Taino

by Jose Barreiro

  Ceiba and Catalina’s people were friendly and frequent visitors. Thus a large group came with Catalina to the wedding. Catalina, a cousin of Anacaona’s and older by ten years than Ceiba, led her young cousins in singing moon songs. In the early evening, she gifted us a fortune telling, looking to our destiny as a couple, a fertility search with manatí bone games that always came out two. Everyone nodded as this was considered good fortune, and the elders all reminded me of it months later when our twin boys were born. Catalina, bless her heart, came to help with the birth.

  One hundred forty-six. Enriquillo’s camp is like the old yukaiekes.

  I am glad to be here. This camp reminds me of those days, when we went for months not seeing even one Castilian and we could take the time, every day, to be Taíno. Ceiba and I put in a conuco all our own, even tobacco and herbs we planted. We worked together every day, bathed at the stream twice a day, and coupled excessively, day after day, wherever and whenever we wanted. She was wide of shoulder and hip, a strong woman who could work and work in the sun and who made love with certainty, grabbing a man firmly and opening herself in full trust, and she was so easy and so wonderful to love. For those months, as her belly grew and we continued to sneak around like mice in the corn, I became a poet in the style of old Guarionex and my grandfathers of childhood, full of thoughts for our little family and for our village and formulating thoughts of peace and words of love for Ceiba and words of reason and harmony for the Castilians, feeling in love strong enough to carry impacts of importance.

  One hundred forty-seven. The old man knew so much.

  I sat with Guarionex and I heard him many times ponder the future. I grew to love the old man and through him was once again touched with the beauty and the reason of our Taíno customs. Guarionex knew it all. He was one of the very few, even in the best of times, who could remember the songs for all the areitos, all of the origin stories, the traditions and safekeeping practices for each and all of our cemi helpers. About the medicines, he knew their ceremonies and could check and instruct behikes and medicine women who regulated such things. But his interest was the peace pact, for which he could draw on a great repertoire of memories.

  Peace-pacting was a strong tradition in Guarionex’s court, and he was often drawn to help resolve fights between caciques. With me he talked much about these things, and together we wondered the motivations of Castile, why they settled on Taíno lands and what accommodations might yet be made with them so that our people could survive.

  One hundred forty-eight. Death Spirits that open sores in our faces.

  It happened, too, that with the spread of Castilian settlements new illnesses grew among our people. There were constant deaths in villages where once the occasion was relatively rare. Every day now many people were dying and many others laid up on hammocks, very hot and retching and unable to eat, ears and noses running liquid and in many cases, open sores formed on our peoples’ faces and bodies.

  Guarionex pondered out loud on all this. Through the cohoba I experienced with him then, I did see my elders (though I could not talk to them), and I remember that they gestured for me to not come near them, but to stay where I was and open my ears and eyes wide. I saw my old men of Guanahaní and my father’s mother, who waved at me, clasping her hands with two thumbs raised. I had not experienced the cohoba long enough to know what to do within my trance, nor how to move about, nor how to bring forth sound. I had no real skills, though I felt at ease with it, and in the morning my body felt clean and my mind clear.

  Guarionex was powerful in cohoba and could communicate with his grandparents and especially with his great-grandfather, Caiçiju, a behike of renowned power whose cohoba vision of three generations before Guarionex shared with me.

  “Caiçiju fasted six days,” Guarionex told me. “Every night he took cohoba and dreamed. Three nights he received sorrowful messages for one or another of his relatives. Then, even animals reported to him stories of future hardships. One night, Vital Force Supreme Spirit, Yucahuguama Bagua Maórocoti, the one without grandfather, of grandmother born, He who is Creator of our sea and islands, creator of all fish and of our Taíno people, Ancient Waves of our Ocean, spoke to him. He took Caiçiju out of himself and into the bright day sky past a thin cloud cover. Caiçiju told later that he reentered our world through the clouds to see our crablike island. On the ground, he moved through his known haunts. A man spirit, not Yucahu, he said, showed him his third generation on this earth, not free, as was his own, but enslaved, chained and lashed, dying of hunger. He saw covered men, he said, who came from the east and rode four-legged beasts full of fury.

  “Caiçiju asked himself, how can this be? Who could do such a thing? He thought of the Carib, their pesky raids, but that didn’t make sense, as they seldom settled for long and even then, more often than not, were taken in by our people.

  “Of course, whom it was I know now,” Guarionex told me. “The Castilians it is whom he was shown by Yucahu Bagua Maórocoti; the covered men were carried to us in his own Great Spirit vision, on the waves of his own mother sea.”

  One hundred forty-nine. Roldán and the first Indian repartimiento.

  One day in early spring 1498, some six months after our twins were born, Guarionex came to our bohío, which was nearly a mile from his main village and a quieter place. He was distraught. His men had been severely punished in recent weeks. “So much blood I cannot sleep.”

  And now something worse he had heard. The adelantado sent an offer to Roldán. The rebellious mayor and his men would receive land grants from Columbus, including whole villages of peaceful Indians. Roldán and his men would be installed as captains over caciques. Guarionex asked me to check this information for him and I did by spending some days in the adelantado’s company (I took a wide cape of parrot feathers to him from Guarionex).

  One hundred fifty. Guarionex retreats to the mountains.

  Don Bartolomé confirmed the offer to Roldán. It was true, the yukaiekes were to be split off, and Roldán would receive land and many Indians. Francisco Roldán, who led the first rebellion against the Columbus brothers’ central authority on the islands, was a troubled man, quarrelsome. At times, he took up the Indian cause, demanding an end to the tribute system. And this way, here and there, Roldán enlisted caciques in plots against the admiral. Thus, at one moment, Guarionex himself threw his lot into a battle at Concepción, where his warriors wiped out nearly a whole garrison.

  The problem was Roldán’s men had no morals. They relied on the guaxeri for food but constantly abused the women. Roldán sought our alliance against the admiral but just the same demanded complete subservience from us. After one such campaign, I have written, Roldán raped Guarionex’s second wife. Now, the admiral, whom Roldán insulted a hundred times, was to give him as gifts our lands and people. It was the final act for Guarionex.

  “I see Castile fight, son against father.” (He meant Roldán versus the admiral). “They would kill each other. And in that fight, each of them seduce us to be of each their ally. But no matter with whom we elect to stand, they each, in the end, despise us and disdain our place. Our friendship ceremonies, our guatiaos, the change of faces and exchange, our areitos we have sung them, it all amounts to nothing. They are a people who live in constant shame.”

  Guarionex would start to speak slowly, but the words soon pounded out of his mouth in stark blows. “I know his weapons can blow men apart. The fury hurricane he commands, and it does horrify. But beyond the horror of death, what truly frightens is the way they are. How certain of their destiny are these covered men, and yet how willingly they have lied to our caciques. This covered man sees not my eyes. He sees not this world. He is not a god, that is certain, but he is not a human like our people are human.”

  Guarionex was agitated by his growing perception. “I will withdraw from my territories,” Guarionex said. “My people the admiral cannot just give away like so many fish in a canoe.”

  That day, Guarionex asked Cei
ba and I to take his mother’s clan house under our care, hoping they could avoid direct persecution as he went to war. Ceiba and I agreed to make a village for more than one hundred people, and Guarionex asked the people to accept me as cacique. As his sister’s husband, I could take this place, according to our ancient tradition, since she held the actual cacique line and not him. Of course, in calmer times, she and her sisters would raise one of their boys to be cacique rather than choose one of their own husbands. As the adelantado had granted me, with Don Christopherens’s permission, a tract of land, my new relatives I settled then into a formal cacicasgo.

  Days later, the old man moved his main villages into Cacique Mayobanex’s territory, who had offered to protect him from Castilian attack. Mayobanex was Ciguayo, a strong warrior and elder. He greatly esteemed Guarionex’s superior knowledge of our ceremonies and stories. Weeks passed and then a war Guarionex started that raged for several months. Guarionex and Mayobanex both led warriors and raided with impunity. Many ambushes of Castilians took place during that time, and it wasn’t always clear who had the upper hand. Divided as he was by the attacks from Roldán’s men and the various Indian skirmishes, Adelantado Bartolomé Columbus strung out his forces, until accommodations with Roldán allowed him time to pursue the Indian chiefs.

  One hundred fifty-one. Guarionex falls, and Mayobanex.

  The story I told last night to the young men (and captains) in Enriquillo’s circle, of how Guarionex and Mayobanex, a Ciguayo and a Taíno, stood together and were destroyed together. I told them of the character of the adelantado, who chased them mercilessly, finally cornering each of the old men in turn and alienating their jurisdictions. Poor Guarionex was chained and placed in isolation in Santo Domingo. Nearly three years he languished before being sold into slavery. His only luck was to die en route, no longer a cacique but not yet a slave.

  One hundred fifty-two. Castilians swarm the island.

  The Castilians were beginning to swarm the island by then. The central plain was nearly pacified. Santo Domingo and the other Castilian forts grew. I hear Las Casas tell that some three hundred repartimientos, or early encomiendas, were already granted by the year 1500, including many ranches and mines and large fincas. I do remember that they cleared roads for their oxen wagons and horses, and they traveled in groups between towns. At that time, I did all I could to hold Ceiba’s yukaieke together, feeding and protecting her old people and our growing twin boys. We had settled into the valley granted to me by Don Christopherens, a remote conuco, away from the traveled roads, and we went nearly undetected for five years.

  Many of our people did what they could during that time to hide away in remote places. Three of the five main cacicasgos, the Taíno bighouses, and one Ciguayo, had been annexed or destroyed by the Castilians. Guacanagari was absorbed, then lost. Caonabó, Guarionex, and Mayobanex were taken down. Only two provinces, Higüey and Xaraguá, on the eastern and western ends of the island, retained their own territories. Neither had gold to offer, yet each paid substantial tribute, in cassabe and fish, in woven cotton and the labor of artisans. Only later did I travel to Higüey, so I never met its cacique, Cotubanamá, though I often met people from their region in Santo Domingo, when they came to deliver their goods. I had more contact during this time with Bohekio and his sister Anacaona, widow of Caonabó, who maintained their Taíno cacicasgo intact, this in the province of Xaraguá, which surrounds these Bahuruku mountains. They were very calm people, just as my own little village was calm, and it seemed for a few short seasons that peace might return and a common ground could be reached with the Castilian towns. Of course, Ovando, the knight commander, had yet to come.

  One hundred fifty-three. Surrounded by young Taíno, education for peace.

  Speaking for their young Taíno minds last night, surrounded by friendly forces, I felt incredibly light. I am light anyway from my fast, and my mind is light, too, like dew on a spider’s web. I move in a flow and the warriors notice. The behike, whom they greatly respect, is constantly with me, and Enriquillo signals approval at every turn. He likes my stories and attitude, and I am conscious of returning his new message to his fighting people. I must educate them at every turn, prepare them for a possible peace. For fifteen years Enriquillo has taught them to abhor and kill Castilians, to kill especially mánso Indians like me, who have always been the greater threat. Now he needs them to appreciate an end to hostilities, if such should come. For this, he even interrupts his vigilance; he produces me as his voice. Sometimes, as I speak, I feel his face on my own, the weight and the tension of his brow in my eyes.

  One hundred fifty-four. A song comes to me.

  This afternoon, on the last day of my fast, I write. Tonight we snort cohoba. Day by day, the behike, often with Enriquillo in attendance, sits me facing west, looking away from the sun, a circle of yucca and conch shell dust drawn around me. At dawn and dusk, a small hicara (gourd) of water. Each morning, with my back to the morning sun, he whispers, “Shoulder his power.” I thank this mountain site, thanking, too, the ancestors who pay attention. When the sun hits directly my face from above, my circle of protection the behike opens by brushing aside a line of the yucca and shell dust, inviting my hand and step.

  “Maybe you cannot sing,” he said before, as he noticed my silence. “Make the noise, hum it, if you remember it.”

  This morning, as the dew steamed away, a song came to me. The mist was still around us. The behike burned the lightest bit of tabanacu incense, and the smoke rose in little puffs that dissipated before reaching the forest canopy. It was the puffs of smoke as I watched them that recalled the touch of that old wooden drum of Guarionex, which he beat many times singing cohoba songs for me. Suddenly in my ears I picked up a song that went on and on, repeating itself and branching out, and I could hear in it voices that had not lived for many years. What a good sound it was, how pleasing and warm to the memory!

  One hundred fifty-five. Going to meet the medicine.

  I make final notes and prepare my mind. Afterward, I will not write but prepare my return to the convent in Santo Domingo. There I will write more. For now I can say that my mind is very calm and that I feel as complete as I have in years. I am convinced of the life that exists beyond our awakened earth, the resounding mind that accompanies our walking days, and the many spaces and folds in its world. My father is there, I can tell. My father is with me. Nearly every day, here and there, I sense him. I see him in my dream, and I smell the sweat of his back on first awakening.

  Today, walking through the woods from the behike’s, I felt the ground rise and fall in waves beneath my steps, soft earth supporting my body with her heat. Everything smelled green. The world was green smelling as I walked lightly, so lightly over the earth.

  It was then I felt them all around. I felt warm winds embrace me, even dance around me in the woods, walking so lightly, walking in the weakness of no food, of hunger denied and then ignored, removed. So light I was I felt the water as I drink it travel through me in clean rushes, a coolness in my thighs. So light I feel I could see them already, even in the light, knowing as they do that the cohoba is being prepared, greeting me in their shy way as I walked. For them, the earth said to me: Remembered son, I clean your feet with my dew as with your step you caress my back.

  My father told me: Never rush the first medicine. Even your certain medicine, don’t greet it personally on the first pass. So, I asked the earth, Sacred Guakeya, I intoned: On you, beautiful land, why is there so much suffering for my people? I asked, too: And, will there be survival for the good Taíno?

  Folio V

  Cohoba Dreams

  Two weeks later, at the convent in Santo Domingo… Journey with cohoba, a returning memory… The cohoba journey… Message of the cohoba, a way to guard the survival… I conduct a strange ceremony… At the convent, Las Casas returns… I ask Catalina to help me… In the woods with Catalina… At my old yukaieke in the lower Magua country… With cohoba again, with Ceiba… Finding love
with Catalina… Barrionuevo has arrived… Tempering the good friar… I hate telling a lie, but… The good friar confesses a deed of his youth… Las Casas goes again… In the memory: Velazquez presses me into service… The route to Xaraguá, with Velazquez… The Massacre of Anacaona’s Banquet… The killing begins, Enriquillo in my arms… Encounter with Manasas at the stream… Suspected in the killing… My village is encomended…

  One hundred fifty-six. Two weeks later, at the convent in Santo Domingo.

  Quietly I have returned to the friars’ cloister. No one questions my long delay at the sugar mill, though I know that there are whispers about me. They wonder about young Silverio, who decided to stay, who decided to be a warrior guaxeri among his people. About him, I have said that he stayed to work in carpentry on a second Maguana sugar mill.

  No one has raised any question about the way I look and act. I have decided to speak to no one, directing but very brief words to Fray Remigio, who took up the care of my poor, mangy mare and announced my deep retirum to silent prayer the morning of my return.

  Truly they think of me as another monk. And though I have never taken vows of any kind, I could run a high Mass, a baptism, a confirmation, a marriage, and even the extreme unction. Now I protect myself by retiring into prayerful sacrifice, and they must respect it. No one speaks to me directly, and I put on their hooded mantle, and I emerge only in the quiet moments and spend much time in the chapel, kneeling for my faith.