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Resources on Famous Taíno
Indian Kasike or Cacique (Chiefs)
ANAKAONA 
The Five "Kings" of Hispanola by Las Casas
Enriquillo or GUAROCUYA. 
HATUEY
Map of the Taíno
Territories & Leaders in Hispanola (Haiti / Dominican Republic)
Map of the Taíno Territories & Leaders
in Borikén 
MAHAGUA
ANACAONA, also called
the Golden Flower, was an Indian queen, wife of Caonabo, one of the five caciques
who possessed the island of Santo Domingo when the Spaniards discovered it
and settled there in 1492. She was celebrated as a composer of ballads and
narrative poems, called areitos. The Indians, being ill-treated by the conquerors,
revolted, and made a long war against them; and during a feast organized to
honor the queen of Jaragua, who was friendly to the Spaniards, Governor Nicolas
de Ovando ordered the arrest of Anacaona and her Indian noblemen, all of whom,
being suspected of conspiracy, were executed.
"Caonabo et
Anacaona"
Caonabo, le fier cacique,
qui le premier défendit la liberté de l'île
en réduisant en poussière
le premier établissement
des souverains de Castille,
le fort de la "Navidad Capturé
pour ître conduit en Espagne
sa colëre et ses gémissements
crevërent l'horizon et soulevèrent la tempête.
Les eaux caraîbes
gardèrent les restes du titan
et du bateau dêchiqueté.
Il avait brisé les chaînes et choisi,
invaincu et sans concession,
comme sépulture
un lit d'algues à l'ultime limite
de son monde. Anacaona ešt un destin aussi cruel.
Elle sera pendue en la saison des fleurs en l'an 1503.
La petite reine aux couleurs de sapotille mourut,
le cou orné d'un collier d'églantines,
les deux bras croisés sur ses seins nus.
The Birth of Anacaona (based on
the ìBirth of Venus)
by Julia Santos-Solomon
Anacaona
Esposa de Caonabo, cacique de Maguana y hermana de Bohechío,
cacique del cacicazgo de Jaragua. Mujer de gran belleza, inteligencia
y gracia, que atrajo la atención de los primeros conquistadores españoles.
Fue considerada la poetisa más famosa entre los indios. Según
los cronistas, su nombre significaba en lengua aborigen "Flor de Oro".
A pesar de que en un principio ella sintió gran admiración por
los españoles, a quienes consideró superiores, el continuo abuso
que estos cometían contra los indígenas, junto a la prohibición
por parte de Roldán del matrimonio entre Hernando de Guevara y su hija
Hig¸emota, convirtió en odio y antipatía esa admiración.
A la muerte de su hermano quedó gobernando el cacicazgo de Jaragua.
Encontr·ndose Ovando como gobernador de Santo Domingo, éste recibió
una denuncia -probablemente falsa- de que Anacaona estaba preparando una conspiración
en sus dominios. El Comendador de Lares creyó que la única medida
para evitar tal cosa era acabar con los habitantes y gobernantes de tales
dominios. Para poner en pr·ctica su idea, se inventó un ardid y se
dirigió a Jaragua acompañado de 300 infantes y 70 jinetes bien
armados. Lo que anunció como ìuna visita pacíficaî se convirtió
en la masacre de los indios y caciques que había reunido Anacaona para
preparar la fiesta de recibimiento. Anacaona fue amarrada, vejada y más
luego ahorcada en tierras del mencionado cacicazgo; los indios que pudieron salvarse de
esa brutal matanza, fueron sometidos a la esclavitud.
Source: http://rincondominicano.com/historia/aborigenes/anacaona.php
ANACAONA by Penny Slinger
Go to back to Top
Las Casas on the Five "Kings" of Hispaniola
On this [island of Hispaniola], we knew five principal
kings who governed and ruled it, and their names were as follows: Guarionex,
who ruled in the happiest part or the Vega Real, which we said above had so
many excellent qualities. The second king, Guacanagari ruled the end of the
third province, which was called Marien, and he was the first to have dealings
with the Christians, because the Admiral Christopher Columbus came ashore there
when he discovered these Indies, and [Guacanagari] welcomed him and all the
Christians who came with him, giving them a paternal, gracious, and admirable
reception, for which he was not paid, receiving no benefits from this then or
later. The third king was named Behechio and ruled in the nineteenth province,
called Jaragua, which is in the western part of the island. This king had a
sister named Anacaona, a woman of great prudence and authority, very courtly
and gracious in her manner of speaking and her gestures, who was very devout
and a friend of the Christians from the time she began to see and communicate
with them. The fourth king was Caonabo, who ruled in the twenty-second
province, called Maguana, which was bounded by the province of Jaragua on the
west. He was a strong and brave lord of imposing presence and authority and,
according to what those who first came to the island were told, he was of the
Lucayan nation, being a native of the Lucayos Islands [the Bahamas], and had
crossed over here from there; and because he was a notable man both in war and
peace, he came to be the king of that province and was greatly esteemed by all.
It was also said that he was married to the above-said lady Anacaona, the
sister of Behechio. The fifth king or kingdom was on the eastern part of the
island, whose land is the first seen when we come out to this island from
Castille, and is called Higuey by the Indians; the name of its king was
Higuanama, but in our time it was ruled by a very old woman, and I did not find
out when it was possible to do so if this name of Higuanama belonged to that
Queen or was common to all the kings of that kingdom, as was the case with the
Pharaohs of Egypt.
The lords who were subject to these five kings were
innumerable, and I knew a great many of them; all had an immense number of
subjects. Guarionex, the king of the Vega Real, was said to have another king
or lord among his vassals, one who was called Uxmatex and ruled in the
twenty-first province of Cibao (which, as we said before, was called Haiti and
gave its name to the whole island), and when the king Guarionex called him, he
would come to serve him with 16,000 warriors. The king or lord who ruled in the
thirteenth province of Haniguayaba was, I think, a lord in his own right. The
reason I say this is that this province was at the western end of the island,
more than fifty leagues from the kingdom and royal city of Jaragua, where the
king Behechio had his principal seat, and because there were many other lords
in that province who seem to have been subjects of Haniguayaba and to have been
under his lordship, and it may have been the same in other parts of the island,
though at that time we made little effort to find out. [Thus I do not know
whether] the king or lord of the Ciguayos, who was called Mayobanex, was a
subject of Guarionex, the king of the Vega, because he was a very great lord in
the seventh province, and he suffered great hardship to free Guarionex from the
imprisonment and persecution inflicted on him by the Spaniards, making many
wars on them. I do not know whether this was because Guarionex was his king and
overlord or because he had come to him as a person in great need. The same
thing could be true in the kingdom of Higuey, the province we have numbered the
eighth, where there were many lords, and especially one named Catubanama, who I
knew very well and of whom we spoke earlier. He was a very brave man of
imposing presence and authority who defended himself bravely many times and for
many days, personally and with his people, against the Christians who were
making war on him, of which we shall speak at greater length, if it pleases God,
in the second book of our general history; thus I do not know whether to say
that he was a subject of the queen Higuanama.
On this island and in every kingdom within it, there were many
nobles who were respected for being of better blood than the rest and had
charge over the others; in the language of the island, these were called
nitainos (the "i" accented). They had three words with which they
distinguished the rank and dignity of the lords: one was Guaoxeri (the accent
on the last syllable), which indicated the lowest of the three grades, much in
the way we would call a gentleman Vuestra Merced. The second was Bahari (the
accent on the last syllable), which was used for a lord of higher rank, in the
same fashion that we address a titled lord as Senoria. The third and highest
rank was designated by the term Matunheri (also with the accent on the last
syllable). This title was used only for the supreme kings, who were addressed
as "Matunheri" in the same way that we address a king as Your Highness.
Of all these five kingdoms, the most illustrious was that of
the king Behechio, who lived in that province or city of Jaragua, because he
had a great many lords who belonged to his kingdom and came under his
jurisdiction. As we later found out, and if I am not mistaken, these totaled
more than a hundred and maybe even two hundred, for indeed there were a great
many nobles in the provinces around Jaragua. The inhabitants of this kingdom
excelled all the others of this island in the refinement of their language, and
their words were softer and more polished. Both men and women possessed a
greater natural beauty and more refined features than the others, so that it
was something to marvel at. Several years later on this island, I saw a town in
the same place that the king Behechio had his palace with a population of sixty
or seventy
Spaniards, all of whom had married the wives or daughters of
those lords, and the beauty of those women could rival that of the most
beautiful ladies in our own Castille. The women of the kingdom of Guarionex
were also known for their beauty, as were those in some other parts of the
island, but nowhere was their beauty so general as among the inhabitants of the
kingdom of Behechio. Also these people were more refined in many other things,
so that it was our habit to refer to Jaragua as the Court of the entire island.
All of these people go naked, the men from head to foot, while
the married women cover themselves with a kind of small and well-made cotton
skirt from slightly below the waist to the knee. Though these cotton [skirts]
are made throughout the island, as are the hammocks in which they sleep, the
people of Jaragua are the first in making and weaving things of cotton. All the
young maidens, while they were virgins, did not cover their bodies at all. The
beds in which they sleep, which are called hammocks, were made in the shape of
a sling an estado and a half or two in width and one estado in length, all made
of twisted threads of cotton, not woven into a net but rather extended lengthwise.
These are tied crosswise to other threads a couple of fingers apart like
netting, and running lengthwise, and there is a distance of about a palm
between one cross-thread and the next. At the ends of the whole thing running
lengthwise, which as we said extends for about one estado, there are many loops
(asas), about a palm distant, running lengthwise, from the last netting; and
these loops are [made] of all the threads running lengthwise; and in this
respect it is different from a sling, which has only one strand or cord running
from one end to the other. There, in each of these loops, they put some cords
(cuerdas) that are fine, well-made, and twisted, of better material than hemp
but not so good as linen (and this they call cabuya, with the accent on the
penultimate syllable), placed in the same manner that we would put them on the
end knots of a square net, so that the net can be hung up at both ends and will
remain suspended in the air. These cords are a generous braxa in length, and
they come together at the end like a small screw (rosca chica) or even like a
bracelet (manilla). From those two screws or bracelets they tie them with some
other heavy cords, of the thickness of a finger, very carefully made and better
than the form of a braid, and they tie each one to logs (palos) at one end and
the other so that it remains suspended in the air, and thus they lie in it,
because it is a good clean bed for a country where it does not become cold. In
addition, though it is two estados in width and one in length, as I said, the
whole thing weighs no more than eight pounds, and they can carry it under their
arm. Thus it is very suitable for traveling.
There were three different languages on this island that were
mutually unintelligible. One was spoken by the people [of the region] we called
lower Macorix, and one by the inhabitants of upper Macorix, which we described
[earlier] as the fourth and sixth provinces. The third language was the
universal one spoken throughout the country, and this language was more
elegant, had more words, and sounded sweeter; and, as I said above, the dialect
of the people of Jaragua was the first and ahead of all the rest.
Source: Bartolome de Las
Casas
Enriquillo, Enrique
or GUAROKUIA
The struggle of
Cotubanama to preserve the autonomy of the eastern province of Higuey against
the brutality of Juan Esquivel was proof of that. Cotubanama was ultimately
hanged. Throughout the Americas the Indians had revolted against Spanish
domination. However the revolt of Enriquillo was unique in that it worried the
Spaniards for 18 years and only ended in an agreement between the rebel and the
Spaniards; agreement that was sanctioned by Charles V. This was the first
agreement in the Americas between Europeans and Native Americans as equals.
Enriquillo or Guarocuya was raised in a Franciscan monastery.
He returned as a cacique to his native village in the Baoruco, region on the
southern coast of Espanola. He and his wife Mencia were married in the
Christian fate. However, Enriquilloís life like that of any slave was not easy.
He was repeatedly humiliated by his encomendero (master), Valenzuela who
ultimately raped his wife. He complained to the governor but was threatened
with imprisonment. He carried his complaints to the court system of Santo
Domingo and was given the run around. Enriquillo got tired of being ignored and
fled to the mountains of the Bahoruco in the south of the island where he led a
full-scale rebellion from 1519 to 1538.
In the mountains, Enriquillo and his followers returned to a
purely Indian style of life. For more than a dozen years, he withstood every
Spanish contingent sent against him. With every victory, his troops became
stronger and more Taino joined the ranks of the new cacique. He grew a strong
army out of arms stolen from the Spanish. He protected the old and women,
encouraged a mode of agriculture with shifting crops. Straw huts built in patches
ten or twelve leads apart over a surface of approximately 40 leagues. In these
huts he sheltered women, the old and children, moving their location every time
he judged it threatened by a Spanish attack. Enriquillo and his Indians were
the first maroon communities of Espanola if not of the New World.
News of Enriquilloís revolt reached Charles V and he saw in it
the possibility of Spain losing Espanola. The king sent Captain Francisco
Barrio-Nuevo to negotiate with Enriquillo in order to find an issue to the
crisis. In Espanola, Barrio-Nuevo presented Enriquillo with letters bearing the
agreement of Spain and the court system of Santo Domingo allowing Enriquillo
and his men to live free on the mountains of the Bahoruco. Enriquillo accepted
the peace treaty. He died a year after the agreement. According to Las Casas,
this peace treaty between the Taino and the Spaniards lasted for all but four
to five years before the Spaniards broke it.
A statue
of Guarokui· (Enriquillo), the great TaÌno Indian chief who led the rebellion
in 1522 against the Spaniards.
Una
estatua de Guarokui· (Enriquillo), gran jefe TaÌno que condujo la rebeliÛn en
1522 contra los espaÒoles.
Source: http://www.presenciataina.tv/historical.html
HATUEY
http://www.uctp.org/Volume1/issue1/UCTP_Newsletter_-_January_.html
Map of the Taíno
Territories & Leaders in Kiskeia (Haiti / Dominican Republic)
Map of the Taíno Territories & Leaders in Borikén (Puerto Rico)
The Kasike Mahagua of Bayamon, Borikén (Puerto Rico)
http://www.preb.com/s15-16/majaguae.htm
United Confederation of TaÌno People
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Tel: 1 (212) 604‚4186
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