The Great Dying and the Voices of Resistance

The numbers

No one counted the people of Haiti in 1492. Historians' estimates of the island's population that year range from about 100,000 to 1,000,000. [1]

Later counts are firmer, and they fall fast. Bartolomé de las Casas recorded about 60,000 people living on the island in 1508. [1] By 1514, the number was reportedly about 32,000. By 1565, it was about 200. [2]

Forced labor, hunger, violence and disease all played a part. Smallpox is not recorded in the Americas until 1519, so most of the early losses came before it arrived. [2]

Caonabo

Caonabo was the cacique who led the 1493 attack that destroyed La Navidad. [3] In 1494, a Spanish captain named Alonso de Ojeda captured him. According to Las Casas, Ojeda offered him a set of polished handcuffs and chains, claiming they were worn by Spanish kings; when Caonabo put them on, Ojeda locked them. One historian considers the story likely embellished. [3]

Caonabo was put on a ship to Spain. He died during the voyage and was buried at sea. [3]

Anacaona

Anacaona was born around 1474 in Yaguana, today's Léogâne, in Haiti. She was an acclaimed poet and composer whose works were performed at areítos, Taíno ceremonies of song and dance. [4] She was also Caonabo's wife. [2] After her brother Bohechío died, she became cacica, ruler of the chiefdom of Xaragua. [4]

In 1503, the island's governor, Nicolás de Ovando, came to Xaragua with about 300 men. Anacaona received them with a great ceremony. Ovando believed the caciques were planning a revolt. He lured them into a large meeting house, had them seized and bound, and burned them inside. Anacaona was hanged. [4]

Ovando named the town he founded there "Holy Mary of the True Peace." [4]

Hatuey

Hatuey was a cacique from Guanaba, today the island of La Gonâve, in Haiti. With about 400 followers, he crossed by canoe to Cuba to warn its people about the Spaniards. [5]

According to Las Casas, Hatuey showed the people of Cuba a basket of gold and jewels and told them this was the god of the Christians, the reason the Spaniards came. [5]

The Spanish hunted him with mastiffs. On February 2, 1512, they tied him to a stake at Yara, near today's Bayamo, and burned him alive. Before the fire was lit, a priest asked if he would accept Christ and go to heaven. Hatuey asked whether Spaniards went to heaven. When told they did, he said he would rather go to hell than be where they were. [5]

A voice from the pulpit

On December 21, 1511, a Dominican friar named Antonio de Montesinos preached a sermon in Santo Domingo. He told the colonists that they were all living in mortal sin because of their cruelty to the Taíno. He and his fellow friars would refuse to hear the confessions of those who held Taíno in forced labor. [6]

The colonists were outraged, including the governor, Diego Columbus, the Admiral's son. King Ferdinand at first ordered Montesinos and his supporters sent back to Spain. [6] But the friars persuaded the king, and a royal commission drew up the Laws of Burgos, issued on December 27, 1512, rules on how Indigenous workers were to be treated. [6][7]

A colonist changes sides

Bartolomé de las Casas came to the Americas as a colonist. For his part in the conquest of Cuba, he was granted Indigenous laborers. In 1514 he condemned the system and freed the people he held. [8]

He spent the rest of his long life documenting the abuses. His A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies was published in 1552. [9]

Las Casas also made a terrible proposal. To spare Indigenous people, he suggested bringing enslaved Africans to the Americas instead. He later changed his mind after seeing what slavery did to Africans. [9] That story continues in Chapter 6.

Enriquillo

As a child, Enriquillo survived the massacre at Xaragua. [11] Most historians believe he was Guarocuya, Anacaona's nephew. Orphaned, he was raised in a monastery in Santo Domingo. [10]

In 1519 he led his people into the Bahoruco mountains and rose against the Spanish. Because they knew the land far better, the Spanish could not defeat them. [10] In 1533 a royal captain, Francisco de Barrionuevo, arrived with 180 men and an offer of peace. [12][16] The treaty that followed granted Enriquillo's people their freedom and the right to their land. [10]

Enriquillo is remembered as a hero of Indigenous resistance in both the Dominican Republic and Haiti. [13] A lake on the island still carries his name. [10]

Fourteen years. One cacique and his people, in the mountains, held off an empire and forced it to the table.

Not gone

In 1802, Spanish colonial authorities officially declared the Taíno extinct. But people of mixed and Taíno descent still live in the Caribbean today, and their disappearance from colonial records may say more about how officials classified people than about who survived. [2]

Taíno words live on in English, too. [14]