Taino (28 page)

Here in Bohío, when I arrived with the admiral, there were five chieftainship lines, each with many village and village cluster chiefs. They knew each other, spoke a common language, and shared many common memories of the clear lineages of careful intermarriages. On the other side were the Cuban
cacicasgos
, Taíno as well, and their simpler, older relatives, the Siboney. In Borikén, under one main
cacique
, Agueybana, they were the people of the ball game, of which I remember tales, even in my home islands, of how Borikén's large valleys were framed with ball courts, where
caciques
in grand ways hosted dozens of competing villages and clans, and some of my own people had gone, in years past, to the Borikén ball games. Then we had people of our own talk in Xamayca, too, and they were quite belligerent, even against each other. And, of course, there were the smaller outer islands like my own Guanahaní, and we were the same people. But the origin island was always this one of Bohío, our home, where the origin caves remain, where our Taíno gold veins were born.

The old
caciques
of that time, Bohekio and Guarionex, together held ceremonies and put through many doings for their peoples. These oldest
areitos
of the Taínos, kept among the grandmother-guided lineal-breeding sachem families and among the
behikes
and some of the learned
guaxeri
of the clans of the ni-Taíno lines, were the laws by which our villages were sustained, so that fighting could be kept to a minimum and never wars to destroy the mother lines. Mutual recognition there was among all the main
caciques
, both Taíno and Ciguayo, including Guacanagari, Bohekio, Guarionex, Caonabó, Cotubanamax, and Mayobanex—respect they had for each other's place in our island world, and it was balanced.

Yes, of course, sometimes they fought, but these were men who considered it a victory when the big shark could be diverted while the canoe paddles away without notice. So a fight might be decided most of the time by one combat, a good whack might sprawl a man on the ground, and the old men throw up their hands and call a halt to the fight, call for the peace-pacting talks. Inevitably, despite their mutual irritations, the
guaxeri
groups peace-pacted. This was a common custom, to call in the old
caciques
who valued harmonious relations. Of these, Guarionex was the grand old man. Others, like Bohekio, whose line was quite strong, had the prestige but not the art. Guacanagari, first friend and ally of the admiral, was much younger. He was gifted with the most clear genealogies and was about equally considered with Bohekio, but Guacanagari, the bosom friend of Columbus, was a mere child compared to Guarionex.

I told the boys: the two prominent
caciques
here in Bohío were Guarionex, who was the
cacique
of peace, using the laws of reason about safety and sustenance of the
yukaieke
and using also the art of the gift in provoking peace offerings; and Caonabó, who was decisive in war and excelled at leading warriors in fighting.

What made Caonabó and his brothers fierce was training by a Kwaib father who prepared them for war, even as they learned to walk. From two years of age, the boy is made to run, endure hits, eat raw fish and meat, and swim long distances, and always he is urged to fight fiercely. Caonabó endured the Kwaib boyhood discipline. But he was named and taught also by his mother, a woman of Taíno line through Guarionex, and she, before her death, saw him named Caonabó, Lord of the Living Ancestor, the Place of Gold.

Guarionex was a holder of the most ancient
areitos
of our people and, through them, a great strategic thinker. The peace-pact
areitos
were central to his knowledge. Guarionex's power, even more than that of Bohekio and Guacanagari, was based on the refinement of the
areitos
, he and his men and women societies could sing. Guarionex was a gifted singer whose sweet, lilting song could melt any Indian heart.

Guarionex's
areitos
came from the second cycle of Deminán stories, in the original tellings, which Guarionex's people remembered in disciplined fashion. At the time that the admiral reached our shores, Guarionex was fashioning the system of alliances that were to ensure the Taíno people's life in the whole of Bohío. The success of his life's vision, he professed in his
areitos
, could guarantee generations of peaceful existence for our island peoples. As his vision of prolonged survival required not only strategy, but also the best defenses against the raiding Kwaib that he could secure, Guarionex had engaged Caonabó, channeling the fierceness of the warrior chief to protect the Taíno future.

It happened some ten years before the coming of Castilians. Bohekio's sister Anacaona inherited the
caciquedom
of Maguana, with its main village in the valley of the gold, Bonao, ancestral entrail of our island. Gold, as you must know (but the young people didn't quite know it, I realized), is the residue of the spirits of our ancestors. It is not to be disturbed. In those days, Bonao was a territory guarded and respected as a most spiritual place.

Guarionex planned it all. It culminated his vision and life's work. Anacaona, “flower of the gold,” he offered the young Caonabó (“keeper of the gold”) in marriage. Anacaona, who was a trained peace queen, royal in all her lines as her brother Bohekio, gifted in the poetry that calms hearts, and leader in the carving and spinning arts, was a lovely woman and would make Taíno out of the Ciguayo's children. Thus it was done, a marriage peace pact. Thus Caonabó was brought in to the sister
caciquedoms
by the old peace pact maker, Guarionex, who taught him the
areitos
of the ancestors and assigned him to guard with his fierceness the sanctity of the Bonao. All this, I told the boys, is part of your old history, of the time before their coming, when our world could be understood in our own minds, when the currents of our own migrations, settlements, wars, and alliances had their own dictates and interpretations. The Taíno were a people who thought of peace. Among them, of the generation of
caciques
when the Castilians arrived, Guarionex sought peace the most. He was a true Taíno. And among them was the fighting defender, too, Caonabó the Ciguayo, who supported their peaceful, respectful ways with his truculent character and his ironwood arm.

One hundred twenty-three.
Castilians dance for gold.

Caonabó acted quickly, I told them, when the Castilians imposed their presence on our people. It was he who first said, enough, when the forty covered men left behind here from the wreck of the
Santa Maria
took to killing and raping and stealing. Not one of our women did a Castilian ask for in marriage, not one mother or father was consulted, no one's recognition sought, but by rape their relations began. Not once, after months, did any honoring of the Taíno families take place. So it was Caonabó, as I have written before, our first defender, who told his men to arm for battle and led the parties that hunted down and killed all the left-behinds.

The boys hollered in delight, and I waited for them to quiet down.

But the admiral returned, and I with him, and of Castile came another many, I continued. They settled a town, Isabela, the first one. And immediately the clamor among the Castilians was for the death of Caonabó. Occupied with pressing matters, the admiral did not hurry to vengeance. I helped in this by reminding him of the many misdeeds against our people committed by the left-behinds, and I believe my words helped tame the admiral's potential for revenge, which, in any case, was overshadowed by his organizing the first gold-mining expedition. For this purpose, he ordered Hojeda and others of his trusted captains out into the territories, admonishing them with strict instructions (as he had left with the forty of Navidad) to “treat well the Natives,” taking nothing but food and gold and giving many presents.

Thus in January 1494, I was sent by the admiral to translate for Hojeda as he crossed over the coastal cordillera and south into the Magua plain, later called the Royal Plain, this territory of Guarionex was famous for its leagues and leagues of
conuco
gardens. With Hojeda, we came to the foothills of the sierra of Cibao, on the edge of Caonabó's territory of Maguana. There, reverently, shyly, our own people pointed out to the Castilians gold dust and slivers in the rocky crevices of rivers.

This is where for the first time I saw the Castilians dance for the gold. And, yes, dance they did, laughing and splashing each other and hopping around, screeching like parrots and several even linking arms on shoulders and hopping together in what they call a
jota
, a dance of King Ferdinand's country, which looked to many of us Taíno then something like our own
areito
and confused us that maybe a thanksgiving was offered. And it was, but it was not a thanksgiving for the gold. It was giving thanks for finding the gold, for being led to the gold that they meant to take out of there and trade it for other things. Not for our
caona
but their
oro
, which could transform their lives, they danced and sang.

Even this behavior on their part no longer surprised me, I said to the boys.

I remember the report from Hojeda to Columbus at Isabela days later. The hidalgos present did not quite dance but paced and spoke in high glee, and joyfully a column was organized, commanded by the admiral himself, that would take formal possession of the gold streams and build a fort. This was truly the beginning of the end, I feel now, for by this action was announced the taking of all that is precious to us. I must confess, too, at that time I understood enough of the covered men's passion for the yellow metal (the vibrating of our ancient souls, our people said, could be felt in the streams and places of gold) that I accepted the admiral's decisions as inevitable and questioned them not.

I remember the cinching of horses and porters, the dressing of the soldiers, banners unfurled, the admiral and troops anointed to the field of battle by Father Buil, armor on all shoulders and chests. But there was no war that time, only the long, fatiguing march through thin trails in the heat of our Caribbean month of first rains. Coming fully into the villages of the Magua, the admiral had lombards fired and scrolled pronouncements read in Latin and all our people were once more astounded by the covered men and offered them great quantities of food, which they hardly touched at first, and helped them cross rivers and carried their packs and even sang for them. Thus was a fort built, called Santo Tomás, beginning on March 15, 1494, and some twenty of the best miners, guarded by a squadron of more than thirty soldiers with harquebuses, were left behind to commence mining operations under Captain Pedro Margaritte, whose report I later heard.

Twelve suns passed, and I returned with the admiral to Isabela to witness, incredibly, a little town manifesting, more than a hundred houses and
bohíos
for more than a thousand Castilians and several hundred Indians. Only twelve suns and I was horrified to witness the creation of a little piece of Seville or Barcelona or any Castilian town, without the cathedral, yet, but with cows and pigs and men living with each other inside houses, slop all over the place and the men stinking so violently the new town was already pestilent.

There was insult and accusation in the air. What Castilian men were not sick with fevers and vomit or famine were in active opposition to the admiral. These included the priest, Buil, and most of the so-called nobility, who resented the forced labor imposed by the admiral on all able-bodied men, regardless of nobility or rank. Father Buil, whose shouts and insults against the admiral I heard again and again, was the leader of the disrespect. Perturbed and agitated was Don Christopherens by all this, and only by the invocation against mutiny and rebellion and the imposition of lashings for the mildest insubordination was his command maintained.

One hundred twenty-four.
Caonabó serves notice on Fuerte Tom
á
s.

The
cacique
Caonabó, aware that the covered men were walking his territory again, requested to know if they were accompanied by women this time. Informed they were men alone, he inquired as to their treatment of the local people, which, at first, was not abusive. (Pedro Margaritte was one of those few Castilians that were touched by the message in our natural kindness and was adamant that his men not impose upon our people.)

For a few days, Caonabó watched as the covered men built the fort. Then, on the fourth day, a crew of miners went to the richest river and began to extract gold. This the
cacique
found intriguing, as the very activity was meaningful and sacred to our people.

Remember, I told the gathered group, the
caona
for us was the bright light of the sun made matter through us, the humans; remember what the old people said, in those places, even without
cohoba
, you can feel the emanations of the earth; there, the breath of our ancestors mixes with ours. They stayed with us our ancestors and would not be dissipated if the places were prayed over and often resin smoked.

I must note my surprise to see how many of the young people awakened to my words. Even Enriquillo, who was, after all, educated by priests, grew up at a distance from that knowledge. Thus, over the past few days I have been talking now, the group has grown, including more and more young women.

I have told them a teaching of our old
behikes
, who believed that the best of ancestor spirits rested and were reflected in the gold. Blessed with much light in life, these “good-minded ones,” these most Taíno of our people, do not fully depart the earth at death, but deposit their spirit in the gold, adding ever so slightly to its creation in the rocky crevices of brooks, there to keep cool and to be gathered and fashioned to our likeness and to reflect our ancestors in the light of the
areito
fire at all-night ceremonies. We go to the sun when we die, the old people said. The spirit that is in us in death, travels to the bright yellow father of the cloudless sky. As our flesh dries in the wind, our spirit is released and returns to the sun. Thus the shiny metal was respected and loved, and what was made of it—masks and chest (to reflect the heart) pieces and belts and ankle braces—all had a purpose and a connection. The gathering of gold was reserved for the most serious of ni-Taíno among our people, and always they abstained from sexual relations twenty days before going to gather it.