July 26, 1533

Atahualpa

Atahualpa is baptized and executed by garrote at Cajamarca

He was offered a choice that was not one: accept baptism and be strangled, or refuse and be burned. The traditional 29 August date is impossible: Pizarro was already reporting the execution on 29 July.

The commutation

The leading modern reconstruction puts the execution at Cajamarca on 26 July 1533. Atahualpa's sentence of burning was commuted to death by garrote on condition that he accept Christian baptism; sources disagree over his baptismal name, giving either Francisco or Juan.

He had been a prisoner since 16 November 1532 — eight months and ten days, if 26 July is accepted — and the promised ransom had already been delivered, melted and divided.

A rumour that scouts could not confirm

Cieza de León's investigation says Pizarro broke the agreement made with Atahualpa and ordered his death after false reports that warriors were approaching. Cieza records that Hernando de Soto returned from reconnaissance without finding the army.

Immediately afterward, Spanish and Inca ceremonies acclaimed Túpac Huallpa, another son of Huayna Cápac, as the new Inca under Spanish sponsorship.

Why 29 August cannot stand

Pizarro's now-lost letter of 29 July was already reporting both the execution and Túpac Huallpa's appointment to Charles V, which makes the traditional 29 August date impossible. That later date first appears in Juan de Velasco's eighteenth-century history and was repeated by Prescott and others.

Raúl Porras Barrenechea decisively rejected 29 August but at first established only a late-July or early-August window; reconstructions have proposed 20, 26 and 27 July. No surviving contemporaneous execution record supplies an uncontested day. A documentary reconstruction puts the Spanish departure from Cajamarca on 11 August 1533.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 5 sources 2 audit passes Date disputed

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →

Date disputed. Sources disagree about when this happened.

What the sources leave uncertain

July 26 is supported by modern scholarship and by the fact that Pizarro reported the execution in a July 29 letter, but no surviving contemporaneous execution record supplies an uncontested date.
Historian Raúl Porras Barrenechea decisively rejected August 29 but initially established only a late-July or early-August window; different reconstructions proposed July 20, July 26 or July 27.
The August 29 date first appears in Juan de Velasco’s eighteenth-century history and was repeated by Prescott and later writers.
Sources disagree over Atahualpa’s baptismal name, commonly giving either Francisco or Juan. The fact of baptism and garrotting is much firmer than the name.