How Caribbean Amerindians Influenced the History of the Americas
©
Michael Auld (Yamaye)
-Artist/Author
powhatanmuseum.com
Today we may find it hard
to believe in the reality of myths. Yet, beginning in 1492, an entire
hemisphere was explored and exploited by arriving Europeans many of whom were
primed by the belief that folklore was real. One seminal myth that drove the exploitative
greed of the Spanish was the Taíno epic of the Travels of Guahayona (the First Shaman). Amerindians paid with
their lives for the actions of the Spanish, due to the story of an Island of
Women and its twin, an Island of Gold. The myth was reworked and incessantly
perused by the Spanish search of the fabled Amerindian treasures.
The
First Shaman
Guahayona was believed to be the first shaman of
the Taíno. He originated in one of the two caves of creation, Cacibajagua,
along with the Noble People. He had been the one to bring sacred tobacco to the
people. (His name also meant "Our Pride"). Guahayona’s epic helped to
shape how Europeans perceived the Americas. The telling of his story by elders
was meant to warn women against the danger of pride. This tale influenced both literate
and illiterate Spanish seamen as factual evidence of Amazons and unimaginable amounts
of gold in the Indies. Over the years, many adventurers lost their lives or
gained riches in search of the fabled gold of the Indies.
(Above:) The First Shaman of the
Taíno epic the "Travels of
Guahayona". The life sized wood canoa by the artist is in the shape of
a barracuda (usually
a solitary fish, barracuda is a
Cariban word that means "He Who Is Alone").—Sculpture by Michael Auld
(Above-- Left) detail: Guahayona was an integral part of the canoe culture of the seafaring Taíno
(Above-- Right:) Guahayona, meaning “Our
Pride”, is an epic myth of the seduction of pride that was exhibited by the
first women. After the abduction, men were left without women who were taken
away to Matinino by the shaman. As the story continued, it told how some
feminine creatures without genitalia were made into wives with the help of a pecking
of a woodpecker.
--Materials:
wood mask, vine, shell and macaw feathers.
by
Michael Auld
Cristoforo Colombo a.k.a. Cristóbal
Colón, the one we know as
Columbus, arrived in the Island of the sacred Iguana in 1492. Guanahaní (Iguana Island), as it was
called by the Lukku-Cairi Taíno, was named for a spiritual symbol of
the sun. On that day in 1492 in the Bahamas, the Lukku-Cairi (Small Island) Taíno oral tradition required them to entertain
the Italian captain and his Spanish seamen with an areito, a
part of an epic put to song and dance. Through sign language, the Taíno also
related the portion of their ancient heroic story when asked about the gold
jewelry (yari) that some of them wore. Columbus was told about Matininó, an Island of Women and its twin Guanin, the Island of Gold to the south. Fragments of the
story stuck with Columbus who had now more than ever began the search for these
mythical islands. In addition to exotic spices, gold was at hand!
“I was attentive and labored to know if they
had gold, and I saw that some of them wore a small piece hanging from a hole
which they have in the nose, and from some signs I was able to understand that,
going to the south or going around the island to the south, there was a king
who had large vessels of it and possessed much gold”—The Journal of Columbus, p.26
The
“king” alluded to may have been Guahayona. Columbus’ journal had many
references to spices and gold whose source was south (in the geographic
direction of Martinique). Later, in Cuba, the Taíno came to believe that
"the Cristiano's God was Guanin (14k gold alloy)."
Cacique
Hatuey who had escaped the massacre of Anacaona on Ayti Bohio, had said,
"They love him so much. Even if you swallow him they will cut you open to
retrieve their God."
To the direct south of the Bahamas were islands the Taíno called Cuba,
Kiskeya/Ayti Bohio, Boriken and Yamaye. On his Second Voyage, now entering the
Americas via the Eastern Caribbean (south of the Bahamas), Columbus thought
that he had found Matininó. Today’s Martinique was that mythical isle,
only it was populated by the Island Carib, a warrior society. Columbus wrote that
he followed the direction (with this 2nd voyage of 17 ships) given
to him by a Taíno whom he had taken to Spain as evidence of reaching India. It
seems, according to Columbus' writing, the Taíno man on board ship had known a
shorter route between the Americas and Europe. This was the route used by
sailing ships from then on entering the Americas, until the invention of
steamships. The Taíno were seafaring agriculturalists who had daily navigated
the thousands of islands from the Orinoco River Basin to Florida over 1,000
years before. It was not until a few years later when Columbus had been made
governor of "Hispaniola" (Kiskeya/Ayti Bohio) that he learned the
entire story of Matininó and Guanin.
On Columbus’
1st Voyage one of his ships sank off the coast of Ayti Bohio. His crew
was saved by the local cacique, Guacanagari, whose people had helped to salvage
everything from the wreck. The Spanish seamen were impressed with Taíno
honesty, since "not even a needle was lost." Columbus left from
the hastily constructed fortification of La Navidad, to sail back to Spain,
where he obtained 17 ships and financing. The crew that was left behind became
mutinous and greedy. They requested multiple women from their hosts. Another
nearby cacique had enough of the disrespect and launched a scorched earth
attack with pepper smoke grenades, disorienting the Spanish, and all of the
intruders were killed. Upon his return, Columbus meted out revenge, killing a
number of Taíno who had not left the area.
The
Taíno revolted. “The first American insurrection against colonialism was put
down in a bloody battle at the Vega Real [Hispaniola/Kiskeya/Ayti Bohio] on
March 27, 1495.” Amerindian warriors were
not the docile people that he had written about from his first impression in
the Bahamas. The shipment of a small amount of gold and exotic hardwoods was
not enough to repay the debts for the voyage. His fateful decision to pacify
the impatient Spanish Royals was to “fill the ships of Antonio de Torres with
Indios to be taken back to Spain and sold as slaves.”
As the
governor of Hispaniola, in 1495, he sent a Catalán cleric
named Friar Ramon Pané who had become fluent in Taíno languages, to record
their beliefs and ways. For his own safety, Columbus decided to find out more
about the people that he had previously underestimated. It was at this juncture
that Pané recorded the following Taíno story.
Guahayona said to the women, “Leave your
husbands and let us go to other lands and carry off much guyeö.
Leave your children and let us take only the
herb with us and later we shall return for them.”
Guahayona, OUR PRIDE, left with all the women,
and went in search for other lands.
He came to Matininó, NO
FATHERS,
Where he soon left the women behind,
and he went off to another region called
Guanin.—Cave of the Jagua, Antonio M. Stevens-Arroyo, p.157
Guyeö was a chewing tobacco made with green leaves
mixed with salty ashes from algae. As a cleric, Pané recorded this story with some skepticism. However, vast
numbers of the Spanish, both literate and illiterate, believed it as Taíno
gospel. Taíno stories, when examined, were similar to the Adam and Eve biblical
tale intended as a guide for inappropriate behavior. “Women”, it meant, “don’t
be seduced by Guahayona/pride.” Abandoned on Matininó, the arriving Spanish wrote
about and searched for this “Island of Amazons/Women”.
Figure 1: The artist’s 18” x 24” silk screen print of Guahayona's travel to Matininó, the
Island of Women. The female images are of Attabey, the virgin mother of the Supreme
Being, Yucahu. Her image is from a ballpark in Puerto Rico, dedication to honor
her and the rubber ball game, batu,
the ancient Mesoamerican game first seen by the Spanish in the Caribbean. She
is the goddess of childbirth and fresh water. Her body is depicted in the shape
of a frog that represents procreation while the woodpecker at her groin depicts
a part of the story of “How the Women Came to the Men.”
Figure 2: Guahayona leaves Matinino and travels to Guanin,
the Island of Gold. The print includes a 16th century woodcut by Oviedo
y Valdéz who observed the Taíno method of panning for gold in Kiskeya. The
Spanish adopted this method of gold mining. The glittering feather of the
colibri (hummingbird) was their symbol for gold.
Fifteen years after Ramon Pané
recorded Taíno myths in Hispaniola, a similar story with the same theme of
women and gold was published in a popular novel in Spain.
“Know ye that at the right hand of the Indies there is an island called
California, very close to that part of the Terrestrial Paradise, which was
inhabited by black women without a single man among them, and they lived in the
manner of Amazons. They were robust of body with strong passionate hearts
and great virtue. The island itself is one of the wildest in the world on
account of the bold and craggy rocks.” -- Las Sergas de Esplandián (The
Adventures of Esplandián) by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo, 1510
During this "Age of Discovery" a novel was published in
Madrid, Spain. It was the story titled La California an island
of Amazons filled with gold and pearls led by the black warrior queen Califia. The
epic continues to the point where this barbarous queen, who initially fights
with the Muslims against the Christians, is converted to Christianity. Queen Califia's
Amazons' weapons were made from gold, while man-eating Griffins (half eagle and
half lion) that flew overhead protected the women from encroaching men, ripping
them apart when trespassing on La California. This novel became one of the most
popular books of the time and was widely read. Hernán Cortés, the touted "conqueror of the
Aztec" Triple Alliance, while in upper Mexico (later called Baja
California), believed that the high mountains seen in the distance was the
Island of La California, and named it so. In the novel, La California was
located next to the Terrestrial Paradise, one reference to the Caribbean. For
some time, California was illustrated on maps as an island.
The use
of Amerindian themes in European writing after the “Discovery” can be seen in a
variety of published stories and plays. For example, William Shakespeare’s
character, Caliban in The Tempest, is
an Island Carib, mislabeled Caribales, Cannibales and cannibal by Columbus. In
the play, Caliban is a conniving savage, not unlike a current politician’s
characterizing “Pocahontas” slur. Set in the Caribbean, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe’s companion Friday is a
Taíno hiding from “cannibalistic” Island Caribs. Based on a story of an actual
shipwreck in South America, this novel employs a Columbus inspired myth about
cannibals. “Carib cannibalism” appears in Disney movies and was earlier used by
Spain to justify the enslavement of “unfriendly” Indios, Carib or not.
The
thread of Matininó and Guanin ran through the other areas of the
Americas. The Caribbean Taíno myth was sometimes combined with an old European
story of conflict with the Muslims. The Hopi territory became the mythical
location of Las Siete Ciudades de Oro. From a distance, gleaming pueblos
appeared to be golden in the sunlight. Las Siete Ciudades de Cibola, the Seven
Cities of Gold, referred to a tale describing the flight of monks from a
cathedral when the Muslims attacked. The belief was that the clergy escaped
with the gold ornaments that may have ended up in the direction of the Indies.
Although Estavanico the Moor was killed by the Hopi in the effort, the Hopi
suffered great losses of life over a golden myth.
El
Dorado and the Amazon
To the
south of the Caribbean, after the fall of the Inca Empire, Pizzaro's crazy
brother was sent off on a fateful search for more Amerindian gold. The
expedition fell apart. Many Amerindian porters died or deserted the Spanish at
the headwaters of the large river that was then to be named the Amazon. The
survivors built a boat to go downriver to find food. The cleric on board
recorded that the current of the river was too strong for their return and the
boat was shot up with arrows by women warriors, or "Amazons" on the
river's banks. "The boat appeared to be like porcupines," the cleric
wrote.
Behind
every myth, there is some truth. Ironically, the myth of Amazons/ Matininó the Island of Women and Guanin the Island of
Gold proved to have been partially right. Large deposits of gold were actually
"found" in the California Mountains. A related combined myth of the
gold of "El Dorado" was found in Columbia, comparatively close to the
“Amazons.” The Caribbean is a place where myths became real in the minds of
Europeans who also searched for the Fountain of Eternal Youth among the
youthful Taíno’s northern territory of Bimini (La Florida). Along with Greek
Amazons there was the belief that the Caribbean was the location of Atlantis.
So, our islands are called the Greater and Lesser Antilles and we border the
Atlantic Ocean.
_________________________________________________________________________________
About
the sculptures:
Taíno
symbolism is key to these artworks. In doing research for these Amerindian
inspired sculptures the artist used the combined influence of both Mesoamerican
Art and Taíno aesthetics to illustrate the Guahayona
Epic. "If Taíno culture had not been disrupted by Columbus, our
continued works would exhibit Mesoamerican influences. In terms of stylistic
aesthetics, artistically these ancient Amerindian civilizations would have been
the Western Hemisphere's ancient Egypt, that other hemisphere's mother
civilization."
*Taíno words:
Iguana (big lizard); canoa (source
of canoe); cacique (leader/chief); colibre (hummingbird); barracuda (solitary fish); Anacaona (Golden
Flower, -Spanish assassinated Queen of Xaragua, Ayti Bohio); bohio (roundhouse); macaw (talkative
parrot); guanin (14k gold alloy made with caona--pure
gold); yari (gold jewelry); Lukku-Cairi (small islanders of the Bahamas. Cairi became cayo in
Spanish, cay and key in English); Cuba (Coabana. Coa = site, bana = large); Kiskeya/Ayti Bohio—“High Mountain Home”-- (the
Dominican Republic and Haiti renamed Hispaniola, both the center of the Taíno
civilization and later the fledgling Spanish American Empire); Boriken (Puerto
Rico); Yamaye (Jamaica).
There
are monuments to the Taíno heroes Hatuey and Anacaona; Hatuey (cacique
and hero who fled to Cuba. He was late to Anacaona's diplomatic celebration put
on for the new Governor Ovando. At the
celebration, Ovando massacred over one hundred of her caciques in attendance,
and hanged her. Hatuey was hunted down by the Spanish and burned at the stake.
When asked at the stake if he would convert to Christianity so that he could “go
to Heaven,” Hatuey asked the priest, "Are there Cristianos in
Heaven?" "Yes", the priest answered. "Then I do not want to
go there." So, they burned him.
