Taino (4 page)

I saw Castile in my youth. I would write about that next, how I traveled through Spain in 1493. Then I would write about our return, the shock of what we encountered at Fort Navidad. All that and more would come before, in my story, because from the time I met the admiral to the time we sailed to Cuba and met Bayamo, the
cacique
who cursed Columbus, it was a year and more.

Now, it is forty years since that morning at Guanahaní, when after a night under lock in the hatch of the
Santa Maria
, I heard the pilot, Sancho Ruiz, holler the order to pull up anchors, and the three caravels hoisted up sails, gliding swiftly as they let the seven of us Guanahaní-ti, or as they called us, Indians, come out on deck just in time to see our beach disappear, our little turtle island of Guanahaní, become a sliver in the horizon, gone from our eyes.

Nine.
I begin with the return.

Later in this journal, I will take up the proper order. I want to tell my own stories and I have plenty of paper. But first I will let the good friar guide my pen.

In Castile, the admiral was received as a hero, but when we arrived again at our shores, that time with seventeen ships and more than fifteen hundred men, it was a not a good moment. The colony Don Christopherens left behind, Fort Navidad, was destroyed and everyone killed. Trouble brewed.

I remember well those first nightmare days of the new Isabel town, when all Castilian eyes were nervous and distant, weapons always at the ready and quickly used. The admiral's authority was daily challenged. The Castilian captains and the priest, the buzzardhead Buil, disdained him as a mere Genoese. Daily were the fights and contentions between Castilians themselves and against our Indian people.

A simple thing: the taking without permission of a cutlass from a sleeping Christian man. For that I saw the broad ax come down and a fourteen-year-old Taíno boy hopping and hopping as blood poured from his wrist, as the admiral, walking the ship's deck in long steps, shrugged his long shoulders, nodding, “It is the lesson we must teach, Diego. Always understand, I myself have no bloodlust, but the lesson must be sharp (
tajante
) to be understood.” His hair was still red, that marvelous red hair we all had wondered at. I remember now how I told myself over and over that the bloodletting had its reason:
The Guamíquina knows what he does, I cried against hope that night. The Guamíquina knows what to do.

April 26, 1532

Ten.
A route home denied.

Columbus was by then my adopted father, this having happened in Barcelona, after his triumphant reception by the queen. And I still loved him, though it was a love in its final instances. Nevertheless, those first few days sailing, the openness and natural generosity of the sea made my heart soar. Too, Don Christopherens was a man who came alive on a ship. A thing to behold was his certainty of signal from wave and wind and cloud. I admit I sailed happily off with him from Isabella, still as his main interpreter, escaping the troubles of landlocked men.

The hope of my innocence that time was to once again arrive home at my island of Guanahaní. I rejoiced in the possibility of return to my own village by paddling home around the Maisí Point of Cuba. That first night, starting out, when I mentioned this wish to the admiral, he said: “It is possible to do so, Dieguillo.” I envisioned rounding Cuba's easternmost point and heading north. Night after night I dreamed myself in a canoe, paddling home those last few suns to arrive at Guanahaní in the early morning, where I would make fire for my mother and awaken her gently by stroking the skin of her face.

Sighting Cuban land, our three ships indeed hugged the shore but turned west, not to round the Maisí tip of Cuba and out to my little island of Guanahaní. I questioned not the admiral, but waited; he spoke soon enough. To the officers and crew that very evening he asserted that this land of Cuba, which he renamed first Juana and then others called Fernandina, was not an island but a peninsula of the mainland of China. He meant to determine this thesis, he said, by exploring the southern coast going west. Don Christopherens got that distant look in his face, a dreaminess, when speaking of Cuba this way. So we sailed around the southwestern point of Cuba, which the admiral renamed Cape of the Cross.

In my heart I despaired I would never again see my mother, my village, or my people. Suddenly I felt the loneliness that would be with me the rest of my life. Yes, stingray jolt was for me that trip to Cuba, that trip that exploded my wonderment about the admiral, this arrogant man that renamed the world at will, changing the nature of everything, mixing what was ours with what was to be theirs. Yes, that was the moment. My beckoning like a son to this man we believed could cross the barriers to the Spirit World shattered. My heart was as the dried out carapace of the great sea turtle left out in the midday sun.

Eleven.
The trip to Cuba, barbecuing on the beach.

On the beach in southern Cuba, from the distance, we could see Indian fishermen cooking. Then on the open sea in front of us, we saw two men in a canoe. They turned out to be brothers, and one fished with a net, the other by means of a guaikán, or sucker fish, which I am named after. This clever method of my people was unfamiliar to the Castilians on board. It makes use of the powerful circle of suckers on the guaikán's flat head, by which the fish attaches itself to larger fish and even bigger turtles. The fishermen tied the fish's tail with a long, thin
bejuco
string and asked us to slow our approach as they were then pulling in a big turtle.

I talked to the brothers from aboard ship. They gave our ship four large
caguama
turtles and invited me to the beach in their canoe. The ship's boat followed us to the shore, where we found other men cooking hundreds of smoked lobsters, yellowtails, barbecued
hutías
and iguanas, most of it wrapped in
maize
husks and stacked in small huts.

The men were of
cacique
Bayamo's village. Immediately they stated that from there to Baracoa, on the northern coast, and including all the mountain ranges of the region, their
cacique
and his line of
behikes
were respected. Their
cacique
had told them to prepare food for visitors. They said Bayamo was a seer who knew many things. Believing that we must be those expected visitors, they directed us to a place up the coast, a fishing village of a lesser
cacique
named Macaca, where we would find Bayamo. They gifted me with many foods for our ships. When the sailors thanked them, they shrugged, and said together, “We'll catch more.” Since they had seen me emerge from the caravel's hold, the brothers were sorry to see me go, for they wanted to hear my stories about the hair-faced men who traveled in wooden caves.

Twelve.
Bayamo and Macaca: not a discourse but a curse.

The next day, I sat next to the admiral in the rowboat going to the shore. The three caravels sat behind us in the thick of the bay. Waiting on the beach, hundreds of men, women, and older children surrounded the
cacique
, an old man, frail but spry, who carried a woven tunic over his shoulder. In one hand he carried a basket of small
guayabas
. The admiral spotted him. “Regard thou this Indian his apparel,” he said to Captain Juan de la Cosa, his mapmaker, who sat behind us. I, too, was impressed. The old
cacique
of Bayamo watched sternly as his men pulled our boats to shore, then waved us to him. The admiral stiffened but went to the old man, standing before him a few seconds, then offering his hand. Old Bayamo grasped the hand and held it, peering directly at the much taller Don Christopherens.

Bending slightly toward me, the admiral said: “Tell him he may kneel and kiss the ring, which is granted me by the sovereigns of Castile and Aragon, now the united Christian Kingdom…” But, before I could begin to put that into our language, another old man, the local
cacique
Macaca, came up and took the admiral's other hand. The two
caciques
turned and began walking fast, the multitude closing behind them and suddenly it was all we could do to keep up, Don Cristopherens, myself, Captains Herrera and Navarra, a dozen soldiers and sailors, plus the braggart Cúneo, walking for half a league, the soldiers hacking a trail through the greenery, sweating gourds before arriving at a deserted
yukaieke
of twelve
bohíos
built in a square.

Their round
bohíos
were very well made, with tight thatch ties in the roof poles and bamboo and palm board walls fastened so sunlight could not penetrate. All had good dimensions and some large ones were forty and fifty feet wide. The square was recently swept. Large woven mats made from palm fronds lay covered with baskets of sweet fruits, pots of cooked corn ears,
ñame
,
boniato
soups, barbecued duck, lobster, iguana, and a fragrant herbal tea, freshly squeezed with cool mountain stream water. It all had been left out, smoking and steaming in the empty village, awaiting our arrival. Immediately I felt at home. This was the way it was done among our Guanahaní people, to leave food out like that, as if dropped from the sky. Even among small
caneys
of three or four families, often a family might return from harvesting or fishing and find a meal prepared like that, all warm and freshly made and no one around. As we sat and feasted on the
axiaco
and
cassabe
, I felt a great homesickness grip my chest.

Thirteen.
The Castilians change everything.

I promised, good friar, to tell about the meeting and not get too involved in my own story. You say we were like Christians in our ways of worship, that we believed in similar spirits. I will say it is true, that our people had some similar ideas to yours. But another truth is you came from a world other than ours. And that world you brought with you, and with it you saw everything of ours, and with your words you renamed and changed everything that was obvious before.

At Bayamo's open-air
batéy
, or plaza, a dance was held. First the young men drummed and sang, then the women and all children joined in, holding hands in two long rows on both sides of the fire, singing long and melodic
areito
songs. They gave a beautiful rendition of the
areito
of Bayamanacoel, which they would, of course, being the Bayamo people. They did this in greater detail than I had heard before or since. Bayamanacoel was the first maker of
guanguayo
, our sacred
cohoba
paste and the
areito
tells how Bayamanacoel found
cohoba
the first time, what great trials he suffered to gain its favor and the favor of fire itself to prepare its powers for creation. Later, in one part of the story, he spits this paste on the back of Deminán, another of our ancestral grandfather-creators…

A Taíno such as myself could appreciate this offering, which was ceremonial and spiritual. Truly, I have loved reclining in the wide hammocks of my mother and grandmother, listening to the
areitos
of our Taínos that can go on and on, night after night, and never lack for songs. Bayamo's
areito
was so intricate, so ancient, that it ended after almost two hours where the same
areito
of other places would begin. Then, four old men and one old woman, all wearing the white, woven tunics, joined the great
cacique
Bayamo in reciting ancestral stories for our ears. These doings put through by the old
cacique
represented a great honor and normally would have been reciprocated with several days of ceremony.

Sitting next to me, the admiral was impatient to be back in his ship as night was falling and a bright moon was our only fighting advantage. I knew and informed the admiral that his turn to speak, as honored guest, would surely come, and thus he waited quietly, observing everyone at the same time that his agonized mind calculated everything. Here, he had been seated by our people in a
duho
, or ceremonial chair, his back placed against a wide root that protruded, tall as a cathedral wall, from a huge tree that towered over the clearing. Here he was feasted and sung to and offered the hospitality of the village, but in his mind that I know so well, he was in his mission, calculating possession and achievement.

Asked to speak, the admiral stood. This is what he said, as I remember it. “I am here to claim the lands we stand upon for the sovereigns of Castile and Aragon, whose loyal subjects you are now become,” he began. I stood next to him to interpret and yet consciously moved a bit apart to establish my own stance before Taíno people.

“We are Christians,” he continued, “and we are led by the most revered Catholic queen, our beloved Isabel of Castile, who, along with her own sovereign husband, King Ferdinand of Aragon, sent us to these lands. If Bayamo wants to be among the good people who go to Heaven when they die, he and his people should accept what I am telling them. But by our Christian law, once you have heard our doctrine, not to accept it is to be damned eternally, and you would force my armies to war upon you without mercy.”

I translated as well as I could the words of the admiral. My instinct was always to let my people know as clearly as I could the intentions in the Castilian's words, but often they could be so drastic that I had to refrain from giving their full tenor.

Thus, at first, the
caciques
smiled at each other over the admiral's words, hearing only favored points. “Taíno-ti-Taíno,” they said, one after another, meaning: “Good, we are the good people, too, the nice-minded people.”

The admiral listened to their words with distant demeanor, until a reference was made to their own land by a young leader, whom Bayamo asked to speak. “This is our island,” the man said clearly, “which we share with the Çiboney villages, not far from us down the coast. Our own people, guided by ni-Taíno that we understand in our language, extend from here to the small Lucayos and to the Bohío land, to Borikén and Xamayca.”