One hundred seventy. The good friar confesses a deed of his youth.
Again I saw him tonight. It was a long, difficult day for both him and me. I write here again how sorry I am to lie to him. I do hate to lie to this great man that trusts my word.
Las Casas paced slowly several times around his room. He was puff-eyed like an owl from lack of sleep. I prepared his cot. Finally, he sat down. “We spoke much about Ovando,” he said. “Gonzalo Fernández … Oviedo was there. He knows it all, as usual. The gold counter is writing a book about the Indies, and he read some parts to Barrionuevo and the assembled gentlemen. It was all I could do not to fight him. He speaks of Knight Commander Nicolás de Ovando and his times as the ‘years of civility’ on the island. He claims Ovando established good government and stimulated a true economy here. Ovando is his big hero.”
“What did you say, Father?”
“I held my tongue, the bastards.”
“I thank you for your silent indignation.”
“Ovando massacred coldly,” he said. “He calculated everything about his ways of terror.”
The friar was deeply upset. He breathed heavily and rubbed his temples.
“Ovando watched it with arithmetic,” I said. “He counted the dead, like logger captains count felled trees.”
“That violence we have shown your people,” he said harshly. “I retch at the thought of it.”
“You have done your best, Don Bartolomé. No one…”
“I, too, have killed men of your race. Dieguillo, I even took slaves, several times, and sold them, I accepted an encomienda…”
“You don’t have to confess to me, Father,” I said. “I am pitiful before you.”
“Tonight you are my confessor, Dieguillo,” he said. “You who remember those days.”
He had fought as a soldier, and once led a cannon crew, during the roundup of caciques after Anacaona’s massacre. During a skirmish, he held the igniting ember on the cannon when a Taíno group of about fifteen people approached. “We had fought all day,” he said. “They had only wooden weapons and there was no fight left in them. There were men and women, and I knew they would not attack. Yet, the fury was part of me. I had the urge. I bade our crew prepare to fire. I looked at the group of poor Indians and lit the fuse. I remember the blast was of a furnace exploding toward them. Of fifteen, six fell dead, cut to pieces, and then everything was still. I can see the faces of the ones left standing, how surprised they looked.”
“I know what carnage looks like,” I said.
“Oh, Lord in Heaven, forgive me,” he said and knelt. I touched his head. I felt mildly sick.
“On behalf of your people, Dieguillo, forgive me.”
I could forgive him, too, even though it was precisely during those campaigns I lost my own free village and even my family. “You have saved more than a hundred times six of our people, Father, and many more, since that time. A devil’s act in your youth does not define your destiny. You did not cause the wars, nor did you command your own place in the circumstances. As for the dead,” I told him. “In our way, we believe they will be waiting for you when you pass on to the Spirit World. There you will have to explain yourself to them.”
“Forgive me now, Dieguillo,” he said. “So I may be absolved that horrible deed.”
“I forgive you, Father,” I said. “And I pray for you that they, too, will forgive you.”
One hundred seventy-one. Las Casas goes again.
Today early again, Las Casas went over for meetings. I caught him shortly after the seven o’clock Mass, as he left the convent by the big wooden doors. “Remember that Enriquillo is a peaceful man,” I repeated to him. “His intentions Barrionuevo can trust to settle a community with his captains, to farm and raise cattle and be good neighbors.” Las Casas nodded. “Friend and brother, we are in good accord,” he said. “We will free many Indians with this one.”
One hundred seventy-two. In the memory: Velazquez presses me into service.
In the morning, I sent Father Remigio with a note for Rodrigo Gallego, inviting his visit to the convent tomorrow. I ate at midmorning and then took a nap, having stayed up writing last night. I dreamed vividly during my nap, and now I write my dream.
I saw Manasas in my dream, just as I saw him in the cohoba, sitting, looking away from me. Manasas was a big man, a soldier’s soldier. He was Extremaduran, and he wore plated armor and carried two swords. I killed Manasas at the Massacre of Anacaona, in the late afternoon, after ten hours of mayhem and carnage, when the Taíno men had retreated and Ovando was counting the dead.
That was in 1504, or thereabouts. I say that truly because even though my duty on the ship’s ampolleta fixed in me the breaks of daily time, those later years have blended for me one on another. Those were my seasons of peace, my only ones since I left home. That was when Ceiba ruled my world, my cacique queen who could run a yukaieke of 140 relatives with the precision of nature itself. That was when I saw my two boys, who are still alive, who are still alive, that was when I saw them grow and sprout, those two skinny reeds forming out calf and butt, strong little chests, running and jumping in the grass. That was the time when the Castilians forgot about me and my little village estancia, and for almost five years we tended our conucos and gathered our honey and fished in several abundant streams. We grew pigs even then, in those early years, and hutía was still abundant, and yaguasa and iguana and mahá, and as always in our lands, there was abundant fruit. Perhaps this is what Enriquillo’s camp intimates for me most of all, of those peaceful seasons before I met Las Casas, between the time Guarionex left us, in 1498, and the time in 1503 when Captain Diego Velazquez and a hundred of his Castilian troops with more than three hundred Indian mánsos came into my little valley looking for me.
Velazquez carried a letter from the new admiral, Don Diego Columbus, pressing me into service as interpreter and guide. At the end of my service, which was mandatory in any case, I would receive a horse, the letter said.
I left with Velazquez within the hour, apprehensive anew for the many soldier’s eyes that had gazed upon my valley. Avarice and sinrazón were the expression in those faces for the pretty gardens and layout of the streams and the able-bodied guaxeris that they saw there in my yukaieke. I remember Ceiba’s eyes that would not cry in my presence. The twins played behind her in our bohío, and I saw only flashes of them as I walked away.
One hundred seventy-three. The route to Xaraguá, with Velazquez.
“We travel south and west to Xaraguá,” Velazquez informed me as we camped for the evening. “Anacaona is to greet us. The knight commander, Nicolás de Ovando, and his army, are to visit her villages soon.”
Of the major seats of Taíno authority on the islands, Xaraguá was the only one left. Bohekio, its distinguished old cacique, had died, but his sister, Anacaona, who held several clan lines in her own person and who was the highest ranking nitaina, commanded increasing respect. Anacaona, who was Doña Mencia’s direct line grandmother, was quite a woman. Tall, beautiful, and regal, she was in her late thirties and had boundless energies for every sort of activity. With the demise of the great cacicasgos of Caonabó, Guarionex, and Guacanagari and the death of her brother, Bohekio, the court of Anacaona became, more and more, the gathering place for the island’s younger caciques and elder guaxeris.
Of the island’s sachem women and their families, from which the caciques were chosen, Anacaona was queen. Beyond holding nearly all hereditary lines, Anacaona herself sponsored many areitos and organized societies of singers and dancers. She had been an intimate of Guarionex and had married Caonabó, and she had been the forbidden love of Guacanagari. She was Taita Grandmother, and all of our Taíno people gave her great respect. Moreover, adept agriculturalists were her guaxeri. They had an ingenious system of irrigation that distributed large volumes of water from the verdant hills to their much-drier plains. In Xaraguá, they brought up huge quantities of yucca and produced mountains of cassabe torts, also much corn
and peppers and beans of several types and tomatoes of several types. For their feasts, Anacaona’s guaxeri produced many combinations of foods, recited poetry, and put up jousting contests, huge ball games, acrobatics, and other things.
Along the way to Xaraguá, Velazquez, who rode a red Andalusian gelding, spoke to me in ways that inspired some hope for a positive meeting with Anacaona. Velazquez had already forty years by then, but he was lean and tough and very vigorous. “Xaraguá is well-organized,” he said. “The people are productive and Anacaona wants peace, it would seem.”
“My captain,” I said, always repeating a Castilian’s words back to him. “This Taíno queen would make peace with the Castilians, and her people produce many beautiful things.”
“I have seen her gifts to the adelantado, Don Bartolomé Columbus.”
“The Xaraguáns have paid much tribute,” I said.
“They have no gold,” he said. “But I am told they are fine artisans, that they can build good boats and homes, and they can feed a mighty number of people.”
Then, without another word, he rode off. That was on our way to Anacaona’s main batéy, her court of Xaraguá.
Later, as we approached her villages and the Xaraguá men spotted us and began to trail us, I hoped some friendship could be maintained. Maybe, I thought, the Castilians will the see productivity of the Xaraguáns and allow them to continue with their own conucos and villages.
One hundred seventy-four. The Massacre of Anacaona’s Banquet.
I will write about the massacre here, because, of course, I was wrong to hope. The knight commander joined forces with our troop at the Yaqui River, just at the entrance to the Xaraguá province. More than three hundred Castilian soldiers and some seven hundred Indians, more than a thousand combined troops, formed companies and marched into Xaraguá. I should have known the knight commander planned a wicked thing, but at that moment only the officers knew. The Indians were not told until just before the deed.
Anacaona’s main village was squarely set, following the four directions. In the center, a large batéy opened quite wide. The visit began with song and ceremony, with a feast and a dance, and with the highest of expectations among our people that the Castilians might still learn, after all. Anacaona feasted everyone. She had foods prepared for weeks of feasting and some eighty caciques gathered to celebrate areitos with her and to see what the Castilians might plan for them. Our thousand men she distributed, ten or twenty to each bohío, for the cacique families to feed and host. Our herd of seventy horses she assigned a large pasture with water that Castilian soldiers secured and guarded.
The knight commander was an austere man of the church, lean and cold, with a very big face and head. He wore long robes, even on horseback, and he forgot nothing, ever. When two years before Bobadilla took the three Columbus brothers, including the admiral himself, to Spain, in chains, accused of excessive violence, corruption, and other abuses of power, it was Ovando, a count, who was the king’s selection to clean up the mess. Ovando was a man of great authority and inquisitorial character.
The fateful morning, I sat with Commander Ovando and his captains as they met with Anacaona and several of her caciques in front of Ovando’s caney. This was a large palm structure given to him by the cacica, where I myself had hung my hammock at the commander’s instruction. At a second caney, almost as large, built across a corridor, the commander ordered a cross put up.
I knew I needn’t interpret for Anacaona, since she spoke more than a bit of Castilian by then, but she intimated not her capacity, and I did not either. However, I felt a great tension, though all the talk was diplomatic and many gifts were exchanged. Anacaona sat next to Ovando, her voluptous breasts barely covered by a black Spanish shawl, a gift of Adelantado Bartolomé Columbus in earlier years. The commander looked away as he spoke to her and even as he gave her gifts of combs, mirrors, and small looms, but Anacaona was wonderful to look at. Not only was her body radiant; a woman of proportion, she was endowed with a masterful energy, a vibrant, continuous motion. The urge to hold and envelop hung around Anacaona like a warm mist.
Anacaona’s diplomacy, I could tell, agitated the knight commander. A natural consequence of her energy was that she approached principal men with both her mind and her body and had thus known several of the commanders that had come her way. Thus she had tempered the excesses of both the adelantado, Don Bartolomé Columbus, and of his mortal enemy, Francisco Roldán. Don Bartolomé was honest with her, but Roldán it was, precisely, who denounced her to Ovando as treacherous and rebellious.
On Ovando’s his first night in, after a late meal and some wine, enveloped in her fog, Anacaona led him across the yard nearly to her hammock, where suddenly the commander declined her invitation curtly, walking rapidly away, eyes widened and red streaked. Everyone saw the move, caciques and officers, and Ovando made his blood-furious plan. I heard him say in the late evening: “A rebellion is in the offing here. The filthy slut won’t let things be.”
“Her people will follow her, Commander,” Velazquez, who was nearby, said.
“She is in need of a Christian example,” Ovando replied.
One hundred seventy-five. The killing begins, Enriquillo in my arms.
When, after lunch the next day, he told her he would celebrate a Mass for her many chiefs, I interpreted Ovando’s words to the cacica and thought to myself how simple and easy everything might turn out. First a parade of horses he would show them, then a Mass he would celebrate. He loved their souls, he said, and would endeavor to show them the way to everlasting life. Yes, I thought that maybe I was seeing Christian love for our people. Tribute would be exacted, no doubt, but possibly softened by the mission of the sacred sacraments.
Among the horses, a bay gelding was trained to dance on his hind legs, to bow and curtsy. He did this to sounds from a flute. It was quite gracious. Thus all seventy of Ovando’s horsemen were mounted when Ovando requested the Indian chiefs of the region to join him inside his second caney. About eighty caciques went inside, and I was to follow, when Ovando held my arm back. “Stay with me,” he said. He then grabbed a golden crucifix that hung from his neck.
Suddenly the captains jumped into action and the caciques were surrounded in the big caney. Velazquez seized Anacaona, looped a rope around her wrists behind her back, and brought her out. Led away by two soldiers, she stopped in her tracks where I stood with the commander. “What have we done to you?” she cried to him. “We received you with song. We have offered you all!”
“You are as soiled as a mudsnake,” Commander Ovando said calmly to her. “By authority of Church and King, I will hang you for your sins against nature.”
Holding lances and swords at the ready, a hundred soldiers and another hundred mánso Indians surrounded the captive caciques. “You are prisoners,” a captain said, instructing ten men to tie up the caciques. “Submit, or we will burn your queen,” he told them. A dozen other soldiers held flaming torches, and many others piled dry branches around the palm-and-thatch building. When most of the caciques had been tied up inside, the soldiers exited and tightened up around the building. “Fire to the devils,” Velazquez cried, on a nod from the knight commander. All around, the caney was lit and a fire roared in minutes. There was much groaning and coughing. A few men tried to break through the cane walls, but the soldiers sliced and poked at them as they did, then pushed them back on the burning pyre.
Guaxeris and the few remaining caciques not at the banquet but around the yukaieke began to come over, inquiring on the fire and commotion. They met a quadrant with lines of horses, bowmen, and harquebus shooters. Then four companies of swordsmen were signaled to rampage. Great mayhem broke loose, hundreds of people running then circling back and attacking with rocks and lances, macanas and daggers.
I stood by the commander, frozen. He had ordered a crossbow and, after several shots, spiked an arrow into an Indian’s neck. Ovando had a guard of twenty around him, half mounted, half on the ground. Suddenly h
e mounted his own horse. “Commander,” I said, fearing for my life to be left alone, battle raging all around me. He looked at me and took off his red shoulder cape, then hollered to the troops all around us. “Do not harm Diego Colón, who is protected by my cape.” Several captains and soldiers repeated the order, and many Castilians looked my way in midfight. Then Ovando was gone, mounted and with his lance set to his stirrup, out to run Indians through.
Back and forth the running went. The guaxeri of Anacaona fought well. They attacked fearlessly, trying to get to their burning caciques, and more than once the Spanish horsemen had to retreat. Many horses were killed and more than fifty Castilian soldiers. I moved little from Ovando’s assigned caney, as the Castilians in battle often went berserk, killing even mánso Indians like me.
Once, after several hours, I was suddenly alone, the battle having moved on to a field on the edge of the village. Venturing out, I turned and found myself facing a wounded Taíno, a minor cacique with a deep cut in his shoulder. I helped him back to the commander’s caney and dressed his wound. This was Enriquillo’s father, who died months later from his wounds. Suffering horribly, he told me about his two boys, who were hiding in a grove of fruit trees about a hundred yards away. The soldiers had almost found them, so he had jumped out to draw them away. He took a sword blow but distracted the soldiers and kept running. “Please get my boys, guaxeri,” he said. “Bring them here before the maguacokíos kill them.”
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