Taino (10 page)

Thirty.
Jiqui, a warrior, escapes.

Word today that one of Guamax's warriors among the prisoners sold by Ayala has escaped. His name is Jiqui. He jumped a guard, then bolted for the woods. Two
cuadrillas
with mastiff hounds took up his trail early this morning.

August 11, 1532

Thirty-one.
Sojourn in Cuba, along the northern coast, searching for the Great Khan, the curse of Old Guamax, days of early reverence.

I still remember the Yunque of Baracoa, in Cuba—that wide, flat mountaintop that can be seen from the bay. I remember the Cuban coast, how thick and lush it was, how big the island felt that first time. The admiral was very excited. A land more beautiful human eyes have never seen, he said—words I heard him repeat many times later in his discourses with nobles, bishops, and powerful merchants of Spain.

In Cuba, we from Guanahaní knew Cubanakán, a
cacique
from the center of the island whose fishermen made the journey once a year to Guanahaní. And once a year our own men (my father and uncle Cibanakán among them) would reciprocate, visiting also on their shores. They traded woven
jenikén
ropes produced from maguey grass at Cubanakán for our good fish catchers, hookers, and spearpoints, made from the shells on our great caracol beach on the northeast corner of Guanahaní. The great hemp twine woven in Cuba from tall savanna grass was much requested, particularly their very fine long ropes that made the best reinforcers of fishing nets. In good weather, it took the men six days to make the trip to Cubanakán; in my memory, they never lost anybody during those journeys.

Many times, encouraged by Rodrigo, I mentioned that
cacique
's name, Cubanakán, and the island's name, Cuba, to Don Christopherens, who wrote it down and had his secretary, Escobedo, write it down, comparing the writing to my sounds. Caréy, a man of my village and a cousin of mine, was forced on board as we left Guanahaní. He was a
guaxeri
in the fishing with my father, and he guided Captain Pinzón and the admiral. Caréy had made the trip to Cuba for several years.

We sailed into Cuban waters on the thirteenth sun after leaving Guanahaní, my home. By the Castilian calendar it was October 27, 1492. I remember it rained all night, drops pounding flat on the decks like frogs falling from trees; the ships hove to, drifting in the bay, and all night rain fell. The morning sky was so clean, the eyes drank from it, the kind of day my elders would have deemed “swept by Coatrisquie,” the spirit
cemi
who, in our Taíno mind, ruled the heavy rains and assisted in the cleansing of the skies.

Cuba was different from the beginning. The coastal
caciques
were not forthcoming. As he had done on four other islands, the admiral landed the ship's boats. He liked the many small and large bays and took boats himself up the wide rivers, but for days the local Taínos fled from him. This excited him even more, as I could tell he had grown tired of the hundreds of people that had swarmed his ships in the smaller islands. When he found two very large and well-carved traveling canoes, one with capacity for more than 150 people, the admiral paced and paced and many times showed me, Caréy, and others a bracelet and a chain made of fine gold. Rodrigo's agile hand signals interpreted for us: the Guamíquina wants to see other great
guamíquinas
. The Guamíquina wants to see them wear their gold.

Thirty-two.
Embassy to Camagüey.

Caréy, though he was resentful of his captivity, which I yet was not, offered to guide the admiral to Cubanakan's shore. However, the admiral declined to sail that far west on the Cuban coast and at a bay near Puerto de Mares, around November 3, decided to send an embassy inland. Both Caréy and I were chosen to go on this mission, to assist Luis de Torres, a converted Jew, and Rodrigo de Jerez (a former crusader, not my young friend Rodrigo Gallego), as they led us inland.

Only years later did I learn the true reason for our trip inland to Camagüey, but I will state it now. Cubanakán, our
cacique
brother from Cuba, the great
caimán
island, was mistaken by the admiral for the Great Khan, a chief of the Mongol people in the land of China, with whom he wanted to trade. Nothing else interested him that day. The few Indians who had pulled up to trade, mostly canoes from the islands we had passed, he now ignored. “
Caona
,
caona
,” (gold, gold) he repeated to the dozens of canoes that had now caught up with us. Or he would say “
Turey
,
turey
,” another Taíno word, meaning “sky,” which he at first believed meant also “gold.” But the
lucayo
Taínos offered no
caona
, only cotton nets, food, fresh water, and fruit.

The search for the Great Khan had been planned in Spain and the admiral ceremoniously entrusted Torres, the poor converted Jew, with gold samples and types of spices and a letter for the Mongol from King Ferdinand and Queen Isabel. “I am convinced we are on the mainland, near the cities of Zayto and Quinsay, a hundred leagues more or less distant from one or the other,” he told Torres. Instructing him to take no more than five days, the admiral said: “Find the Great Khan.”

Thirty-three.
Caréy's doubts and my certainty.

Caréy plotted to leave the Castilian ships as soon as possible. He hoped at Cubanakán's village he could slip away to the forest and later make his way home. But now we were barely on the edge of old Camagüeybax's territories, with whom we had no particular relations. “What do the Castilians want, really?” he despaired, as we walked thin trails south over the coastal hills into Camagüeybax's plains. “They want to see Cubanakán but won't sail west; now he sends us here. I do not like this, Guaikán, and I don't understand what you find so curious about them.”

It was true. I was still intrigued. I still liked the Castilians. What's more, I believed them to be men-spirits, sent by the Spirit of Spirits, first Creator, Yayá, first grandfather to us, in the Castilians' words, “Our Father, Who Art In Heaven.” The Castilians, I felt, were wonderfully superior and clever, and anything they said was bound to be right.

“They have done you no harm, Caréy,” I argued with my
guaxeri
.

“They take me against my wish,” he responded.

“Don't worry so much,” I remember I told him. “We'll all return home safely.”

Thirty-four.
Meeting Baigua, a ni-Taíno of Camagüeybax, the old ladies call for
jaguajiguatu
.

We walked two days, joined by crowds that reached into hundreds, arriving at the village of a secondary
cacique
, one of old Camagüeybax's ni-Taínos, by the name of Baigua. Baigua's village was the largest by far that we had encountered, and he had been preparing a feast for a day before we arrived. Along the way we had seen small clusters of
bohíos
, maybe four or five together, but Baigua's
yukaieke
was made up of more than fifty
bohíos
, probably a thousand people, and it was where Torres finally decided to stop.

Baigua greeted us with great courtesy, in the open Taíno style. He was the sweetest of
caciques
, only middle-aged but doted upon by grandchildren and old ladies and appeared to have not a care in the world. He had a kind face that stood out for its gentility, even among Taíno. All around his large
yukaieke
, as far as you could see on a valley of rolling hills, there were planted
conucos
(raised beds) of
yucca
,
ñames
, potatoes, and other types of tubers, much
maize
, pineapple, herbs, and edible grasses, all interwoven with fruit stands of
guayaba
,
mamey
,
caimitu
,
anon
,
guanabana
and other fruit and nut trees. The
batéy,
or main plaza, had been recently swept clean. Around the
cacique
's central fire, several Taíno ceremonial seats,
duhos
, were arranged for us.

After exchanging gifts and eating (they served much meat of the delicious
yaguasa
, the Cuban tame duck), Caréy let me do the talking. As I was by then accustomed, I conveyed my heartfelt views that the covered men were truly special, sacred, that they had come from the sky in huge canoes with wings like seagulls, and they could guide a ship against the wind. Instructed by Torres, I inquired after the Great Khan. They responded that they knew him but that he lived farther west. I asked, too, after
caona
,
guanin
, or any other metal, of which they claimed to have none. Torres was obviously disappointed with the second answer but gratified by the first, although, certainly, they only referred to Cubanakán, the Cuban
cacique
and not the Mongol ruler. Torres showed profound relief when informed that the walk to the “Khan's” towns would take more than fifteen suns, as it excused him from continuing the exploration. With an air of great solemnity, he announced we would spend the night at Baigua's village and return to ship at first light.

Poor Torres, whom I came to like very much, was a sensitive man, and could read and speak several languages. On ship, he was under constant suspicion for any lapse in his Catholicism, as he was a first-generation converted Jew. He compensated for his fate with a very light foot and quiet demeanor. Among the Castilian men, he was one of the very few who had abstained from lying with our women, making it a point to be at the admiral's side at all prayers, although he was a man of fine features and liked to gaze nonetheless.

The speeches over, Baigua had large gourds and clay pots of water brought in for us to wash. All the men first and then some of the women smoked large tobaccos. Torres was curious about their smoking and they showed him the tobacco plant, our
coxibá
, sacred offering to the Creator Beings and all
cemis
. The older women, who liked the tone of his words, then whispered to the
cacique
a request that I had anticipated by the manner of our reception. Our own Guanahaní people had the same custom whenever, quite infrequently, visitors arrived at our villages.

“
Jaguajiguatu
,” the old women whispered, meaning, literally, “fire in the loins,” an old right of the housemothers to mix into the village life, and their bloodlines, the potential contributions of men visitors. Baigua, gentle chief, was delighted, even enthusiastic at the request, which I explained to Torres as best I could as the older matrons ushered out their selected young women, who commenced to wash our feet and, in Torres and Jerez's case, to pull and half-carry them into a large
bohío
scented by a thick floor of freshly cut pine boughs. I never looked in on them all night, but I laughed with Caréy at Torres's ever-weakening admonitions as the women swarmed him and silently urged from him his traveler's duty to our Taíno grandmothers, ever watchful for their future generations. Jerez, the old slaving hog, needed little prodding, though he was a peculiarly ugly man, short of leg and long of torso, little neck. “What good seeds you'll get from Torres, you are losing with the no-neck,” Caréy kidded, in his sardonic way, and we laughed with Baigua's old woman
bohío
-mother, who said, “We've never seen anything like those two. They look strong. I truly hope some of the girls will take.”

August 14, 1532

Thirty-five.
Torres reports to the admiral, Cuba as mainland.

Not ten minutes back from Baigua's village, while waiting for Don Christopherens to complete his meal service, Jerez had told the
Santa Maria
's pilot, Sancho Ruiz, about his night of abandonment. Torres's participation in the overnight adventure came out in the telling, and, immediately, several sailors made the most of it. Three men in particular, bad characters from the ship's home port of Palos, made a song about “the converso's hiccups of ecstasy, how the old rabbi must have left something for him to use, after all.”

Finished his dinner, the admiral came out of hi
s cabin. “Torres!” he called. Torres was before him as the sound faded.

“Did you meet officials of the Khan?”

“No, my captain.”

“What did you see?”

“A very large village, sir, very large.”

“And the people?”

“About the same as our guides, sir.”

“No slipper shoes, head casks?”

“No, sir, they were all naked as their mothers birthed them, sir.”

“The way Torres likes them!” someone shouted, from starboard, causing some laughter. It was Clavijo, a nasty character who was one of three convicted criminals granted clemency to join the expedition.

The admiral would have none of it. “
Alguacil
!” he ordered, quieting everyone. “Arrest that man.”

Clavijo was led down the hatch by three men.

Don Christopherens asked next about geography and the Great Khan's whereabouts. “It's a long way,” Torres told him. “Two weeks' journey, maybe more.”

“Maybe much more,” said the admiral. “Probably many leagues, wouldn't you say?”

“Probably, my captain.”

“I am convinced this is mainland,” Columbus said then. He had learned that
Cuba
means “large territory, well planted” in the Taíno language. “We are at the southern extensions of the Great Khan's dominions,” he pronounced. “Cuba of the Great Khan.”

Torres, of course, knew better, as did Jerez. Caréy and I had even told the admiral, several times, that Cuba can be rounded by canoe. It is a very large land, indeed, but an island. The admiral never quite conceded the point. He kept insisting it a mainland, and, as I have written earlier, insisted on it completely on the second voyage, as we traveled Cuba's long southern coast.