One thing that has become exceedingly clear after reading Juan Daniel Balcácer's Enriquillo: historia y leyenda is that the legendary cacique did not die at the site of Boyá. When he passed away in 1535, the written sources describe his community as living near Bahoruco. Indeed, he may have been buried in Azua. A letter from 1547, cited by Balcácer, mentions the destruction of Enrique's pueblo by African maroons, after stating that these subjects of Enrique lived in the foothills of Bahoruco. In addition, a letter by Las Casas from 1534 describes Enrique's pueblo as about 7 leagues away from Azua. This does not sound like it would have been anywhere near Boyá in Monte Plata. However, what if the remnants of Enrique's community did move to the area of Boyá later on? While the survivors were said to be few, 8 or 10, perhaps they were joined by other survivors and then later joined by other indigenes of Hispaniola.
The evidence to support this theory is very thin. However, the rather detailed and perhaps elaborate Indian pueblo of Boyá described by Charlevoix does not strike one as entirely fictional. According to Charlevoix, the pueblo was headed by the self-titled "cacique of the island of Haiti." Supposedly, the bourgade attracted around 4000 Indians when first founded, which must be an exaggerated. However, according to a document he claimed to have seen, the population of the pueblo had dropped to 30 men and 50 or 60 women. Most of the subsequent scholars who described this community often repeated some or parts of Charlevoix's description, all agreeing that it was the town of Enrique's followers and last bastion of the island's native population. For an example of another French Jesuit who mentioned the pueblo, a short allusion to it was made in a letter by Fr. Margat from 1729. According to Margat, this small canton of indigenous people was unknown for a long time. Perhaps he meant unknown to the French, since Boyá was usually the only town of Indians mentioned in the 1600s and 1700s.
In addition to Charlevoix and Margat, one can also find early Spanish references to the town. One early reference to the community by Luis Geronimo Alcocer, was written in 1650. Already, in 1650, he wrote of a pueblo de indios "que oi no tiene seis vecinos."Intriguingly, Alcocer did not make any reference to Enrique, solely describing the town as the only place where Indians could be found. Elsewhere, fortunately, he offered an explanation for the town's depopulation. Apparently, several residents of the town had migrated elsewhere in the colony to search for work. Their community still had 6 houses and perhaps those who had left retained some tie to the community. If many of its vecinos had already left the pueblo for economic reasons by 1650, perhaps that is why the gender imbalance was so pronounced when Charlevoix wrote of the community in the 18th century. A somewhat later source, Domingo Fernandez Navarrete, also wrote about Boyá. According to him, in 1678, the town only had 2 Indians, both mixed-race (mestizo and castizo).
Another Spanish source on the community can be found in a work by Domingo Pantaleon Alvarez de Abreu, written in 1740. According to this source, Boyá's population had 65 Indians and 11 slaves. So, the community included about 65 Indians in 1740, and about 80-90 adults according to Charlevoix. Perhaps due to the community's pattern of male outmigration, their numbers were in constant flux. According to Antonio Sanchez de Valverde, however, the community by the late 18th century only consisted of mestizos, some of whom descended from people from the mainland. This could be also related to the possible relocation of Indians from other parts of the Americas to Boyá. For example, Indians from Campeche or other indigenous peoples brought to the island by the French but intercepted or seized by the Spanish colonial authorities. Nevertheless, by 1785, the town only had 25 or 30 mestizos.
The late 18th century brings us to Moreau de Saint-Méry, one of the most interesting on the question of Boyá and Enriquillo. While he mostly repeated what was already written on the subject by Charlevoix, something Thomas Madiou also did in the 19th century, he added a few new elements. First, he testified to the claims of indigenous ancestry by some of the mixed-race people in the Spanish colony. As Nau later observed, Dominicans, especially women, of certain features and long hair, were called indios. For our French observer, they also laid claim to aboriginal ancestry with pride. This is evidence for the longevity of the "indio" self-ascription among the mixed-race population in the Spanish Caribbean. Long before Trujillo and the conflicts between Haiti and the DR, some of the multiracial Creoles of the island called themselves Indians and claimed indigenous ancestry. Of course, Moreau de Saint-Méry saw them as people of mixed-race ancestry in which, for some, indigenous features could be occasionally observed. In addition, our author also claimed that several Indians in Banique successfully proved their descent from Enriquillo's subjects in 1744. While Banique, close to Hinche, is rather distant from Boyá, this anecdote could be a reflection of outmigration from the community, some of which reached Banique by this time. Unfortunately, there are no sources to corroborate this claim by Moreau de Saint-Méry. As for our pueblo of interest, he mostly restated past descriptions of the town, particularly those of Charlevoix and Sanchez Valverde.
After this brief review of some of our sources on the pueblo, what can one actually say about Enriquillo and Boyá? First, that the town was not associated with Enriquillo during his lifetime. If it has any connection with the followers of Enriquillo, it must have developed after the destruction of the original settlement. That said, the claim by Charlevoix that the town claimed a connection to Enriquillo may have had a kernel of truth. Since we do not know what happened to the survivors of the maroon attack that destroyed the original town, perhaps the survivors were resettled in the area of Boyá. Indeeed, perhaps Enriquillo's cousin or his wife, assuming they were still alive, had an opportunity to lead the community in the new town. Then, assuming Charlevoix was not entirely incorrect, other indigenous people of the island may have been resettled in Boyá, boosting its population. This theory, while not verifiable with sources, may explain why so many writers associated Boyá with Enriquillo. Alternatively, it is possible the founders of Boyá invited the survivors of Enriquillo's community and sought to use them to ensure legal protections and privileges from the government. Regardless of how and under what conditions the connections were made, the claim by Moreau de Saint-Méry that people claiming descent from Enriquillo's subjects were found in Banique, near Hinche, if true, provides evidence that his followers may have reconstituted themselves at Boyá. Then, dispersing to make a living, some reached Banique. While these Indians described by Moreau de Saint-Méry may have also been motivated by legal protections and the honor attached to Enriquillo, their success in convincing the colonial authorities must have relied on some strong evidence, perhaps origins in Boyá.
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