Dobyns learned something from Cieza de León that was not mentioned in Prescott’s history, in the Smithsonian’s official Handbook of South American Indians, or in any of the then-standard descriptions of Tawantinsuyu. According to Cieza de León, Wayna Qhapaq, Atawallpa’s father, died when “a great plague of smallpox broke out [in 1524 or 1525], so severe that more than 200,000 died of it, for it spread to all parts of the kingdom.”
