The Battle of Puná, a peripheral engagement of Francisco Pizarro's conquest of Peru, was fought in April 1531 on the island of Puná (in the Gulf of Guayaquil) in Ecuador. Pizarro's conquistadors, boasting superior weaponry and tactical skill, decisively defeated the island's indigenous inhabitants. The battle marked the beginning of Pizarro's third and final expedition prior to the fall of the Inca Empire.
Background
The Spanish army, following a long and difficult journey from Panama throughout which many had fallen to virulence, predation, and other hazards, had docked at the Inca city of Tumbes in April. Received with quiet hostility by Incas who had perhaps been alerted to the acts of pillage and plunder committed on the fringes of the Empire by the invaders, the Spaniards, deeming it unsafe to remain in Tumbes, relocated their camp to the nearby island of Puna in preparation for an assault on the Inca city.
Initially, the Spanish occupation of the island proceeded without bloodshed. The natives of Puna were a warrior people who, reluctantly bowing before the might of the Inca Empire, had intermittently accepted the status of tributary state, though periods of friction and even open warfare had frequently erupted with the Incas out on the mainland.