Taino

by Jose Barreiro

  Seventy-one. Escarmiento—the fight to leave a warning.

  The first fight happened on the way out. I did not see it but heard the details from the men who fought it. We headed west on the northern coast of the island looking to sail for the open sea when the admiral decided to put in on a calm beach and caulk the Niña. It was Ciguayo country, and it was not long before we encountered the long-haired, black-faced bow-and-arrow warriors of Mayobanex.

  One old man with very long hair was captured in his canoe. I helped the admiral interrogate him. At that time, the Ciguayo to me were as enemies, maybe the dreaded Caniba of our most horrible tales. Later, I would know them differently. The old man’s language was strange to me; I could understand only a few of his words. The admiral was harsh. He also believed them to be the Caniba of our Taíno nightmares. These Ciguayo, I would learn in time, were partly assimilated into our people. Their fierce appearance and war abilities resulted from their fights with mainland raiding parties. These realities, however, were not the concern of Don Christopherens.

  The admiral released the old man but the next morning, spotting a group of warriors on the beach, he sent a boat with seven armed soldiers to produce what he called un escarmiento, a sort of warning. “This one is for our comrades left behind,” he told the men as they boarded. “Show your fighting skills. Leave a memory here of the bite of our steel.”

  Pretending to trade for the Ciguayo’s bows and arrows, the soldiers tried to slowly disarm the group on the beach, but the Ciguayo warriors suspected the ruse and became agitated. They hid their weapons and approached with ropes to trade for the hawk’s bells that intrigued them. Then the soldiers attacked, one man slashing at the two nearest warriors with a broadsword. With one blow he cut the buttocks off of one man and with another, half of an arm. A crossbowman quickly fired two arrows, one through a man’s chest and the other through a runner’s leg. The Ciguayo retreated to shoot their arrows, but the two crossbowmen continued to wound them in their bodies from much greater distance. Nor did any more Ciguayos dare the sharp steel of the three experienced swordsmen who preceded the crossbowmen, swords slicing menacingly through the air. Recognizing they were up against deadly foe, they took flight into the forest.

  Seventy-two. Sailing out to the great water.

  Just days later, we sailed for the great distance, beginning the monotony of the open ocean. That is the way we left the sea of our reptile islands and thus that ends the narrative of the first voyage of the admiral, Don Christopherens Columbus, to this world he called the Indies. Such are my notes as requested by the good friar, Don Bartolomé de Las Casas, at the Monastery of Santo Domingo, about my memories of those early sailing trips and what they meant to me.

  Folio III

  To Go Forth and to Return

  So much to tell… Storms at sea and the loss of my father-uncle, among others… The traveling priest… Columbus and the chickpeas… King João’s bean maps of the Caribbean… Palm fronds and one less Indian… First sight of Spain with Caréy… Laugh and cry—“La cabra” of the Inquisition… How Las Casas remembered me… The admiral requests my words… Rodrigo Gallego becomes our servant… Meeting Queen Isabel, who requests my adoption by the admiral… A dinner party in our honor, Rodrigo meets Matilda… Out with Aragonese girls in Catalonia… I find the fair-haired woman of my dream… Caréy’s bout of drinking… The admiral is titled and granted… Something about Oviedo: he lies about my people… With Rodrigo’s Gallegos at Otero del Rey, his mother’s offering to the duendes of the water spring… A run with bulls for San Fermín… Rodrigo’s home village… Good-bye to Atoya, and Castile… A country where many are poor and destitute and a few are very rich… The romance of Cúneo’s mares… Captain Alonso de Hojeda, the perfect soldier… Meeting the “man-eating” Kwaib, how tales get started… Discoverers are saved by Indian grandmother… Perfect proof of Carib perfidy: a castrated boy… Hojeda draws first blood, Cúneo in on first fight… Cúneo’s treatment of a Kwaib warrior woman… Caréy responds to Cúneo… The news on Fort Navidad… The story of how Fort Navidad was overrun by Cacique Caonabó… The story denied… Isabela is built, the first metropolis… My loss of innocence… A devilish bout with the grape… In need of punishment… Las Casas reports mixed news… I must get to the Bahuruku… Flogged out of my guilty stupor…

  October 10, 1532

  Seventy-three. So much to tell.

  I have much to tell and a good stack of paper left over from the good friar’s contribution, so I will continue to write. Rather than disturb the narrative, as I await word from both Enriquillo and Father Las Casas, I will write on about the voyage to Spain, what I saw there, and how the admiral prepared his return trip.

  October 12, 1532

  Seventy-four. Storms at sea and the loss of my father-uncle, among others.

  Yesterday afternoon, a late summer storm came up, bringing a rare coolness in the evening vapor. In the early morning I had dreams of Cibanakán, old father-uncle of mine. I felt him again hunched over behind me, nearly curled around me as I crawl out from his grasp of death.

  On ship, going to Spain with the admiral, at the onset there were almost a dozen of us Taíno and four Ciguayo, a third as many as Castilians had remained at the fort named Navidad. None survived of their colony, and that is a story I will detail later in these pages. While of ours, of the Indians on ship, I can say that only seven survived the voyage. Maybe half died on the way there. Others died in Spain.

  What got my Taíno were two terrible ice storms that caught our ship, the Niña, as we entered Portuguese waters. The whole length of that great ocean we had sailed, and pleasantly, to tell the truth. When snow and ice as we had never experienced took our destiny, with winds that ripped the sails and clashing waves tossing our ship in midair, lightning and cold, incredible cold where leather and sail froze, most of us Indians had no clothing. I am certain to have died but for my great father-uncle, Cibanakán.

  The storms followed each other by two weeks, February 12–16 and March 2 and 3, 1493. The first one started in the early morning with heavy winds, and by afternoon, as the sun lowered, it turned to pure ice, first a blizzard of snow, then sheets of ice that froze your feet and fingers. Our people found their best, most secure places onboard but died by the threes and fours as the night progressed. The Spanish, even those few who were so inclined, had little time to tend our needs. They shared little of their clothing, particularly the water-waxed items, and even our own Taíno cotton, gathered from the many islands to show their monarchs, remained under lock and key. I secured a blanket from the admiral and called to my uncle, who gathered two more young men under it. I caught the chills badly within minutes of my first soaking, ice forming on my bare skin, and came out of that first storm coughing and shaking badly. Somehow, Cibanakán survived alright that night.

  After the first storm passed, Cibanakán nursed me, and Rodrigo strove to secure us food, mostly soggy cassabe and dried fish but a great thing to suck on when you are sick. I never felt so loved as by Cibanakán during those few days. He took on the appearance of my own father, caressing my skull gently and singing quietly to me. My illness lasted for more than a week, during which the admiral put in at a port on the island of Santa Maria of the Azores, and I was lucky for the gift of a chicken, which I ate in a broth. The admiral departed hurriedly from the small island on February 23, as the Portuguese authorities tried to hold ten of his sailors who had gone ashore to pray. I was too sick to take notice of those events before the ships removed again to the open sea, but I was almost recovered as the tempest picked up again on February 27 and 28.

  The second ice storm descended fully on March 2, so violently that two experienced sailors were washed overboard by giant waves. Ice storms were all around us, and the decks glistened, slippery with ice. Under a ship’s boat, Cibanakán curled around me from behind, wrapped in our blanket. He held on to me all night like that, breathing his warm breath on the back of my neck, all night and a day and anot
her night doing that for me, my father-uncle, holding me, keeping my back warm.

  On the third day, the sun came out first thing in the morning, a hot ball and wide beam on the water facing from the east and I was still in the arms of Cibanakán, though as I gained consciousness, I felt the stiffness of his embrace. I was cold as the deepest of mountain streams, colder than that, as cold as ice, my feet and hands, my nose and ears. My ears hurt so much, so stiff and cold I could not touch them, though my neck and back had still some warmth. Awakening, I wriggled out of Cibanakán’s stiff arms and only a bit of warmth could I feel in him, around the area of his heart. But despite that warm spot, he was stiff from cold, his neck and shoulders, which he had surrendered to the elements, frozen hard as ironwood.

  He was not dead, quite, but there was nothing left in Cibanakán’s eyes, his breath was cold vapor. And that next cold night, though I held him all day and evening, and Rodrigo tried to feed him broth, Cibanakán died. The next day, morning was sunny again and without meaning as we surrendered my noble Cibanakán to the waves.

  October 15, 1532

  Seventy-five. The traveling priest.

  Las Casas must be now arriving at Spain. I like it that he is heading in precisely the direction of my narrative, on a ship sailing to Spain, now nearly forty years later.

  That priest is an indefatigable traveler. The ocean he has crossed at least a dozen times. He has mountains of energy, and in his campaigns at court he causes quite a ruckus. I pray he will be calm and help to soften the king’s heart—maybe through the queen. I hope and pray that he arrives well.

  Seventy-six. Columbus and the chickpeas.

  For the Niña, that first time, the landfall was Portugal; I remember how the admiral tacked on the coast, I remember the certainty of command he had over his ship and how in the worst of the first storm, while the Niña took each wave in its own angle, he offered a vow to make pilgrimage and give his thankful prayers at the altar of his favorite virgin at Santa Maria de Guadalupe, in Estremadura. One chickpea among many was marked with a cross and put in a sack. Whoever drew it would undertake the fulfillment of the vow, upon return to land, as promised to the Lord in common prayer. And it was Columbus who drew the pea, not once but three out of four times. And it was in the wake of his final vow that the storms abated and we sighted the Portuguese coast.

  I was good, by then, at the afternoon ditties and could understand most of what the Castilians said. I even sang high the Salve Regina for the admiral, “Dulcis Virgo Maria,” loving and respecting him who had shared his blanket with me during the storms and who had hugged me to him as one after another of my kinsmen had been slipped overboard.

  Seventy-seven. King JoÃo’s bean maps of the Caribbean.

  In Portugal, we were questioned by the monarch himself, King João, who disbelieved the admiral his news of the discovery of our lands. There was fear he might imprison the admiral or even have him killed. Finally, the king took Caréy aside and had him draw out with beans a map of our islands. As Caréy finished, using several beans for the larger islands and single ones for the smaller ones, the king studied it carefully then disturbed it. Then he called me over to do the same, which I did, in much the same form as Caréy’s. This convinced King João, and we went on our way, sailing into the harbor on the Rio Tinto, at Palos, Spain, on the fifteenth of March, Year of Our Lord, 1493.

  Seventy-eight. Palm fronds and one less Indian.

  The admiral led us into Seville on Palm Sunday (March 31), where a large crowd was gathered. The local people put palm fronds on the road. Having procured a burro, he rode into town surrounded by us seven remaining Indians. Hundreds and hundreds came out to see us, and they sang for him and asked him to speak at every turn. “The man who discovered the Indies” is what they called him in Seville. In Seville, too, we lost another lucayo, named Bexuco, who, like myself and Caréy, had met the admiral early on. Shaken still by the voyage and unable to swallow the Spanish food, he walked away in his dream. The sleeping death Bexuco chose one overnight in Seville.

  Seventy-nine. First sight of Spain with Caréy.

  The admiral left Caréy and me at a family pensión in Seville during our stay in that city. It was a four-story house by the Gate of the Imagenes, near the Cathedral Square. Our room was on the third floor and had a window facing the street, and you could see other stone and wooden houses, next to each other so they always shared a wall, and you could hear horse carriages going by on the street below. The room had one small bed that Caréy and I shared. The bed came with two warm woolen blankets, which we learned to appreciate.

  I remember that room in the pensión house in Seville, and here at the convent it feels like I am in it again. Caréy was all I had left from my world by that time, and I feel him with me tonight. That night we laid together and huddled to make our bed warm, and for the first time I cried. I cried so hard that Caréy started crying, too. It was a night of recovery for us, a convalescence. We talked about our time on board, the death of our people who had died in the storm. By morning, the shock and fright had subsided, but the pain was still with us, and the strangeness.

  Everything in the Castilian country was a great marvel to us those strange first days. We saw how people moved in horse-drawn carriages and barges and canal boats, how they lived in houses made of rock and wood, with iron doors, and some with windows of many colorful crystals. We saw barley fields and valleys of wheat, groves of squat olive trees, evenly spaced and all the same height, and leagues and leagues of sheep grazing in the plains and meadows. We made our first acquaintance with the wheelbarrow, a marvel of a tool, and of course we were surprised by the covered people’s many uses for oxen and horses and mules. Often Rodrigo or Captain Niño or Luis de Torres explained things to us, how to eat, where to walk on the street, when to stand and when to sit in church. What nothing could have prepared us for is what we saw near the cathedral in Seville, the use they had for the goat. This, a Christian scene, we witnessed some days later, after Holy Week had passed.

  Eighty. Laugh and cry—“La cabra” of the Inquisition.

  Luis de Torres, the converted Jew with whom we had journeyed to Baigua’s village in northern Cuba, was assigned to keep company with Caréy and me in Seville, where his parents lived. We felt alright with young Torres since sharing his peculiar experience with the eager village women of Baigua.

  That morning he led us to breakfast down the street from our pensión, to an inn run by his parents, where he stayed. We ate a meal of lentil soup, bread, and a piece of sausage. I remember his parents were darker than most Castilians, and they were very quiet.

  After eating, Torres led us through a maze of very thin streets, in and out of rows and rows of houses. “I am to show you the cathedral today,” he said. I remember thinking that without him leading the way, I would easily lose my way in those streets. That area of the city was La Judera, the Jewish people’s quarters in Seville, where families kept indoors and hung crucifixes near every window.

  The fear held by Jews for the Spanish authorities I had already seen when a group of church inquisitors inspected the Niña at the port of Palos. Palos was especially harsh on unconverted Jews, as many had been recently deported from Christendom through that coastal town. I remember Torres, how he volunteered to pump the filthy ship’s hold just as he saw the group of priests board the Niña. “Don’t let them talk to you,” he advised me as he disappeared below. “Pretend you don’t know the Castilian.” I did as he warned and stood mute near the admiral as he told the group about his mission on behalf of the Catholic sovereigns and showed them one of the gold masks Guacanagari had given him. With a knife and iron block, he tapped off pieces of the gold to give them. “This gold of the Indies,” he said as they left, happily clutching the gold pieces, “will finance our Christian armies. With its wealth, Their Highnesses will retake Jerusalem.”

  In Seville, both Caréy and I would see more of the Inquisition. Trailing Torres, we passed an arched gateway out of La
Judera and out onto a bit broader street, where we turned left and walked two blocks, the street opening into a plaza surrounding the biggest of buildings, a construction of stone that went up into the sky. This was the Cathedral of Seville, a century old and not quite finished when I saw her.

  Torres stopped. At one corner of the square, around the side from the main entrance to the church, a crowd gathered. “We’ll see what the attraction is today,” he said, as others ran past us, and I heard someone else say, “Hurry, they’re bringing out the goat!”

  At the edges of the crowd, Caréy and I pressed behind Torres, and in brief glimpses I could see a man tied by the arms sitting down on the ground, his legs pulled apart, straddling a post. A stick went under the knees and secured them with rope. Through the crowd I could see the man’s very white bare feet and legs on the stone floor. At the entrance to the cathedral, only a hundred feet away, several monks and an archbishop stood solemnly. They wore pointed white and purple hoods over their heads and faces, status of the Grand Inquisitors, defenders of the Holy Catholic religion.

  I had seen several lashings aboard ship and thus I thought this might be occurring. From the look on the man’s face, he seemed unbeaten but very frightened. A guard next to the man nodded, and a peasant leading a billy goat by a neck leash made his way through the crowd. He handed the leash to the guard. Then, he unwrapped a cake of honey paste and smeared the condemned man’s toes and feet. I sensed something very bad was going to happen but could not fathom what. Then he tied the goat within reach of the man’s feet and stood back. “Suffer, blasphemer!” he yelled and stepped aside. “Laugh and cry.”