"Columbus, My Enemy"
(A Caribbean chief resists the first Spanish invaders)
 
by Samuel M. Wilson
 
in "Natural History" (December 1990, pp. 44-49)
 
     In May 1497, the Taino ruler Guarionex was enmeshed in a
potentially disastrous political situation.  Five years had passed
since the strange and dangerous Spaniards first appeared on the
northeast shore of Hispaniola.  For five years Guarionex had
attempted to mediate between the foreigners and his people and to
maintain his power and prestige among the other Taino caciques, or
chiefs, who were sometimes his confederates, sometimes his
competitors, in the complex political terrain of the Greater
Antilles.
     Two years earlier, Guarionex had witnessed the utter
devastation the Spaniards could wreak in battle.  Together with the
other chiefs in La Vega Real--the largest, most fertile, and most
densely populated valley on Hispaniola--he had set out to destroy
the small force of Spaniards.  Tens of thousands of Taino, perhaps
as many as one hundred thousand, had gathered from the largest
chiefdoms on the island.  They faced only about 200 Spaniards.  But
in battle the fury of the strangers had been awesome: twenty men
with armored clothing had ridden through his people on enormous
animals, inflicting horrible wounds with their lances and swords. 
Men on foot used terrifying weapons that exploded fire.  The
Europeans' large dogs ran before them and with uncontrolled
violence tore through the Taino warriors.  The Spaniards' goal
seemed to be not merely to impress or subdue the Taino or to
embarrass the chiefs into joining them as subordinates but to kill
as many people as possible.  Even after the battle they tortured to
death some of the most respected chiefs in La Vega Real.
     Soon afterward, however, the foreigners' ferocity strangely
abated.  They gave the remaining chiefs remarkable presents--glass
beads, copper bells, brightly colored clothes.  Faced with these
powerful and unpredictable creatures, Guarionex had agreed that he
and his people would be their subjects.  From the Spaniards' signs
and the few Taino words they could speak, Guarionex understood that
their leader, Columbus, demanded submission not to himself but to
some even more powerful chief who lived on an island of which
Guarionex had never heard.  Guarionex further agreed that his
people would pay tribute in food, cotton, and gold.  To placate the
Spaniards, he offered to plant fields stretching for more than 100
miles, from the north coast of Hispaniola to the south.  The
Spaniards, however, appeared to want gold more than anything else:
they demanded that every man of fourteen or more years give them
one of their little copper bells full of gold every three months. 
Gold was relatively plentiful in surface deposits on Hispaniola,
and although they valued it, the Taino did not mine it extensively.
     Still, the Spaniards required more than tribute.  Because the
Spanish ships came so infrequently and brought so little food, the
colonists constantly roamed the countryside demanding the
hospitality of the Taino villages.  Sometimes hundreds of Spaniards
and the Indians that followed them would descend on a village for
a few weeks.  They called for food and seemed to eat much more than
a Taino would.  And they did not eat just the food that was ready
to be harvested; they also ate the manioc that normally would have
stayed in the ground for another six months, and so after they
left, famine followed.
     By 1497, after two years of epidemics and famine following the
arrival of the Spaniards, the other chiefs were pushing Guarionex
to put up some resistance.  Guarionex was a coward, they argued;
groups of Spaniards who hated Columbus and his kin were living in
Taino villages and had promised to help the Taino in battle if they
would rise up again.  The Spaniard Francisco de Roldan led a small
army of dissatisfied Spaniards out of Concepcion de la Vega, the
fort that controlled the center of the island.  Roldan led a small
army of dissatisfied Spaniards; he had told the chief Marque that
he would help drive the Spaniards out of Concepcion de la Vega, the
fort that controlled the center of the island.  Roldan promised
that if the Taino won, the spaniards would stop demanding tribute. 
His offer was attractive to many of the chiefs in La Vega Real. 
Most of them were subordinate to Guarionex in the Taino hierarchy
of social and political status, but their opinions were extremely
important.
     The Taino world stretched more than 1,000 miles from east to
west.  Beginning more than 2,000 years before the arrival of the
Spaniards, the ancestors of the Taino had moved into the Caribbean
archipelago from the northeast coast of mainland South America. 
They spoke a language (called Taino) of the Arawakan family, one of
the most widely dispersed languages in South America.  By A.D. 700,
after occupying the Lesser Antilles and Puerto Rico, they had
pushed farther into the islands of the southern Bahamas and the
western Greater Antilles--Hispaniola, Jamaica, and Cuba.
     The ancestors of the Taino were people of the tropical forest,
who made their living by growing manioc and other root crops and by
hunting, fishing, and collecting wild animals and plants.  In the
centuries of living in their new home, however, the Taino way of
life had become distinctively Caribbean.  Ways of growing and
collecting food had been adapted to island environments; social and
political institutions had emerged that allowed a dense population
to endure successfully in an island context.  The sea served to
unite, rather than separate, the Taino.  The elaborate oceangoing
canoes of the chiefs could hold as many as 100 people, and voyages
between islands were routine.
     In addition to intermarriage between high-ranking lineages,
the large chiefdoms of Hispaniola and the other Greater Antilles
interacted with one another through a ball game.  As in Mesoamerica
and parts of South America, the Taino played the game on large,
flat courts lined with stones or earthen embankments.  The game was
played with a gum rubber ball, which could not be caught or struck
by a player's hand or feet.  For the Taino, the game was much more
than sport: it was a focus for religious festivals, feasting,
trade, intermarriage, and the (relatively) peaceful resolution of
conflicts.
     Since the ancestors of the Taino had moved onto the islands of
the western Greater Antilles, the chiefdoms had been growing larger
and more powerful.  In 1492 Guarionex was one of the five most
powerful chiefs on Hispaniola, ruling tens of thousands of people
scattered over hundreds of square miles.  All the villages of the
central Vega Real--some seventy or more--were under his control
through stratified tiers of less powerful chiefs.  Most of his many
wives had come from the highest-status families of these
surrounding villages; his marriages helped forge the social and
political bonds that held the chiefdom together.  Some of his wives
were from even farther away, from powerful lineages that ruled the
other large chiefdoms of Hispaniola.
     Among the Taino, a chief's power was measured by his ability
to convince others that his authority sprang from his birth into a
maternal lineage of high status, his special relationship with
supernatural spirits, and his political acumen.  but his position
was vulnerable; he could be deposed by his brothers or nephews or
even by a member of another lineage.  This, Guarionex greatly
feared.  Despite misgivings that the rout of two years earlier
would be repeated, he lent his support to the planned uprising.
     Even as Guarionex was being pushed into battle by his
confederates, Don Bartolome Colon, Columbus's brother, learned of
the impending uprising in La Vega Real.  He had heard of Roldan's
plan to join with the Taino to take over the fort at Concepcion de
la Vega.  If Roldan succeeded, the pro-Columbus faction would be
cut in half--part would be in the coastal colony of Isabela and
other forts in the north, part in newly founded Santo Domingo and
other settlements in the south.  Moving quickly with the 300
Spaniards he had with him, Bartolome came into La Vega Real from
the south.  His men reinforced the fort, but they were still vastly
outmatched by the surrounding Guarionex-Roldan alliance.
     In many ways Bartolome was the more capable of the Columbus
brothers.  He was described by Bartolome de las Casas, an important
chronicler of the early contact period in the New World, as "a man
who was prudent and very brave, more calculating and astute than he
appeared, and without the simplicity of Christopher.  He had a
Latin bearing, and was expert in all of the things of men....  He
was taller than average in body, had a commanding and honorable
appearance, although not as much so as the Admiral."
     As long as the Columbus family was the dominant Spanish
faction of Hispaniola, Bartolome was its de facto leader.  He
alienated members of rival factions to a lesser extent than his
brother and interacted more effectively with the Taino elite.  In
the two years since the first uprising in La Vega Real, he had
learned to speak some Taino and had developed relationships with
many of the chiefs, including Guarionex.  He knew that the Indian
leaders were becoming desperate.
     As Bartolome moved into La Vega Real, Guarionex and his
confederates were assembling and preparing for battle.  The allied
chiefs were scattered in several villages within the central
valley.  The situation was different from two years earlier, when
the Spaniards had so overawed the Taino that no man could stand
before them.  Now the Taino understood the power of the swords and
horses, and the firearms had lost some of their terror.  Moreover,
they truly felt that they had no other hope but to defeat the
Spaniards.
     The force of fewer than 400 Spaniards at Concepcion could not
survive a determined attack by thousands of Tainos.  The fort's
small blockhouse could not even hold them all, let alone allow them
to withstand a siege.  In the morning, the Taino would attack. 
Bartolome realized that the situation was growing more dangerous by
the hour.  He had been drawn into fighting the Indians in the area
where their strength was greatest, and if Roldan intervened,
horses, armor, and firearms would offer little advantage.
     In a breach of Taino battle etiquette that was devastatingly
effective for its novelty, Bartolome staged a midnight raid on the
surrounding villages.  His plan was to capture many of the chiefs
before they could attack in the morning.  Small groups of horses
rode into the villages and carried off fourteen chiefs before any
defense could be organized.  Bartolome himself went into the large
village of Guarionex and took the chief back to the fort.  Las
Casas wrote that "they killed many of the captured leaders, from
those who appeared to have been the instigators, not with any other
punishment (I have no doubt) except for burning them alive, for
this is what was commonly done."
     The raid threw the Taino into chaos.  Without their chiefs
they were doubly lost.  Their leaders not only directed warriors in
battle but also mediated between the Taino and supernatural spirit-
helpers, who could bring them success.  In the morning, according
to Las Casas's account:
 
     Five thousand men arrived, all without weapons, wailing
     and very upset, crying bitter tears, begging that they be
     given their king Guarionex and their other leaders,
     fearing that the caciques would be killed or burned
     alive.  Don Bartolome, having compassion for them and
     seeing their piety for their natural leaders, and knowing
     the innate goodness of Guarionex, who was more inclined
     to put up with and suffer with tolerance the aggravations
     and injuries done by the Christians, rather than think of
     or take vengeance, gave them their king and other
     leaders.
 
     Compassion it may have been, but Bartolome and his men were
still in the middle of thousands of desperate people, and Roldan
was still waiting in the wings.  Bartolome knew that without the
political organization the chiefs provided, the tribute system
would quickly collapse.  Fate had cast Bartolome and Guarionex as
strange allies, each dependent on the other for his authority and
survival.
     This partnership, however, was fragile.  Famine and disease
were unabated in the villages, and among the Taino the feeling of
despair continued to grow.  Guarionex was unable to protect his
people from either the tribute demands of Columbus and the Crown or
the unofficial demands for food and gold made by the anti-Columbus
faction of Spaniards.  Increasingly, Guarionex was viewed as a tool
of the Columbus family, and his support from the other chiefs, from
the pro-Roldan faction, and from his own people began to evaporate. 
He was able to maintain his position as a powerful chief for little
more than a year after the fourteen chiefs had been captured, but
then had to flee La Vega Real with his family.
     Even then Guarionex could not find safety, because Bartolome,
fearing that Guarionex would return with an army, hunted him down
in the mountains of northern Hispaniola, where he had sought
refuge.  Guarionex and his people had been hidden by Mayobanex, the
most powerful chief in the northern mountains and perhaps a distant
kinsmen of Guarionex's.  Bartolome's capture of Guarionex brought
about the destruction of this chiefdom as well, by the same
strategy used elsewhere--capture the chiefs as hostages to be
ransomed (but not released) in exchange for their peoples' tribute
payments.  Guarionex was held in chains at Concepcion until 1502,
when he was sent to Spain.  His ship sank in a storm, and he died
along with all the ship's crew.
     The same forces that combined to bring Guarionex's rule to an
end in La Vega Real were acting on all the other chiefdoms on
Hispaniola and, ultimately, on others throughout the Greater
Antilles.  By 1500, most of the large political structures that
existed on Hispaniola in 1492 had collapsed.  For the Taino,
political disintegration and the decimation of the population
occurred simultaneously.
     The impact of the Europeans' arrival was felt differently on
other islands of the Caribbean, just as it was in different parts
of the New World.  Ponce de Leon's conquest of Puerto Rico began in
the early 1500s and quickly brought about the destruction of the
Taino way of life there.  On Cuba the first Spanish attempt at
colonization was less intense, in part because no gold was found,
and in part because the discovery and conquest of Mexico diverted
the attention of Spanish fortune seekers.  Indian populations there
were not completely destroyed.  In the eastern Caribbean, the Carib
Indians were largely bypassed by early colonizers.  Their
descendants survive today as the Garifuna of Central America,
although their pre-conquest island culture has been transformed
greatly through five centuries of interaction with Africans and
Europeans.
     The indigenous societies of North, Central, and South America
survived the arrival of Europeans with different degrees of success
in what we have come to view as the remote "contact period."  Five
hundred years, however, is a short fragment of human history.  We
are still negotiating the coexistence and synthesis of peoples with
African, European, Asian, and Native American ancestries and
heritages.  Guarionex's struggle to retain his political status, to
navigate the treacherous early years of the Spanish conquest, and
ultimately to save his own life is just one story in this
continuing process.
 
Reprint permission granted by both author and publisher
 
With permission from "Natural History", March 1991;
Copyright the American Museum of Natural History, 1991.