Encounters Unforeseen- 1492 Retold

by Andrew Rowen

  Cristóbal’s triumph had been heralded before his arrival, and he was honored and feted by Andalusian nobility and clergy the entire Holy Week. He met with the leaders of the Genoese community, including Francesco Pinelo and others who had financed the voyage, all of whom were eager to participate in the exploitation of the Indies, which they believed augured tremendous profits in gold, spices, and slaves. Cristóbal was overwhelmed by job seekers and gold hunters who yearned to be selected for the second voyage. He frequently asked his captives to accompany him to meet and be examined by dignitaries and merchants, explaining repeatedly that their skin color proved he had discovered the western route to the Indies.

  Pedro escorted Bakako and Yutowa about the city to these audiences. One day, they crossed through Seville’s slave market and were stunned to behold not only black-skinned peoples, but many with olive-colored skin much as their own. Pedro explained that these peoples had been enslaved in the “Canary Islands” for resisting the king and queen and denying Christ. Frequently, they encountered pale-skinned natives parading about in exotic attire with lavishly decorated cemís and observed that, as always, hungry and destitute natives congregated near churches and wandered among the marchers, begging for food.

  One afternoon, Bakako and Yutowa were fascinated to behold a parade before the city’s enormous church,4 led by a native dressed as if the Christ spirit, bearing a wooden cross upon his back and a garland of thorns on his head. Bakako turned to Pedro. “What?”

  “During Holy Week, we celebrate Christ’s death and resurrection.” Pedro doubted the two Indians understood. “You know how Christ died?”

  “On cross.” Bakako and Yutowa nodded.

  “You know Jerusalem?”

  The youths nodded again, having heard of it many times now and that it lay as Castile across the sea from Guanahaní.

  “You remember our Mass at La Rábida?”

  “Yes,” both replied.

  “Christ rode to Jerusalem to die. He ate dinner with his follow-ers—we call it the Last Supper. It was then—the Last Supper—he shared his body and blood with his followers for the first time.”

  “Last Supper thank Christ crops fish?”

  “No.” Pedro barely concealed his irritation that the Indians never fully understood and completed his explanation of the pageant regardless of his friends’ comprehension. “As Christ foresaw, a follower betrayed him to the Jews, and after dinner they delivered him to the governor. This Friday, many years ago, he died nailed on the cross to save men from their sins. This Sunday, many years ago, he rose to Heaven. The man you see carrying the cross is enacting Christ’s last walk to the hillside where he died.”

  “Christ died. Now eat body, drink blood? Crops good? Fishing good?”

  Pedro was startled, and his sense of superiority punctured, by Bakako’s untutored perceptivity. “Yes. We believe in Christ and share his body and blood at Mass. Sometimes he hears our prayers and brings rain for the crops—and wind for our sails. Sometimes he punishes lack of faith.”

  Bakako spoke to Yutowa in Taíno. “The natives consult their Christ spirit for the same reason we consult our spirits—for assistance and protection.”

  “Maybe to protect each one and his family, but not their neighbors or their people. Everywhere natives go hungry because they don’t share food as a people. The only food they share is pretending to share the Christ spirit’s flesh and blood.”

  A vision of the behiques visiting the Niña flickered through Bakako’s memory and he recalled he had heard the word Jews a number of times before. He turned to Pedro. “Jews enemy Christians?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “They deny Christ is the son of the Lord.”

  “Jews different spirits?”

  “Yes. They deny Christ and the Virgin.” Pedro reflected on the complexity of the beliefs he held true. “They do worship the Lord in a mistaken manner.”

  Bakako turned to Yutowa and shrugged. “Pale men who worship different spirits are enemies. Why would they have it so?” Again, they reflected that Admiral’s peoples had a singular manner of existence.

  Haunted by his own foreboding and a fascination to ascertain their reaction, Pedro led his friends through plazas, alleys, and a gate in the city wall to a field on its southern perimeter, where eventually he spied a flat, burning area with tall, charred logs staked into the ground, removed from the bustle of city life.

  Pedro slowly ambled closer to the stakes, apprehensive to keep a healthy distance but bent on getting close enough to inspect the ash scattered about. He pointed at the stakes. “We are on holy ground. You see the stakes? Do you know what is done here?”

  Bakako pondered Pedro’s fascination and apprehension and sensed it was a place for evil spirits or their worship. He and Yutowa had heard Admiral refer to a Satan spirit more than once—as the root of evil in the pale men’s hearts. But he courteously sought another explanation first.

  “Kill pig? Kill cow? Cook fire?”

  “No.”

  “Pray Satan?” Bakako responded, venturing what he suspected.

  “No.”

  “Fire slaves death?” asked Yutowa, wincing to intimate he didn’t expect that the explanation.

  “No.” Pedro recognized Bakako and Yutowa would never guess the answer. “Here’s where they burn heretics. When a person pretends to believe in Christ but really believes as the Jews, he or she is burned to death here.”

  Bakako and Yutowa gazed gravely at the ashes, uncertain of the meaning. Pedro tried a second time. “A Christian must believe in Christ. If a Christian doesn’t, and secretly believes like the Jews, the Christian is punished—some to be burned here. No Jew may live in Spain.”

  The Guanahaníans’ hearts pounded, fearful that Pedro was revealing critical information they had never understood. Their own people believed in many different spirits, and belief or nonbelief in a particular spirit wasn’t cause for a man’s harm, no less death. No one killed those who invoked different spirits.

  Bakako anxiously probed Pedro’s meaning. “No believe Christ die?”

  “No. You die only if you pretend to be Christian but deny Christ because you secretly are Jewish.” Pedro sensed his friends’ incredulity and sought to reassure them. “You, Yutowa, and the others are neither Christian nor secretly Jews. You wouldn’t be brought here.”

  Pedro studied the ashen ground for a moment, realizing Bakako and Yutowa had not truly understood, and his heart now also pounded. In an instant, he asked himself if Bakako and Yutowa were wrong to be incredulous. But, in the same instant, he acknowledged the grave peril of asking that question on the very ground where they stood. He retreated fearfully from further discussion and led them from the field, remorseful to have taken them there. Silently, the three youths returned to the Indians’ lodging.

  That night, as they lay to sleep, Yutowa turned to Bakako. “The natives are treating us very well here.”

  “Yes, but they are very different from us,” Bakako replied, sensing Yutowa’s anxiety and desire to share it.

  “Do you think they burn themselves to death often?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you think that’s our people’s fate, but Admiral is just hiding that?” Yutowa whispered hoarsely.

  “Admiral doesn’t appear to be a savage.”

  “But the natives are savages! It’s one thing to enslave—we could do that if Caribes are captured—it’s another thing to burn people to death for the spirits they honor.”

  “I agree,” Bakako responded gravely. “It’s astonishing they do that. It’s not as revolting as eating people, but just as savage. Perhaps it’s an ancestral rite they continue to observe. Perhaps they’re just backward—they’ve never learned to live in harmony with one another. We’ve thought of these men as one people, but clearly they think of themselves as many, and entitled to treat others savagely.”

  Bakako stared into the darkness, trembling to imagine Guacanagarí�
�s horror when he learned how critical a man’s belief in the Christ spirit was to the pale men. Guacanagarí had ignored Admiral’s promise to teach of the Christ spirit, and Admiral had not divulged any worldly harm of failure to learn.

  On Easter Sunday, Cristóbal proudly received the sovereigns’ letter addressing him as Admiral and ordering a second voyage. He quickly prepared a memorandum summarizing his recommendations for Española’s settlement and government, advising that as many as two thousand volunteer colonists should go to secure and manage the island and its trade and that they should be settled in three or four townships built about the island. He believed greed for gold would fuel rapid colonization and proposed that the share a colonist received for the gold gathered would be set by the territory’s governor from time to time as development progressed—but that for the first year a colonist’s take should be half of that gathered. He indicated that a church should be built staffed with friars to perform divine worship and convert the Indians.

  The gold was not his own greatest glory. Cristóbal now believed the Lord had chosen his very name—Cristóbal—to designate him as the one chosen to bring Christ to the heathens across the Ocean Sea. He signed the memorandum with a mystical signature he would use thereafter, ending with the Greco-Latin form of Cristóbal, reminding that he was the “Christ bearer.”

  As Holy Week passed, all the Indians became ill, sniffing, coughing, and growing feverish and weak, their skin breaking into reddish rashes over the entire body.5 The extraordinary abnormality of their disorders and pains were terrifying, as was the uncertainty whether they would survive so wrought and suffer indefinitely or quickly die. Bakako and Yutowa desperately consulted Attabeira for guidance and cure. They feared the Christ spirit’s punishment for failure of reverence and honored him, as well. Inexplicably, Bakako recovered within days, as did Xamabo and Abasu, but Yutowa and others declined further, with severe earaches, labored breathing, and total incapacity.

  Columbus’s signature.

  By April 11, Cristóbal departed by mule for Córdoba en route to Barcelona. Yutowa and three other Indians remained too stricken to travel, and Cristóbal left them in Seville under care of friars. Before departing, Bakako tried to hearten Yutowa, reminding they now understood Admiral was returning to Bohío, which gave them hope.

  “We came to this new world together, and we’ll leave it together,” Bakako comforted him.

  “Admiral will take us only to Bohío,” Yutowa muttered. “We’ll never see Guanahaní again. We’re doomed to serve as his ears and tongue forever.”

  Bakako was startled, not by Yutowa’s prediction but by his desolateness, as if he didn’t care to survive. “Yutowa, you’ll recover as I did. We’re Lucayans. As Deminán, we’ll survive, prevail, and prosper.”

  As he approached Córdoba, Cristóbal’s elation was pinched by remorse. Proximity whetted his yearning to reunite with his sons. He anticipated a jubilant reception by Córdoba’s nobility and merchant community, as well as the Aranas and his many friends at the apothecary.

  But he was now nobility, and Cristóbal felt his stature no longer befit a relationship with Beatriz. His life had become his enterprise, her ignobility had no place in it, and he no longer cared for her because he no longer needed her love and support. He would never marry her, and, when convenient, he would discard her. In a rarest of moments, he felt guilt for the sins of ingratitude and deception—he and the Lord both knew he was born common just as she, and that she had fed, housed, and loved him for seven years and born his child.

  Cristóbal’s entrance into Córdoba was tumultuous. Andalusia’s clergy and nobility met him at the great bridge over the Guadalquivir, together with Diego, little Fernando, Beatriz, and other Aranas. Before all, Cristóbal embraced his sons and Beatriz deeply and explained to the Aranas that their Diego now commanded the first settlement in the Indies and was amassing a fortune of gold. Bakako studied Admiral’s natural sons and woman and understood that Admiral indeed was but human. Bakako showed the boys the bounce of the batey ball.

  The city council hosted the Admiral to a great feast. That night, after the accolades, Cristóbal returned to Beatriz and the boys in her house. He recounted stories of the naked peoples and their customs, the Caribes who ate human flesh, the weed floating across an enormity of the Ocean Sea, and the tremendous storms. It was hours before the boys slumbered, and then Cristóbal and Beatriz were alone.

  Beatriz proudly and passionately embraced him, undressed for him, and drew him into bed. Cristóbal was overcome by her warmth and love and his guilt, and he could not bear or dare to tell her what he intended at that moment. He recalled that Domenico had loyally supported Susanna throughout decades as her husband, whether he had loved her or not. A vision of Filipa’s embrace as she lay beneath him on their wedding night scalded his memory, reminding him that she had welcomed him in spite of the very ignobility he now shunned. They made love, Beatriz happily and Cristóbal as if he were outside his body beholding an act by himself that the Lord condemned. When finished, he realized he found neither happiness nor simple pleasure in anything outside the scope of his enterprise.

  By April 11, Cristóbal and his party departed for Barcelona, riding west to Murcia and then along the coast to València. The news of Cristóbal’s triumph reverberated throughout Spain and crowds flocked to glimpse the entourage in every village, town, and city they passed. An emissary of King João also approached Barcelona, dispatched to advise Fernando and Isabel that the lands discovered were João’s.

  LAWLESSNESS IN GUARICO

  As the sun rose, Guacanagarí prepared to greet the three lieutenants in the plaza and reflected on the deterioration in the trading settlement the pale men called “Navidad.” It barely existed anymore, as the pale men had dispersed into three enclaves in Guarico, apparently under separate rule. Their captain Diego and some dozen men still held the fort and heavier weapons, but Pedro, Rodrigo, and their followers paid no heed to him. A band of crude misfits followed a degenerate rogue named Chachu. Rather than using the fort to store the gold collected, each man kept his own on his person, and it was obvious neither Admiral nor the cacique Fernando would receive it. The pale men’s seed had died from neglect, and their only food was that which Guacanagarí supplied or they looted, and they looted daily.

  Each pale man now claimed four or five women, there had been no marriages, and it was suspected many women were pregnant. Their husbands, fathers, and brothers were incensed, and Guacanagarí heard bitter harangues for justice and punishment daily. He shuddered that his subjects might resort to their own justice, only to be slaughtered by the garrison’s weaponry.

  The pale men’s reverence for the Christ spirit, so apparent in Admiral, had decayed. Their daily areítos and communal invocations had dwindled to weekly, and now only Diego’s band at the fort observed them. Each still wore a cemí of the Christ spirit or his mother about his neck or in his pocket, and most invoked these at dawn and dusk for protection. But few, if any, consulted their spirits frequently during the day as had Admiral, and they lusted for women and gold instead. Guacanagarí considered that his own subjects’ frequent spiritual invocations provided tranquility and order, and he suspected the absence of spirituality fueled the pale men’s misbehavior. Their fear of spirits had been supplanted by an arrogant celebration of their own flesh.

  Many of the pale men now suffered from syphilis, some likely fatally. Guacangari had explained cures to the three lieutenants, but they had dismissed his advice, and it had been obvious they considered his knowledge of remedies inferior. He wondered whether the severity of the pale men’s infliction was Yúcahu’s design, as vengeance for their abuse of women.

  Guacanagarí spotted the lieutenants approaching and resolved to conceal his disdain that pale men were coarse, dirty, untrustworthy, and disrespectful of man, spirit, and nature. He greeted them courteously and invited them to sit with him, his nitaínos, and a youth Guacanagarí had selected to learn to speak their langua
ge. The lieutenants responded courteously to Guacanagarí but ignored and insulted the nitaínos as if they were naborias.

  Through gestures, Guacanagarí indicated he would select the food allocated to the entire garrison and deliver it to the fort, where it could be divided as the lieutenants wished. He reviewed the cazabi and fish brought by his subjects and, with unease, allocated a disproportionately large amount to the pale men, sensing his nitaínos’ irritation.

  Diego interrupted and gestured that the garrison should receive more. The nitaínos gazed at the ground, angry and disgusted, as no one ever questioned a caciqual decision on the allocation of food.

  “No,” Guacanagarí answered, shaking his head. “It will be as I have allocated. Your men have taken food from others already.” His youth attempted translation.

  Diego, Pedro, and Rodrigo were surprised. Diego touched his stomach and pointed to his mouth. “We need more to eat.”

  “No. You must stop the looting, both of food and jewelry, and you must stop taking married or unwilling women. Then you may have the food you need.”

  Rodrigo understood denial and, without waiting translation, replied in a moderate tone, with gestures. “We recognize our men’s conduct is not appropriate. But if you give us what we need, we’ll prevent the excesses.”

  Guacanagarí politely listened to his youth’s translation and paused as if to think, but he had already decided his plan. “I will give you one more basket of cazabi as a gesture of goodwill. But I will deliver the food to the fort today myself, and I will warn all of your men of the consequence of continued misbehavior.” With open disdain, he indicated the lieutenants should leave the plaza. All present, both olive and pale skinned, understood he had signaled his tolerance had reached its limit. Those olive also saw he didn’t fear a nonviolent confrontation.