Taino (25 page)

“In the case of the Negro rebellion, exactly ten years ago, the second admiral acted swiftly and brutally, it is true. More than twenty blacks had gotten away, and word was spreading to other sugar mills. He sought to—”

“Everyone knows he feared a general rebellion,” Oviedo had caught my challenge. “But why do you say, a Castilian—by what meaning?”

“The way of your punishment has been to hang and burn our elders,” I said. “Or is this strange to your learned ears?”

“Only rebellious ones,”
Oidor
Suazo intervened. I think he tried to change the conversation. “What say you, Don Gonzalo, of the efforts to deal with Enriquillo?”

“If done properly, he would be hanged,” Oviedo replied quickly, looking at me, and then spoke slowly. “He is a brigand, Indian or not, and has committed acts of theft and cruel violence.”

“He fights only for a justice denied him,” I said.

“He is an outlaw, a rebel and a murderer, regardless of—”

“He is a man of conviction,” I interrupted, “not a fingery gold-counter!”

Oviedo stood, making as if to reach for his dagger. “This Indian must go,” he yelled. “Insult I will not tolerate.”

Oviedo, now turned historian, came to these islands to count the king's gold. Everyone knows that, and there are many stories on the depths of his pockets. Two monks stepped behind him, I think to prevent violence, as he stood erectly facing me, hand on the hilt of his dagger.

“Las Casas knows these things,” I said with deadly calm. “He writes the truth about us.”

The abbot stood. “Dieguillo must retire,” he said, as Oviedo, facing me, yelled: “Las Casas is another lying fool!”

I stood, too, wanting to insult him again, but more words were not forthcoming. I was ready to kill that Oviedo, to yank out his lying tongue. Leaning on the table, my hand clasped a serving knife, a gesture noticed by the abbot. “Go at once, Dieguillo,” he commanded. “You are dangerously close to illegality. Do not threaten an officer of the king.”

Thus did I retire to my cloistered cell, in the early hours of this new year, marking now 1,533 since the birth of the Christ.

January 10, 1533

One hundred ten.
In need of punishment.

Two days my body felt a wretch after contention with the bottle. Only Fray Remigio, the Franciscan, and young Silverio visited my room, and then briefly, after meals. I ate steadily from their offerings to stabilize my corpus, but as my body recovered, my mind and heart bemoaned my thoughtless indiscretion.

Now I am ashamed, not because of the insult to Oviedo, who is an old whore full of calumnies, but because my own stupidity allowed such a scandal. How I think of Enriquillo I gave away and precisely to the wrong people. Nothing did I hear from
Oidor
Suazo nor, of course, from “the intellect” about the need for peace with Enriquillo, though they pronounce such thoughts in their more public gestures. It is not a good moment to lose my anonymity.

With the knotted rope the convent keeps for such a purpose, I will ask Fray Remigio to flagellate me. I will ask him to strike me hard, make me bleed from the shoulders and suffer. I am such a fool, and I have always been such a fool. And how can I change now, but through more pain? I must concentrate my mind on the task before me, which is to ensure that Enriquillo lives, that his movement is not crushed just as he would make a peace.

January 12, 1533

One hundred eleven.
Las Casas reports mixed news.

As if to torment my agitation, a letter arrives from Las Casas, but full of troublesome news—all the more reason provided me for the painful remedy I have dictated for my soul.

The good friar met with the empress, as King Charles was not yet back in his Iberian court. Long dialogues he reports, though the empress was not well disposed. As of July, 1532, she commissioned a captain to press the war on Enriquillo, annihilate him once and for all. His name is Barrionuevo, and according to the friar, he and more than two hundred soldiers will have left for our island by my receipt of the letter. The friar will also return now.

He writes: “I demanded from the Empress Isabel of Portugal, wife of King Carlos I, an adequate plan for a peace in Española based on the principle of just treatment.” “She called me a meddler and referred to more than a dozen documents of complaint against my person, several authored or seconded by the
oidor
Suazo, of late so endearing with me.

“What to make of all this I am not sure, except that a strong position at the court is that Enriquillo should be invited to come here on an embassy from which he will not return. I am more worried than always now, noting the empress's response. I believe the king is more disposed to establish a peace, but he is tending to his German dominions and is not expected for several more weeks.”

One bit of good news: my old friend Rodrigo Gallego is to make the voyage as an officer of the guard. He is now a captain and well regarded. His application to join the mission was easily accepted. The good friar reports long conversations with Rodrigo, who professed himself a sympathizer these many years to the plight of our Taíno people. I am very happy about this news that I will see my friend, missing from my life since our tearful farewell in Seville, in 1493.

“Seize the initiative to negotiate on our own with Enriquillo,” writes Las Casas. “The island hidalgos have the stealth for a devious assassination, but I don't believe they have the courage for more campaigns in the Bahuruku, which describes the empress's plan. Assist the baby boy [here he employs my code] to design a careful negotiation. A captain and a soldier, Barrionuevo nevertheless carries secondary instructions to recognize Enriquillo's original complaints. I expect, if our efforts are rewarded, that he will go empowered to grant pardons if peace can be achieved.

“As you receive this letter, I will be on board a returning ship. Please be very careful and strategic as the moment comes for definitive action to make gains at the end this fourteen-year-old affair. I have raised the
encomienda
as a point of discussion. Yes, it angers everyone anew to discuss this sin we all share, but it must be raised, again and again, until justice is done.

“My friend, I remember seeing you those many years ago, not far from where I now write these words, your skinny young frame and quick smile and the wonderful parrots you handled. I hope you are well and commend you to keep writing, keep writing. What you have to say about those early days is I believe of great importance.”

One hundred twelve.
I must get to the Bahuruku.

Now I sit and ponder, hoping my lunatic indiscretion with Oviedo and the
oidor
will have minor repercussion. The monks, I know, are watching me more carefully. Most are sympathizers of the good friar's mission, but I fear their constant curiosity for my expressions on the
cacique
. So they watch me, wondering, and I wonder, too, is there a traitor among them? And how can I leave here without notice? How can I get to the Bahuruku to talk to Enriquillo, which I clearly must do, and not give him away? I am such a magnus fool for what I have done, and at such a wrongful moment!

One hundred thirteen.
Flogged out of my guilty stupor.

Finally I am flogged. Fray Remigio understood my request and gracefully backed me up without word, administering my torture faithfully and quietly, assisting me to my cot as on the fortieth stroke I crumbled from the pain. A prayer I intoned when I awakened, and for two days I have forced movement on my arms and shoulders, a dismay through my neck and head that has made me wretch anew. Such is the power, though, even in my stupidity, that one day later an opportunity arises. I feel the strength of the spirits in this, a prayer returned. The sugar mill near San Juan de la Maguana constructs a new
trapiche
building and has called for carpenters. I will go there and set a message out for the baby boy.

Folio IV

A Visit to the Rebel Camps

Francisco Pedro, Yoruba friend… Two weeks later, sugar mill story… A new day begins… In the free Taíno territory… Greetings by Enriquillo and Doña Mencia, council of captains… Younger captains' proposals for raids to procure arms and munitions and tools… Touring the camp, the young men… The capture of Caonabó… Lessons for the boy-warriors… Castilians dance for gold… Caonabó serves notice on Fuerte Tomás… Blood not spilled, but a chopped hand… Discussions in the evening… Caonabó's deception by Hojeda… Nobody liked the story… San Miguel's deception… Seeking a path to peace, Enriquillo… Looking for the
behike
… Early
cohobas
with Guarionex… Fasting and old stories of Taínos… Peace-pact ways of Guarionex… Friar Pané,
el terco
, the busybody priest who got many good people killed… A Castilian army readies for battle… Maniocatex riles up a war… Pané riles up a
cacique
's
yukaieke
… The Battle of Christendom over the Heathens… Guarionex is prisoner… Guarionex is released, Guacanagari disappears… A Taíno offer on the land… The first Castilian rebellion: Roldán attacks the admiral… I take a bride, Ceiba… Making a family, home days… Enriquillo's camp is like the old
yukaiekes
… The old man knew so much… Death Spirits that open sores in our faces… Roldán and the first Indian
repartimiento
… Guarionex retreats to the mountains… Guarionex falls, and Mayobanex… Castilians swarm the island… Surrounded by young Taíno, education for peace… A song comes to me… Going to meet the medicine…

One hundred fourteen.
Francisco Pedro, Yoruba friend.

I write tonight from a small
bohío
near San Juan de la Maguana, where I have come with young Silverio. The
bohío
belongs to a free Negro named Francisco Pedro, who served with me in the
encomienda
of Pero Lopez before that singular son of a she-dog lost his Maguana holdings, during the time of the admiral Diego, and returned to Santo Domingo. Francisco Pedro is a good friend who, like myself, has benefited greatly from the friendship of the second admiral and that of Father Las Casas. He is a lucky African just as I am a lucky Indian to come out alive from inside the nightmare of the past forty years. He was one of the first Yoruba men brought over by Antonio de Torres, before the time of Nicolás de Ovando in 1502.

When I was
encomended
in 1514, along with Enriquillo and his father, already Francisco Pedro, whom I call by his common nickname of Yoruba, was an older man. Today he fixed us herbal tea and cooked a hen in onions and rice and boiled
yucca
for us, and he seems as agile as in those days. “
Muchacho
,” he still calls me, though I am certainly not a boy anymore. “You better rest a day and be ready to work when you go over to that Solana's sugar mill. You are now used to that soft life of the convent, dusting
maguacokío
altars and cooking for priests. But the mill—they work you, even a freeman, sixteen straight hours, with a one-hour stop after midday.”

He is right, of course. The life of the sugar mill is the worst now. And what he is too polite to say: Indians don't work the cane or sugar-grind anymore. All that has gone to Negroes in the last ten years, the strongest arms for
macheteros
, and the biggest ones to work the grinding
trapiche
. Wielding the machete in a field of cane, spiny slivers by the millions falling on your face and sweaty neck, burning sun of the harvest torching your head, is about the hardest work a man can do on this island, now that the gold mines are nearly exhausted. Almost all
macheteros
(canecutters) are Negroes now, while Indians are harvesting
yucca
and herding cattle. Many Negroes are like us in build, but many more than us are big and muscled heftily, and those are put to work inside the mill, where the machinery is huge and heavy and everything is hot to the touch. “The Castilians treated Indians as if you were wild game,” Francisco Pedro told me today, “but they treat us Negroes like beasts of burden.”

Tomorrow I will ride into the Spanish village of Vera Paz, what used to be the main
yukaieke
of old
Cacique
Bohekio, here in the province of Xaraguá. I am to go to the sugar mill and cattle ranches of Don Diego Solana and his wife, Doña Maria de Arana, where a new
trapiche
building for squeeze-grinding sugar cane is to be constructed. Solana is probably the biggest cattleman on this side of the island, with more than twenty thousand head of cattle, thirty Spanish foremen, three dozen Indian peons, and more than one hundred African slaves. Most of the plain from Santo Domingo to the foothills of Bahuruku is crowded already with cattle, sheep, and sugar cane. It is hard to believe how much everything has changed. I count forty years since the first Castilian settlement on these parts, and it is amazing how the sugar cane sea of deep green has spread. Sugar cane tastes sweet enough, but it burns the land and feeds nothing but ships going to Castile. Not even animals or birds does the sugar cane feed; no animal does it feed except for the plague rat that came over in their own ships. And that one not even the
mahá
snake eats. The sugar feeds not even the men of the sugar boilers. At the refineries, the Negroes near the boilers are forced to wear
bozales
(muzzles) so they cannot open their mouths to swallow even a bit of its product.

Silverio rides a yellow gelding I rented from the abbot, who was pleased to see me off. “The work will do you good, Dieguillo,” he said, though he warned me not to go near Oviedo's cattle ranch near San Juan de la Maguana. Of course, I intend doing no such thing, as my mission here is to work two weeks at carpentry on Solana's
trapiche
, while Silverio rides on to the Bahuruku. I am trusting young Silverio, who is mostly a resourceful lad, precisely from the people of Guarionex, with this delicate mission. Interestingly, he worries not the danger presented by the governor's
cuadrillas
but wonders if Enriquillo's warriors might not lynch him, which deed they have carried out at various times against suspected
mánso
informers. “I can avoid the Castilians, Don Diego,” he assures me. “But I fear the
guaxeri
of the
cacique
.”

I prepare for him tonight a note, waxed over and wrapped inside the sheath of his machete, that will deliver him and be delivered to the baby boy. Meanwhile, I will write not during my stay at Solana's sugar mill but instead will hide my writing things away here with Yoruba, whom nobody bothers, while I fulfill my obligation in that stifling atmosphere. When I find myself at the Taíno camps, at our free places on the Bahuruku, where my people are still maintaining themselves, there I will write again.

One hundred fifteen.
Two weeks later, sugar mill story.

Once again tonight at Francisco Pedro's
bohío
I take up the pen. Two weeks exactly have passed, and later this morning I will ride my whiteface mare to the old Camin River, where it enters the plain. Word from Silverio already awaited me here, delivered two days ago by a mounted
guaxeri
of Enriquillo's. It indicated the place of my entrance to the free country.

I make only two quick notes before departure. One is how excited I am to be near the baby boy. The daring ride of his messenger, who was chased by two Spanish squads before slipping free, warms my heart.

The second note is this: at Solana's hacienda, which is on the foothills of this plain, I saw the remains of the irrigation canals used years ago by Bohekio's gardens. This dry plain, rich in soil but poor in water, required an intricate plan from that thoughtful
cacique
's forebears, who turned out large quantities of
yucca
, yams, corn, and beans.

At the hacienda, a foreman from Asturias berated an African man. “Negro
etúpido
!” he yelled as the Negro man led a wagon of water pulled by an ox. The trail was rough and the African, who led the ox by way of a nose ring, kept tripping, jerking on the ox's nose so that it bled. The foreman let fly the whip, three, four times, at the poor Negro man's shoulders. Their activity was to transport a huge barrel of water, carried by ox wagon, to moisten the soil of the vegetable gardens. As the blows stopped, the African recovered his composure to lead the ox, but then the wagon wheel itself became stuck as the road's edge collapsed. I was walking by with two planks of wood, keeping my head low. That's when I saw the old canal, under the dry-cracked lode. It was the old irrigation canal my good Taíno brethren used forty years ago to water all of this beautiful plain, turning a dry valley, year by year, into mountains of food. Typical
maguacokío
, I thought, beating someone else in frustration when the solution to his problem is right under his feet!

One hundred sixteen.
A new day begins.

Tired I am tonight, exhausted and agonized by my cramping leg, after a journey through iguana trails, down rivers, and up buttes. But I am found, I say, and I write this in the bright night of a circle moon. I am here, I say. I am lying up in a hammock, in the
yukaieke
of the
Cacique
Guarocuya (my baby boy Enriquillo), surrounded by the constant din of the forest.

I saw him already; he was there at the water's edge to greet me, Doña Mencia, as always, at his side. They are so young and yet their manner so grave, so beautifully calm. I am entirely content to see them, to be here, to write these words—incredibly, wonderfully—by moonlight. Now the
coquí
, our tree frog, barks in his quick rasp and the whole forest chirps back. I note it happily. Near me, also on a hammock, young Silverio sleeps, breathing in tandem with the night.

Silverio helped guide me here. He came in the company of a young warrior from this camp, a tall thin man named Cao, after the black crow of our islands. He claims descendancy from Hatuey's people, on the old Guahaba province, just north of here. I could see they were good friends already. In only three weeks with Enriquillo's men, young Silverio has lost the nervousness that has characterized him for me. I met the two by a huge
ceiba
tree that grows in a place of large boulders, where the river turns west and enters the plain. We rode upriver a while, then it got thick and they let their horses go.

I left the whiteface in a meadow. With the help of the
guaxeris
, I made a corral surrounding a heavy salt stone. The corral is closed off by the river on one end and thick brush and a post fence hidden behind trees. I expect she will be alright there. We then walked for six days, the going so rough at times I wondered if we would crisscross the Bahuruku's thirty leagues of length along the coast and twenty-five leagues of width inland before getting somewhere. We followed the river up rugged peaks and through brush so thick we had to crawl on hands and knees. Then slowly we made our way down the valley called Cayobani to the shores of the big lake called Aybaguanex. Cao located his canoe, hidden in the brush, and we paddled off, trailing a line and a wide basket weighed down to scrape bottom, which caught about three dozen hand-sized
xaiba
crabs. The line caught one large fish I did not recognize but which Cao said was good eating.

Enriquillo and Mencia waited at the waters' edge. It brought tears to my eyes to see them in white cotton garments surrounded by captains and
guaxeri
and to hear the sweet words of our language, “
Caraya tao, cacique Guaikán
, welcome to our home.”

It was late afternoon. We drank a pineapple drink, ate
guayabas
and small sweet plantain—a food of the Africans that traveled quickly into our
conucos
—but no hot meal, as there were yet another four hours to walk. It was this walk, brisk and totally uphill to a plateau, that cramped my leg and lay me out.

One hundred seventeen.
In the free Taíno territory.

I now see part of their
yukaieke
, eight wide
bohíos
set back on the open plateau, saluted by moon's shadows. I smell the smoke of the braziers, where fish and pig and crab are barbecuing, and I can hear the soft murmuring of
guaxeris
as they prepare the food and they greet and feed the outposted warriors coming in from their guard. Tomorrow I will see the place by sunlight and the enchantment will, I am sure, dissipate, a war camp it is, after all. But now as I struggle with my tired eyes and fight the pain of my caimán-bitten leg, I feel with certainty the reason for my being alive. Thanks it be to the Yucahuguama Bagua Maórocoti, first powers, Lord Spirit of the Yuca Beings, Spirit of the Sea, Male Spirit without grandfathers of Woman Only Born; it is in you, the Three Combined Into One, who still breathe life into our Taíno nostrils; thanks it be to your mother, Atabei, Mother of Waters; thanks it be to Itiba Cahobaba, Ancient Bleeding Mother, mother of Deminán, leader of the Four Brothers, remembered creators of our Taíno world: please be with us, all the greatnesses; thanks be to all the
cemis
you have empowered, Xán-Xán, please be with us, yes, all, and thanks to you, yes, again, yes, and again and again, yes. Xán, Xán Katú, Xán Xán Katú.

One hundred eighteen.
Greetings by Enriquillo and Doña Mencia, council of captains.

Three days have passed since I touched this pen, three days full of life I have spent with the men and women of this place. Now, on a clear day, I will make notes.