Taino by Jose Barreiro Page B

him. “Two weeks’ journey, maybe more.”
    â€œMaybe much more,” said the admiral. “Probably many leagues, wouldn’t you say?”
    â€œProbably, my captain.”
    â€œI am convinced this is mainland,” Columbus said then. He had learned that Cuba means “large territory, well planted” in the Taíno language. “We are at the southern extensions of the Great Khan’s dominions,” he pronounced. “Cuba of the Great Khan.”
    Torres, of course, knew better, as did Jerez. Caréy and I had even told the admiral, several times, that Cuba can be rounded by canoe. It is a very large land, indeed, but an island. The admiral never quite conceded the point. He kept insisting it a mainland, and, as I have written earlier, insisted on it completely on the second voyage, as we traveled Cuba’s long southern coast.

    Thirty-six. Cibanakán, my father-uncle, comes on board.
    We sailed east from there, as the admiral decided to round the cape of Cuba at Maisí Point and strike southward to explore the large island of Bohío, now Santo Domingo or Española. Touching points on the coast of Cuba, the ships took in sixteen more Taínos, chosen from the crowds to be kept as captives. This new action disconcerted me. Like our own Guanahaní people taken by force, the Cuban Taínos were selected for their strength and physical appeal. Of our own men, three had already slipped overboard at appropriate moments, hitching rides on the canoes of friends. In one case, the rescuer was none other than my uncle, Cibanakán, who later returned to get me, talked at length with me, and ended up staying. Cibanakán being at the time some forty-five years of age, we made up a story about his wife and children being aboard in order to obtain the admiral’s permission. “He should work with you to keep our captives calm,” he told me.

    Thirty-seven. The old man Guamax, his curse on the admiral.
    I promised to tell about the elder Guamax, the old cacique of Baracoa who held the name at the time of the first voyage. I believe he was related to the other great cacique of eastern Cuba, Bayamo, whom we met in the first of my pages.
    As the Taíno men and women taken on the Cuban coast numbered twenty or more, the story of the takings spread on land. From coastal promontories, signals of smoke that told of seaborne danger (very black smoke from the resin of the jobo tree) could be seen, and for days after a taking, shore after shore turned up empty. Once our sailors, ashore to search an empty village, found the skull and bones of a grandfather, as customary, resting in a basket near the ceiling of a tall bohío . After the admiral inspected it and both Caréy and I explained its significance, the sailors played with it on the beach, in sight of his hidden relatives, who watched from a hill out of reach. Two sailors tossed the skull around by its long hair, finally discarding it into a river. I remember being sickened by their game. This occurred, I am reasonably certain, near the end of November 1492. I had been with the admiral six weeks.
    On December 3, as I count suns in my memory, after three days of absolutely contrary wind, the caravels moved east along the coast of northern Cuba, entering small coves as they made their way out of the Baracoa area. That day, as we took final pass of a wide river mouth, the local ni-Taínos, despite their fear of the Castilians, perceived us to be leaving and several dozen canoes came out. One of our captive Indians, taken days before, pointed out to me an old man, tall and thin and wrinkled, wearing a wide headdress, who directed his young paddlers round the stern of the Santa Maria , where Columbus was standing. “ Taíno-ti, Guamax-cacique ,” I heard a captive man say, next to me, by way of greeting the old man.
    The old man who at that time held the title of Guamax pointed directly at the admiral, took off