Taino (29 page)

The gold taking bothered Caonabó enough, but then on the seventh day, a walking group of five miners came upon two of our girls bathing and captured them, making use of them repeatedly and with desperation. This Caonabó was told by one of the girls who could do so, as the other one was sick with vomit almost immediately and later bled from her insides and died. Caonabó gathered warriors and descended on the miners, demanding that they leave and threatening to burn the fort and kill everyone. Margaritte sent out three men who half-ran to Isabela and were pushed around by the warriors but, as they were leaving, were not killed.

Thus started the second war between Castilians and our people, just as the admiral prepared to sail on to Cuba and his encounter with Bayamo, who cursed him with the
guanguayo
. Those were indeed dark days; dozens and dozens died. The Castilians, at first, would not eat our foods, refusing even our offers of fish. Everyone complained at Columbus. “Where is the gold that washes like rocks on the beaches?” Father Buil taunted him. “Where are the friendly native servants that will do all our bidding?”

The admiral wanted to escape the tumult. He was a man of the ocean and thrived in long silences. The future of his enterprise, he felt, lay in Cuba, which he intended to prove a mainland, the outreaches of Oriental empires. Discovery of a mainland on this second and misbegotten voyage would indeed make the trip worthwhile, at once achieving hegemony of the promising mainland and rekindling support for his explorations. Thus, the admiral entrusted Hojeda and Captain Margaritte with orders to pacify the island, organize for war of conquest, terrorize and warn—
escarmiento
—using terror first of all, and while he did that, I must admit, I happily loaded his three new caravels.

That was the time I thought I would go home. It mattered little to me that moment here in Española; truly a lonely thirteen-year-old I was, and I was going home. War was next. I knew it. Caonabó would be attacked. Caonabó, whom I feared as much then as I have come to respect and love his memory. Truthfully, I wanted to miss it, I wanted to go home. At that time, my fervent anxiety was to return to my home island of Guanahaní, the first of our lands to be touched by Columbus, to see my kinsmen, my mother, be again in my
bohío
.

I remember Hojeda organizing three hundred infantry and thirty mounted Castilians and twenty-eight mastiffs and eight hundred men of Guacanagari. Guacanagari always allied with the admiral. Hojeda lined up the troops and marched them, ran them in phalanxes and squared them into squadrons. Do you know phalanxes? I asked the growing group of youngsters and adults. Phalanxe is the pointed attack formation of the Castilians, also called the wedge. From Hojeda, it was, I first heard those terms, as the Castilians he organized for war. He requested me from the admiral, as translator, but was refused. Thus busy with preparations for sailing, I was happily spared the bloody campaign of
requerimiento
, a conquest by announcement and massacre, which, after all, required little interpreting.

“Understand,” I told the circle of young people and the many
guaxeri
and captains who had joined in. “I have lived in this Española island longer than your
cacique
has years, but I am not from here. I had my home on the Guanahaní, one of the cays. I was a fisherman with my father and uncles when Columbus took me” (Here I fibbed to simplify the story).

“Did you ever return home?” A young man asked impolitely.

“No, I never did arrive at my
bohío
, not ever again,” I said.

Maybe now, in the passage to Spain of some ship, by paying a captain plenty, I could go to my old island. I care not to. No one is there anymore. All my own people were hunted down for slaves, sold into
encomiendas
, a few here, most in San Juan de Puerto Rico or in Cuba. No one lives anymore in my old island or my old village; all is empty.

I had not done with my tale that first afternoon before the boys were needed in other activities. I was thanked by them formally and made to promise to continue my story in the evenings, for which Enriquillo offered his
bohío
. Here and there, over these past weeks, I have responded to requests for my interpretation of events, and in this vein, I find the words to write it down.

One hundred twenty-five.
Blood not spilled, but a chopped hand.

Thus it continues.

Armed groups went out against Caonabó. But even Captain Hojeda, who hunted and killed well, could not locate him, neither in ambush nor in frontal assault. Nevertheless, Hojeda moved his troops around the country looking for the first incident as the “pacification” had begun.

On the Vega, Hojeda encountered Indian humor, which he rewarded with blood. Two Castilians had requested rides across a river on Indian shoulders, trusting their clothes to porters. Halfway in the river, they were dumped by their young carriers and left naked. Watching the naked
cassabe
-butts swim and hop to the other side delighted the young Taíno men, and for days the village laughed itself to sleep on the vision of the hairy Castilians enjoying a river bath.

Hojeda stormed the village and took two minor
caciques
. This is where the noses were slit down the middle and the ears of the two
caciques
were sliced in half, a deed of which Indian runners informed me within a day of its occurrence. Oh, the blood, one said in my ear, and scurried. Others arrived on their heels,
caciques
tied about the neck and pulled as they pull now the Negro people coming off the African ships. Two of these
caciques
and one their
guaxeri
the admiral studied glumly and ordered: “Decapitate them. In two days.”

But we were ready with our voyage to Cuba, and I had not the need to look. In my mind every day and night, I hugged my mother and lay in my hammock, hearing her songs. Many came to beg the Guamíquina, as they called the admiral, relatives of the doomed who pleaded. “Please, don't kill our fathers, please don't kill my
cacique
.”

They spoke in my ear, too, and the night before the execution, as the admiral readied for bed, I brought him fruit.

“The people here would cooperate more if their women were not violated and the cruelties would stop.”

“The men are sentenced, Dieguillo.”

“Consider the sentence, my admiral. Noses have been slit for the mere dumping of a pompous ass.” I knew the admiral enough to intuit he did not like the dumped hidalgos and got the slightest smile out of him, though he answered: “I cannot underestimate the element of respect. An Indian must not challenge the dignity of an hidalgo.”

“Even so, my
señor
, consider the balance. A well-deserved bath against two with slit noses and ears. Their warriors, even now, they want to make peace. They want no war with you. They fear, they even love you.”

Finally, he released the two men, after all their
subcaciques
and ni-Taínos pledged perpetual tribute to his jurisdiction.

Those days, we were ready to sail but going nowhere as the winds proved contrary. The admiral ordained a round of Masses. These were about finished and the prevailing winds shifting in our favor, when a “thief” was caught with great excitement. A young Taíno man had stolen a cutlass. He was brought in tied by the hands. The admiral, impatient to go, was petitioned to grant the maximum sentence against the thief, that is, the chopping off of his hand.

I remember the young boy. He was about my same age. They tied him to a post at the docks. “Why do they do this?” he asked me as I brought on board the last of the fresh
cassabe
torts. “I took the blade only to cut a few vines. Before, they took my pendant, and this man whose big knife I took even gave me a name. Why can't they just let me go?”

I wondered what response to give him when I heard the admiral. “Dieguillo, get away!” he shouted. “Leave the thief alone.”

The admiral of the Ocean Sea was busy with instructions for everyone. There were ships to be dispatched for Spain; final instructions to his war captains (“Reduce all resistance to the king's dominion”); instructions on what to build and what crops to put in. The boy sat in the sun and cried, knowing what his punishment would be. “We are not a thieving people,” he said a few times. “Like all my people, a simple reed I will respect.”

The ax came down as we pulled away, the admiral witnessing from the poop deck. I meant to miss the moment, working below deck and burying my gaze for minutes at a time. It was fate itself forced me to look out a small hole, precisely to see the arcing blade and hear it hit, the boy crying like a caught seagull as tears popped into my eyes to join his running blood.

One hundred twenty-six.
Discussions in the evening.

“What makes them that mean?” It was Enriquillo speaking. “So many things like that they have done to our people.”

This meeting was on an evening, at the
cacique
's
bohío
. For three straight nights I have told stories, many more even than I can write. Most of the captains, including Tamayo, and many
guaxeri
come to listen. Cao, my first guide of the trip, was there and, I noticed, seated behind Tamayo. I spoke of the chopped hand because of Tamayo, to help put him at ease with my words over his recent deed. I want to be closer to this warrior captain. It is important that Tamayo accept Enriquillo's orders to stop raiding. Ill-timed violence could destroy all chance at negotiation. I looked to Tamayo and nodded the palaver over to him, which he recognized.

“I believe the gold makes them crazy,” Tamayo spoke after a few minutes. “That is truly their god. Gold is more important to them than their own people.”

“That is what Hatuey said when he fled over to the Cubans,” Romero said. “‘The Castilians worship only one God, and his name is Gold,' he told them.”

“I heard that story as a child,” Enriquillo added in. “How Hatuey was burned at the stake.”

“Yes,” Tamayo continued. “That story was also in my ears. Everybody told that story some years ago, even the priests. It impressed me very much how he knew that about the gold. I was told he even put together a new ceremony, which he introduced at villages in Cuba. He would lead them to the top of the mountains overlooking the sea, carrying their baskets with all their things made of gold. The
behikes
would sing death and farewell songs, offering their spirits back to the waters, a way of refuge. Hatuey would sing an
areito
, asking the winds to hold the Castilians back, and they would throw all the gold into the deep waters.”

“Hatuey was caught by mastiff dogs,” Enriquillo said. “They say he killed two hands of Spaniards.”

“I was there when he was burned,” I told them. “At the place called Yara, near Bayamo, Cuba. But we are getting ahead of my story. Hatuey's death was in 1512 or so. I was telling you about things that happened at the very beginning, the war against Caonabó, in the year of 1494.”

“And Guarionex,” Enriquillo added. “They were the old
caciques
then. Big men. Because Hatuey was a lesser
cacique
here on this island. He was respected, but he was not as important as Caonabó, Bohekio, or Guarionex. And, it is true, his story comes later, when he fled from here a year after Anacaona's massacre,” Enriquillo said.

“Yes, maybe about five years after the massacre, around 1507 to '08, maybe later,” I said, noticing Doña Mencia, who looked away at the mention of Anacaona, her own mother's mother, and the memory of her sad demise. “But what I was referring to, in the very early wars, happens against Caonabó and Guarionex.”

Enriquillo stood. There were upward of sixty or more people surrounding the elders' circle, where my stories were being heard. He looked over the group. “Tonight many have come, our people,” he said. “It is a risk of assemblage I do not often allow. We are nevertheless well guarded by warriors at all corners.

“My elder, Guaikán, sitting here with us, gifts us with his memory. He makes me very proud to be Taíno tonight. You, our younger ears, hear his tale, as he would tell it to you. He knows your four generations. He speaks of the generation before our own, the generation of Caonabó and Guarionex, Guacanagarí and Bohekio, and Anacaona, those first ones to meet the Castilians. And before it is over we will hear of Caiçiju, who was of a generation before that. Guaikán knows that story, too. His own generation comes next, and then ours, of Mencia and myself, and Tamayo. Then comes you. So, these stories are your stories. You will do well to remember them and listen to what your elder says.”

Finally, in truly regal manner, Enriquillo turned to me. “Ni-Taíno Guaikán, our questions have taken you away from your story path. But since it is late and some must travel before they sleep, perhaps you could finish with the story of Caonabó, how he was betrayed and caught by gold and of his final moment. Of course, the next time, we would like to continue with the story of Guarionex and even hear about Hatuey.”

So, I finished that evening's round of stories with the capture of Caonabó, a memory I dedicated to my young guide, Cao, who had been true and ensured my safety into camp.

One hundred twenty-seven.
Caonabó's deception by Hojeda.

Caonabó was a warrior's warrior. His own father was a Carib war leader and his father's own grandfather was the first in his line to settle on this Bohío island. I was gone on our trip to Cuba when his capture happened, but I heard the story from him.

Caonabó was caught by gold, treacherously. Hojeda chased him several times after raids near to Isabela but had not dared battle the old
cacique
into his own territory.