The account of Garcilaso de la Vega depicts the three-day battle, which is generally believed to have occurred in the reign of Tupac Inca Yupanqui (1471-93 CE).

[3] Historian Osvaldo Silva conjectures instead the battle occurred much after Tupac Inca Yupanqui's conquest of northern Chile with 1532 being a possible date.

[1] In a six-year campaign with an army that eventually rose to 50,000 men, the Inca general Sinchiruca[4] had subdued the regions of northern Chile, Copiapó, Coquimbo, Aconcagua, and the Maipo Valley around what is now Santiago.

Silva holds that the battle of the Maule is not connected to the main pulse of Incan conquest of Chile which took place during the reign of Topa Inca Yupanqui (1471–93).

[1] The Inca incursion may have reached as far as the site of Concepción where the later account of Jerónimo de Vivar of Mapuches bearing gold and silver objects suggest some kind of Mapuche—Inca interaction.

[1] As such Silva concludes that the battle of the Maule did not stop the Inca conquest, but it was rather a lack of incentives to commit greater efforts to subdue a non-urban society, plus the difficulties in imposing imperial rule given the political and social structure of the Mapuche.