Taino

by Jose Barreiro

  May 23, 1533

  One hundred ninety-one. Continuing to work with Barrionuevo.

  Rodrigo, too, helps me. He dines with the knight captain each evening, a function to which I am disallowed, as they discuss logistical and potential military needs. But I know he speaks of me to Barrionuevo and dissuades doubt the captain may carry yet about my sincerity. I had some thought of this most intimate of missions as I boarded on ship, but now it is obvious. Barrionuevo is the man to be near, and I am in the right place, by Rodrigo’s grace, to feel his goeiz.

  Today, in the afternoon, as Barrionuevo scanned the coast by long glass, I lay in a hammock and watched, face hidden behind the lace of the net. He searched the coast with his glass in a concentrated stance but saw nothing of what he sought—no sign of smoke or light or movement of any kind that could point to contact with the rebel camps. I watched and watched him then quit watching but felt my gut and chest move in his direction, taking measure of his time so I knew exactly when he was about to quit, anticipating the moment when he took down the long glass and looked my way. My head I lifted at that very second, looking to the coast in my own concentration. This brought him over.

  “The search for this cacique of yours could be tedious,” he said.

  “He seeks not yet for us, my captain,” I said. “After I disembark at Port Yaquimo, I will initiate various messages to Enriquillo’s camp.”

  “I will find him on the coast, and I will deliver the queen’s message to him,” he said, and I was silent. Barrionuevo was not interested in my participation at the negotiations; he merely liked my information.

  After a while, he said, “The thing of the ram made me laugh.”

  Barrionuevo likes joviality, which is the way to reach him. Barrionuevo was making obvious his enjoyment of my tongue. Vasco Porcallo, whom I served for nearly two years in the Camagüey region, was indeed a comical (and despicable) apparition.

  “He was every bit a ram,” I said “He even hopped rapidly about, from one place to the next.” To humor his mood, I told Barrionuevo how Porcallo would take the Cuban girls, one after another, sometimes as many as eight or ten in a single day.

  “Most often he did it from behind, like a ram,” I teased. “And sometimes standing up against a post.”

  This got a boistorous laugh out of Barrionuevo, who said: “Dieguillo Colón, you nasty old-timer. You are a rascal to remember these things!”

  One hundred ninety-two. Opening the path.

  My tongue not only humors but measures Barrionuevo. Today, in his light-hearted nostalgia, I found a path to his mood and put in my pitch. Since in a few days I will leave him to travel ahead by land to the hills of the Bahuruku, I am glad to reach him.

  One hundred ninety-three. Making connection, the change of heart.

  As he formally left me, Barrionuevo patted my back. “You have survived a great deal, Dieguillo,” he said. Immediately, I sought and captured his eyes. “So have you, my captain,” I responded, and he nodded. I said then: “And so has the Enriquillo, who is a decent and brave man, a man who wants nothing more than the peace of the land for his relatives and other Indians.”

  “Is this totally so?” he inquired, and, yes, I felt trust for my answer in his interrogation.

  “Totally, my captain. Show this cacique but few soldiers, yet go to his lair. He is a fair man and will not attack an offer to parley. Then, do not threaten violence but show him the monarch’s message and capitulate with him in clear language. Pardon issued, he would settle in a quiet farm somewhere, and your Indian war will be over forever on this island.”

  I looked into his eyes without fear or bashfulness, and I knew at that moment that peace was possible with this man, a real peace for our remaining free Taínos, with a settlement on land, pride, and authority, and even a community for Enriquillo and Mencia’s people. “By the love of the baby Jesus, by the purity of the Holy Mother Mary,” I ventured. “A great war captain could by an act of peace redeem the years of horror on this island with a measure of just finality.”

  “I will do my best,” Barrionuevo said, and I believe he means it.

  May 25, 1533

  One hundred ninety-four. Cruelties of Vasco Porcallo.

  This afternoon Barrionuevo and Rodrigo Gallego talk alone. I am very lucky to have Rodrigo here at this important moment.

  I will write about my time with Vasco Porcallo, the man-ram of our joking, who put my remaining son and me to work mining gold at the swampy rivulets near the new town of Sancti Spiritus. Those days in Cuba repeated the events in Española but much more quickly. This time the Castilians arrived in larger numbers, always well stocked and with clear strategy to subjugate our people quickly. In their attacks and raids to take slaves, they chased them from their villages and conucos all over eastern Cuba, so that two and more planting seasons were entirely missed. Famine ensued among the Cuban Taíno.

  Vasco, a young man of twenty then, but regal in his manner, was granted a huge estate, spawning cattle and sheep and pigs and many planted fields. His foremen organized gangs of gold panners and rakers into regular squads, working long, long days with little food and the constant sting of the whip and the whap of the planazo, a blow with the flat of the cutlass or machete that easily turned bloody. Vasco ran his encomienda severely. As his raiders took many men prisoners, he would feed them not, but worked them for weeks until they dropped. Sometimes, a few were allowed to go after fruit, when in season. Once several men made a pact to assuage their desperate hunger pangs by copiously eating dirt. They knew, of course, that this would kill them. Vasco was personally insulted. He rescued the men by forcing large quantities of oil and water down their throats, then tied them to posts. If they could eat dirt, he said, perhaps they could eat something else. Then, he cut the testicles off three men and made each eat his own. The act was so horrifying to the people that suicides stopped. For actions such as that, Velazquez hailed Porcallo a “great encomienda administrator.”

  The obdurate Porcallo was among the most emulated of the conquistador class. And, yes, he was an untiring fornicator who day after day for thirty years passed over our women and spawned hundreds of mestizos. Porcallo was not without plan, however, as he conceived of peopling the region with his new race, the power from his own loins adapted to the land as the offspring of the indigenous woman. He had an accomplice and even a teacher in the old cacique of the savanna—Camagüeybax, who arranged many of these couplings and provided young maidens for the man-ram. Once, I tried to scold the old cacique, but he refused to be admonished. “War is useless against war-driven people. To pacify them with their own desires is our only protection and our only survival,” he told me. Porcallo put up women who gave him children in their own bohíos, and he kept going back to them. Later, he went on to import artisan and even noble families from Spain to marry his first generations.

  I hated it, all the fornicating and begetting without lineage, without any sort of guidance from the elder mothers. But having lived another twenty years, I know now that mere survival is our only possible victory. And wonder I do now that Camagüeybax maybe was right. The region of Camagüey is today peopled by our mixed race, and guaxiro is a term oft-employed to describe our survival in the loins of Taíno women, seeded by Castilian men. What matters, Camagüeybax would say, is that our old people’s eyes and ears, our expressions survive in the generations and not just die away.

  Some people say that every mestizo means one less Indian. I agree now with Camagüeybax that inside each mestizo an Indian survives to come through.

  May 26, 1533

  One hundred ninety-five. Caimán-hunting days.

  My boy and I were fortunate, saved from the killing hunger by the extra food provided through the meat of caimán, whose danger I was after some weeks assigned to eradicate by hunting. I was given an old harquebus, dagger, and lance and fashioned for myself several long bejuco ropes. Heart of Earth was not allowed to hunt with me but stayed in the gold panning. I fed him much ca
imán that year, and he lived on it. Oils from the caimán also I used on him, to rub his water-wrinkled skin that turned to blackened leather on his arms and shoulders. Thus I saved my boy from the open sores that killed many of our miners.

  Las Casas I met also at that time. His own encomienda was not far away, on the Arimao River, and I was borrowed by his partner to eliminate a reptile on that waterway, a giant beast that had taken a servant boy as he filled casks with water.

  I hunted that monster on canoe, by the light of the moon, and saw him one night leave the water to stalk a young calf. Knowing his hunting area, I cleared all animals away, but a young calf we tied in a field not far from the river. With eight men, I waited six nights, and then the giant caimán left the water. We surrounded the beast and a long pole we stuck into his snapping mouth. Killing him was easy after that. Las Casas was quite happy, and that night we conversed until the early hours. He was changing his mind about then on the keeping of our people as slaves and not much later gave up his own encomienda to take up the campaign for our freedom, a cause he has never relinquished.

  I hunted large caimán by the dozen for nearly a year and was never hurt. Then, once, while bathing in a quiet little pool, clear as glass and with nothing in sight, a puny caimán not three feet long snuck in on me and bit my leg. He was so small, I walked out with him hanging from my thigh and ran him through with a knife, but the damage was done. His long tooth pierced me to the bone just above the knee, the wound festering to high fever until I lost track of all time. It was Las Casas who nursed me, upon hearing the case, and even in my sickness worried twice was I, as Heart of Earth took sick himself from the constant panning in cold, dirty water, and I was certain he would die.

  I recovered first. Las Casas, who was still friendly with Velazquez, obtained my son for me. I nursed Heart of Earth myself, feeding him honey paste and fruits, rubbing him down with caimán oil and wet digo compresses and smoothing out the ridges in his now scaly skin.

  Around that time, Ponce de León, who resided in Borikén, heard the tales of the Fountain of Youth, said to be found at Bimini or on the coast of La Florida. He would mount an expedition to find it. Word of this was heard all around, even in Cuba, where a group of volunteers agreed to join. A complex tradition among my people was this story of the Fountain of Youth, referring as it did to our own Taíno movement to the smaller islands (my own Guanahaní among them) and the settlement of new villages. Thus the youthfulness it promised referred to the founding of new communities and the rekindling of sacred cemis, not the rejuvenation of old men. But the Castilians took it as enchantment and set out to find an actual fountain.

  Heart of Earth, who had recovered, thanks to the good friar, wanted to go along in Ponce’s expedition. A young man of fourteen years, he would leave for the port of San German with the Castilian volunteers and reasoned thus to me: “Father of my days,” he said. “Let us go, if allowed. No life is there for us here. I would go and see our days before us. With luck, we might see our people at Guanahaní and maybe find a spot of earth and a people of our copper color who will uphold us.”

  I myself applied to the expedition but Velazquez would not permit my going; the young man, yes, he said, after all, he offered everything I could, plus youth. Reluctant was I to see to see my son go, but no true argument against it came to me. Thus, he embarked with Ponce, and I know from later testimony he did land at Guanahaní, where he might have seen my people, and onward they sailed to Bimini and La Florida. On a Florida beach, Heart of Earth one day went out to chop a palm tree, I was later informed, and disappeared. I hope, I pray he walks among our own Taíno people, who previously settled in those parts.

  May 27, 1533

  One hundred ninety-six. One areito remembered.

  I cannot help thinking at this moment about my twins, how they looked together laid out on the hammock just after birth. It turns my mind to the songs of the double twins in our origin stories: Deminán, first ancestor, and his three ximagua brothers. Many roundances were sung throughout the villages of the Taíno for these four beings. Episode after episode was sung, the cycle starting the evening after first rain and running, night after night, through the wet season.

  Of woman born without male ancestor were these four brothers, who are the four winds, who gathered the powers from the world beyond the clouds; they who walked the rim of the sky. Said one areito song: “In the world where heat does not exist, the eyes can create.” I think of it today, as I lie and write in a hammock that hangs low behind the captain’s cabin. We are clipping fast toward Yaquimo, and this well-made ship, the king’s own, has the grace of a giant dolphin. There is nothing like the swing of a hammock on a gentle ocean.

  Our areitos said: this world of humans is of the heart, the belly, and the groin. Mind exists, and spirit, but in little proportion to the other three. In the world before ours that the dead endeavor to reach and are forever in, mind and spirit are nearly all. There is some heart, very little gut, and no groin, no link to the rudeness of procreation, no hope of the fleshful love, nor the command of touch necessary to its generation. Yet, in the mind is everything, in the spirit of the other self, the other me, the opposite, in that link is where movement originates and the spark of existence.

  A pondering people were our Taíno on the measure and the breadth of our existence. Origins we had, and creators, generations of creators. Before ever I heard of Adam and Eve, ancestors of the Castilians, or of the Jesus from Nazareth, from a place beyond Iberia, in the Kingdom of Judea, whom all Christians venerate though his own people betrayed him—before all of that, we had Itiba Cahobaba and the Sky-walking Brothers, and before them Yucahu, and even before that, YaYa and Atabey and so much more…

  Deminán was first among the brothers and many of our songs told the tales of his adventures, his intelligence, his beautiful looks. Deminán could swim in the wind, and while his three younger brothers were being born, his laboring mother told him: “Search out ways of creating a world where Taíno can live, a sea and a bracelet of islands, all manner of fish, the action and heart of man, the mind and love of woman, a language, and, best of all, the cohoba and the tobacco to make the link complete. All the forces necessary are in your path,” his mother, Itiba Cahobaba, told Deminán. She, Ancient Bleeding Mother, said to him: “Spirit beings you will find in your path who hold the needed medicines and powers but know not how to use their gifts to spark the world into being. That is you. Your curiosity is the next creator,” she told him.

  Yucahuguama Bagua Maórocoti, first-force-yucca-giver-sea-provider-of-Woman-born-without-grandfathers, already existed and had accomplished his main labor on the heated earth. Birthed by Atabey, along with his brother, Guacar, they had been formed by their mother out of the invisible elements of space. Atabey, too, brought the life-giving powers to earth: she sucked the wind into herself, churned it into her spiritual waters, and birthed twin boys. They were the best and the worst, natural harmony and natural chaos. Yucahu, the harmony, continued to create the earth, and the sun and the moon he brought out of their origin caves. All this Yucahu accomplished. Beauty he had accomplished, on his mother’s instructions. Guacar, his brother, in his own nature, sought disharmony. He liked ugliness; he created what his brother did not: all manner of disintegration, turbulent storm, pests, diseases, aggressive fish (shark), poison sea jellies, pain itself, and, of course, death.

  But that was a time much before, and even then the world of human beings was already coming out of caves and forming out of trees and manatí and out of the heart of palm. Some paddled in the spirit waters, but blindly and lost and needed to be taught. All were guarded from the sun, who was fierce and unforgiving before he loved us. All this Deminán’s mother, who died as the fourth brother emerged, told Deminán. Now, he must walk the clouds and follow his wishes, his curiosities, and all would be alright; he would accomplish the rest.

  So, Deminán traveled, and his impulse was certain.

  It so happened a spirit named
YaYa was the ultimate existence, the weaving of time itself. He lived with his wife in a bohío that was the beginning and the end of the road. His own first son, who had a great gift, YaYa had killed. Yayael was the son. He was now bones in a basket hanging from the rafters in the westernmost corner of the bohío. One day his bones, caressed in his mother’s hands, became fish, and both father and mother ate happily. Now with his wife, YaYa went to his conuco, where a patch of spirit corn needed cleaning.

  Deminán, walking the rim of the sky, saw YaYa’s empty bohío. He knew he should respect a strange bohío but on impulse approached and entered. His three brothers only waited at the door.

  Deminán moved carelessly through YaYa’s bohío. Spotting the basket, he climbed at the rafters without thinking. Suddenly the brothers whispered, “YaYa is coming.” Deminán lunged for the basket and toppled it. Out came mountains of water, heavens of wet water; long, heavy fish tumbled out, all manner sea life, an immense volume of life-giving water world. YaYa approached his bohío angrily; he felt his son, whom he loved above all else, upset by a simpleton. Deminán fled, trailed by his brothers, and, the song says, all four were suddenly consumed by a hunger that craved cassabe, smelled cassabe—crisp-roasted tort of the yucca root, sustainer of Taíno life. This—smelling the heat of a cooking fire—just as the waters of the earth began to teem with life.

  June 2, 1533

  One hundred ninety-seven. Another gold trap.

  Soon, maybe by late this afternoon, we land. After a night of drifting in the open sea, a pilot who well knows the coast indicated a shadow like a darkened eye on the line of land. “That is Yaquimo,” he said. “We can be there in half a day if the wind holds.”

  I talked again to Rodrigo, mentioning again the Valenzuela plotters. Barrionuevo approves the arrest of two guards on board, Valenzuela’s men who mean to strike at Enriquillo at the earliest opportunity. They will be taken at the port of entry, handcuffed, and turned over to the local marshals in Yaquimo with six-month sentences. The charge, admittedly trumped up, will be: transactions in gold without authorization. This set up with the last piece of gold from the cacique.