Taino (32 page)

It was during this time that a young man named Diaz, who fled punishment after stabbing a sailor in a knife fight, was taken in by Doña Catalina's people from the southern coast. They had a large, well-fed settlement on the banks of the wide Ozama River, which flowed into a beautiful and calm bay on the most protected coast of the island. Diaz and three companions married sisters of a local
cacique
and learned to appreciate the qualities of the site for a true Castilian city. It turned out that the stabbed sailor recovered, so Diaz went to the
adelantado
, Don Bartolomé Columbus, who forgave them their transgression, as they had found him, he proclaimed, the perfect site for a prosperous city. Thus did the
adelantado
set out to establish the port and city of Santo Domingo, the present capital of this Española island. This was terrible news to the central island
caciques
, who for the first time fully appreciated the permanency of the Castilians on the Bohío island.

One hundred thirty-seven.
Maniocatex riles up a war.

Maniocatex, second brother of Caonabó, called together representatives of the
mayor caciques
of the island, both Ciguayo and Taíno. Bohekio sent several ni-Taínos, as did Cotubanama. Guarionex came in person, in the company of Mayobanex, a Ciguayo. More than three hundred lesser
caciques
also attended.

Maniocatex called the
caciques
to support him in a major battle against the Castilians. “Give me men, let your men come to my army, and we will march on them and together push them to the sea. They have taken my brother, they have taken our mothers and daughters, they are killing our people and abusing us without respite.”

Guarionex asked for time. “The Castilians have many desires. Let us try to satisfy them, as we have all our enemies. There are only so many of them. Remember, too, they are very good at killing and will do us much harm if unleashed against us.”

Maniocatex formed an army of nearly ten thousand men. Many
caciques
who joined him brought whole villages to camp on the Vega. Guarionex was impressed, but he cautioned against a frontal war.

One hundred thirty-eight.
Pané riles up the
cacique
's
yukaieke
.

In those days, Pané was all the time in Guarionex's village, living in the
cacique
's own
bohío
. He had the disgusting habit of asking for the old stories, taking notes as the storyteller humored him, and afterward arguing with the elder storyteller, declaring the stories nonsense and devil stories and always invoking the biblical story of Jesus for the listeners.

It was these dialogues with Pané that most bothered Guaironex, for Pané never deviated from his opinion about our most sacred tales. One day, insulted, Guarionex left a session abruptly and spoke harshly to a gathered group against the Christian efforts to indoctrinate his people. “They are thick-headed,” he said. Next day, several of his young men took the message to heart and brought down a large Castilian cross that had overlooked his village.

Friar Pané was incensed. He went to the old chief and demanded to know how Guarionex could reconcile such an action with the fact that he himself had invited the catechism of his children and grandchildren. “We learn from you, but you care not to learn from us,” Guarionex told him. As Guarionex was increasingly called out to the growing camp of fighters, Pané attempted to organize against him in his own village. He was challenged in this by the
cacique
's mother and nephews, who finally ran the nitwit priest out.

The admiral heard Pané's angry report and, despite his slowly recovering corpus, implored his brother to let him lead the troops into the imminent engagement. On March 25, 1495, they dressed the troops for battle, which the admiral named The Battle of Christendom over Heathenism.

“Crosses have been dumped to the ground,” the admiral himself exhorted the war captains. “We have just cause to battle and, by Santiago, the Lord is on our side.” He ordered the marshal of troops to read the law on war slaves. This was another of the Torres brothers, from the
converso
family in Seville. The queen's law stipulated that natives of these Antillean islands, like others in Africa and elsewhere, could be enslaved if taken as a result of war or to prohibit cannibalism and other abominable heathen practices.

The Castilian army marched in two formations toward the Vega, where, upon reaching a plain they called The Hope, the admiral ordered a fort built that he called Magdalena. “Crusaders are we in these far lands,” the admiral told the captains. “The infidel has declared his devilry. It is not just ignorance, my fierce captains. The savages now repulse our savior and a lesson must stamped on the land.”

Maniocatex organized the battle for the Taínos, but nevertheless it was up to Guarionex, as senior
cacique
, to confront the enemy first. Ritually, Guarionex deployed his men in one long row, and behind them Maniocatex and other
caciques
led their own men. They were all there but had made no real plan and assumed their superior numbers would suffice to convince the Castilians to sue for peace. I was told that Guarionex said to his ni-Taínos as he watched the Castilian troops approach: “If they agree to a peace, blood may be unnecessary,” just as the harquebus units and the artillery pieces fired all at once in a wide pattern, some eighty detonations of the shouldered weapons plus the two midget cannons that spewed forth all manner of shrapnel. Nearly one hundred Indians fell dead or wounded. The carnage amazed and froze everyone. Guarionex would later tell me he saw the eyes of death in a cloud behind the Castilians and that he was left without thought at the sight of the totally severed torso of his own second son. The cavalry and mastiff handlers waited nearly two minutes for a second volley, which dropped another hundred Indians and panicked everyone else,
caciques
and everybody running this way and that as the mastiffs and the cavalry charged among them at will, in complete killing discipline.

I stood at the admiral's side, holding the handle on a dagger but surrounded by his private guard of twelve men, while the
adelantado
and eighty others on horseback charged the mass of running Indians, hacking and stabbing with swords and short, sturdy spikes propped against their saddles, piercing back after fleeing back.

Not all Taínos ran. Many were fearless, watching and trying to grapple with the soldier formations, trying to wound them with our spears and
macanas
, but the Castilians and, yes, their Indian troops, advanced swinging heavy, sharp swords of steel. Three, four, five, I think as many as twenty major discharges were directed against the Indian mass, now divided in two or three groups, with the crossbows shooting volley after volley and the dogs chasing and tearing at the many trying to escape. I saw how it was done. Truly we were chased in place, denied the opportunity to regroup and kept moving by sheer terror so that large groups ran and ran into each other and in circles while the Castilians cut large swathes into them.

“Our idea is different now. We don't attack but chop at them little by little,” a young
guaxeri
man said, when I told this story.

“Vigilance,” the
cacique
responded. “That's what we have learned.”

One hundred thirty-nine.
The Battle of Christendom over the Heathens.

The Battle of Christendom turned into a long afternoon of gore. More than a thousand bodies were counted when the killing was done. Two dozen Castilians were wounded seriously and twelve died in the battle and for that dozens of prisoners were made to run gauntlets and other revenges. Two expert swordsmen delighted the company for a while in a contest to see who could cut the most prisoners completely in half with a single blow. The champion at this sport sliced eight men in half before having to repeat a stroke. The women seized were all raped, some repeatedly and very violently, then herded together with the children.

As the fight subsided, the admiral was still worked up. “Punish the heathen!” he charged, several times, not once flinching from the inflicted punishments. A dagger I saw him use twice, both times on badly wounded Indians, severing the spinal cord at the base of the neck, waiting the second time for his brother to witness the act. “I shall put him out of his misery,” Don Christopherens said. “A Christian crusader can take pride in the painful spilling of heathen flood,” Bartolomé replied.

Seven hundred sixty Taíno people were made prisoner that day, of which five hundred were later sent for sale at the slave market of Seville. A second large battle was fought weeks later as the Castilian troops cornered Maniocatex, who was captured and his villages scourged. The admiral delighted in the combats against our mesmerized
caciques
. As infidels taken in war can be sold into slavery by law, a cargo he now had, and legally, that he could send to market.

One hundred forty.
Guarionex is prisoner.

Guarionex was made prisoner. I went to see him with the admiral. “Why did you force us to kill your people,” the admiral asked and I translated.

“It wasn't my idea,” Guarionex said truthfully.

“You ordered the dumping of a Holy Cross.”

“No, that wasn't my idea, either.”

“Pané informs me you spoke against our Christ.”

“I only wondered why you don't listen to what we have to say. I felt you disrespected us. My young men were angered and dumped the cross.”

“Which ones?”

“All four died yesterday.”

“You forced us to attack,” the admiral said.

“I have seen your arms before. I wanted not this war,” Guarionex said. “But even I did not expect you could kill so much so fast. It was frightful, seeing so much blood at once.”

“Our Father in Heaven makes us strong,” the admiral told him.

One hundred forty-one.
Guarionex is released, Guacanagari disappears.

Many came to request the freedom of Guarionex, and finally the admiral gave in, but he imposed a large gold tribute upon the
cacique
, on his own person and his people. For the wise
cacique
it was to be a full calabash of gold dust per month. Most everyone else was charged with amounts of half an ounce to one ounce every three months. That first tribute system for gold was very rigid, not only with Guarionex but with Maniocatex and Caonabó's people, and, more and more, even Guacanagari's villages were called upon to provide tribute, not escaping the harsh punishments imposed upon failure to provide. The tribute for gold worked like this: you brought in your assigned quota of gold and received a wooden pendant on a string, to be worn about the neck. Any Castilian could check any Indian under tribute. Any Indian caught without the proper pendant could be punished, either by whip or by the cutting of fingers, hands, or ears.

Now even Guacanagari, the admiral's “noble
cacique
,” who saved him in his time of trouble, was pushed about and called dog. His own
guaxeri
, now trained as soldiers of Castile, imposed upon him his gold tribute, which they themselves would collect, fiercely aggressive toward him. During those days it was that Guacanagari walked into the forest one morning and was never seen again.

One hundred forty-two.
A Taíno offer on the land.

Guarionex was astonished that so many of his people were maimed. He had so much gold to gather that his
guaxeri
would give their portions to him to turn in and took the punishment meant for him. Guarionex decided to take
cohoba
at that time and an instruction received, which he followed.

Guarionex was to organize all of his planting
guaxeri
, a very impressive group that involved some of the best Taíno farmers. The
guaxeris
of the Yuca, of the Maize, of the
axí
(peppers) and the fruit orchards he brought together. A pilgrimage they would make, Guarionex informed them, to the
adelantado
's farm. I was in camp with the
adelantado
when a runner came in from Guarionex, manifesting the peaceful intentions of the gathered group. The admiral came at once with his own troop. I remember thinking there might be another battle and was horrified, but indeed a quiet parley was the occasion.

Guarionex lined up his best gardeners, his orchard keepers, and thousands who came behind them, planting sticks in hand and seed pouches around their necks. The whole group sat on its haunches as the parley began, and Guarionex beseeched the admiral and the
adelantado
to consider his offer, which was to plant a huge sea of
conucos
, with
yucca
,
buniato,
and other tubers with
ajis
and
maize
and beans. He would work plantations that would run the width of the island from northern to southern coast, the
cacique
said, more than eighty leagues by thirty leagues square. “Never will you want from hunger,” he promised. “You and your children we will feed, here and in your Castilian lands. So much food we will grow that you may never feel a threat to your existence. Happy, like us, you will be. Make the villages, keep your animals, cut the trees and build huge boats, bring your women. Yes, we will feed them all, as we have done before, but plentifully, and we will plant and plant and make
cassabe
for you, and fish for you, and present it to the Castilians with good heart and with consistency.”

Guarionex's own words this day mixed in with a well-known speech among our
areitos
, one orated during the establishment of a new fire or village. It is called the speech of the
naboria
, and it was designed, in our own protocols, to invite a newcomer tribe to settle peacefully, as was happening with the Ciguayo in Española. For enticement, the
naboria
speech offered agricultural assistance, even labor. This was the oldest of
areitos
, used even by the earliest people we knew in in western Cuba, the Guanahatabey, when greeting with fruits and roots and conch meat the first Taíno to come on their beaches, in their eastern shores, many generations ago. It is the gentle way of the
naboria
, our ancient serving cousin, which was our own human way to cope with power and the migrations of warrior groups.