by Andrew Rowen
_______________
1 More fully known as Yúcahu Bagua Maórocoti, yucca being an excellent source of starch and the sea the source of fish.
2 From the Taíno word meaning “island people,” of the Bahamas or Turks and Caicos.
3 Matrilineal succession.
4 The Duke of Calabria, Jean d’Anjou.
5 Alfonso V, died 1458.
6 Pera, the town north of the Golden Horn at Constantinople (Istanbul); Phocaea (Foca), a town east of Constantinople along the Aegean coast; and Scio (Chios), the Aegean island nearby offshore Phocaea.
7 The legendary kings titled the Prester John.
II
1460S, YOUTH
CAONABÓ
Journey from Aniyana to Haiti
Before sunrise, Caonabó rose from his hammock inside Father’s caney (the chief’s house, constructed with wood beams, reed or palm siding, and a thatched roof) to find himself standing before Mother. He felt tears welling and averted his eyes. He had grown to a young man, thirteen, and now would journey to Maguana, Mother’s homeland in central Haiti, to compete with cousins to be chosen as Maguana’s next cacique. He had never been there.
Mother had watched him sleep, having anticipated this day for years with pride and sadness. She knew he would cry and hugged him tightly to cherish him. He now stood tall above her, with the thin, muscular frame and rapt black eyes of a hunter. But he was still her boy, and she whispered that she and Father loved him and would think of him always. His younger brothers would join him when they reached manhood. Caonabó searched for words but didn’t find them and simply told Mother he loved her, too.
Mother let go of her hug. “Uncle will care for you. Remember you owe him obedience and loyalty. Reciprocate his generosity.” She handed him the stone cemí of Yúcahu that had been her mother’s and whispered with a penetrating intensity, “Remember Father and myself and your brothers and sisters. Honor our spirits.”
Caonabó remained at a loss for a significant response and replied merely that he would always do so. Mother gently kissed his forehead and wistfully told him to join Father to eat. She cried when he left, recovering when Caonabó’s many brothers and sisters awoke and called for her.
Father’s village lay nestled beside forest, more than twenty bohíos (ordinary houses or homes, constructed like caneys but smaller) encircling two plazas and a batey (ball court) where the ballgame was played, with Father’s caney astride the larger plaza. Caonabó met Father there as he supervised the preparations for the canoe journey to Haiti. The crewmen had gathered for a substantial breakfast of cazabi and fish while their wives readied the provisions, filling gourds with fresh water, wrapping smoked fish in wet leaves, and packing a reed basket with sweet potato and more cazabi. Naborias departed the village, hauling baskets of salt for trade in Haiti north to the ocean beach that harbored the larger canoes.
Caonabó shared in the crew’s breakfast and sensed their admiration for Father. The afternoon before, Father had spoken to him of his conduct and future, including the importance of developing traits worthy of a cacique, particularly virtue, and the appropriate balance between harmony and competition in seeking to be chosen. Father rarely was intimate, and more rarely acknowledged fault. But Father had shared his experiences, the mistakes he had made when seeking his own anointment, and explained—in perhaps the last conversation of their lives—that Caonabó undoubtedly would err, as Father had, and would need the perspective and flexibility to correct himself.
Father scanned the tidal flats to the south, now intently focused on the journey itself, and remarked to the crew that the weather was suitable for the voyage, which would take a full day and night.1 The wind was mild, the sky overcast so the sun wouldn’t bake, and the hurricane season well past. The crew had masterful experience in making the journey, which it did frequently in the drier months when the weather was more predictable. Its leader was Father’s most trusted younger lieutenant, a nitaíno (nobleman) well versed in the crossing and, if necessary, hostilities. At the meal’s conclusion, the leader led the crew in invoking Yúcahu for the journey’s protection. Confident in their prowess, the crewmen said good-bye to their families without ceremony and left for the northern beach, where they would push Father’s greatest canoe into the sea and load it.
Caonabó said good-bye to his friends. He would miss them, particularly Onaney, of whom he had grown fond. She was eleven, and they had walked alone along the salt flats at dusk the day before.
“Will you remember me, Caonabó?” she had asked.
“Of course,” he had answered.
“I will soon be old enough for marriage.”
While eager to respond, he had chosen silence, to learn what she proposed.
“And my father won’t delay to arrange it. No one expects you’ll return to Aniyana.”
“That’s not true. I can return whenever I wish.”
“You won’t return if you’re chosen Maguana’s cacique. Or when you marry the daughters and sisters of Haitian caciques.”
“I will take as wife whom I wish, whether chosen as cacique or not.”
She had gazed into his eyes, inviting him to her, and he had kissed her softly and then passionately as the day ended.
Caonabó’s brothers and sisters joined him in the plaza. Little Manicoatex, three years old, asked if he was going as well, and Father laughed. Caonabó embraced them one by one, overcome by the recognition that the strongest bonds of trust and loyalty lay within family. Father and Mother began the hike to the northern beach, and, with melancholy, Caonabó departed with them, carrying Mother’s Yúcahu cemí in a small pouch. As they walked, Father imparted final advice.
“There may be cousins who make fun that you’re Lucayan, not Haitian. Don’t let that bother you—either their attitude or your own concern that you aren’t their equal. You are the equal of your cousins born on Haiti, and you have the ability to be selected cacique. Uncle certainly will see it that way. Mother is as Haitian as your cousins’ mothers.”
“Father, I’m proud of who I am. I won’t be cowed.”
“It’s also important to appear moderate. If you’re teased about being Lucayan, don’t overreact. Simply ignore it. Seek your goal firmly, but avoid friction.”
“I understand, but I will let others know I’m their equal.”
Father didn’t press further to avoid appearing overly concerned.
They arrived at the beach, and Caonabó beheld the great canoe floating in calm, shallow water, sheltered from the ocean by coral reefs offshore. It had been carved and burned from the trunk of a single tree and stretched more than forty feet in length, with benches for the oarsmen and ample space for provisions and passengers. Father and Mother embraced him cheerfully for the last time, and the leader bid him sit at the canoe’s midpoint, behind a satchel of gifts to be dispensed along the journey. In unison, the crew hunkered against the heavy hull and pushed it forward to gather speed and momentum, whereupon they jumped aboard as Caonabó waved good-bye, exhilarated. They sped east to vanish into the channel separating Aniyana and Wana (East Caicos), heading south to cross the great undersea bank, the Ba We Ka (Caicos Bank), a turquoise shallow that extended many miles south toward Haiti. The canoe coursed first toward two tiny cays some twenty miles south (Big and Little Ambergris Cays).2
Caonabó had been on the ocean countless times before, traveling among the neighboring islands and trolling the Ba We Ka, which teemed with fish, lobsters, and rays. He knew that Haiti was an island amid many islands surrounded by an encompassing sea on a flat earth. The heavens ascended above, the sea and underground caves descended below, and the sea and the heavens converged on the horizon where spirits could pass from one to the other. His home, Aniyana, and other Lucayan islands (the Bahamas) stretched northwest from Haiti. Cuba and Yamaye (Jamaica) were to Haiti’s west, and far west of Cuba lay a great landmass where men wore clothes. To Haiti’s east lay Boriquén (Puerto Rico) and then a chain of islands— including
Matininó, Guanín, and Carib—extending south to another great coastline. Spears tipped with the stingray’s poison tail lay in the canoe’s hull in case they encountered Caribe warriors.
Haiti was the center of this universe. Caonabó marveled with humility that he would now live there and that the caves where mankind had lived before emerging to populate the world were in the center of Haiti itself. His noble people—the Taínos—had emerged from the Cacibajagua (the Jagua Cave) in the mountain of Cauta.3 The rest of mankind had emerged from the cave of Amayaúna (without merit, value, or importance).
Every hour, the crew rested and drank water, and, before midday, they entered the passage between the two southern cays and ceased paddling to eat. Caonabó understood they could return to this shelter if it stormed before nightfall, but they would not thereafter— regardless of the peril. The leader studied the sky, wind, and surf farther south and silently consulted Yúcahu and Guabancex, the female spirit of hurricanes and storms, and her herald Guataúba, a male underling who ordered wind and rain. He invited the crew’s and Caonabó’s opinions and, hearing no objection or concern, decided to continue to Haiti.
“How often do you turn back?” Caonabó asked.
“Not often,” the leader responded. “But you can’t make a mistake. The decision must be free from pride.”
Caonabó nodded, wondering if his pride was transparent.
“It also must be free of undue fear. How tall are the waves, how strong is the gale, does the sky reveal the spirits will have them grow or shrink or storm? Those are the questions to be answered.”
The men recommenced paddling, with a few taking turns to rest in the hull, and the canoe left the shelter of the cays to enter the ocean. It rose and fell on large waves blown west by a strengthening wind, and the water grew dark as the ocean deepened.
When the canoe surged upward, Caonabó gazed about to landless horizons far distant and recalled with pride how the Taínos had first ventured from the Cacibajagua onto the land and then braved the ocean. Before his recognition as the Taínos’ ancestral leader, a young Guahayona had led other men’s wives out of the cave and ventured by canoe into the sea, tricking his cacique into joining but soon throwing him overboard. Guahayona took the women to the island of Matininó and left them there, to live without men except for small portions of the year, and then continued alone to the island of Guanín to gather its guanín (gold alloyed with copper and silver, with a shiny reddish hue and scent of copper). He found a beautiful young woman, Guabonito, in the sea, and, while she would not sleep with him, she bestowed more guanín on him, healed his disease (syphilis), and showed him how to be virtuous. Guahayona then returned to the mountain of Cauta and, in recognition of his learning and respect for the spirits, was anointed ruler. Caonabó pondered Guahayona’s valor and search for wisdom and mused whether Guahayona’s journey and fortune foretold his own.
The rhythmic rise and fall of the canoe and swish of paddles dipping the sea lulled Caonabó to recline and slumber in the hull, which sheltered his nakedness from the wind. The wind’s howl and the splash of cold spray roused him as the afternoon waned, and, with apprehension, he listened to the crew discussing the weather. The gale had strengthened, and wave and spray curled into the hull, forcing the crew to bail with calabash gourds. Land wasn’t visible in any direction, and Caonabó recognized his dependency on the leader’s judgment and recalled the wrath of Guabancex. But there were no storm clouds, the canoe held a firm trajectory and balance, and the leader remained silent. The sun set in a fiery array of purple and gold, and Caonabó studied the night’s darkness envelope the eastern horizon, the stars rise from the sea to the heavens, and a crescent moon cast a silver coating on the undulating sea. He admired the crew’s mettle to venture at night and dozed on and off for hours.
Twilight’s faint halo revealed Haiti low in the distance, and, when he woke, Caonabó was astonished by its immensity across a great sweep of the horizon. He had learned that Haiti had a spirit within, an enormous female beast that nourished the Taíno people who dwelled there. The canoe was approaching the beast’s backside, her eyes far beyond the eastern horizon and her rump beyond the western. The beast gradually grew from a gray sliver to an enormous, mountainous coastline partially covered in lush, green forest. At dawn, they passed through a strait between imposing cliffs and a small island swarmed by birds (Cabo del Morro and Isla Cabra, Dominican Republic). Caonabó spied fishermen in canoes floating in a calm bay and smoke rising from villages inland, and the leader landed the canoe ashore at the mouth of a great river surrounded by beach and mudflats (Río Yaque, Dominican Republic). They had arrived in the cacicazgo of Marien, four nights’ journey overland to Uncle’s home in Maguana. Fishermen and naborias who transported fish and other goods inland crowded the beach.
The leader recognized acquaintances, and they offered Caonabó and the crew cazabi and papaya juice from Marien. Caonabó shared the remaining fish from Aniyana and related news of Father’s settlement, startled and gratified that he could speak to these people as he spoke to Father’s subjects on Aniyana. The leader traded the Aniyanan salt for pottery and gold jewelry, and, after resting some hours, he and Caonabó departed up the Yaque with a single crew member in a small canoe, leaving the goods acquired with the crew on the beach.
The river cut through a mangrove swamp into an enormous plain, bordered by mountains to the north. By dusk, gardens of yuca, mahisi (corn), and sweet potato lined the riverbank, stretching as far as Caonabó could see on either side, with mountains rising to the south to form an enormous fertile valley. The cultivation of the fields astounded Caonabó, rows upon rows of large dirt mounds planted with yuca and carefully mulched, weeded, and irrigated by water channeled from mountain streams. He recognized cotton and fruit trees, and the leader pointed out a patch of tobacco. They passed villages on the Yaque with twenty or thirty bohíos each, with hundreds of people and throngs of children at play. Taínos of all ages bathed in the river. The Yaque curled frequently, and, at each turn, Caonabó expected wilderness to begin—but it never did, as every turn revealed a new settlement.
The leader eventually brought the canoe to rest at a village where he was known. The local cacique greeted Caonabó with cazabi and juice and invited the visitors to share his caney for the night. At dusk, they feasted on sweet potato, turtle, and iguana, and Caonabó offered a shell trumpet made on Aniyana as a gift. After nightfall, Caonabó lay in a hammock, too excited to sleep, yearning to understand the calls of the parrots, the gurgle of the river, and the scents of the verdant gardens rising from Haiti’s backside.
In the morning, Caonabó and the leader bade the cacique, the last crew member, and the river Yaque farewell and started the journey south through the valley and then over the mountains to Maguana. They now strode through villages and fields on foot, greeting and greeted by villagers, glancing into people’s bohíos, listening to their daily lives. Caonabó glimpsed yuca being shredded and baked to cazabi, trees slashed and bled for rubber, and tobacco rolled to smoke.
They came to foothills on the valley’s southern edge and began to climb, arriving by midday at a pass to rest in a thicket of palms. The cacique of a nearby village offered a traditional meal of pepper pot—peppers and other vegetables stewed with hutia (a cat-size rodent) and bird in a large turtle shell. Caonabó gazed toward the mountains they would cross, a region strewn with rocks the leader called the Cibao, and was shocked by its remoteness. In less than a day, he had traveled from the most populated villages to the most splendid wilderness he had ever seen. He and the leader commenced traversing it, climbing up and down hills and ridges but gradually ascending until dark, passing through fields of wild, tall grass growing from hard, stony ground and groves of trees blooming orange or red flowers and tall pines. The air grew cooler, and, at dusk, they arrived at a village where again the leader was known.
As they retired for the night, Caonabó asked the leader, “Have you ever thought to remain in Haiti—i
f that pleased my father?”
“No. My wife and children are on Aniyana. Your father is the source of my nobility.”
“But if you didn’t have family or concern for your nobility?”
“Like yourself? I’d remain.”
Caonabó recalled Onaney’s prediction. “Would the Haitians accept you?”
“They’ve always been friendly and generous to me. It may depend as much on yourself as them.”
Caonabó fell asleep contemplating the rustle of the highland grass and the scents of pine resin and cold stone. They occupied the next two days much as the first, continuing south to Maguana. Mist enveloped the mountains at dawn, which the hot sun quickly burned away. They hiked until sunset, villagers freely offered meals when they passed, and local caciques shared their caneys for the night. On the final night, they rested at a village where the local cacique owed allegiance to Uncle and had played with Mother as a girl. He embraced Caonabó and praised Mother, and Caonabó remembered Father’s final assurances and realized that he did belong in Haiti, to be known as Mother’s son.
In the morning, Caonabó and the leader descended into the fertile valley of Maguana and, after some hours passing through crop fields and gardens, they arrived at Uncle’s village, teeming with more people than Caonabó had ever seen together. The leader brought Caonabó to Uncle’s caney, which stood astride an enormous plaza, and remarked that Uncle’s batey field was the largest in all of Haiti.4 For an instant, Caonabó remembered Father’s esteem that Uncle had more than two dozen wives, most of them born in distant villages, each marriage arranged to maintain or extend Uncle’s authority in the wife’s native village and territory. Caonabó grew apprehensive, preparing himself to meet a paramount Haitian cacique for the first time and anxious that he meet Father’s and Mother’s expectations of his conduct. Uncle was summoned, and Caonabó trembled.