Yes, of course, sometimes they fought, but these were men who considered it a victory when the big shark could be diverted while the canoe paddles away without notice. So a fight might be decided most of the time by one combat, a good whack might sprawl a man on the ground, and the old men throw up their hands and call a halt to the fight, call for the peace-pacting talks. Inevitably, despite their mutual irritations, the guaxeri groups peace-pacted. This was a common custom, to call in the old caciques who valued harmonious relations. Of these, Guarionex was the grand old man. Others, like Bohekio, whose line was quite strong, had the prestige but not the art. Guacanagari, first friend and ally of the admiral, was much younger. He was gifted with the most clear genealogies and was about equally considered with Bohekio, but Guacanagari, the bosom friend of Columbus, was a mere child compared to Guarionex.
I told the boys: the two prominent caciques here in Bohío were Guarionex, who was the cacique of peace, using the laws of reason about safety and sustenance of the yukaieke and using also the art of the gift in provoking peace offerings; and Caonabó, who was decisive in war and excelled at leading warriors in fighting.
What made Caonabó and his brothers fierce was training by a Kwaib father who prepared them for war, even as they learned to walk. From two years of age, the boy is made to run, endure hits, eat raw fish and meat, and swim long distances, and always he is urged to fight fiercely. Caonabó endured the Kwaib boyhood discipline. But he was named and taught also by his mother, a woman of Taíno line through Guarionex, and she, before her death, saw him named Caonabó, Lord of the Living Ancestor, the Place of Gold.
Guarionex was a holder of the most ancient areitos of our people and, through them, a great strategic thinker. The peace-pact areitos were central to his knowledge. Guarionex’s power, even more than that of Bohekio and Guacanagari, was based on the refinement of the areitos, he and his men and women societies could sing. Guarionex was a gifted singer whose sweet, lilting song could melt any Indian heart.
Guarionex’s areitos came from the second cycle of Deminán stories, in the original tellings, which Guarionex’s people remembered in disciplined fashion. At the time that the admiral reached our shores, Guarionex was fashioning the system of alliances that were to ensure the Taíno people’s life in the whole of Bohío. The success of his life’s vision, he professed in his areitos, could guarantee generations of peaceful existence for our island peoples. As his vision of prolonged survival required not only strategy, but also the best defenses against the raiding Kwaib that he could secure, Guarionex had engaged Caonabó, channeling the fierceness of the warrior chief to protect the Taíno future.
It happened some ten years before the coming of Castilians. Bohekio’s sister Anacaona inherited the caciquedom of Maguana, with its main village in the valley of the gold, Bonao, ancestral entrail of our island. Gold, as you must know (but the young people didn’t quite know it, I realized), is the residue of the spirits of our ancestors. It is not to be disturbed. In those days, Bonao was a territory guarded and respected as a most spiritual place.
Guarionex planned it all. It culminated his vision and life’s work. Anacaona, “flower of the gold,” he offered the young Caonabó (“keeper of the gold”) in marriage. Anacaona, who was a trained peace queen, royal in all her lines as her brother Bohekio, gifted in the poetry that calms hearts, and leader in the carving and spinning arts, was a lovely woman and would make Taíno out of the Ciguayo’s children. Thus it was done, a marriage peace pact. Thus Caonabó was brought in to the sister caciquedoms by the old peace pact maker, Guarionex, who taught him the areitos of the ancestors and assigned him to guard with his fierceness the sanctity of the Bonao. All this, I told the boys, is part of your old history, of the time before their coming, when our world could be understood in our own minds, when the currents of our own migrations, settlements, wars, and alliances had their own dictates and interpretations. The Taíno were a people who thought of peace. Among them, of the generation of caciques when the Castilians arrived, Guarionex sought peace the most. He was a true Taíno. And among them was the fighting defender, too, Caonabó the Ciguayo, who supported their peaceful, respectful ways with his truculent character and his ironwood arm.
One hundred twenty-three. Castilians dance for gold.
Caonabó acted quickly, I told them, when the Castilians imposed their presence on our people. It was he who first said, enough, when the forty covered men left behind here from the wreck of the Santa Maria took to killing and raping and stealing. Not one of our women did a Castilian ask for in marriage, not one mother or father was consulted, no one’s recognition sought, but by rape their relations began. Not once, after months, did any honoring of the Taíno families take place. So it was Caonabó, as I have written before, our first defender, who told his men to arm for battle and led the parties that hunted down and killed all the left-behinds.
The boys hollered in delight, and I waited for them to quiet down.
But the admiral returned, and I with him, and of Castile came another many, I continued. They settled a town, Isabela, the first one. And immediately the clamor among the Castilians was for the death of Caonabó. Occupied with pressing matters, the admiral did not hurry to vengeance. I helped in this by reminding him of the many misdeeds against our people committed by the left-behinds, and I believe my words helped tame the admiral’s potential for revenge, which, in any case, was overshadowed by his organizing the first gold-mining expedition. For this purpose, he ordered Hojeda and others of his trusted captains out into the territories, admonishing them with strict instructions (as he had left with the forty of Navidad) to “treat well the Natives,” taking nothing but food and gold and giving many presents.
Thus in January 1494, I was sent by the admiral to translate for Hojeda as he crossed over the coastal cordillera and south into the Magua plain, later called the Royal Plain, this territory of Guarionex was famous for its leagues and leagues of conuco gardens. With Hojeda, we came to the foothills of the sierra of Cibao, on the edge of Caonabó’s territory of Maguana. There, reverently, shyly, our own people pointed out to the Castilians gold dust and slivers in the rocky crevices of rivers.
This is where for the first time I saw the Castilians dance for the gold. And, yes, dance they did, laughing and splashing each other and hopping around, screeching like parrots and several even linking arms on shoulders and hopping together in what they call a jota, a dance of King Ferdinand’s country, which looked to many of us Taíno then something like our own areito and confused us that maybe a thanksgiving was offered. And it was, but it was not a thanksgiving for the gold. It was giving thanks for finding the gold, for being led to the gold that they meant to take out of there and trade it for other things. Not for our caona but their oro, which could transform their lives, they danced and sang.
Even this behavior on their part no longer surprised me, I said to the boys.
I remember the report from Hojeda to Columbus at Isabela days later. The hidalgos present did not quite dance but paced and spoke in high glee, and joyfully a column was organized, commanded by the admiral himself, that would take formal possession of the gold streams and build a fort. This was truly the beginning of the end, I feel now, for by this action was announced the taking of all that is precious to us. I must confess, too, at that time I understood enough of the covered men’s passion for the yellow metal (the vibrating of our ancient souls, our people said, could be felt in the streams and places of gold) that I accepted the admiral’s decisions as inevitable and questioned them not.
I remember the cinching of horses and porters, the dressing of the soldiers, banners unfurled, the admiral and troops anointed to the field of battle by Father Buil, armor on all shoulders and chests. But there was no war that time, only the long, fatiguing march through thin trails in the heat of our Caribbean month of first rains. Coming fully into the villages of the Magua, the admiral had lombards fired and scrolled pronouncements read in Latin and all our people were o
nce more astounded by the covered men and offered them great quantities of food, which they hardly touched at first, and helped them cross rivers and carried their packs and even sang for them. Thus was a fort built, called Santo Tomás, beginning on March 15, 1494, and some twenty of the best miners, guarded by a squadron of more than thirty soldiers with harquebuses, were left behind to commence mining operations under Captain Pedro Margaritte, whose report I later heard.
Twelve suns passed, and I returned with the admiral to Isabela to witness, incredibly, a little town manifesting, more than a hundred houses and bohíos for more than a thousand Castilians and several hundred Indians. Only twelve suns and I was horrified to witness the creation of a little piece of Seville or Barcelona or any Castilian town, without the cathedral, yet, but with cows and pigs and men living with each other inside houses, slop all over the place and the men stinking so violently the new town was already pestilent.
There was insult and accusation in the air. What Castilian men were not sick with fevers and vomit or famine were in active opposition to the admiral. These included the priest, Buil, and most of the so-called nobility, who resented the forced labor imposed by the admiral on all able-bodied men, regardless of nobility or rank. Father Buil, whose shouts and insults against the admiral I heard again and again, was the leader of the disrespect. Perturbed and agitated was Don Christopherens by all this, and only by the invocation against mutiny and rebellion and the imposition of lashings for the mildest insubordination was his command maintained.
One hundred twenty-four. Caonabó serves notice on Fuerte Tomás.
The cacique Caonabó, aware that the covered men were walking his territory again, requested to know if they were accompanied by women this time. Informed they were men alone, he inquired as to their treatment of the local people, which, at first, was not abusive. (Pedro Margaritte was one of those few Castilians that were touched by the message in our natural kindness and was adamant that his men not impose upon our people.)
For a few days, Caonabó watched as the covered men built the fort. Then, on the fourth day, a crew of miners went to the richest river and began to extract gold. This the cacique found intriguing, as the very activity was meaningful and sacred to our people.
Remember, I told the gathered group, the caona for us was the bright light of the sun made matter through us, the humans; remember what the old people said, in those places, even without cohoba, you can feel the emanations of the earth; there, the breath of our ancestors mixes with ours. They stayed with us our ancestors and would not be dissipated if the places were prayed over and often resin smoked.
I must note my surprise to see how many of the young people awakened to my words. Even Enriquillo, who was, after all, educated by priests, grew up at a distance from that knowledge. Thus, over the past few days I have been talking now, the group has grown, including more and more young women.
I have told them a teaching of our old behikes, who believed that the best of ancestor spirits rested and were reflected in the gold. Blessed with much light in life, these “good-minded ones,” these most Taíno of our people, do not fully depart the earth at death, but deposit their spirit in the gold, adding ever so slightly to its creation in the rocky crevices of brooks, there to keep cool and to be gathered and fashioned to our likeness and to reflect our ancestors in the light of the areito fire at all-night ceremonies. We go to the sun when we die, the old people said. The spirit that is in us in death, travels to the bright yellow father of the cloudless sky. As our flesh dries in the wind, our spirit is released and returns to the sun. Thus the shiny metal was respected and loved, and what was made of it—masks and chest (to reflect the heart) pieces and belts and ankle braces—all had a purpose and a connection. The gathering of gold was reserved for the most serious of ni-Taíno among our people, and always they abstained from sexual relations twenty days before going to gather it.
The gold taking bothered Caonabó enough, but then on the seventh day, a walking group of five miners came upon two of our girls bathing and captured them, making use of them repeatedly and with desperation. This Caonabó was told by one of the girls who could do so, as the other one was sick with vomit almost immediately and later bled from her insides and died. Caonabó gathered warriors and descended on the miners, demanding that they leave and threatening to burn the fort and kill everyone. Margaritte sent out three men who half-ran to Isabela and were pushed around by the warriors but, as they were leaving, were not killed.
Thus started the second war between Castilians and our people, just as the admiral prepared to sail on to Cuba and his encounter with Bayamo, who cursed him with the guanguayo. Those were indeed dark days; dozens and dozens died. The Castilians, at first, would not eat our foods, refusing even our offers of fish. Everyone complained at Columbus. “Where is the gold that washes like rocks on the beaches?” Father Buil taunted him. “Where are the friendly native servants that will do all our bidding?”
The admiral wanted to escape the tumult. He was a man of the ocean and thrived in long silences. The future of his enterprise, he felt, lay in Cuba, which he intended to prove a mainland, the outreaches of Oriental empires. Discovery of a mainland on this second and misbegotten voyage would indeed make the trip worthwhile, at once achieving hegemony of the promising mainland and rekindling support for his explorations. Thus, the admiral entrusted Hojeda and Captain Margaritte with orders to pacify the island, organize for war of conquest, terrorize and warn—escarmiento—using terror first of all, and while he did that, I must admit, I happily loaded his three new caravels.
That was the time I thought I would go home. It mattered little to me that moment here in Española; truly a lonely thirteen-year-old I was, and I was going home. War was next. I knew it. Caonabó would be attacked. Caonabó, whom I feared as much then as I have come to respect and love his memory. Truthfully, I wanted to miss it, I wanted to go home. At that time, my fervent anxiety was to return to my home island of Guanahaní, the first of our lands to be touched by Columbus, to see my kinsmen, my mother, be again in my bohío.
I remember Hojeda organizing three hundred infantry and thirty mounted Castilians and twenty-eight mastiffs and eight hundred men of Guacanagari. Guacanagari always allied with the admiral. Hojeda lined up the troops and marched them, ran them in phalanxes and squared them into squadrons. Do you know phalanxes? I asked the growing group of youngsters and adults. Phalanxe is the pointed attack formation of the Castilians, also called the wedge. From Hojeda, it was, I first heard those terms, as the Castilians he organized for war. He requested me from the admiral, as translator, but was refused. Thus busy with preparations for sailing, I was happily spared the bloody campaign of requerimiento, a conquest by announcement and massacre, which, after all, required little interpreting.
“Understand,” I told the circle of young people and the many guaxeri and captains who had joined in. “I have lived in this Española island longer than your cacique has years, but I am not from here. I had my home on the Guanahaní, one of the cays. I was a fisherman with my father and uncles when Columbus took me” (Here I fibbed to simplify the story).
“Did you ever return home?” A young man asked impolitely.
“No, I never did arrive at my bohío, not ever again,” I said.
Maybe now, in the passage to Spain of some ship, by paying a captain plenty, I could go to my old island. I care not to. No one is there anymore. All my own people were hunted down for slaves, sold into encomiendas, a few here, most in San Juan de Puerto Rico or in Cuba. No one lives anymore in my old island or my old village; all is empty.
I had not done with my tale that first afternoon before the boys were needed in other activities. I was thanked by them formally and made to promise to continue my story in the evenings, for which Enriquillo offered his bohío. Here and there, over these past weeks, I have responded to requests for my interpretation of events, and in this vein, I find the words to write it down.
One hundred twenty-fiv
e. Blood not spilled, but a chopped hand.
Thus it continues.
Armed groups went out against Caonabó. But even Captain Hojeda, who hunted and killed well, could not locate him, neither in ambush nor in frontal assault. Nevertheless, Hojeda moved his troops around the country looking for the first incident as the “pacification” had begun.
On the Vega, Hojeda encountered Indian humor, which he rewarded with blood. Two Castilians had requested rides across a river on Indian shoulders, trusting their clothes to porters. Halfway in the river, they were dumped by their young carriers and left naked. Watching the naked cassabe-butts swim and hop to the other side delighted the young Taíno men, and for days the village laughed itself to sleep on the vision of the hairy Castilians enjoying a river bath.
Hojeda stormed the village and took two minor caciques. This is where the noses were slit down the middle and the ears of the two caciques were sliced in half, a deed of which Indian runners informed me within a day of its occurrence. Oh, the blood, one said in my ear, and scurried. Others arrived on their heels, caciques tied about the neck and pulled as they pull now the Negro people coming off the African ships. Two of these caciques and one their guaxeri the admiral studied glumly and ordered: “Decapitate them. In two days.”
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