Taino

by Jose Barreiro

  I would add, good friar, that from hearing these ravings (which later became law), Cúneo must have picked up the reference to Heaven and Hell, as he helped nurse the admiral during that voyage.

  May 1, 1532

  Fifteen. Hard to explain our Indian religion, even to a good friar.

  Don Bartolomé read my pages of the admiral’s meeting with Bayamo. He shook his head at me. “Cúneo mentioned nothing about a warning or curse. In fact, he said that the cacique wanted to go with the admiral to visit Castile. He said the admiral had gone ashore to hear Mass when the cacique approached him. And that he was very happy when the admiral mentioned that he would help the Taíno against raids by Kwaibs.”

  “No,” I said. “What got the admiral that time was how clear the cacique and his behikes were about the fate of our Taíno people.”

  “It would seem so, from your pages.”

  “I was there. I saw it. The admiral was fashioning the idea of the encomienda.”

  “Yes, I admit that. Your perception on Indian servitude being exchanged or requested for Christianization, that is a very good, Dieguillo. And you remember that from the meeting with Cacique Bayamo?”

  “Oh, yes. He said that even then. And Bayamo knew what it meant. We all did. Even I, as dense as I can be, I finally understood they meant to own us forever. All of us were to be their naboria, or worse, their complete slaves…”

  “A great sadness you must have known.”

  “Indeed, but for that little revenge of the guanguayo, which I confess, Father, lifted my Taíno spirit.”

  “That’s witchcraft, Dieguillo. You would persist otherwise?”

  “Father, please, trust my character, which you have known. There is no devil in it. The cohoba was at the center of our minds. It was the veil of water for us, it was the passageway between this world in our hands and the one of our memories, in our dreams.”

  “You still believe in that, Dieguillo? And you, a baptized Christian, and so knowledgeable in our sacraments?”

  “This is what I mean. Even now, the Christian owns everything. Even you, the best of Christians, would choke my little space. Let me have a moment with this. Or would thou call the Inquisition on me for explaining my people’s beliefs?”

  “Very well. I try to understand you. Proceed and forgive me.”

  “Understand, they were angered. And they did have a power. In our way. Now, let me finish, Father. Don’t start again. Because they did curse him, directly. And never again would he be as certain. He began losing his way then, after his encounter with Bayamo. By the time we arrived on ship, he looked graven. It was our old medicine, good friar. It was one connection that we Taíno had, a power that existed here even before your word of the Christ and the Supreme God with no mother who begot a man-son with no father. You see, even in that, ours was an opposite way. Our Supreme Being, Yucahuguama, had spirit mother but no fathers, no grandfathers.”

  “You help yourself not with these fancy notions.”

  “Let me tell you, Father. Because, it does not deny your way. It is opposite, yet it is also true. Our behikes used to say, the opposite of everything is also true. What would you say to that thought?”

  “Perhaps if you could just answer my question, Dieguillo. I don’t want to get lost in too much detail. The thing is: did the cacique believe in Heaven and Hell?”

  I shook my head.

  “But do you not see the importance. It makes your people nearly Christians, even before hearing the gospel. We can argue that the Indian can reach Christ directly, through the clergy, without need of overseers and masters.”

  I have grown used to his thick-headedness. The friar’s cause before the Spanish court has lingered for twenty years to little avail. Our people, those who are not in active rebellion or who, like me, have received special dispositions, have remained miserable slaves—killed and raped, cut at will. No, I do not care to prove that our people were like Christians before the coming of the first Iberians.

  We were not a perfect people; I only look in the mirror to prove that. But, I know the truth of what was. So, in my poor health, as I am become nearly a dried up man, my family lost and my heart on the ground, I no longer need to please anyone. I respect the friar, yes, and I am obliged for the many gestures he has had with me, but what I saw and heard I know and remember.

  “He did not mean Heaven and Hell, as you say it,” I told him. “Bayamo used the admiral’s own words to warn him to stop stealing our people. Good friar, our world here was very different. We did not just talk of the Spirit World as an afterdeath; it was not a place faraway. We could walk in and out of it, our ancestors danced with us, even as we lived.”

  “Don’t speak of pagan things,” he snapped at me. “I won’t allow it in my presence.”

  That was his precise response, and at that moment I felt a nausea from this greasy-smelling, thick-headed Spaniard. Truly, sometimes I wish to macanear this priest, smash his head like pineapple.

  I stared out my window for a long while. The friar assumed I was in meditation and scribbled away at my desk, copying selected paragraphs from my manuscript. I don’t like to displease him. I know we need him, and, in fact, I respect him very much. Presently, he wiped his pen, folded his papers, and stood up to go.

  “You should confess yourself soon, my son,” he advised as I lowered my head to receive his blessing.

  May 2, 1532

  Sixteen. Enriquillo’s conditions and vigilance.

  He came again in the afternoon.

  Father Las Casas is dark for a Spaniard. He had the cowpox as a child, in Seville, and it scarred him. His nose and face are long and he is thin but for a bulge at his belly, like the mahá snake after swallowing one of our tree muskrats. He sat on a three-legged stool next to my cot and, as always when excitation takes hold, the bulge of his stomach wiggled. His torso truly resembled the mahá with a meal still living in his guts.

  “Enriquillo is much the topic again at the government house,” he said. “They are obsessed with pacifying him. Another delegation has gone already to king’s court about it, even as I would go.”

  Enriquillo himself will not parley anymore with officials on the island, as the troops here have tried to sniff out his hidden camps while pretending peace. Once, shortly after taking to the bush, we met at the ranch of friends. He told me: “On our island all are thieves and liars. If the king is just, as they say, he cannot know what is going on.”

  Another time, I was sent to him by the governor general, Don Diego Colón, son of the admiral, with a partial offer of amnesty. Then, Enriquillo would not let the Castilian official with me within four leagues of his camp. Even I, who once saved his life, did not visit the main camp myself, though he did greet me properly with a feast at the edge of the Lake of the Encomendador. There I met Ciguayo, his allied chief, as well as the one called Romero.

  “Vigilance guides my every step,” Enriquillo told me then. “I trust not a one of them but the good friar, and even he I would hang if I had to.”

  I acknowledged that the good friar and some others among the Dominicans and the Franciscan priests were indeed trustworthy, but advised him equally. “Learn from the fate of your fathers,” I told him. “The Castilians are masters of treachery.”

  “The king might capitulate now because their campaign to ensnare Enriquillo has absolutely collapsed,” Father Las Casas said today. Again, he told the truth. The island government has fielded ten experienced captains to root out Enriquillo’s camps, causing him no end of trouble. Enriquillo retaliated by destroying the encomiendas of the specific captains sent against him, burning several and forcing the other four captains to stay close to their haciendas. I can say without any exaggeration that in the past year, Enriquillo’s prestige among our own people and among the Africans here has grown. Since the failure of the last campaign against him, many Spaniards are talking about returning to Spain or migrating to the mainland.

  “I am informed the king reasons he risks loo
sing the island if he does not interfere,” said the good friar.

  “Enriquillo has never asked for more than the king’s intercession,” I said.

  “Intercession in freeing all Indians,” he said. “Fray Remigio, when he saw Enrique in the mountains, reports that among the cacique’s demands is an end to the encomienda system in Española.”

  “He is a true hero,” I said, though I suspected the good friar was exaggerating. “It concerns me, Father, that he may ask for too much. All-out war from the king will come next if a peace is not reached.”

  “Not at all,” the good friar said. “He must do no less than demand an end to the encomienda.”

  Seventeen. The Bible guides Las Casas.

  Tonight, one day later, Father Las Casas stopped by again. He leaves in the morning for the monastery at La Plata, where meetings to discuss the Enriquillo negotiations are being held. Together we read a chapter from the Old Testament, one in Ecclesiastes where the good book tells of misbegotten gifts, how property and goods obtained immorally are not acceptable to God. He read it out loud after we read it silently and then reminded me of how he released his own Indians in Cuba, in 1514, to begin his work on our behalf.

  “The truth of our Bible guided me, Dieguillo,” he said. “The good book I have given you before. Read it. As you know how to, read the gospels. Read Matthew. This you must do every day, on three occasions. Empty your head of the things of behikes. The Devil can control that. You may not think so because you have a love for your people’s things, this is natural. But beware that the Devil can control them and you will fall prey. He will damage your soul. He will steal you from us. Fill your head with Christ, my son, Dieguillo.”

  “Yes, Father,” I agreed, though I hate to be spoken to in this manner. As I wrote before, I am past the point where I have to please anyone. But I said, “It is only that my memories exist, Father.”

  Before he left, Don Bartolomé took my hand. “Resist bad memories,” he said, forcefully. “Think of our Holy Trinity, think of our Christ on the cross.”

  Folio II

  Losing Everything

  Thinking of the elders, after my father’s death… First sight of the admiral, first greetings… Meeting Rodrigo and the Castilians, my turn of life, and leaving Guanahaní, my home… Report to the elders and pubescence… The old cahobaneros’ vision on the night and morning of my short farewell… Last words, for a while… Enriquillo sends his messengers, request of cohoba peace pact… A message and words of instruction… A letter to Las Casas… Useful Castilian things, paper, horses… News from Cuba, death of the Guamax rebellion… Remembering the elder Guamax… Jiqui, a warrior, escapes… Sojourn in Cuba, along the northern coast, searching for the Great Khan, the curse of Old Guamax, days of early reverence… Embassy to Camagüey… Caréy’s doubts and my certainty… Meeting Baigua, a ni-Taíno of Camagüeybax, the old ladies call for jaguajiguatu… Torres reports to the admiral, Cuba as mainland… Cibanakán, my father-uncle, comes on board… The old man Guamax, his curse on the admiral… Life on board and learning Castilian ways; out from Punta Maisí, at one with the admiral… Ignoring the feelings of my own people… Getting closer to the admiral… Even closer to the admiral… The good friar returns from La Plata… Preparations for his trip to court in Spain… Jiqui is captured… The execution of Jiqui… Cruelty is the province of the covered men… Pressing “the Indian cause” could get Enriquillo killed… Las Casas wants to end the encomienda; I want Enriquillo to live… A message for Catalina Diaz, midwife and friend… A note for later writing… Reminding Las Casas of Enriquillo’s first cause… The townsmen have reasons for peace… Dissimulated romancing with Catalina… Catalina believes in both us and them… The meeting ends… Good-bye to Las Casas, ashamed of my writing… Breeding my mare… Survival in humility… Our ways were respectful of reproductive powers… I do not really feel shame… Indians tell Columbus to look elsewhere for women and gold… Diving for yellowtail with Rodrigo and Caréy… Cibanakán faces the hammerhead, impressing the sailors… A generosity of parrots… Guacanagari, first Taíno sachem to meet Columbus… Columbus’s ship Santa Maria sinks on Christmas night… Guacanagari saves the day and provides the first gold… The white man’s industry is as impressive as his hunger for gold is immense… They get more gold from us… Spirit men remain behind as we sail off from Fort Navidad… Escarmiento—the fight to leave a warning… Sailing out to the great water…

  June 14, 1532

  Eighteen. Thinking of the elders, after my father’s death.

  The good friar has been gone ten weeks. Twice in early May he was roughed up while walking through the square. Fortunately, Obispo Cisneros, as well as the governor general, have pressed him into the negotiating embassy soon to discuss the parley with Enriquillo. For now, he is in study at the convent on La Plata, a much more quiet place than this hellhole of Santo Domingo. Despite our difficulties, on his departure he asked me to continue writing. I took the opportunity to request more paper, but, in all sincerity, I grew weary of the writing. It is only today, after an afternoon watching fluff clouds dancing through a light blue sky, that the wish to speak arises. The sky carries messages, as does now my pen.

  Today I ask my pen: how can I pass on what I have in me but by telling the truth about myself? And I say, reader of my words: do not think my story more important than another; it is just the only one I know how to tell. Those among my people of whom I have some knowledge, those remarkable among my guaxeri countrymen, I will try to recount here so that their names and their deeds might be known.

  From a young age I liked the feel of words; always I could make pictures from my eyes to your eyes. I remember cohoba nights that were full of that prettiness, when the chiefs described their old stories, told of our past, how everything came alive again, again and again, our village dreaming in unison, sometimes for days after an areito, sharing their words. I would pick up turns of phrases then and repeat them for my mother, her sisters, and for the boys in my group. I was well named as a boy, and often elders would remind me that my being was truly guaikán—keeping ahold of things, bringing them back with my head, as the guaikán fish will, never letting go. The elders liked me for that willingness of mine to repeat their old things, and in my village I was one of the youngest men ever to participate in the cohoba.

  After my father’s death, the old men cried for me. They loved me very much but they revered my father. Many would call me to their backs, as my father had, during the first round of cohoba songs, this for eight nights, and I would, out of my need, hug the backs of my two great-uncles, as they sang those beautiful songs I have not heard in forty years. During that time, my father was already drying in the sun, on the small bluff on a hidden bay called the Cove of the Dead. Night after night, following the double snort of the barrel sticks, chief after chief would talk and talk and they would cry to my father for me, telling me again and again his four great deeds, always recalling how our Taíno people came to be. The old people told many stories and sang many songs. Mind full of words that I have, I never picked up the songs, but I do remember the stories. I feel grateful for this time with my elders, when they showed me their love and gentility.

  After the nights of cohoba, ceremonies full of emotion, the old men prescribed for me eight days of rest. I slept and slept again and I was well fed, in the spiritual way, by my mother and two aunts. Twice in my dreams my father visited, once walking the rim of the sky, another time sitting with me, leaving me clear minded, physically recovered from his death and its condolences. Not two moons later, when the three giant seagulls of our destiny appeared on the horizon and bearded men covered with cloth first came to our shore, it was natural the old-timers would send for me, requesting that I take a group of men to meet them. They could not tell me if I would be in danger or not, they said, because they had never heard of such a thing as the giant seagulls described to them very early that morning.

  Nineteen. First sight of the admiral, first greetings.


  More than thirty young men, most older than me, followed me down to the shore. I admit I would not call myself a brave man. I have survived enough perils, have been wounded, both in incidents of war and as a slave, but seldom have I dared physical danger if it could be avoided.

  We walked toward the shore up and down sand dunes formed behind a line of brush. Gaining height on a dune, I could see the giant gulls were actually huge sails, and men climbed atop long poles while others pulled on long bejucos (ropes) from below. I motioned our men to lay low. “They are something like people,” I whispered, as they too preened over the top. Crouching now, we spread across the dune and made our way to the brush line, very near the shore.

  Maybe an hour went by and presently we saw three small boats emerge, one from each of the bigger ones. Two men paddled each boat, though, curiously, they sat backward as they rowed their vessels around the bigger caravels. Rope nets were lowered, and other men descended onto the rowboats. Presently I remember seeing the admiral for the first time, at the rudder of the larger rowboat, his slender back arched like a Ciguayo bow and that magnificent head of flaming red hair.

  Closer and closer their boats came and then thudded home on our sands. They were not sixty feet away from me. I watched the admiral directly as his eyes scanned the beach from the boat and saw us. Immediately two men went to assist him but he ignored them, jumping to the dry sand. All the covered men often looked his way, as if to check their actions. He held a long staff, banners blowing in the breeze.

  I am forced to say that the man they later called el descubridor vibrated at that moment. I saw it myself how he held that staff high, such as our own behikes might, and intoned a voice for the skies, how he spoke to the heavens in a harsh but resonant language.

  We were all stupefied, eyes wide like seashells. “How does one greet such beings,” Xiquí, my brother-uncle, whispered in my ear. “Where could they be from?” Cibanakán, my father-uncle, responded: “Perhaps the sky. Perhaps they have arrived from the sky.”