Taino

by Jose Barreiro

  Asked to speak, the admiral stood. This is what he said, as I remember it. “I am here to claim the lands we stand upon for the sovereigns of Castile and Aragon, whose loyal subjects you are now become,” he began. I stood next to him to interpret and yet consciously moved a bit apart to establish my own stance before Taíno people.

  “We are Christians,” he continued, “and we are led by the most revered Catholic queen, our beloved Isabel of Castile, who, along with her own sovereign husband, King Ferdinand of Aragon, sent us to these lands. If Bayamo wants to be among the good people who go to Heaven when they die, he and his people should accept what I am telling them. But by our Christian law, once you have heard our doctrine, not to accept it is to be damned eternally, and you would force my armies to war upon you without mercy.”

  I translated as well as I could the words of the admiral. My instinct was always to let my people know as clearly as I could the intentions in the Castilian’s words, but often they could be so drastic that I had to refrain from giving their full tenor.

  Thus, at first, the caciques smiled at each other over the admiral’s words, hearing only favored points. “Taíno-ti-Taíno,” they said, one after another, meaning: “Good, we are the good people, too, the nice-minded people.”

  The admiral listened to their words with distant demeanor, until a reference was made to their own land by a young leader, whom Bayamo asked to speak. “This is our island,” the man said clearly, “which we share with the Çiboney villages, not far from us down the coast. Our own people, guided by ni-Taíno that we understand in our language, extend from here to the small Lucayos and to the Bohío land, to Borikén and Xamayca.”

  I knew this would cause me trouble, although, of course, among our people we have always known Cuba to be an island. All of our pilots who ever guided the admiral—all—always referred to Cuba-cubanakán as a land that can be circled by canoe. But when I loudly translated the young man’s description of Cuba as an island, the admiral reddened in the face and widened his eyes at me with a terror that frightened me.

  Old Bayamo, I could tell, saw the heat of the admiral and watched intently. The Castilian captains and sailors had also heard me say “island.” Looking at the admiral, I knew that he knew I had consciously betrayed his idea. From that moment on, the admiral always saw me as a potential betrayer of his intentions. Because I did know his intent.

  In Barcelona and Seville that previous winter, I sat next to the admiral at the many dinners given in his honor, where he claimed to have touched the lands of China by sailing west. Thus, he called Cuba, which he renamed Juana, a peninsula of the distant mainland ruled by the Grand Khan. I knew the sovereigns granted him one in ten of all the wealth generated from lands he discovered and claimed for the Crown. Thus the noblemen who wined and dined him and who would finance his return made much of his assertion that Cuba might, indeed, be that main motherland of the rich and vast Mongol Empire, a gold-hued heathen civilization.

  Fourteen. The admiral is cursed.

  It is true the admiral felt great pressure in his mind to find the nearest source of gold. He said directly to Cacique Bayamo: “In the most powerful land of Castile, my queen hurts deeply in her breast with a pain most horrendous. Only one thing can cure her: the shiny metal we call gold.” I translated the Spanish oro for Bayamo as both guanin and caona, “copper” and “gold” in our language. “My queen and her king will love dearly any people that can provide them with the shiny metal, and they need much of it to quench their heart’s pain,” the admiral said.

  Those words I remember distinctly. Since by then I knew how gold is used by the Castilians, what it means to them, I was daunted by his expression. It made everybody wonder just what he meant and how it could be that the shiny metal might help a sick person, which, interestingly enough, was also our custom. We did not know yet, not even I, the lengths to which the covered men would go to secure the gold.

  When Bayamo stood to speak, I translated his words for the admiral. Bayamo called the admiral by a Taíno name, Guamíquina, which means something like “main chief.” He was direct and, again, I remember his words quite well, as they still bounce in my ears.

  “Tell the Guamíquina that in these parts we have our kind of people. The good people, Taíno-ni-Taíno, are peaceful. We share what we have, what the land and the sea give us. As you can see from our many foods, we are a fortunate people. Our spirits are plentiful. Because we are good, our spirits like us. They fortify our plantations. Thus the yucca, thus the maize, the aji, the beans, fruits of the trees, fish, turtles, and iguanas. In the sea, the Kaçi, our eldest Mother Moon, guides the women and the snappers…”

  “What spirits is he referring to?” the admiral interrupted, out loud. His voice was accusatory. Bayamo fell deeply silent and looked surprised. I could tell he had never been interrupted in his life. In our people’s ways, an elder is never interrupted, much less in midsentence. Young Taíno faces turned away out of respect for Bayamo, who patiently heard my translation. “It is a natural curiosity for spirit men,” I added by way of excuse, although I had no doubt by then that the covered men were not spirit beings.

  “What spirits would I speak about?” Bayamo responded. “I speak of the grandmothers and grandfathers, the Taíno who are in us. I speak of no one else. I mean only our old ancestor spirits, the spirit of the sea, the spirit of the mountain, the spirit of our incense and our tobacco, spirit of our yucca and our corn, those ones that forever have helped us…”

  I interpreted. The admiral responded thus: “This that he says is mistaken. Tell him his faith is misplaced. Tell him he would fare better by accepting our Lord, Jesus Christ, and baptism in the true faith. Then he could travel the road to Heaven and Life Everlasting. Tell him those who do not accept Jesus Christ as lord and savior will go to Hell, tell them their souls will roast and burn for ever and ever.”

  My translation was more gentle and included an apology for the whole interruption.

  “Tell him about Hell. He must understand how the punishment works,” the admiral insisted.

  I translated. The cacique peered silently at the admiral. At that moment I saw Don Christopherens rear back slightly, detecting the intensity of the cacique’s goeiza, or living spirit, which emanated that light hummingbird tremor.

  Cacique Bayamo was truly of the elder men of our people, of the ones that spoke to the earth directly, keen with the certainty of our Taíno love and common spirit with the living world.

  It is true that the Castilians have reduced us, have just about destroyed us. I admit that our fighting skills could not match their furious thrust. Truly were they decisive and resolute when we, in our trance, in our habitual and cyclical understandings, took forever to decide anything but what our culture dictated, responses so slow that they still hurt. But I know this: the superb among our people, those most steeped in our traditions, were men and women who could spark response in wind and cloud, could converse with plants and trees, could hear the animals speak, could even be heard by snake and caimán, turtle and manatí.

  For generations on generations were our Taíno guided by those conversations, held by our elders with the dream-time leaders of the reptile and bird nations, with the leaders of trees, the ceiba and the guásima, with the discernible snake motion of the long fish runs, the passing of the flocks, with the very swell of the sea.

  Bayamo himself was of the snake. His neck and sloping shoulders on a thin body, his flattened forehead, carefully manipulated from his birth by grandmothers of his line, a practice for precisely such babies in whose reptile eyes could the great mothers feel the cold, penetrating, never-forgetting, never-ignoring justice of the snake, who can snatch time from the quickest prey.

  Such men and women among our people were extraordinarily powerful. And I can state with certainty that there never was and never will be even one such as those among the covered people, whose very best can forge wide roads out of forest and cross worlds of water and command huge quanti
ties of death and mayhem, but cannot ever hear the adjoining voices, the surrounding and constant conversation from our living world.

  Cacique Bayamo began the shaking in Columbus’s Christian heart. I saw it, and I was glad to see it and, now, to remember it. It was in his look, how he transferred to the admiral’s eyes his own body’s terrifying inner shaking. Yes, at that very meeting it was that the hummingbird medicine grasped the admiral’s heart.

  “We have guided you in our world,” the cacique talked on. “So you would not be lost. And now you know us. We are a people that stay to our islands, fishing and visiting, mindful of the present business of our foods, our bohíos, our conucos, and our ceremonies. We have been here for a long time, drink the same water, eat the same food. Always, in our gatherings, amongst us, we love the children. And our children, in turn, love and respect us. Even our dead, our opías who come through the treetops from the Coaybay, House of the Dead, and have no belly button, sometimes they stay around us and dance with us. We are good, Guamíquina. We don’t raid. We never raided, always build and fish and plant, do for ourselves. In our way, we feed everyone. If a man comes from other islands and he accepts our peace, we take him in, marry him into our people, exchange names with him. In this way, we extend our houses, our bohíos, and give roof to everyone. Our ni-Taíno circles and the outlier guaxeris listen to each other. That way we have grown strong and are growing still on these islands.” (I translated islands as simply lands this time).

  “The bad men, Kwaib, thigh-eaters, heart-eaters, from the south and some raiders from the north, are mean-spirited,” Bayamo continued. “They raid for women, raid for our young ones. Among them even, some are very, very bad, caniba warrior bands that leave their women on their own islands—the Matininós—and raid for the joy of killing, bent on tasting human flesh. My old people said, ‘Watch out when you see those uglies coming!’”

  The other headmen all laughed, out of habit, at the cacique’s joke. As I translated, the admiral smiled, but very lightly. He liked it that our Taíno had their longtime enemies and made much of it to the king and queen. I myself always thought Bayamo and other caciques who said such to the admiral exaggerated their old enemies’ cruelties. However, it appeared Bayamo had someone else’s cruelty in mind.

  “The giant seagulls that carry you across the ocean, your garments and sand-skin, these things I have heard of,” Bayamo continued. “Our brother-cousins from Cacique Baracoa’s villages, over the mountains on our northern coast, they told us about you. Many things were told when we met them at our common areito, the dance for Yucahuguama Bagua Maórocoti. They even said you came from the skyworld and could fly away. They also said that when you left, you took ten of their people, those you put in a cave hole in your floating house.”

  Columbus stood up with a bound as I translated the words. Again, he interrupted.

  “All people are lost without the knowledge of Christ. Those taken are better because of it.”

  “He is agitated,” I said in Taíno, trying to bridge the minds and minimize the impact of his eruption. “He is a great captain but he is not well.”

  The admiral spoke hurriedly. “The light of the Lord has now come to your lands, headman. Innocence cannot save you from eternal torture. The word of God is in your ear now and only the Holy Doctrine will capacitate your people to enter the Kingdom of Heaven…”

  Bayamo began to talk for himself. I stopped listening to Columbus, who predicated for another full minute, and listened to Bayamo.

  “I have a question of yourself, great lord—are you caniba that your giant seagulls eat Taíno people?” Bayamo asked. “Are you a cousin of thigh-eaters who kidnap our people? I ask the question: Are you good or are you bad? Because if you are bad to my people, you will go to that hell you have mentioned. If you believe every man answers for his deeds into death, then you will not harm those who do not harm you, or you will certainly go to that fire place of hell.”

  Having said that, the cacique sat down and the admiral stopped in midsentence. The silence left behind by the sound of Bayamo’s voice seemed to dumbfound him.

  I translated the cacique’s words then and did not tone down the directness, seeking to maximize the impact. But the admiral had regained his composure. He was not Admiral of the Ocean Sea, Christ-bearer, and grand navigator to be without the capability for an answer.

  “Tell him again,” the admiral said, looking to his own captains and twirling his finger to signify a closure to the parley, “that the people taken are meant to serve us and in return are instructed in the true faith of our Catholic kings.”

  I translated this as gently as I could. However, the precision for terms of bartering in our language made obvious the faults of the admiral’s proposition.

  The old men of Bayamo understood and did not like the admiral’s reasoning. “What if we don’t want to be taught?” one asked. “Why that place of burning?” another one asked. “Why is that necessary?”

  An old man who was gnarled and had not aged gracefully, like Bayamo, stepped into the circle in front of the cacique. He looked to a line of elder women, mostly sisters and aunts in Bayamo’s line, standing together behind the seated line of men. The women all had a rearing-back look, fixing wary eyes on the admiral. The old-timer raised his palm and pointed toward the women with his open hand. “Be careful,” he said. “When you counsel your cacique, be careful of the hair-faces.”

  I translated bluntly again, and the admiral smiled bitterly. “He should fear us more,” he said plainly to no one. It was not meant for translation.

  The old man had stopped. Now Macaca, the village chief, joined him and they went to stand by a tree. I noticed the old man wore a thin belt of caracol shells around his hips and held a small gourd in his hand. Now he took a plug of rolled leaves from the gourd and put it in his mouth. I could tell he was a medicine man, a behike, and that, like his cacique, Bayamo, there was no fear in him.

  The cacique, Bayamo, stood again.

  “Tell my words to the Guamíquina,” the cacique said, and I stood by him to hear him better.

  “The fire is sacred to us,” the cacique said. “We talk with our sacred fire. In fire we think not of death but of life. As for the Spirit World, as I said, our grandparents await us there.”

  The cacique himself nodded at the admiral, but warily.

  Again, I translated his words and, again, the admiral was taken aback. Momentarily, his face looked flush and his eyes darted about.

  “We are going now,” he announced, standing, though with a slight wobble. He stared at the cacique, who stared back. “The fire is good,” the old cacique said. I translated. The admiral stared at him. “Tell him that fire burns,” he said.

  Then the curse was pronounced upon him.

  The gnarled old man, the behike of Bayamo standing by the women’s council, cleared his nose and throat, then coughed into his left palm. Cupping the thick snot with his right hand, he walked between the fire and the admiral, suddenly showing the gob directly to the admiral. “With this I will teach you humility,” he whispered harshly, in Taíno. “The door to your dreams, I close.” The admiral turned quickly to face him and our soldiers stepped up too.

  The old man had no fear in him at all, his palm and fingers slicing through space at the admiral. “Hell is in your dreams if you, a far-seeing man, commit the deeds that are in your mind,” he said.

  A soldier drew his sword, sensing the old man’s hostility.

  “Don’t quarrel here,” the admiral told the soldier.

  With the growing sense of threat, the admiral regained his composure. He felt the men of Bayamo might overcome our small troop of not quite twenty. “Our business is over here,” he said and ordered Captain Herrera to organize the troop. The soldiers and sailors surrounded the admiral, and as we began to walk, he asked what the old man had said at the end.

  “He said to watch your dreams,” I said. “It was a kind of farewell gesture.”

  The guanguay
o had power, I knew, particularly for Bayamo’s people. Behike men like the gnarled old-timer meant everything they said. For myself, I knew they would not attack us under the circumstances, and indeed they lit resin torches and thick, rolled tobaccos and led us down to the shore, singing once again. They carried dozens of baskets full of foods for the ships. But the admiral had been shown a guanguayo, cohoba medicine, teacher of our people, veil of water between the worlds. Don Christopherens moved stridingly, in measured long steps, but even so, walking to the boats he stumbled several times. Later, climbing on ship, he tripped and had to hang by an elbow from a net while sailors hauled him on board.

  We sailed on for many more weeks during this journey, the admiral intent on proving Cuba a peninsula of the mainland. The weeks dragged on and fewer and fewer of his officers believed him. Twice, out of spite, I reminded him of the words of Bayamo’s young chief on the island nature of the Cuba. He had me flogged the second time—five swift ones from the many-tailed whip. For that I cursed him myself and intoned the guanguayo of the dark over him as we sailed for long weeks among the islands. And it happened that as the weeks rolled on, he slept less and less, and I believe that special curse, which he now and forever carried from the people of Bayamanacoel, blocked the doors between his waking and dreaming selves. Truly, the navigation was difficult through the channels of the smaller islands and the admiral became extremely nervous. Finally he got sick and brittle. And for weeks, in feverish deliriums, he exclaimed how much the queen would like it that the Indians believed in a heaven and a hell, evidence to push the enterprise of their Christianization. “For the use of their labor,” he half sang sometimes, “we will bring them the true Faith!”