Taino (26 page)

The morning after my last entry, I awoke with the sun already midsky. A boy watched over me as I opened my eyes. He peered to make certain I was awake then ran to tell. I was up and stretching when Enriquillo and Doña Mencia walked up. He brought water in a bowl and she a white cloth. I washed and then we went to where they had food for me. Enriquillo was immediately busy with two men, and Doña Mencia indicated a meeting was starting that morning. As I ate, nine captains arrived, one by one. They all took a drink and sat around the fire.

None of them I recognized. Five were clearly of Taíno or Ciguayo stock, three were mixed Indian with Castilian, and one Indian mixed with African. They all dressed like Enriquillo, in grayish white cotton pants to just below the knee, no shirt, their
corazas
(suits and vests made by rows of thick, tightly woven chord) spread out at their sides. All nine captains carried sword and lance, three held crossbows, and two were armed with harquebus. One by one, they all bowed their heads to be touched by Enriquillo or Mencia before taking their seats.

I will tell first about the young
cacique
. Barely over thirty years old and already a fighting leader for fifteen years, Enriquillo has the old Taíno look, with a long, hawk nose, long black hair, lean body with a broad chest and taut calves. Enriquillo is taller than most Indians. He wears wrapped leather sandals made of
manatí
hide and braids his hair in one lone strand down the center of his bare back. He too protects himself with
coraza
and has two pages who carry extra swords for him. His eyes are stone black and deep, with a brightness in their gaze that touches the soul. He seldom smiles, never laughs, but speaks in a low tone, gentle but firm, a concentrated mindfulness I have seldom seen before in any of our people. It has been ten years or more since I saw Enriquillo. Once was in the second year of his struggle, when I carried to him a message. He looked more then like the guinea hen he had been nicknamed after as a boy. His eyes scurried and didn't fix. He spoke to me then, our first time together in several years, with great distance, openly but tersely, even haughtily. He had the attitude of the free stallion toward the tamed donkey. The haughtiness is totally gone now. The eyes fix intensely, and he is calm. All the captains hold him in great esteem and some revere him immensely. His two pages, thin young men, complain that he seldom sleeps but nightly leads them around his camp's perimeters and sometimes even out to other lookouts, weapons always at the ready. In the Indian Bahuruku, Enriquillo is
gavilán
(big hawk), the final judge. His word, trusted by all, often becomes law.

Doña Mencia is his reason for being, his open love, and his greatest ally. In our old saying, “The men are the jawbone; the women are the backbone.” Thus with Doña Mencia, who takes care of everything. Never does Enriquillo's return find Doña Mencia asleep. This she would never allow. In her words: “He watches over all of us; I watch over him and what he does.” Everything is ready, always, because of her. She runs the whole food line, organizing harvests and food preparation at the camp and at far-off
conucos
, where stashes of food are kept. Her stashes have saved many a cutoff Indian chased by Spanish
cuadrillas
, many a camp discovered and scattered via insufficient vigilance. Standing with her feet wide apart, legs straight, hand on a hip, usually with a baby or small child from one of her young women, the look of Doña Mencia penetrates. Regal is her demeanor as she points with her chin or lips for
guaxeri
to pick up or bring food, instructing messengers to other camps, crew leaders to their fields, a constant source of direction and information.

Doña Mencia wields a machete with total dexterity and one captain, Romero, told me yesterday that she has wiped blood from it after combat. She wears pants, too, cut at the knee. A cloth wrapped around her torso covers her breasts. She likes a shawl, too, in her evening repose, when the elders talk and smoke. There is nothing extravagant about Doña Mencia, but she commands naturally, clearly of ni-Taíno line. In her face Doña Mencia is slightly round, rather like her grandmother, the well-loved
cacica
Anacaona. She is well-rounded of breast and buttock, also, again, like the revered
cacica
of this old Xaraguá province, who was a most imposing woman.

The meeting of captains the morning of the day before yesterday was little about my visit, as they are all active warriors with many responsibilities and important points to discuss. Enriquillo introduced me briefly. “An uncle I have in my camp, whom you now see,” he said. “He is one of our
caciques
, who saved my father's life and my own, many years ago. Though he lives with the friars, as I once did, he is Taíno.” A small white pipe he lit with tobacco and had me smoke first, a sign of respect, then rolled tobaccos were passed around to the captains and to Doña Mencia and other principal women, who sat in the second circle backing their men.

Done with his smoke, Enriquillo spoke to everyone. “All of you are my nephews, your children are my grandchildren,” he said. “Always treat each other well and help each other.” “Xán, Xán Katú,” the captains returned, in agreement. The warrior captains, with the women of their families, then greeted Enriquillo and called him grandfather. Everybody brought presents, which Enriquillo promptly offered to the visitor, baskets of fruit and
cassabe
, stacks of tobacco leaves, a good rope, a hammock, a cake of wax for light, a large clear conch full of live
cucuyos
, the lightning bug of our islands. These were all put at my feet, as guest of Enriquillo. Doña Mencia later bundled the gifts up in the hammock and had them carried here to my
bohío
across the clearing from her own. (The
cucuyos
, or lightning bugs, I let go a few each night in my
bohío
, where they cut back and forth, hunting mosquitoes by the hundreds.)

Of the captains, three are from other main camps and six run separate
conucos
, or garden camps. There are four main camp areas, spread out in the Bahuruku over several days' walking distance. They also have hidden gardens and fruit orchards. Warrior groups on raids emerge from the thick and rugged mountains in places far from the home camps. Usually a major action is preceded by the taking of several horses, somewhere in the vicinity, which are used in raiding haciendas or towns, holding up travelers and particularly in helping outrun Spanish squads, or
cuadrillas
, which take their toll.

One hundred nineteen.
Younger captains' proposals for raids to procure arms and munitions and tools.

The main purpose of that morning's meeting was a request by three of the captains to carry out expeditions near San Juan la Maguana. They spoke in favor of a “lightning” raid to a ranch in the nearby foothills, where they could apprehend ax handles, iron hoes, and saws for planking wood; they spoke of a place where they could gain more powder and shot for their harquebuses, maybe even a small piece of artillery.

The two younger captains spoke directly and stood together firmly, yet their manner was quiet and deferential to the
cacique
, who did not respond at first but invited more reasoning from the raid's proponents and the opinion of the others. As the captains discussed the proposals, groups of
guaxeri
walked by and stopped briefly, but this was clearly a captains' meeting and no one offered them seats, so they went about their business.

The wizened captain named Tamayo, who commands four dozen men, reasoned for the younger captains. “My
cacique
,” he said. “Everything that makes us stronger in our fighting, I favor always, so my opinion will be obvious. In full sincerity, hear it then for what it is.

“The Castilians press on us with more and more frequency. There is talk of a big attack, from several sides, as they have done before. We need better fortifications, gun powder and I think a piece or two of artillery, for which they would respect us that much more.”

This Tamayo is a tough fighter who has led most of the rebels' excursions into the plain and all recent raids on ranches. The Castilians fear him most of all, as he gives no quarter and expects none. Recently, after a skirmish, he captured two Spanish soldiers. One, an older man, cut the gut of his lieutenant, named Antonin, who later died from the wound. Tamayo ordered his men to hang the Spaniard. The other prisoner was a sixteen-year-old Castilian lad. Tamayo pitied him and spared his life, but he ordered the boy's sword-handling hand cut off. When the young man offered his left hand, the warrior who captured him complained, as he had seen him fight with the right. The young man begged and cried. “‘Don't petition us, you lucky boy,” Tamayo told him. “You are fortunate that, because of your age, I don't hang you.”

Of the other captains, one more sided with Tamayo, while the rest nodded to Enriquillo to speak their mind for them. The young
cacique
stood to speak. He took in his hand a black,
caoba
-wood cane. These will be his exact words, translated into the Castilian.

“Tamayo, my captain,” Enriquillo began; the use of a personal name indicated some tension within him. “I am very happy that you are with us. You are a strong warrior and a defender of our people, and I greet you. Remember our history in these mountains, which we entered separately and yet on similar grounds. I am very happy now two years that we have joined forces, as I have sought that for many years previous to our mutual pact, when you agreed to come under my
cacicasgo
.

“Now, hear my words. In all my time in the Bahuruku, since the year of 1519, I have been the advocate of our quiet withdrawal, fighting as we had to, but with constant vigilance. This, as you know, has been my strategy. Defensive vigilance, survival, and, always, retaliation. Not attack, but retaliation. Thus, my young men and women are trained early to run, fight, plant, and harvest, recognize the herbs, fish and catch birds and pigs and iguanas, all on their own. Thus, many times the Castilians have tired of hunting us, as we seem to them to live on air and feed on tree leaves and, as they say, on lizards. As they tire of hunting us and will run out of food and wind, I have sometimes punished them, and hard. Thus the time of the seventy we trapped in a cave, before you came to us; thus the time I punished the Castilian captain San Miguel, his malignant attack on our camp in 1528, when I followed him home and burned his ranch.

“Open wide your ears, my nephews. Only twice in thirteen years have they caught us unawares, and those only because of traitors, because careless warriors led them to us, giddy with the triumph of raids on the coast. Let me say, yes, I have gone out to take them in their own ground, to teach them their own homes will not be spared. But I seek not from them, I do not descend the mountain just to irritate them, just to steal from them.

“Since those first days, when we defeated Valenzuela and his men with sticks and short knives, killing two of his dreaded foremen, we have sought to disengage, to build our own small ranches in the hidden valleys of the Bahuruku. Never have the Castilians wished to fight us on our grounds, and as we have left the forefront of their memories, passing from their eyes unnoticed like soft winds, for years at a time, they forgot us, and so we built our lives.

“Nephews, continue to widen your ears.

“I am not saying they do not want us. They want us very much. Ten hard captains they have sent against us. Each and every one our warriors routed. We have fought like cats gone to the wild, which is what we are, cats and dogs gone to the
manigua
; and, yes, hawks—hawks who have grown claws and teeth and even talons; we have made carapaces for ourselves, see, like the turtle, and even the thunder stick we now use. I will fight to the death, and I sleep not my nights in my vigilance, but I will remind you, it is our quiet watch and, of course, our willingness to fight when pressed that keeps our peoples here alive. Raids only scare the Castilians into action, into wishing to murder us and press our families into slavery.

“Now, I repeat my observation: as we go about, quietly constructing our camps, we have what we need, and they do forget us for a time. But, as some of our captains continue to raid and kill, so do Castilian angers grow. They take up pesos and set squads actively against us. I remind you captains of this reality and ask you to temper your excursions. Think not just of your strongest arms, think of your weak ones, your children and old people, your women caring for your homes.

“You hang much with warriors, Tamayo. Spend more time with the women and the children, the old men. Listen to them. Let them tell you their fears and their hopes.”

The captains listened carefully and even Tamayo nodded. After a time, all looked to Romero, Enriquillo's brother-cousin on his mother's side, a genial man who is their main spider or webmaker man. It was Romero who brought Tamayo into Enriquillo's circle. He is short and stocky with a face that cannot stop smiling.

“I love you all,” he began to speak. “Taíno-ti, my fellow cousins. The words have been good and should not wound. Love each other, captains. Respect our
cacique
, who has guided our survival these many years. We have never defeated the Castilians but our mountains have. Their own thirst and exhaustion, their fear of our thick brush and darkened forests, these are the things that have defeated them. They cannot fight us if they must hunt us among these peaks. But they are many, many. And if enough of them came for us, they would find us, and they would kill us all.

“Relatives, where is our Ciguayo comrade? Where our great brother, Hernandillo, the One-eye, whose great singing we enjoyed so much?”