by Andrew Rowen
From the caney stepped a large, late-middle-aged man. A guanín medallion hung upon his chest displaying a double rainbow—one rising above the flat earth and one descending below—proclaiming the bearer’s caciqual authority and responsibility to influence the spirits for the benefit of his people and to bridge spiritual and temporal life. His ears and nose were adorned with gold, and a cotton belt embroidered with pearl was wrapped around his waist. He slowly lifted his arms in a sign of friendship and said in a deep voice, “Welcome to Maguana, my nephew.” He paused momentarily, scrutinizing Caonabó and searching for something of ceremonial significance to say, but memories and affections for his sister crowded his thoughts. Chuckling with emotion, he simply proclaimed, “You do look like your mother.”
Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo’s sketches of a bohío and caney, sixteenth century.
GUACANAGARÍ
Marien, Haiti
Eight-year-old Guacanagarí was relieved to be excused from his father’s lessons on conduct and joined his two older sisters and younger siblings swimming at the beach late one afternoon. They found a spot where the ocean waves slipped partially through the offshore coral reefs to break ashore, and Guacanagarí carried a brother—a toddler born of one of Father’s younger wives—into the surf. The youngster screamed with delight as waves tumbled before them and surged past. Heitiana, the oldest sister, warned Guacanagarí to stay in the shallows as the child hadn’t learned to swim. Soon, she called all the children to the beach, where they sat as their naked bodies dried in the breeze and hot sun, and then announced it was time to return home for dinner. It would be dark that night as the moon had waned, and the village would prepare for nightfall earlier than usual.
Guacanagarí obeyed Heitiana with trust and affection, regardless that it was he who might rule one day. The children slowly meandered behind her from the beach, and Guacanagarí and his second sister, Butiyari, each bore siblings on their backs. They crossed an embankment where the forest began and encountered two sentries on duty, teenagers just older than Heitiana, armed with spears, an arrow sling, and a shell trumpet for warning the village of an attack. The sentries nodded deferentially to acknowledge Guacanagarí as of the caciqual family, and he put them at ease with a wave of his hand. Heitiana and Butiyari, both pretty, began to flirt with them.
Guacanagarí listened and recalled overhearing Father and Mother discussing his sisters’ marriages. Heitiana was now a woman and Butiyari soon would be, and Father, Mother, and Uncle would marry them to important subordinate caciques, not Uncle’s soldiers. Guacanagarí studied Heitiana’s and Butiyari’s grace in their innocent tease and realized that the soldiers appreciated the attention well beyond the flirtation.
The toddlers squirmed on Guacanagarí’s back as the conversation extended, and he released them on the ground and turned to scan the sea, as if a sentry himself. Uncle ruled the territory of Marien from the coastal village inland behind him (now Bord de Mer de Limonade, Haiti). To the north, directly off the beach, fishermen hauled in nets, lines, and hooks, just as they did every day, supplying the village with food. In the distance to the west, a darkly forested, mountainous cape (Cape Haitien, Haiti) majestically rose to tower above an expanse of intervening farmland and beach, as if to herald the importance of the territory. To the east, a mangrove swamp jutted into the sea, obscuring the coastline beyond. Guacanagarí sensed order, tradition, permanence, beauty, and peace.
The sentries’ watch continued to nightfall, when they would retire to the village until dawn. Heitiana ended the conversation, and Guacanagarí and the children tramped behind her through the forest to the village, which was well organized with many streets and a clean-swept central plaza. She handed the children over to their nurses in the plaza and joined Mother to supervise naborias cooking dinner on a fireplace before their bohío.
After dinner, Guacanagarí and his sisters relaxed at the bohío’s door while the younger children were laid to sleep in their hammocks. A small fire smoldered inside to repel mosquitoes with its smoke, and cooking fires dwindled throughout the plaza, casting an amber hue that gradually diminished to points of orange glow from dying embers. They had been taught to return to the bohío at night. While one’s soul lived on in another place after death, spirits of the dead haunted the forest—apparitions like the living but without navels— and stalked about at night. Heitiana noticed Guacanagarí staring into the darkness and understood he was frightened by the spirits that might be lurking.
“We’re safe here.”
“I know that.” Guacanagarí was annoyed. “I’m not scared. I know the spirits are there and was thinking of them, but that doesn’t mean I’m scared. They have their place and we have ours.”
“I didn’t say you were scared.” Heitiana and Butiyari grinned. “Tomorrow, after you’ve finished what Father sets for you, we can teach the younger children to play at batey.”
Guacanagarí and his sisters talked until Father came to sleep and then all retired.
Unbeknownst to Guacanagarí and the sentries, beyond the mangrove swamp and their sight, a dozen canoes had rapidly plied the ocean that afternoon, approaching the swamp from the northeast. The crews were Caribes from a homeland they called Turuqueria (Guadeloupe), more than seven hundred miles away. There was a deliberate ferocity in their appearance, their black hair uncut and uncombed and their naked olive-brown skin painted with red and black stripes. They had arrived at the swamp before dusk’s last light, located a small rivulet channeling through the mangrove root in which to hide their canoes, and found shelter on mudflats deep within—where they had slept undetected. Some of them had raided the village years before.
These warriors woke before dawn to eat, invoke their spirits for victory, and tip their arrows with poison. In the faintest twilight, they dragged their canoes into the ocean and circled west to the beach where the children had played the afternoon before, careful to avoid the smack of their paddles against the hull, particularly when landing. They pulled the sterns of their canoes ashore to permit a rapid escape and spread apart to enter the forest at intervals to advance upon the village aligned in an arc. But they quickly halted at the forest’s edge when they heard voices.
The two sentries had returned to their post and were eating breakfast and chatting, speculating whether Heitiana and Butiyari would return that day, their weapons and trumpet set on the ground. Caribe bowmen silently aimed and shot their arrows, which pierced the sentries’ chests, and they toppled, gasping hoarsely. Caribes rushed to strangle them and muffle any cries, and the sentries suffocated in excruciating pain.
The Caribes advanced quietly and rapidly on the village in search of their prey, young women or girls to be captured for use as wives, concubines, or slaves. At the village edge, they howled a war cry in unison to terrify the sleeping Taínos and then charged with spears and macanas (heavy wooden clubs) into the bohíos, spearing or bludgeoning those men who rose. They seized the women and girls they found desirable, dragging them from the bohíos to haul them to the beach. Bowmen dispersed along the village perimeter to shoot those Taíno men who were able to give chase.
Guacanagarí woke in terror at the sound of the war cry, lost his balance, and fell from his hammock to the ground, cringing at the clamor of footsteps charging toward the bohío and his brothers and sisters screaming. He peered desperately in the semidarkness to discern Father’s dark shadow rising to meet the onslaught and the shadows of Mother and Father’s other wives rushing to shelter his siblings. Invaders crashed through the doorway and attacked Father, hurling him to the ground and thrusting a spear to pierce his heart, which he deflected but which sank deeply into his thigh. Guacanagarí was trampled. He heard Mother and the other wives shrieking, and he rose to help Father, who shouted that Heitiana and Butiyari must be protected.
In that instant, Guacanagarí grasped the meaning of the chaos and what was at stake, and he lost fear for himself, consumed with the terror that he must save his sisters or lose them. He
recognized Butiyari screaming and charged through the doorway into the plaza to behold Father’s naborias struggling to wrest her from a Caribe warrior dragging her toward the forest. Suddenly, one of the naborias shrieked and bolted upright, gasping and holding his chest, pierced by an arrow that had flown unseen from the forest. But the other naborias held their grip on Butiyari, and other villagers joined the fray to bludgeon the Caribe. He toppled and released Butiyari, and she fell to the ground, bleeding from the groin.
The Caribe warriors fled as quickly as they had attacked, vastly outnumbered by the villagers now awake and ready for combat. Guacanagarí began to run with other men toward the sea. He had not seen Heitiana, and that terrified him. But, before he reached the forest, one of Father’s naborias restrained him and warned him the battle was for men and that he must return to Father. The naboria stood firmly between him and the forest.
Guacanagarí returned to Father and Butiyari, who were carried into a bohío where Mother and the village behique, together with Father’s other wives, attended them. The women stopped their bleeding with cotton cloth. Father gasped for Heitiana. A naboria responded that she was not yet accounted for, and Mother wailed uncontrollably.
The sun finally rose on the village. The reed of plundered bohíos, pieces of shattered furniture and utensils, personal vestments, jewelry, and torn hammocks lay strewn on the ground as if a hurricane had swept through. At the shore, the men had watched the Caribes escape, apparently with over a dozen captives. During the morning, they were identified by their absence, including Heitiana. Some were married, some unmarried, and some but girls. Some were nitaíno, some commoners, some naborias, and Heitiana was of the caciqual family. The entire village had been violated. A number of villagers had died responding to the attack, including the two sentries. One Caribe had been killed and some wounded, who were unable to escape. They were tortured and executed.
Mother knew Guacanagarí loved Heitiana and feared for her fate, and she held him to console him. “Guacanagarí, listen to me— Heitiana will not be killed. She will survive to serve the Caribe as a wife or concubine.” Mother reflected on what she had been taught as a girl, and told her son before he heard it from others. “If Heitiana has daughters by the Caribe, they also will become wives or concubines. If she has sons, they will be eaten.”
“Maybe she can escape?” Guacanagarí asked. “Can’t we follow them to rescue her?”
“No. No one escapes the Caribe. Their brutality makes rescue impossible.” Mother sought to foreclose any hope. “Guacanagarí, we will never see Heitiana again.”
“If no one escapes from them, how do you know they eat boys?”
“We’ve known that for generations.”
In the following weeks, Guacanagarí did reconcile himself to losing Heitiana forever. There were young children in the village who had lost their mothers, and he was humbled by their misfortune. Father and Butiyari slowly recovered. Uncle’s authority was never publicly criticized, but his esteem suffered greatly. This was the second attack during his rule, and his own sister’s child had been seized.
One morning, Father invited Guacanagarí to observe as he assisted Uncle as a member of Uncle’s council of elders in the routine administration of the village and cacicazgo. The elders sat on wooden duhos (ceremonial seats) in the plaza, and Guacanagarí listened as commoners and naborias reported on the yuca and fish harvested over the past week and presented baskets of cazabi, smoked fish, and fruit. Uncle distributed the food among the villagers, with fishermen receiving cazabi and fruit, farmers receiving fish, and the sentries, woodworkers, and other craftsman receiving a bit of all. He allocated greater delicacies, such as bird and iguana, to the caciqual and nitaíno families.
Father taught his son as they walked home afterward. “It’s a cacique’s responsibility to provide for all his people. In return, the people owe him absolute loyalty. You saw that Uncle provided food for all?”
“He gave people different things. Some got better food than others.” Guacanagarí studied Father’s reaction.
“That’s correct. Uncle gave each person the food he lacked. He also recognized the nobility of the nitaínos and gave them delicacies. All present were satisfied with the result. All have food. None hunger.” Father appreciated his son’s perception and kindness. “Would you have done differently?”
Guacanagarí shrugged. “No, if you think it’s fair.”
“It is. Uncle is known to be fair and generous.”
Guacanagarí gathered his thoughts before continuing. “My friends say some people think Uncle isn’t a good leader. They say other tribes laugh at us because we can’t protect our women.”
“The Caribes raid other cacicazgos, too.” Father was stern. “Uncle is a good cacique. And he is both your uncle and your cacique, so you owe him unquestioned loyalty. He’s called a cohaba ceremony. He and the local caciques will consult the spirits to consider better ways to defend the village.”
“What’ll they find out?”
“People have ideas. We could have more sentries, guarding all night. But Uncle could decide that kind of thing himself. The Caribes pass along Haiti’s northern coast before attacking us. Uncle’s cohaba might consider whether we should ask caciques to the east to warn us when the Caribes pass, and what we should offer those caciques in return.”
Within a few weeks, Uncle’s subordinate caciques in Marien’s largest villages arrived for the ceremony. Together, Uncle, the village behique, and the caciques began to purify themselves before invoking the spirits, remaining celibate and abstaining from meals for a few days other than drinking tea brewed from the plant whose juice was used for soap. They grew physically weaker, releasing the constraints of ordinary perception to achieve better communication with the spirits, and, on the eve of the ceremony, they induced themselves to vomit any food remaining within by placing a ceremonial stick— carved from the rib of a manatee—down the throat.
The following afternoon, finely carved wooden duhos were arranged in a semicircle inside the bohío at the village edge, where Uncle stored his cemís, and a cohaba table set before them, its carved base depicting a behique squatting with his hands on his knees, the tabletop balanced atop his head. Guacanagarí approached at a distance to spy the village behique preparing the cohaba powder, a powerful narcotic, on the tabletop, crushing pods of the piptadenia tree and other ingredients, whereupon Uncle and the caciques entered the bohío. Soon, Guacanagarí overheard Uncle raise his voice in a speech and tone weirdly contorted, seeking a direct communication to attain the spirits’ wisdom. The caciques responded, in tones similarly contorted, frequently loudly and with intensity, debating with Uncle what had been revealed.
The ceremony continued well into the night, and Guacanagarí returned home, resigned to learn its result the next day. As he lay to sleep, he imagined himself grown, leading the ceremony as cacique. But he was haunted by his final conversation with Heitiana and his fear of men’s nighttime spirits. He realized he should have feared men instead.
Cohaba table, duhos, and vomit sticks.
ISABEL
Segovia, Castile (January–June 1465)
In January 1465, thirteen-year-old Isabel stood awaiting her older brother, the Castilian king Enrique IV, in the great Hall of Kings of the majestic alcazar in Segovia, where the nobility had pledged allegiance to their father decades ago. She shivered, as cold winter winds swirled around the castle’s lofty promontory above the ravines carved by two rivers that joined far below.
Above her, displayed on the walls of the great hall, loomed the gold effigies of over thirty Castilian rulers—kings and a few queens—both great and undistinguished over past centuries. Isabel was humbled to be in their presence. She gazed up at them and wondered what struggles they had surmounted to achieve and maintain their crowns. She admired that some had fought valiantly to establish and expand the boundary of the Castilian kingdom during the Reconquista, the Christian reconquest of Hispania from the Mohammedans who
had invaded from Africa in the eighth century. She mused whether the queens had commanded the respect of their husbands and noblemen.
With honor but little remembrance, Isabel studied the visage most recently sculpted, that of King Juan II, her father, who had died when she was a young child (1454). She recalled overhearing others chide that Father had been a weak king and fallen subject to her mother’s counsel and ambition, executing at Mother’s insistence a nobleman who opposed her influence.5 Whether Father’s weakness was true or not, Isabel was heartened to think of Mother, Isabel of Portugal, once queen and now queen dowager. Mother had loved Father, and her love and care for Isabel and Isabel’s younger brother, Alfonso, remained boundless. Mother had been Father’s second wife and had born Alfonso within a year prior to Father’s death. Yet, in spite of Mother’s ambition for their infant son, Father’s chosen successor had remained his son Enrique—born to Father’s first wife6 and then nearly thirty years old. Father’s will had left the small village of Arévalo for Mother, to which Mother had retired—dejectedly, Isabel knew—from court with herself and Alfonso.
For an instant, Isabel proudly recalled that her own lineage included not only the Castilian royal family above her but the English, through both Mother and Father, both descendants of King Edward III, and the Portuguese, through Mother, as Mother’s mother, Isabel de Barcelos, was an aunt to Portugal’s King Afonso V and sister-in-law to the renowned Prince Henrique. But Isabel’s pride quickly vanished as she was overcome by the grim reality that her brothers, King Enrique and young Alfonso, now were in opposing camps, openly hostile to each other. Uncertainty, chaos, and fear were enveloping Castile and herself. She now lived at Enrique’s court in Segovia alone, separated from Mother and Grandmother, whose love and counsel she dearly missed, and under heavy guard.