Taino (9 page)

August 2, 1532

Twenty-three.
Last words, for a while.

It now astounds me that I have written the above scenes. I reread these papers, and I feel the urge to vomit. I don't want to remember so much, by Yucahuguama, by Itiba, my mother, it hurts. I remember the heart behind the heart now. Once I catch the thread, the words come pouring out. I relive the moments, I see them pass before me, and always, afterward, I cry. Truly, these should be my last words for a while.

August 3, 1532

Twenty-four.
Enriquillo sends his messengers, request of
cohoba
peace pact.

How quickly things change. But twenty-four hours ago I forsook to write further. Now the heart thumps. That was yesterday morning. Today I am a different man, a man with a mission.

It was yesterday, after vespers, I left the convent. Reading these papers in the morning, prior to the last entry, uncontrollable pain wracked me all day. Searching solitude, even death, I walked past the convent gate. I wished to die because I never saw my people again … because I have seen the destruction of the world … because I should not have lived so long.

Looking a
mánso
, a pacified Indian, attired in white shirt and knee-length pants with my straw hat on, I walked without notice down the lane that passes the convent, cut across a field of grazing cattle, and entered woods that immediately begin the climb up a ridge. The ridge overlooks the ocean and the road to the eastern sugar plantations.

Reaching the top, I sat and rested. My leg ached at the knee so I could hardly open my eyes. All the way I ignored it, punished it, heart and vision darkened deep. Now, I read the clouds a while. They came in soft puffs and calmed me some. “My grandfathers,” I said to the directions, “tell me why I should be alive. Why am I not dead, too?” The pain behind my knee I cherished, happy to offer the simple gift of my suffering, though small compared to so much I have seen.

In this island of Española, where finally my days are counted, how many have I not seen die? Thousands upon thousands so there is not one in ten, nay, not one in fifty, not one in one hundred, of what there were the first time I came here with the admiral. Yes, I hate what I have seen. But I will not falter now; today I do want to tell it, because a young man named Enriquillo is now at large, imposing his own Taíno liberty, and his act gives me life.

Twenty-five.
A message and words of instruction.

Late evening found me walking toward the docks. The grog of the sailors called me now that the sun was gone. God knows what I might have done had any old sailor from the days of early voyages spotted me and offered his bottle. Deadly with hurricane eye, I was ready to kill, forthrightly, as I have done twice before, take the Castilian unawares and cut him deep. Such were my thoughts at that moment, and timid as I am, and bent, yet capable I was of so much damage, as I carried my good fishing knife and much
Ya
, our spirit of movement.

But feeling the ocean close by, I naturally approached it, leaving aside thoughts of the sailors' cantina and walking to sit on a rock by the waves. There I sat a while, until the laughter of whores and drunkards disturbed me. Walking west along the shore, leaving the buildings in the dark and searching the line of the sea, I suddenly heard men walking in the sand behind me.

“
Taíno-ti, Cacique Guaikán, tao caraya guatiao
,” one said in Taíno. “Good evening, brother Taíno. For you we have been looking.”

They were young men of Enriquillo. I answered them in our language, and they came forward. “Guarocuya sends us,” the speaker of the two said, using Enriquillo's Taíno name.

I spoke at length with the young ambassador and his fellow runner. The speaker had a long report for me, a speech he had memorized from Enriquillo himself. I was to listen carefully, as they would return to the bush immediately after delivering the speech. As with all our Taíno memorized messages, he spoke in sections.

The young warrior started:

“Guarocuya said to tell you that these are his words, though out of my mouth they will come now.

“Our
cacique
trusts you and respects you, he said. Your gesture with him at the Massacre of Anacaona's Banquet he remembers, and your many favors over the years.”

He paused briefly. “Now I continue,” he said.

“A hard campaign has been fought, the
cacique
of Bahuruku wants you to know. Guided by our own
mánsos
in the dry season five years ago, Captain San Miguel sniffed out three of our larger camps and destroyed them, killing many of our people. Since then we are much weakened to defend against other major assaults.”

He paused again.

“That time, Guarocuya struck back. We moved deeper into the mountains, to the last good places of retreat. Then did our
cacique
send our warriors to the enemies' ranches. When the rains started, we followed the Castilian captain home. That night, we burned his ranch and strangled three men who had done the guiding. Many horses we took, many cattle, and weapons, and tools. His bulls and boars, rams and stallions we decapitated and left to rot. All progenitors he lost. He and three other such captains all lost their ranches, one by one, destroyed for their aggressions against our free villages.”

He paused again briefly.

“Guarocuya said to tell Guaikán these important words: We are strong, more than two hundred tested warriors. But camps and even villages we must sustain, and war raids we must withstand as well. A coordinated campaign, such as the emperor king could unleash, which might all at once send eight or ten fighting squads against our territory, would be difficult to avoid or repel. We depend on surprise and the willingness to punish our tormentors. Thus, we are feared. But, we are mortally threatened if the king's armies should turn fully against our cause.”

He paused again. I counted twelve waves lapping at the shore before he continued.

“Many tongues make talk about an embassy from the emperor king. Our
cacique
asks—is it only words to roll up time? Or is there sincerity in the wish for peace?

“The king must learn, he says, that the
cacique
is man of peace. The king should know the
cacique
is a man of his word when he says that he would serve the king, who is a fair man, but not the local
cajayas
, the man-shark captains of the islands. The
cacique
is a firm man. Negotiations will not happen with island authorities, only with the king's embassy.

“I carry these instructions: Five conditions are required, according to our
cacique
. The safety of the
cacique
and his chiefs and captains must be the king's first words. The location of our camps and villages he must not inquire. Pardons must be granted for all his people, the Africans among our people included. Good planting land could be offered for a settlement and gentle peace. Then, if need be, the
cacique
should police his own. He wants men among his captains deputized, so arms they can hold legally.”

The young envoy stopped. He walked a few steps into the oncoming waves, and I followed him. The three of us stood in the water, caressed to our ankles by the waves. He meant to say by that: the sea mother cleans my next words. It is an old way of ours.

“Now about the good friar, our great protector, and your convent companion all these years, the robed man called Las Casas. I am to tell you that he has been in touch, but with disorienting effect. He sends messages suggesting sites for a parley, as such. He sends lists of conditions and offers to come and put up a Mass, give us the many sacraments. This is not good. Messengers open paths that soldiers follow. And, for certain, all parleys with Castile at this moment are death traps. So, the good friar is to know: deciding where to meet is for later and the site will be chosen by the
cacique
. And our
cacique
, who watches over all of us, he says the friar might go to the king's court. This would be good. Yes, indeed, he should go and report for us, nay, demand for us that a king's embassy is required for a true parley to take place.”

Enriquillo's messenger-warrior stopped abruptly, a final pause. He had a very alert face, proud of his memory.

“As for you, uncle, the
cacique
asks Guaikán to walk our mountain way. The steps to peace must be reviewed, he said, and you are requested to remember the time of Guarionex, the way of his peace pact. You are to remember how your old father-in-law conducted his alliance-making
areito
ceremony. In three new moons, we will come to guide you. And you must let us know when you are ready.”

His message delivered, the young Taíno lowered his head to receive my warmest blessing, then they both ran off without another sound.

August 7, 1532

Twenty-six.
A letter to Las Casas.

I sent a letter today to Father Las Casas. It went with young Silverio, who took my mare. He rides to the monastery at Puerto de Plata to deliver my letter himself. I wrote to the good friar of my contact with “the boy held in the bosom.” This is a reference to how I held the boy Enriquillo during the Massacre of Anacaona's Banquet, carrying him to the only safe spot, in Commander Ovando's own tent. His older brother I led by the hand, but a soldier drunk on blood killed him with a sword. I then held the four-year-old Enriquillo to my chest, protecting him as I ran. This story Father Las Casas knows from me.

Twenty-seven.
Useful Castilian things, paper, horses.

I marvel at the usefulness of paper to carry the message. Young Silverio was brought up
mánso
. I would not wish to trust his memory, much less his ability to hold a secret. The mare, too, is a Castilian thing. I have had her six years. She was a gift of Don Diego, the admiral's real son, upon his return to Castile, after his time as governor of the island. “For your service to my father, during the early years,” he told me.

My little mare is a sturdy brown Andalusian and has a white face. I call her Cariblanca, in Castilian. I don't ride her much, for the old leg wound just under my left buttock can be irritated and sends horrendous burning pains down to my knee and up my back. I rent Cariblanca to messengers and occasionally to travelers, but only if they treat her gently.

August 10, 1532

Twenty-eight.
News from Cuba, death of the Guamax rebellion.

Sad news this week from Cuba. The rebel
cacique
Guamax is dead. A Castilian patrol attacked his main
rancho
, near Baracoa, on the northeast coast of that island. But the
cacique
died of an old wound weeks before they broke up his main camp. When they rode into his clearing, Guamax's widows were placing his bones in a funerary basket. They say that for all the running and killing, the two women continued their work until captured inside their
bohío
.

I heard a version of this story at the dock today from Juan Martín de Ayala, an old sailor of Hojeda's, who now commands his own caravel. He sailed in from Santiago with a boat full of slaves, including some of Guamax's captured men. Ayala said the skull of Guamax was stuck on a spike at the entrance to the village of Baracoa, as were the severed heads of his chiefs and principal women.

“Our good Carlito [King Charles V] lost his patience with that one,” he told a group that gathered later to hear his story at the Pensión Marinera. “Guamax burned our forts to the ground at Sancti Espiritus and Puerto Principe. But the king sent new troops, well-heeled with harquebus. Damn Indian kindling were blasted with shot all over that plain. What's left of them are deep in the forest, still running.”

I could not call Ayala publicly on his equivocation, so now with pen and paper I will set the record straight. Guamax of Baracoa went to war in 1522, less than two years after Enriquillo took to the bush here in Española. Three years ago, in August of '29, he nearly defeated the Castilians in Cuba, burning down several towns, as Ayala recounted, though Ayala made it sound as if it happened recently. It wasn't the king's soldiers that got Guamax either. It was the smallpox, which got to his large war camps as they moved through the mountains to lay siege on Baracoa and Santiago. They say his warriors and women advisors dropped all around him by the hundreds, nine out of ten of them, over the course of but a few days. Guamax's campaign was destroyed by the pox—that son-of-a-bad-mother disease. Guamax himself was heartbroken by the death that seemed to come in the wind, though his surviving warriors continued to raid. Beyond the raiders, too, other
guaxeris
just moved away to the high ground or back to the coast.

Ayala and the group discussed Enriquillo next, but I eased away for fear that Ayala or another one from those times of Commander Ovando might remember my actions of then. I owe my peace of recent years to an instinct for evasiveness. Sailors, soldiers, and
encomendado
peons, even some
patrones
, all hang together in Santo Domingo. They pray at the same church and frequent the same whorehouse. In both, they damn to Hell the good friar, of whom I am a devoted servant, and in both they relish in descriptions of punishments for Enriquillo and his men. Tonight, they will be toasting the death of Guamax.

Twenty-nine.
Remembering the elder Guamax.

I never met the younger Guamax, though once, at the beginning, I was in his territory of Baracoa. It was with the admiral, not many days after leaving Guanahaní in the ship
Santa Maria
. That time, forty years ago, the Guamax who died of recent would have been a crawling boy. Another Guamax, an elder
cacique
, held the title then. We did meet him and, now that I think of it, in a rather peculiar way. While I await the good friar's return, I will take up that tale next, how I sailed to Cuba with Don Christopherens after hiding on his ship at Guanahaní, what we did and how we later arrived at this island of La Española, or, in our language, Haiti-Bohío, or Quisqueya, the big mountain country.