Hey! I'm not sure how much information we have about the Incas, but I was curious. Historical events excluded, what do we know about their way of life? Day-to-day things, from the farmers to the emperors. All information is appreciated!
I would advise two books to begin with:
You'll find the answers you seek if you want to deepen your knowledge of the Inca civilization.
First of, the Incas didn't write. They had one of the most sophisticated census system yet they didn't write. The study of history is based on written documents, though, which means that most of what we know about the Inca civilisation comes from what the Spaniards wrote when they came in contact with the Incas. We can appreciate many of their impressions and statements through archeological data but many and most of the Inca treasures are definitevely lost to history. Therefore we must be cautious with numbers and the Inca administration as the Spaniards understood it. This is only my way of saying: I might be wrong on some points, I will present the historical truth to the best of my knowledge, but make sure to investigate the matter further with a critical eye. In the meantime, let me offer you a very few and short introductory notions and key-words to help you navigate the topic.
Incas, as most Andean people, were structured in "tribes" called ayllu. It's a kin group of members that believe they share a common ancestor. What is most fascinating about those ayllu beyond their unique social structure is how they strived to guarantee their own material autonomy. In order to reach that goal ayllu members didn't stay put on a mountain somewhere (where the cult of their divine protector and ancestor was held) but actually expanded by building or joining colonies*.
However, the Andean people who'd go in such colonies wouldn't settle there but would come back to their native land after some time. Then, they'd repeat the adventure. It involved a lot of movement within the lands held by an ayllu, called the marka. It also meant that Incas were totally stranger to trade! They had no need for merchants, or even money. It also explains why they rebelled so vehemently against their Spaniard rulers when they were asked to pay taxes. Incas never had the habit of giving away anything they worked for or owned personnally. However, they were very familiar with the idea of providing time to their "lords", or kuraka, and work for him in exchange of gifts--which made slavery easier to implement.
Every married male ayllu member from 25 to 50 years old was bond to work for his kuraka and fulfil his mita: a free labour service. He'd therefore work on the kuraka's pastures and fields, enlist in his army, whatever was deemed necessary, even build roads or temples. That's why the census was so important for the Incas. Chieftains needed to know how many men they had at their disposal. Marriages were sometimes hurried when the workforce proved scarce.
In return, the kuraka had the solemn duty to take care of his ayllu members and grant them whatever was necessary to their survival and well-being. He was especially put in charge of widows and orphans. This system wasn't perfect, however, and kurakas seldom piled up resources to insure their own wealth more than the common good of their ayllu.
* Some colonies were in fact shared by several ayllu if they were the sole point of access to rare resources such as salt. It could become a source of conflict.
The kuraka were part of an elite: the kapa. Whereas the widows, the orphans and the poor were called the waqcha*. The feeling of social stratification was very strong and it wasn't easy to "move up in the world" if not outright impossible. Family was everything. Your birth defined your place in society, unless you became a yana, the faithful slave of a mighty kuraka who could raise your social status by granting your wealth, power and priviledges.
Most prominent kuraka were leaders of poly-ethnic and poly-linguistic "realms" that proved very difficult to manage. The state of warfare was almost permanent until the Incas rose to power and granted peace as a legitimate principle of their rule. Even then, however, every time an emperor would die, the state of warfare would resume and a civil war would unfold until a succesful contender secured the "throne". It so happened that the Spaniards arrived when the Incas were in the middle of such a civil war, saw an opportunity and grabbed it.
At the beginning the Incas were only one tribe among many. They inherited most of their architectural prowess from previous and long dismantled empires. However, they won their many wars against their rivalling tribes and managed to come on top of them, securing mita from their vanquished foes. They also dismembered unruly ayllu by forcing their members to migrate where the empire required extra-workers or soldiers. Such migration were called mitmaq.
Again, the census proved more important than ever to keep track of the male workforce all accross the empire. Such was the duty of kipu-kamayuq, empire officials assigned to the task of counting the married men who could perform the mita. Since they didn't write anything down, they did it counting nodes on sophisticated ropes.
* A fun fact is that the emperor called himself a waqcha, meaning that he renegated all his former family ties when he rose to power in order to found his own house. Every emperor was expected to do so which explains why there was no proper dynastic continuity among the several rulers of the Inca empire and every rule ended in a civil war.
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I hope this very short introduction to the Inca society will help you dive deeper into the subject now that you have some basic knowledge and information about it ;-) I could take a few follow up questions if necessary. I didn't talk much about agriculture, craftmanship and religion for I'd need some more time to gather my notes and write about it.
u/Asinus_Docet's answer is good, though I would carefully note that the Andean insitutions of mita and yanacona are very different from Classical or Antebellum forms of slave labor, and so I'd be hesitant in using that term to describe them.
I've tried to approach the question from a different perspective, by discussing what might happen to a farming community incorporated into the Inka empire.
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It’s important to realize that the “Inka” were a specific ethnic group from the Cusco Valley in Peru. The term Sapa Inka was also used as a title for the ruler, though many Spanish sources refer to this individual as the Inka. The Inka empire, as a result, was a large territorial collection of various ethnic groups spread across multiple regions of the Andes, from the coasts to the high mountains. It’s tricky to write an answer about what life was like for an Inka farmer, then, because of that variability. Nevertheless, I’ll take a shot at it. For the purposes of this answer, let’s assume I’m talking about a community in the Central Andes, and their everyday experiences. In order to understand what life was like under the Inka empire, it’s important to understand what life was like in the Andes just prior to the Inka’s territorial expansion. For narrative purposes, I’ll use the second person in this answer.
The archaeological period in the Andes before the Inka expansion is known as the Late Intermediate Period (LIP) in English or the Period of Regional Developments (PDR) in Spanish. Really, all this term means is that there was no over-arching political control. Though some states or empires exist at this point, such as the coastal Chimú, many Andean communities at this point were organized into what anthropologists might call chiefdoms – hierarchical societies that lacked large organized bureaucracies and were relatively small territorially speaking. These chiefdoms were often at war with one another, raiding and captive taking were commonplace, and fortifications known as pukaras were often built on hilltops near villages in order to provide a safe refuge in times of warfare. The land was divided between ayllu, as discussed above, and further divided between hanan (upper) and hurin (lower) divisions of the ayllu (not that hanan and hurin are linked with Cusco’s dialect of Quechua, but the same pattern was probably true across the Central Andes).
Depending on your elevation, you farm either corn or, higher up on the mountain, potatoes and quinoa. Higher still, above the region where crops can grow, are the pastures for llamas and alpacas. I would disagree slightly with the previous posters description of these vertically distributed areas as colonies of an original community. This might have sometimes been true, but it might also have been the case that they were separate communities and ayllu linked by traditional trading relationships and the seasonal passage of caravans of llama traders. And so, life consists of mainly of tending either to your crops or animals, both for consumption and trade within your local community. Other labor obligations, such as harvests and house building, are done by the community in a reciprocal/ exchange sort of economy. The local kuraka, though, may argue that his leadership (both political and military) is what he gives in exchange for your labor.
All of this changes rapidly when the Inka army one day arrives at your doorstep. The community is frightened, perhaps you retreat to their traditional pukara and stand at the walls, slings in hand prepared to repel an attack. However, the Inka don’t initially attack. Instead they send diplomats (perhaps the current Sapa Inka’s nephews or cousins) to negotiate. They offer to incorporate your local community into the empire peacefully. They offer to respect your religious beliefs, and maybe even to have one of your wa’kas (sacred objects) sent to a place of honor in the imperial capitol in Cusco. They shower your local kuraka with gifts, including textiles and a silver kero vessel – used for the ritual where he and the Inka diplomats will consume chicha (corn beer) and establish their relationship.
In return, the empire demands that the community send a certain number of laborers every year to fulfill their mita obligation. This doesn’t seem like that big a deal, given the local community is used to reciprocal labor exchanges. Obviously this exchange isn’t equal, though you could view access to the empire’s military protection and vast network of storehouses and roads as a benefit the community receives in return (some have used the term Pax Incaica, similar to Pax Romana, to describe the decline in violence established by Inka military force). The land in your community is also reallocated, with approximately a third for the kuraka, a third for the community, and a third for the Inka and the sun god Inti. Your mita obligations might include working the imperial fields, serving in the military, constructing transport infrastructure or tending to imperial herds of llamas and alpacas. Special ethnic groups, such as those from Chachapoyas, might have special privileges as a result of their service in the imperial army and as royal guards in Cusco. Really though, this only takes up some of the year, for some of the people in your community. Life doesn’t radically change for most people, and the vast majority of the changes build off Andean traditions and systems that are centuries or millennia old.
That’s one the secrets of the Inka empire, and really any successful territorial empire. They don’t ask the common people to radically change their day to day lives. Sure, some people will rebel or refuse to join, and the Inka military response will be swift and unyielding. However, most people join and remain by choice, because the benefits the state provides usually seem to be fair for the labor tribute they provide.