Taino

by Jose Barreiro

  November 14, 1532

  Ninety-seven. Captain Alonso de Hojeda, the perfect soldier.

  We came upon the southern islands, those that guide our way from the mainland, early in November 1493. The people of those islands were not Taínos, Siboney, or Ciguayo, but tribes of the Kwaib, the island warriors who raided against us in the northern Caribbean islands.

  The admiral delighted in sighting the new islands and went about naming one after another in his language. He named one after our ship, the Marie Galante, another one Dominica, after his own father, Doménico, and so on. He insisted on doing this, even though I always told him our word for each place, words always more exacting than the Castilian he provided.

  Among the men on board who quickly distinguished themselves, Alonso de Hojeda stood out. He was a short man among the Spaniards, but everyone commented on his perfect physical being. I remember in Seville, during an afternoon when Queen Isabel invited local entertainment, it was Hojeda who impressed her. First, he won a ball-throwing contest, throwing a rubber ball higher than anyone else. Then he walked on his hands for a full hour, straight as a tree. Then he amazed the court by stringing a rope high from one building to another and walking upon it, back and forth. The queen gave him special mention and inducted him into the second voyage herself.

  On ship, though not a sailor by profession, Hojeda could climb the mast faster than all the seamen. And he could haul sail, pull rope, take fathom, and load anchor in superlative fashion. He was also quick to fight and to draw blood. Hojeda saw combat as a captain in the Moorish wars. Cúneo, who had also been a soldier, befriended Hojeda at that time, and Hojeda reciprocated, though his obsessive devotion to the Virgin Mary and his severity of character did not allow him to approve of Cúneo’s horse enterprise.

  Ninety-eight. Meeting the “man-eating” Kwaib, how tales get started.

  We were anchored in a small cove. Several men had gone ashore days ago without return. Hojeda went with forty men to hunt the lost party down but returned without them. The men had vanished in the dense foliage. For days, the admiral tacked along the shore of the island. Hojeda made several forays. He reported sighting villages and brought back baskets full of bones.

  On board, he showed them to the admiral, who said, “Man-eaters,” and had Dr. Chanca examine the bones. Dr. Chanca found scrapes and notches on the bones and declared them to be tooth marks. “These bones have been chewed,” he said. On another occasion, human bones were also found boiling in a pot. This time it was Cúneo who declared the island inhabited by man-eaters. “Write it in your journal,” the admiral told him. “I will write it, too,” Dr. Chanca said.

  On both of these occasions, I remarked to the admiral that the boiling and the preservation of bones in baskets was more a funerary practice than it was about man-eating, as these were both customs of our own Taíno people as well, and we certainly were not man-eaters. We dried our dead in the sun and the rain, then used shell tools to scrape the remaining flesh from the bones. The flesh is buried near where the belly button of the person was originally buried, and the bones are either buried or accommodated in baskets which are kept in the bohíos of those families. These things are considered sacred among our people.

  “You are wrong,” the admiral snapped at me. “Guacanagari told me about these people. And your own women cried about them, and your uncle Cibanakán commented on their raids. These are the Carib man-eaters!”

  I withdrew my observations, but I was not convinced. I always felt that these were mostly old stories and beliefs of our people. Even though some of these practices occurred, the extent of the man-eating was aggrandized. It is true that my own Guanahaní island was quite far for such raids, and thus we had less contact with those legendary enemies of the Taíno. But it is also true that I have heard stories told in the ancient areitos, both among my Guanahaní people and the people from Haiti-Bohío, of the ancient blood feuds and how warriors would expect the right to eat a dead enemy’s thigh and heart.

  It was later, from the elder caciques of Bohío, especially Guarionex, that I heard the other stories, the ones that told about the “change of heart” ceremony. These were tales made up of episodes, each detailing, one by one, how the old warriors who lived to make war and eat their enemies were convinced to love the gentle peace ways, how, as the years went by, they would become Taíno, lovers of sea breeze, lovers of the gentle waves and the clean running waters.

  I have seen also a canoe of Ciguayo warriors who paddled back from a fight with an enemy’s thigh hanging at the bow of their canoe. They would let the meat dry and harden in the sea salt and sun, and then, at special times, those men who had been in the fight would taste of the jerky from the thighbone, at once honoring the warrior and consuming his flesh, spiritually defeating him.

  What I never, ever heard of was anyone cooking up human meat as a daily food, as basic meals for their people and children. Yet this was the talk among the important Castilians on board the admiral’s ship, some even claiming that the man-eaters would castrate their own boys and fatten them up for the barbacoa. The soldiering men on board began to take out their weapons, sharpening swords, stringing crossbows, and cleaning harquebuses.

  November 16, 1532

  Ninety-nine. Discoverers are saved by Indian grandmother.

  An old Kwaib woman whose name I never learned guided our lost party to a promontory from where she estimated nightime fire and daytime smoke signals could be seen by the ships. Those men could easily have been ambushed and eaten by the Kwaib at that time, but they were not. Instead, they were fed, and on the second day a sailor on the high mast spotted the smoke signals from shore. Hojeda was dispatched on rowboats to fetch the group.

  One hundred. Perfect proof of Carib perfidy: a castrated boy.

  A conversation I heard some days later between Cúneo and the admiral and some officers and hidalgos about the rules of war during the early crusades and even back in their old-time memory to the Greek and Roman wars. Again the topic of man-eating was discussed, with Columbus and Cúneo explaining that such men were judged among the most abominable of heathens and were legitimately considered slaves. The people now encountered were opposed to my own Taíno people, whom the admiral said to be peaceable and potential converts to the true faith. But the Kwaib, or Carib, eat people and thus are enemies that should be taken as slaves, he said. There was much concurrence about the disgusting nature of the practice of the Caniba and even our own Taíno on board thanked the admiral for making the distinction between us, Taíno, men of the good, and the horrible Kwaib who would eat people. I must admit, I felt some relief and even pride at that moment that we had such a standing with the admiral, even though I did not believe and have never seen where people would eat the meat of humans as a regular meal.

  At one island, I forget which one, several young men and women were captured. A young man was wounded and sore in his crotch, causing him great pain. To my eye, the wound was infectious. He had scabs on his thighs and on the edges of his lips and it was my impression that our dreaded genital illness, the one that is passed through coupling, had taken hold in him. I could not make out his language fully, but he was able to tell me that a Kwaib healer tried to remove one if his swollen testicles, and that had caused him greater pain. The admiral had Dr. Chanca inspect the boy, and he noted the partial amputation. “The young man has been castrated,” Dr. Chanca declared.

  “Why would they do so, I do not know.”

  “I would assume the purpose was to fatten him up and soften his flesh for the pot,” Cúneo said as the admiral nodded. But they were all unfamiliar yet with diseases of our hotlands.

  Everyone nodded and grimaced, and word spread like fire through the seventeen ships of the armada. Several officers requested permission to inspect the young man in the days ahead. Dr. Chanca insisted at first that the analysis of the castration was speculation, but Cúneo and the admiral were convinced of its accuracy. Cúneo became a guide to the young man’s corner.
“They not only castrate these youngsters,” he would lecture, “but they eat their own offspring that they engender in the captured women.” He would laugh loudly and wink. “They say the flesh of the young boys tastes better than the young girls!”

  One hundred one. Hojeda draws first blood, Cúneo in on first fight.

  We were anchored in a cove at the island of Ayay, which the admiral renamed Holy Cross. Cúneo and Hojeda organized a party to explore inland. They were already in the large rowboats when a canoe full of Kwaib rounded the point of the cove and came to a complete standstill in the water, mesmerized by the sight of seventeen Spanish ships and caravels.

  “At them, by Santiago!” Hojeda and then Cúneo both shouted. “Get the Caribs!”

  They were four men and two women, and they showed no particular fear as our men in two rowboats, filled with twelve soldiers each, plus the two captains and four rowers, started toward them. As the boats neared, one older warrior in the canoe notched an arrow and shouted at the rowboats to stop and hold their distance. But the oarsmen kept rowing hard, and the captains steered at the canoe.

  The Kwaib paddled to the side, avoiding the first pass. Two crossbowmen let lose with arrows, wounding one warrior as three men and one woman among the Kwaib also let lose with arrows. The older warrior this time spiked an arrow through one of the Castilian men, who fell to the bottom of the boat. Another soldier caught an arrow in the stomach, but it didn’t penetrate far beyond his leather vest.

  The Kwaib might have paddled away rapidly as their canoes are faster at paddling than ship’s boats, but it didn’t seem to cross their minds. I watched from the ship, thinking how our own Taíno people would have taken flight, given the opportunity to survive. Victory for us was many times as simple as surviving to continue pursuing our way of life. Rather than fight head-on, Taínos preferred to retire from the field of action, if at all possible, and let the ires pass.

  Not the Kwaib. They liked a good fight. These ones never paddled again, but rather let their canoe drift, lapped toward shore by the waves. Cúneo’s rowboat stayed near, menacing and firing arrows at the canoe, but with small effect. As the Kwaib drifted toward a sandbank, still some distance from the shore, Hojeda’s rowboat, which had unfurled a sail and was maneuvering quite rapidly in the cove, managed to ram their canoe, spilling them all in the water. The fight took place within view of many of us at the stern of the Santa Maria.

  Treading water, the Kwaib, all except the wounded man, raised themselves out of the water and fired their arrows. The woman warrior was exceptional, a long-legged swimmer, with strong, long arms. As Cúneo’s boat approached dead on to hit her in the water, she swam to the side and let go an arrow that traversed an oarsman, doubling him over as the boat passed. But steering the boat, Cúneo turned his stern into her, knocking her over in the water, circling rapidly around to pull her in.

  Not far away, Hojeda’s crossbowmen fired volley after volley of arrows into two other Kwaib, including another woman; they looked like spiny fish in the water after a while. The first wounded man Hojeda himself decapitated just under the ears as he passed him on the water. However, an old Kwaib warrior, a good shooter and fast swimmer, reached the sandbank. He managed to wound another one of Hojeda’s men and was wounded himself with arrows to the legs as the boat approached him. The old warrior jumped into the waves just as Hojeda spiked him through with a lance. Hojeda bore down on the lance with the old man under water for a couple minutes then yanked it back forcefully. The Kwaib went limp, but as Hojeda began to turn the boat around, slowly, the old warrior, using only one arm, started swimming away toward shore.

  This time, Hojeda overtook the Kwaib easily, using a gaff to hook him and pull him in. Then he had a soldier yank the warrior’s head over the edge of the boat while he brandished his sharp cutlass, hacking the neck clean through in two sharp blows.

  “Watch the man-eater swim now,” I remember the priest, Father Buil, saying on board as Hojeda held up the head for us to see.

  November 20, 1532

  One hundred two. Cúneo’s treatment of a Kwaib warrior woman.

  One more thing on Cúneo. He showed his woman warrior to the admiral, who granted her to him as his personal captive. Cúneo pulled the woman to his cabin and tied her down. He came out to urinate and went back in. Immediately we heard him yell. Then, we could hear thrashing going on inside the room and the high-pitched, nearly inaudible screams of the warrior woman. Many men crowded around outside as the sounds of struggle gave way to the dull pounding of the admiral’s great friend into her Kwaib flesh.

  Cúneo emerged triumphant and smiling. The men cheered him and envied him. “Better than a mare, boys,” he said. “Much better.”

  One hundred three. Caréy responds to Cúneo.

  Caréy and I hated him. I would meet crueler men, more gross and more violent than Cúneo, but for some reason I hate him nearly most of all. I hate even the memory of his handsome, arrogant face.

  In a fortnight, Cúneo was offering his woman slave out for lease at one hundred marivedís a session. Caréy objected. I cautioned him against it, but he insisted on saying something. “The woman is brave,” he told Cúneo, in front of several men. “Allow her to recover and not be used by so many men.”

  Without warning, Cúneo delivered a great blow to Caréy’s face, which felled him against a net. Cúneo, his face very red, put a knife to my countryman’s throat. “Don’t ever question me, dog,” he said. “Or I’ll sell you to these men. You might be better than a mare yourself.”

  He didn’t rape Caréy but struck him another hard blow, this time to the chest, with the handle of his knife. Caréy doubled over in pain.

  The rest of the voyage was day-by-day misery for Caréy, constantly taunted, struck, and threatened, not only by Cúneo but by several other braggarts on board, including two who really wanted to bugger my poor cousin. Father Buil was another one of them who had that inclination. I kept Caréy near me as I served the admiral and even inducted him into the ampolleta shifts, but he had become a desperate being, suffocating in the tension of the threats.

  I lost him in Borikén, which we reached on November 19, 1493. One night, while we drifted a mile from the coast, he loaded up on hawk’s bells (“For gifts on the way home”), wrapped up a knife he had pilfered from a sailor, and announced to me he would swim to shore and take his chances from there. Three women from a group rescued from a Kwaib camp were from Borikén, having been taken by Kwaib weeks before. They had decided to go overboard and swim in to shore. Caréy was to help them by cutting their ropes, while they promised to speak well for him among their people. I asked him to consider our better opportunity to get home from Bohío, as the admiral had promised we would round the Maisí Point of Cuba later and go out to our little islands. But Caréy was decided, and in the dark of a night without moon, he and the three women slipped overboard. I heard them swim away, my heart praying for love among our Boricua brothers to help get my cousin home. I don’t know if he ever made it, and I never saw or heard of Caréy again.

  November 24, 1532

  One hundred four. The news on Fort Navidad.

  The admiral was terribly excited as we sailed on to Española’s coasts, which we hugged in search of Fort Navidad, the admiral’s first colony on our lands. Aboard all vessels there was great anticipation. The sea voyage had been difficult on the passengers, the majority of whom had no sailing experience. The talk was of buildings and the uses of woods and how much gold would be secured. I remember hearing long discussions on the carrying capacity of the various vessels, how much gold each of them could safely hold. “Gold makes great ballast,” was an often-repeated ditty, though it never made it into song.

  None had thoughts of farming at that moment, and I certainly don’t believe anymore that even one of them had the Christian mission in mind. Father Buil, the ranking cleric, was an ornery, gnarled man. Nothing kind or inspired came out of him, though he talked incessantly, particularly at the admiral
, who heard him out with absent mind. Buil, the buzzard, we called him, talked a lot about the Grand Khan and dreamed of establishing relations for his order of the Benedictines.

  It was late November 1493 when we came upon the Navidad coast. As always, canoes from small fishing villages came out to greet us. The admiral meant to press on, but for several days the winds strongly disfavored us. One canoe that circled the admiral’s ship I recognized. It had the three-line mark of Guacanagari’s caciquedom. Two of the men seated in it were uncles of the young cacique.

  “Taíno-ti, uncles of our great cacique friend,” I greeted them as they came within earshot. “Can you see that the covered men from Heaven have returned?”

  They nodded at me and paddled close to where I stood on deck. “We are glad to see the double tongue,” they said and fell silent. They asked not for the Guamíquina, and their silence was ominous. I threw them a line of rope that they could hold. The older subchief stood in the canoe. “We would speak with the young Taíno two-tongue,” he said. “Quietly, let us converse a day ourselves.”

  I sat in the low hold, the rope in my hand. “A horrible fight has taken place,” the elder said, beginning a story that lasted all afternoon and ended with the words: “The covered men left by the Guamíquina are all dead.”

  One hundred five. How Fort Navidad was overrun by Cacique Caonabó.

  Here I will relate the story as told by Guacanagari’s subchief, whose name was Guababo and who stood in his canoe as he said these words that are still clear in my memory. Guababo talked all afternoon. Several times he cried. I will write his own words as much as I remember them.