile. Centering on the city of Cusco (Cuzco) in the Peruvian Andes, the Inca domain included the coastal and mountain regions of Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and the northern areas of Chile and Argentina--the only true empire existing in the New World at the time of Columbus, and the greatest political achievement of the American Indians. In the native language the term "Inca" was the title of the Indian emperor. Today, however, it is also applied to the original tribe of conquerors and to all those people who made up the empire (who probably called themselves capac-cuna,"great ones" or "glorious ones," in pre-Spanish times). Courtesy of http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/incas/collier.htm