Reading Rodriguez Demorizi's Los dominicos y la encomienda de indios en la isla Española has been a profoundly rich source on the indigenous history of the island of Haiti. Including in its various sources the 1517 Interrogatorio de los Jeronimos, the reader is treated to the testimonies of several Spaniards on the island answering 7 questions on what can or should be done for the Indian population, the encomienda system, and if the Indians are capable of living politically or rationally, like a laborer or common person in Castilla. Unsurprisingly, most of the men shared a belief in the incapacity of the Indians to be placed in liberty. Even the lone person who thought so, Fray Bernaldo de Santo Domingo, believed that the freed Indians must be placed in communities under Spanish administration for a period. Nonetheless, these highly biased sources reflecting the views and opinions of vecinos, regidores, a treasurer and other men in colonial society do shed much light on the conditions of the colony and what the indigenous population was like. Indeed, one of the men who answered the questions was married to a native woman of the island and could draw from his own experience and that of his wife and her connections to buttress his claims about the Indian or Taino population in 1517.
First, the sources stress the indigenous populations inability to live politically or with reason. Unlike the average person in Spain, the Indians lacked the ability (to the Spanish) to save for tomorrow, work consistently or maintain any kind of devotion to the Catholic faith and meet tribute or tax requirements. Without Spaniards holding encomiendas or Spanish administrators to oversee them, the Indians were said by most of the informants to idle away their time with the batey ballgame, cohoba, areytos, and trading valuable things like hammocks for trinkets or things of lesser value. The informants cite numerous examples of this, including caciques who failed to meet tribute obligations before the repartimientos as well as the example of instances in which caciques or Indians educated or raised among the Spaniards completely failed to become successful holders of repartimientos. Instead, the whites claimed that these Indians, such as Alonso de Caceres and Pedro Colon, were addicted to wine and even exchanged their naborias for it or let others access their wives. Other educated caciques and Indians, such as Masupa Otex, don Francisco in Bonao and the Doctor (el Dotor) in Santiago also failed to be successful holders of repartimientos as their Indians produced less than those hold by the Spaniards and they wasted resources and time on what the Spaniards considered to be the typical idleness of the Indian. To the Spaniard, the Indian's inactivity and laziness meant they were even enemies of labor. They would always prefer to spend their time in leisure, playing the batey game, eating to excess and holding areytos, or wasting time with cohoba. The irony of Spaniards claiming Indians were incapable of living on their own account is rich, especially since the surplus of Taino production had enabled the sustenance of large populations before the conquest and even fed the Spaniards.
Indeed, the indigenous population of the island were often able to spend leisure time in what the Spaniards considered frivolities by their choices in settlements. While the original Spanish pueblos were often founded near the settlements of principal caciques, the Indian population of the island preferred to live at a distance from colonial pueblos. In fact, doing so was the best way to ensure some protection from the worst abuses of the colonial system. Nearly all the witnesses in the Interrogatorio claim that the Indian settlements were always at a distance from the Spanish towns, and if Spaniards made attempts to forcibly relocate these Indians, they either fled into the montes or killed Spaniards or threatened to commit suicide with the venom from yuca. Indeed, the threat of this vivid enough to be recalled when similar ideas were proposed for the Indians in the area of Azua and San Juan de la Maguana. There, the cacique Ojeda and other Indians conspired to flee and resist the Spanish attempt to relocate them. So, the Indian population was able to retain significant autonomy even under the abusive encomienda system. By choosing to live separately from the Spaniards, they could ensure that the 4 months or so of the year they had for themselves was spent in a way that was in accordance with Taino customs and practices. Verily, this was what motivated the desire by the Spaniards to reduce the Indians into pueblos in or close to the Spanish settlements, since they would be easier to monitor, proselytize, and control. Otherwise, left to their own devices in far away asientos or hiding in the montes, the Tainos were continuing their cemi worship, consultation of bohites (behiques), and pre-Christian customs that so offended the Spanish that some of witnesses referred to it as a bestial life.
However, the question of what to do with the Indian population posed so many problems. The aforementioned practice of flight to the mountains, suicide and revolt was paired with a fear of the African population on the island. While one witness claimed the cacique Tamayo fled to the mountains because of African maroons who kidnapped women from his community, other Spaniards expressed deep fear of an alliance of the Indian and African population. If forcibly relocated, they feared that the Indians would flee to the mountains and collaborate with the negros alzados to attack the Spaniards and possibly take the island. Even if they did not, forcing the Indians from their homes to live in new settlements closer to the Spaniards would eventually culminate in the depopulation of the island. The Indians would resist, flee to the mountains, kill Christians, possibly align themselves with Africans, with whom they were allegedly friendly according to one witness and then the mining and agricultural economy linked to the encomiendas would collapse. In order to preserve the colony, while also ensuring the better treatment of Indians held in encomiendas, the witnesses believed it was better to assign encomiendas to Spaniards who were, ideally, married and dedicated to staying on the island. If they were planning on building stone houses and/or had participated in the conquest of it, they were even better, since these men were more likely to reside on the island for a long-term, to be invested in the island's well-being, and more likely to care for and treat their assigned Indians better. Thus, to most of these witnesses, the encomienda system was best kept as maintained, with assignments to men likely to stay on the island and no more absentee holders. Perhaps, over time, the better treatment Indians received from resident encomenderos and the attraction of a better meat diet would have been enough to gradually convince the Indians to stay permanently on or nearby the land of their encomendero. This, was of course, wishful thinking but it was likely true that the Indians held by absentee encomederos fared even worse than the others while the Indian diet and the negative impact of moving back and forth between their homes and that of their encomendero placed an additional burden.
What is most intriguing to those eager to understand the nature of the Taino cacicazgo and society, however, are the numerous details on the role of behiques or bohites and the cemi spiritual tradition. Indeed, the bohites, who could be male or female, were considered worthy of a special punishment in one rather utopian experiencia conceived by the final witness. Bohites and old Indians were also blamed for the lack of Christian devotion and practice among the Taino. For instance, the elders were said to have mocked younger Indians who adopted or disseminated Christian teachings. Furthermore, the bohites were at the center of an island-wide conspiracy to kill the Christians and retake the island. After the initial success of Agueybana and the revolt in Puerto Rico, his relative, a cacique named Andres in Higuey, celebrated the success of the rebels in Borinquen. Then, with other caciques and bohites or shamans, they plotted to use what amounted to chemical warfare against the Spanish! Unfortunately for the indigenous population of Hispaniola, the conspiracy was unveiled and the bohites were revealed to have been the ones who knew how to prepare the toxic gas. So, the behiques or bohitis were central to ongoing Taino resistance to Christian evangelization and were, with caciques, part of a plot to kill the Spanish. While their revolt was ultimately unsuccesful, one can see how the combination of cemis, caciques, and cohoba continued to be central to cacicazgos after the conquest. Indeed, elements of Taino religion likely persisted well into the colonial era since the population had managed to live apart from the Spaniards for so long and chose to either flee or resist when the Spaniards attempted to do so.
Consequently, the foundations of cacique authority persisted in a weakened fashion after the Spanish imposed the repartimientos, yet the caciques were not able to command their naborias to produce gold or labor along the lines of what the Spanish sought. Instead, the authority of caciques appears to have been based on command of their subjects in terms of food production, fishing, and related activities. In other words, a tributary system in which caciques exerted some authority over the labor of their subjects, but without the full means to enforce what the Spanish encomienda system was intending to procure for the Crown and the colonial government. Moreover, the Indian population was best not concentrated near the Spanish to avoid conflicts between caciques over women, resources and followers. This matches what Las Casas wrote about past conflicts between cacicazgos and suggests another reason why Indian demographic patterns favored a dispersal away from the Spanish and other possible competitors. Perhaps the cacicazgo, even in its attenuated and somewhat weakened form due to the pressure of the Spanish conquest, can still partially reflect the precolonial cacicazgo? Of course, in a highly modified fashion with smaller populations and the addition of Spaniards and Africans who, in some cases, joined Indian communities. In fact, such an experience allegedly occurred with some of the Spaniards married to Indian women who lacked encomiendas. Nevertheless, this source is quite suggestive on the nature of the Taino polity and how early colonial society in Hispaniola (and Puerto Rico and Cuba) was still fragile.
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