Taino

by Jose Barreiro

  Friar Pané was incensed. He went to the old chief and demanded to know how Guarionex could reconcile such an action with the fact that he himself had invited the catechism of his children and grandchildren. “We learn from you, but you care not to learn from us,” Guarionex told him. As Guarionex was increasingly called out to the growing camp of fighters, Pané attempted to organize against him in his own village. He was challenged in this by the cacique’s mother and nephews, who finally ran the nitwit priest out.

  The admiral heard Pané’s angry report and, despite his slowly recovering corpus, implored his brother to let him lead the troops into the imminent engagement. On March 25, 1495, they dressed the troops for battle, which the admiral named The Battle of Christendom over Heathenism.

  “Crosses have been dumped to the ground,” the admiral himself exhorted the war captains. “We have just cause to battle and, by Santiago, the Lord is on our side.” He ordered the marshal of troops to read the law on war slaves. This was another of the Torres brothers, from the converso family in Seville. The queen’s law stipulated that natives of these Antillean islands, like others in Africa and elsewhere, could be enslaved if taken as a result of war or to prohibit cannibalism and other abominable heathen practices.

  The Castilian army marched in two formations toward the Vega, where, upon reaching a plain they called The Hope, the admiral ordered a fort built that he called Magdalena. “Crusaders are we in these far lands,” the admiral told the captains. “The infidel has declared his devilry. It is not just ignorance, my fierce captains. The savages now repulse our savior and a lesson must stamped on the land.”

  Maniocatex organized the battle for the Taínos, but nevertheless it was up to Guarionex, as senior cacique, to confront the enemy first. Ritually, Guarionex deployed his men in one long row, and behind them Maniocatex and other caciques led their own men. They were all there but had made no real plan and assumed their superior numbers would suffice to convince the Castilians to sue for peace. I was told that Guarionex said to his ni-Taínos as he watched the Castilian troops approach: “If they agree to a peace, blood may be unnecessary,” just as the harquebus units and the artillery pieces fired all at once in a wide pattern, some eighty detonations of the shouldered weapons plus the two midget cannons that spewed forth all manner of shrapnel. Nearly one hundred Indians fell dead or wounded. The carnage amazed and froze everyone. Guarionex would later tell me he saw the eyes of death in a cloud behind the Castilians and that he was left without thought at the sight of the totally severed torso of his own second son. The cavalry and mastiff handlers waited nearly two minutes for a second volley, which dropped another hundred Indians and panicked everyone else, caciques and everybody running this way and that as the mastiffs and the cavalry charged among them at will, in complete killing discipline.

  I stood at the admiral’s side, holding the handle on a dagger but surrounded by his private guard of twelve men, while the adelantado and eighty others on horseback charged the mass of running Indians, hacking and stabbing with swords and short, sturdy spikes propped against their saddles, piercing back after fleeing back.

  Not all Taínos ran. Many were fearless, watching and trying to grapple with the soldier formations, trying to wound them with our spears and macanas, but the Castilians and, yes, their Indian troops, advanced swinging heavy, sharp swords of steel. Three, four, five, I think as many as twenty major discharges were directed against the Indian mass, now divided in two or three groups, with the crossbows shooting volley after volley and the dogs chasing and tearing at the many trying to escape. I saw how it was done. Truly we were chased in place, denied the opportunity to regroup and kept moving by sheer terror so that large groups ran and ran into each other and in circles while the Castilians cut large swathes into them.

  “Our idea is different now. We don’t attack but chop at them little by little,” a young guaxeri man said, when I told this story.

  “Vigilance,” the cacique responded. “That’s what we have learned.”

  One hundred thirty-nine. The Battle of Christendom over the Heathens.

  The Battle of Christendom turned into a long afternoon of gore. More than a thousand bodies were counted when the killing was done. Two dozen Castilians were wounded seriously and twelve died in the battle and for that dozens of prisoners were made to run gauntlets and other revenges. Two expert swordsmen delighted the company for a while in a contest to see who could cut the most prisoners completely in half with a single blow. The champion at this sport sliced eight men in half before having to repeat a stroke. The women seized were all raped, some repeatedly and very violently, then herded together with the children.

  As the fight subsided, the admiral was still worked up. “Punish the heathen!” he charged, several times, not once flinching from the inflicted punishments. A dagger I saw him use twice, both times on badly wounded Indians, severing the spinal cord at the base of the neck, waiting the second time for his brother to witness the act. “I shall put him out of his misery,” Don Christopherens said. “A Christian crusader can take pride in the painful spilling of heathen flood,” Bartolomé replied.

  Seven hundred sixty Taíno people were made prisoner that day, of which five hundred were later sent for sale at the slave market of Seville. A second large battle was fought weeks later as the Castilian troops cornered Maniocatex, who was captured and his villages scourged. The admiral delighted in the combats against our mesmerized caciques. As infidels taken in war can be sold into slavery by law, a cargo he now had, and legally, that he could send to market.

  One hundred forty. Guarionex is prisoner.

  Guarionex was made prisoner. I went to see him with the admiral. “Why did you force us to kill your people,” the admiral asked and I translated.

  “It wasn’t my idea,” Guarionex said truthfully.

  “You ordered the dumping of a Holy Cross.”

  “No, that wasn’t my idea, either.”

  “Pané informs me you spoke against our Christ.”

  “I only wondered why you don’t listen to what we have to say. I felt you disrespected us. My young men were angered and dumped the cross.”

  “Which ones?”

  “All four died yesterday.”

  “You forced us to attack,” the admiral said.

  “I have seen your arms before. I wanted not this war,” Guarionex said. “But even I did not expect you could kill so much so fast. It was frightful, seeing so much blood at once.”

  “Our Father in Heaven makes us strong,” the admiral told him.

  One hundred forty-one. Guarionex is released, Guacanagari disappears.

  Many came to request the freedom of Guarionex, and finally the admiral gave in, but he imposed a large gold tribute upon the cacique, on his own person and his people. For the wise cacique it was to be a full calabash of gold dust per month. Most everyone else was charged with amounts of half an ounce to one ounce every three months. That first tribute system for gold was very rigid, not only with Guarionex but with Maniocatex and Caonabó’s people, and, more and more, even Guacanagari’s villages were called upon to provide tribute, not escaping the harsh punishments imposed upon failure to provide. The tribute for gold worked like this: you brought in your assigned quota of gold and received a wooden pendant on a string, to be worn about the neck. Any Castilian could check any Indian under tribute. Any Indian caught without the proper pendant could be punished, either by whip or by the cutting of fingers, hands, or ears.

  Now even Guacanagari, the admiral’s “noble cacique,” who saved him in his time of trouble, was pushed about and called dog. His own guaxeri, now trained as soldiers of Castile, imposed upon him his gold tribute, which they themselves would collect, fiercely aggressive toward him. During those days it was that Guacanagari walked into the forest one morning and was never seen again.

  One hundred forty-two. A Taíno offer on the land.

  Guarionex was astonished that so many of his people were maimed. He had so m
uch gold to gather that his guaxeri would give their portions to him to turn in and took the punishment meant for him. Guarionex decided to take cohoba at that time and an instruction received, which he followed.

  Guarionex was to organize all of his planting guaxeri, a very impressive group that involved some of the best Taíno farmers. The guaxeris of the Yuca, of the Maize, of the axí (peppers) and the fruit orchards he brought together. A pilgrimage they would make, Guarionex informed them, to the adelantado’s farm. I was in camp with the adelantado when a runner came in from Guarionex, manifesting the peaceful intentions of the gathered group. The admiral came at once with his own troop. I remember thinking there might be another battle and was horrified, but indeed a quiet parley was the occasion.

  Guarionex lined up his best gardeners, his orchard keepers, and thousands who came behind them, planting sticks in hand and seed pouches around their necks. The whole group sat on its haunches as the parley began, and Guarionex beseeched the admiral and the adelantado to consider his offer, which was to plant a huge sea of conucos, with yucca, buniato, and other tubers with ajis and maize and beans. He would work plantations that would run the width of the island from northern to southern coast, the cacique said, more than eighty leagues by thirty leagues square. “Never will you want from hunger,” he promised. “You and your children we will feed, here and in your Castilian lands. So much food we will grow that you may never feel a threat to your existence. Happy, like us, you will be. Make the villages, keep your animals, cut the trees and build huge boats, bring your women. Yes, we will feed them all, as we have done before, but plentifully, and we will plant and plant and make cassabe for you, and fish for you, and present it to the Castilians with good heart and with consistency.”

  Guarionex’s own words this day mixed in with a well-known speech among our areitos, one orated during the establishment of a new fire or village. It is called the speech of the naboria, and it was designed, in our own protocols, to invite a newcomer tribe to settle peacefully, as was happening with the Ciguayo in Española. For enticement, the naboria speech offered agricultural assistance, even labor. This was the oldest of areitos, used even by the earliest people we knew in in western Cuba, the Guanahatabey, when greeting with fruits and roots and conch meat the first Taíno to come on their beaches, in their eastern shores, many generations ago. It is the gentle way of the naboria, our ancient serving cousin, which was our own human way to cope with power and the migrations of warrior groups.

  The Columbus brothers, including Diego Columbus, the other sibling, who came along with Don Christopherens on the second trip, listened to the great cacique’s offer, spoken in grand gestures and meant to cover the needs of generations. For a few minutes, they were entranced. “He is a smart old man,” Don Bartolomé whispered. Guarionex finished by assuring the brothers that his men were most enthusiastic about the offer, and he looked at the admiral directly.

  The admiral laughed. “But what could he want,” he said, “in return for his food.”

  “There is something,” the cacique responded. “Stop the gold tribute, which is maiming my people. We cannot meet it in any case and it seems without sense to cause so much injury and death of people. We are trying, señores,” said the grizzled cacique, “but there is not that much gold to be gathered.”

  I translated Guarionex’s offer as generously as possible. It made sense to me, as the Castilian colonies were in fact suffering from constant hunger, and making food is what Taíno could do best. Relief provisions had not arrived from the motherland for them, and production in our own villages was greatly diminished by the comings and goings and incessant terror of Castilian squads. Famine had materialized in the areas most affected by violence. I could see that Guarionex’s gesture spoke to our ancient Taíno idea to always offer food and gifts as a way to peaceful relations.

  With sneers and short laughs, the Columbus brothers dismissed Guarionex’s idea. I knew their mood and expected as much, as all afternoon I had heard them discuss the operations of gold mines (a bigger sifting pan seemed a good idea) and the upcoming trip by Don Christopherens to represent the long-term reality to the monarchs. “Thank the great cacique for his generous offer, Dieguillo,” he said. “Tell him we will certainly receive his men to work many conucos. However, as to the mines we offer a better idea.”

  Bartolomé explained: “This is our wish: the great cacique is to redouble his efforts to mine for the gold. Identify new streams and mines to work on. By all means, plant more and more, but bring the gold without manufacture of fanciful excuses. Failure to do so will be to force harsher punishments on his people.” For good measure, the adelantado demanded the cacique take back Friar Pané into his village and continue his work of conversion.

  “The cacique will not be heard,” I told Guarionex in our language, when I was certain his offer was not considered. “I am sorry, for it makes sense to provide for the food supply.” I even told him how honored I felt to spend time with him and to help him make the offer.

  Guarionex left in full dejection but looked at me warmly as he left. I approached him, and he put his hand on my arm. “I appreciate your attempts to help us. Come and see me; I will tell you my stories.”

  Later, the caciques, with Guarionex conducting them, refused for two seasons to plant extra yucca, thinking thus they would starve out the covered men. Just when the plan might have succeeded, a convoy of provisions arrived from Spain, the Castilians were replenished, and the guaxeri of Guarionex faced famine and much sickness on their second season without a yucca crop.

  One hundred forty-three. The first Castilian rebellion: Roldán attacks the admiral.

  By this time, 1496 or ’97, Francisco Roldán, the former mayor of Isabela, was in open rebellion against the adelantado. With a hundred Castilians under him, this fascineroso, or torrid one, as Columbus called him, moved constantly from the Vega Real to the Xaraguá region, making excursions into Bonao to commandeer gold and to Isabela to steal horses and cattle. Roldán made pacts, after his own manner, with several caciques, camping out with them, marrying himself and his men into several cacicasgos. The caciques listened with interest to his call for ending the tribute system and his threat to kill the Columbus brothers, but then recoiled at the treatment received from his own desperadoes.

  During one of these runs, Roldán himself and another captain took over Guarionex’s village and twice raped his younger wife, Bema. As Guarionex pondered starting a second war on all Castilians, his mother’s helpers once again ran the persistent Pané off and took hold of all the church items left in a small chapel the friar had built. For lack of a better approach, they buried the religious items in a recently planted field of yucca, a field assigned to the ceremony of the three-cornered cemi, the Yucahuguama, planted thus with the new tuber field, prayed for and watered by urine to call forth early germination.

  Pané was mortified and cried for the admiral the news of the great sacrilege. Demanding swift punishment for the perpetrators, he identified six men who took part in the act, all nephews of Guarionex.

  The adelantado ordered the six men captured. Then he burned them at the stake.

  I visited Guarionex during that time. He cried in fury and agony at the punishment of the young men, having also lost his own son at the Battle of la Vega. Even though I was in the service of the admiral and the adelantado, Guarionex and I talked a great deal. I commiserated with him about his poor young men, and he accepted me without hesitation as a fellow Taíno seeking also for a way out of the horror that had befallen us. It was then he asked me to stay with him a while, calling me a nephew and introducing me to his youngest sister, Ceiba, in consideration of marriage.

  One hundred forty-four. I take a bride, Ceiba.

  I had met Ceiba twice, we had even spoken, and neither of us had qualms about meeting again during a couples’ dance arranged by the cacique. The adelantado Columbus was in the vicinity, chasing after Roldán, when Guarionex’s offer to me was made public. For hi
s own reasons, the adelantado encouraged me to stick close to the old cacique, whom he still considered potentially dangerous. With our route opened by Guarionex and Ceiba in agreement, I quickly began the arrangement for a marriage ceremony by moving a hammock into my new wife’s bohío.

  This was the beginning of the best part of my miserable life. For nearly a year, the Castilians busied themselves with the building of new forts, starting new mines and moving the main metropolis of Española to the new site of Santo Domingo, on the southern coast. The adelantado chased Roldán and his two hundred men around the Xaraguá area (not far from where I write), while the admiral embarked for Castile to combat accusations by the rebel’s friends, including Father Buil and Captain Margaritte, that the “Genoese tyrants” were committing atrocities against Castilian and Indian alike. A respite of sorts, short but sweet, was the gift of those days for me.

  One hundred forty-five. Making a family, home days.

  It is only now, experiencing as I am the freedom of this rebel camp, that I fully appreciate those days with Ceiba, in the old court of Guarionex, those blissful few months of a season of relative peace, when Guarionex put through areito after areito, singing from his great repertoire of hundreds and hundreds of story songs and ceremonial chants, recalling the ancient prophesies and teachings with me.

  Ceiba and I liked each other. She was a mature woman, slightly older than me. In our second month, a full wedding ceremony was arranged, and Guarionex had a new bohío built to house the new couple. In our custom, a nuptial bohío like this must be built all in one day, with many people working. That day was a great celebration, with many joyful elements, all the more heartfelt as the times were certainly harsh and the people had already much to mourn. But the people of her yukaieke loved Ceiba a great deal, and they accepted me as a possible factor in relieving the great burdens imposed upon them. And it did happen, once, that I turned away a band of four Castilians who wounded a guaxeri of Guarionex and were intent on settling forcefully in the village. The adelantado, I lied to them in perfect Castilian, had given strict orders, under penalty of death, that Castilian soldiers stay out of Guarionex’s village.