Inb4 Llama riding, religously motivated Taiguan's somehow end up conquering half of Americas.
Land of Sweetness: A Pre-Columbian Timeline
- Thread starter Every Grass in Java
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markus meecham
Banned
By somehow you mean sheer martial prowess and a divine will to teach those overdressed barbarians to clean themselves more than once a year, right?
Precisely. I'm waitin for my Taiguano Khalid Ibn Al Walid to appear and Yarmouk these heretics. Nobody expects those weird new religion followers to have ridicously Hannibal-like martial prowess.
Some antithesis to this religion must appearedd soon and quickly it inevitable
I'm amused by the fact that no one noticed how we now have the freakin' backstory for the title!
In other news, the similarities of the Bacocolon faith and the Abrahamic religions are eerily similar, and I don't the Spaniards would miss it too. I wouldn't be surprised if news of Bacocolon travel throughout Europe and North Africa by the Spanish and be later talked about as a "sister faith", only planted half a world away.
While a Taiguano Khalid Al-Walid is something I like to see, I'd really prefer a Taiguano Tariq ibn Ziyad to conquer the whole Caribbean. May the Sweetness of Bacocolon spread across the winds!
In other news, the similarities of the Bacocolon faith and the Abrahamic religions are eerily similar, and I don't the Spaniards would miss it too. I wouldn't be surprised if news of Bacocolon travel throughout Europe and North Africa by the Spanish and be later talked about as a "sister faith", only planted half a world away.
While a Taiguano Khalid Al-Walid is something I like to see, I'd really prefer a Taiguano Tariq ibn Ziyad to conquer the whole Caribbean. May the Sweetness of Bacocolon spread across the winds!
I'm kind of hyped imaging a Taiguano Tariq Ibn Ziyad landing on Cuba, burning his ships just to rile up his soldiers, by telling them the Cubans burnt it. Bacocolon wills it!
Entry 26-2: The Taiguano Prophetess in Haiti, 1363-1366
It's again worth noting that these accounts all come from Taiguano hagiographies, which certainly aren't anything close to reliable.
* * *
THE TAIGUANO PROPHETESS — Part IV
When the Cacique withdrew from Huihozemi, the Prophetess and her followers seized control of the surrounding hills. There, they attacked the manors of local nitaino nobility, burned their records, and emancipated the serfs. She personally taught the serfs the arts of war: to fight with bow and spear and parry with the shield, to advance in unison and withdraw in good order.
Some of her followers pointed out that these were mere farmer slaves who should not be taught to fight. The Prophetess replied with some exasperation,
“We were ourselves slaves in the land of Mayapán. Indeed we were even more wretched they. They are Yucayan slaves of Yucayan masters, but we were Yucayan slaves of Yuzibacaneiri [Mesoamericans]. Yet we triumph in the banner of Bacocolon, we who were the most debased and wretched of men and women! For we have Sweetness, we who were slaves.
“Bacocolon makes no man and no woman a slave; Bacocolon breathes Sweetness to every human heart; it is men who make each other slaves, and shut out their fellows’ Sweetness.”
In 1363, the Prophetess and her following of Mayapán slaves and liberated serfs captured much of the southern mountain ranges. The situation had grown sufficiently volatile that the Cacique of Xaragua launched a new campaign to cleanse the country of the “Taiguanos” – as they were already being called, after their religious focus on taiguan or human achievement – in October.
The Prophetess knew well that her fortress in Huihozemi was insufficient to house her expanded army. Against the advice of her followers, the Prophetess moved her forces out of the sheltering mountains. “Bacocolon will conquer Xaragua by the end of this dry season,” she said.
The Prophetess’s army emerged from the mountains to Lake Yainagua to learn that the Cacique and his full host of twenty thousand soldiers were a mere week away. At a mere five thousand, the Taiguano men were terrified. Some of them urinated. Some fainted. Others threw away their shields and ran away. The Prophetess was not dismayed. She mounted a nearby hill and gave a sermon to the men who remained, speaking of the Sweetness and of taiguan and of Bacocolon and prophesying that there would be no battle. The Taiguano army would enter Xaragua bloodlessly.
* * *
From the Sermon of the Prophetess on the Banks of Yainagua:
What is Sweetness? The acting force of men. When humans are determined and resolute and brave, they have Sweetness. When they are indolent and wavering and cowardly, they have no Sweetness. Sweetness is not instinct; it is a thinking thing. Animals have instinct, not Sweetness. The bee builds her beautiful house because she does not know how not to; the architect builds the most beautiful temple he can, though he thinks and knows that the lord would be well satisfied with a worse one. The crocodile is brave because he does not know how not to be; the warrior is brave even though – no, because – he thinks and knows that he does not have to be, because he thinks and knows that he could run away. You too, you know you could run away! Why do you not? Behold the Sweetness here.
What is taiguan? It is the product of many people’s Sweetness coming together. Architecture is taiguan, the product of the Sweetness of the architect and the builders. Scholarship is taiguan, the product of the Sweetness of many scholars. War is taiguan, the product of the Sweetness of generals and soldiers. Statecraft is taiguan, the product of the Sweetness of the ruler and the ministers. But is taiguan only such lofty things? Friendship is great taiguan. Loyalty is taiguan. Compassion is taiguan, empathy taiguan, justice taiguan. Lust is the instinct of animals, but love is taiguan. The noblest emotions are taiguan, for the noblest emotions are those of relationships.
Lord Bacocolon is the god of taiguan. He created men from an unknown substance and placed them on an empty earth so that they could make taiguan; every act of human taiguan is a sacrifice and an act of gratitude to the Giver of Life. When the soul is freed of its bodies, the fouler and muddier dregs of the soul will go into the Cave of Coabey [the traditional Yucayan underworld] and turn into owls and bats. But the Sweetness in the soul will go to the taiguan it has participated in. And freed from the mud of its soul, it will be happy in the embrace of Bacocolon.
What is taiguan here? It is that when there is a battle – and I say again that there will not be a battle now and that we will march unimpeded into Xaragua, but there will be a greater battle soon – none of you retreat, that all of us stand arm-to-arm with our fellows-in-arms and with the banners of our god fluttering above our heads, that you fall with your blood on your chest and your shield on your arm, not with your blood on your back and your shield on the earth.
What is taiguan? It is the product of many people’s Sweetness coming together. Architecture is taiguan, the product of the Sweetness of the architect and the builders. Scholarship is taiguan, the product of the Sweetness of many scholars. War is taiguan, the product of the Sweetness of generals and soldiers. Statecraft is taiguan, the product of the Sweetness of the ruler and the ministers. But is taiguan only such lofty things? Friendship is great taiguan. Loyalty is taiguan. Compassion is taiguan, empathy taiguan, justice taiguan. Lust is the instinct of animals, but love is taiguan. The noblest emotions are taiguan, for the noblest emotions are those of relationships.
Lord Bacocolon is the god of taiguan. He created men from an unknown substance and placed them on an empty earth so that they could make taiguan; every act of human taiguan is a sacrifice and an act of gratitude to the Giver of Life. When the soul is freed of its bodies, the fouler and muddier dregs of the soul will go into the Cave of Coabey [the traditional Yucayan underworld] and turn into owls and bats. But the Sweetness in the soul will go to the taiguan it has participated in. And freed from the mud of its soul, it will be happy in the embrace of Bacocolon.
What is taiguan here? It is that when there is a battle – and I say again that there will not be a battle now and that we will march unimpeded into Xaragua, but there will be a greater battle soon – none of you retreat, that all of us stand arm-to-arm with our fellows-in-arms and with the banners of our god fluttering above our heads, that you fall with your blood on your chest and your shield on your arm, not with your blood on your back and your shield on the earth.
* * *
As the Prophetess had foreseen, the army of the Cacique did not press their advantage and withdrew to Xaragua the next day. The troops cheered their leader and called her wise. The Prophetess’s response was to be expected: “I am not wise; Lord Bacocolon alone is wise.”
The Taiguano army marched west, approaching Xaragua, to discover conflicting accounts of what had happened. It appeared that a vast army had swooped down from the sea on hundreds of ships – a “city of wood,” some were saying – to attack the port of Xaragua while the Cacique was gone. The Cacique decided to meet this entirely unexpected threat before facing the Taiguanos. But by the time he returned, the city of Xaragua was already under enemy control. Demoralized, the army began to scatter. The Cacique launched an offensive against the occupier with his remaining troops and was beaten back. He was captured in battle, his heart sacrificed.
When the Taiguanos came closer, they learned that the army was Maya. And at its head was Tēzcatl, king of Mayapán.
“Your husband has come to take us back as slaves!” Clamored the troops. “He fell for your beauty once, my lady, and you betrayed him. He will not be fooled another time.”
“He did not stray before.” The lady said. “He loved, and made a choice on that love; he was brave; he had Sweetness and between us there was taiguan; he never strayed, though perhaps he thinks he did. There are myriads of forms of taiguan, and each form of taiguan is its own road, each leading in different ways, each as straight as any other, and we are at the crossroads of taiguan roads on an empty sunless plain, where the cardinals are unknowable and every road heads east. Tēzcatl chose the road of love, a taiguan road, and neither turned back nor faltered; he did not stray.”
The next day, the Prophetess traveled to the Cacique’s palace, now occupied by Tēzcatl. She went unaccompanied.
She did not return.
“Alas!” The soldiers said. “Tēzcatl has betrayed her.” They could not remember what the Prophetess had spoken, of a bloodless entry to Xaragua.
The Taiguano men prepared for war as the Prophetess had taught them. They surveyed the land and marked out the woods and fords good for ambush, organized their battalions and set out potential battle lines, trained day after day with the bow and the spear and the sword, and sent fleet-footed scouts forth to determine the movement of the slaver troops.
The Taiguanos soon learned that Tēzcatl was on the move, and they vowed to be as prepared as they were outnumbered. The men came to know the lay of the land better than the palm of their hands. The shape and location of the smallest molehill were remembered better than their mothers’ names. The bowmen’s bow felt an extension of their hands, and wielding the heavy obsidian-studded blades came as naturally to the swordsmen as swinging their arms. And every day the scouts went to and fro with new information.
It was the scouts who first saw the Prophetess returning, her two twins in her arms, carried aloft on a palanquin by an entourage of burly Maya men.
“There is no war,” she proclaimed, “It is as I said. The army of taiguan will enter Xaragua bloodlessly.”
And the astonished Taiguano troops did indeed enter Xaragua as victors, and bloodlessly. It was March 5, 1364.
Tēzcatl had not been able to forget his love for the Prophetess even after her betrayal. He had lingered in Mayapán for close to two years, but every delicacy he tasted had been like ashes to him, every song grossly out of tune, every painting ugly and abhorrable. One day he had no longer been able to stand it all, given up the throne of Mayapán to his eunuch servant Cemānāhuatēpēhuani, and sailed to Haiti to defeat the Cacique and help in the enterprise of his queen.
Tēzcatl’s Maya army helped consolidate Taiguano rule in the Xaragua realm for the next two years. But Tēzcatl's soldiers were not Yucayans. The Prophetess saw that her husband's men were falling sick, only the illness was homesickness and not even the best physicians of Xaragua had a remedy for that.
Tēzcatl's men urged him to leave. "I cannot," said Tēzcatl, "I love my queen."
His soldiers said, "You are happy here, my lord, but we are not. And we are eight thousand, and you are one."
Tēzcatl asked the Prophetess what he ought to do, and she wept again. She wanted to say, "You should remain here, of course," but the words would not come out of her mouth. She knew, deep down, that they were not the right thing to say. Her husband was responsible for his soldiers; a king is like a father to his people, and a father has no right to force his eight thousand sons to wallow in sickness.
The Prophetess did not speak. But Tēzcatl understood, and he cried too. And finally he said, "Love of my life, I understand why you left without a word."
Together they prayed a final time, both asking Bacocolon why he had made them kings and queens, the most burdensome fate in the world.
On May 14, 1366, Tēzcatl and the Maya fleet set forth from Xaragua port. They sailed east into the ocean sea and did not return.
The Taiguanos never forgot them. Stories were always told of Tēzcatl and his voyage, and people always wondered what had become of them. Had they all perished to a storm or to a giant serpent or to something yet more unknowable? Had they fallen off the ends of the earth? Or had they found land more to their taste, a vast continent like the Mesoamerican mainland? Or were they still sailing, somewhere in the azure sea? If they had found land, was it inhabited? If it was inhabited, what kind of strange races must be living there on the other side of the eastern sea? The Taiguanos had so many questions, so few answers. Then came 1492.
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Man the Isatian and Taiguano have very different perspectives on the same event in regards to how Tezcatl lost his throne. Also it seems that they both have very different positions on who Tezcatl was married to (and presumably why/how he got his throne). I presume we'll see a best estimate of how the Taigueno actually came to power once we're done with the Taiguano version of events by the IU historians?
Keep in mind that while the Taiguano accounts are hagiographies, the Isatian opera we heard about was written four hundred years later as a piece of entertainment, and probably bears about as much relationship to actual historical events as Macbeth, for instance, has with the doings of turn of the millennium Scottish kings.
True. I imagine they both have a lot of bullshit in them and that the truth is likely somewhere in the middle, though in this case the Taiguano one may be a bit closer to the truth. Though I do admit, if my theory on the Taiguano is right about how they fair against the Spanish the fact the Isatian Opera did not even mention her as a minor character is a bit odd. On the other hand, we didn't see the entire play so she could had shown up in a section we didn't see and it could had also been a decision to directly snub the Taiguano if she didn't show up at all in the play.
Or the writer had as bad an understanding on the actual history as William Shakespeare, that is also a real possibility.
Vuu
Banned
Well, we can get the gist of it
Cemānāhuatēpēhuani invades Mayapan, Tezcatl's new wife betrays him. Tezcatl possibly reconciliates with Cemānāhuatēpēhuani, or is a puppet king. One day he remembers his previous wife, gives Cemānāhuatēpēhuani the throne (and it's likely that Cemānāhuatēpēhuani was de facto ruler anyway), takes an army and conquers Xaragua
After that, he goes to an unknown location
Cemānāhuatēpēhuani invades Mayapan, Tezcatl's new wife betrays him. Tezcatl possibly reconciliates with Cemānāhuatēpēhuani, or is a puppet king. One day he remembers his previous wife, gives Cemānāhuatēpēhuani the throne (and it's likely that Cemānāhuatēpēhuani was de facto ruler anyway), takes an army and conquers Xaragua
After that, he goes to an unknown location
Also I have another, relatively unrelated question, since Bacocolon is the Yuyucan version of the feathered Serpent god, is he more of the dragon interpretation in his form or the relatively human looking form we see in a lot of Aztec art from what I understand? Or is it that since Bacocolon is the only deity it can shift from the feathered serpent dragon form to the humanish form?
I think fissioning would be a more accurate term than collapse; as one form of authority collapses under pressure from below political power is divided among the former states. Basically almost any case where a state collapses into competing polities that may still share a common cultural framework(the Illkhanids are an ok example of this).
Entry 26-3: The Taiguano Prophetess in Haiti, 1366-1367
THE TAIGUANO PROPHETESS — Part V
The Taiguano Reforms
Taiguano sources assure us that the Prophetess enforced the Taiguano ideological program virtually the moment of her accession. A circular pyramid was constructed as soon as Xaragua was hers, and already a small statue of Bacocolon, in the full court regalia of a Yucayan monarch, was carved out of gold-silver alloys and placed within. Long ropes chained the former idols of the Xaragua state to the commanding hands of the image of Bacocolon. Elegant wind vanes, surrounded by the finest gold powder, were placed on the high places to see the will of Bacocolon, the Lord of Wind. The festivals were already held, and the tournaments of the arts and sciences too, and libraries were stocked with new books more splendid in their color than anything the islands had ever seen; for the first time in history the Yucayan nobility was writing in the pictures of Mesoamerica and not their ugly syllabaries.
The social changes, say the Taiguano sources, were greater yet. The sale of Yucayans as slaves to Mesoamerica was banned, and from that day on all slaves sold to the Maya were Caniba barbarians. The pentasrix serfs who made up most of the Yucayan population were liberated from their masters and allowed to elect their own village headsmen. Even the lowliest of men and women – the prostitute and the dung-cleaner – now joined the court of the Prophetess so long as they had the talent. All internal commercial activity was prohibited as a manifestation of greed. Many of the great agricultural plantations of Haiti that had once fed and clothed Mesoamerica were destroyed, utterly torn down, and replaced with communities of specialist artisans and craftsmen, whose careful work was exported in place of the bags of maize and cotton and whose professions were indeed more befitting of the dignity of man.
It would be wise, of course, not to put much stock in these accounts.
The Prophetess also searched long and hard for her brother Guaiqui, but he was not to be found.
Ximani and the Aftermath
When Tēzcatl departed in May 1366, the rulers of the other four kingdoms of Haiti declared war on the Taiguanos to restore the ancien régime. Their armies numbered eighty thousand men, the largest force that the island had ever seen, and to the birds above the black of the soldiers’ hair must have seemed as streams of ink speeding west, pushing forward the crimson-red fringe of the royal retinues’ feather headdresses.
A century of warfare had depopulated the border regions between the five kingdoms. The deep of the mountains and the denseness of jungle hindered every attempt to feed this army larger than any Haitian city, despite the valiant efforts of thousands of human animals, and hundreds wasted away to death, day after day, and the rushing streams of ink left behind desiccated bone-white streambeds in their wake.
The idolater hosts entered the Xaragua realm from the direction of the Maguana kingdom, winding along the southern shores of the great brackish lake as they marched under the vast southern mountain range whose shadows darkened their paths at noon. They reached the fortress of Ximani-Between-the-Lakes on March 10, 1367. Ximani guarded the pathways to the heartland of the Xaragua realm and was well-defended on every side. The rain was quick approaching, and the caciques ordered the fortress stormed rather than wait for the siege. Every hour the idolaters’ troops fell by the tens from the battlements and by the dozens in the trenches, and the sky was black with arrows and the earth was black with rot, and every day thousands of newfound red streams twisted their ways to the lake. But Ximani fell with great losses on both sides, and everyone inside was thrown to the alligators.
Then the idolaters prepare to follow the southern banks of Lake Yainagua, where great heights and cliffs of stone soared just next to the waters and cast shadows that were long on the ripples, and the blackness of the jungle made it impossible to know what the mountainside might hold, and the terrain made the soldiers pass in thin rows.
As was customary – for the Caciques were soldier-kings eager for blood – the four kings and their most trusted retainers were at the head of their combined force. Nobody had wanted the disrepute of being last in line. The kings sent out scouts into the mountains. They all reported that nothing was amiss, only many villages of serfs scattered in the terraces. Serfs could not fight. There was nothing to fear.
There was a long and bitter squabble over which of the four Caciques would have the honor of going first. But it was decided at last, and the kings entered the dark and narrow pass together before any other of the troops (beside the guards, of course), held aloft palanquins that were all in one row. The birds must have seen with wonderment how the strange red fringe entered the mountains, and how the mass of black that followed them began to stir like a caterpillar and prepared to snake its way into the land of Xaragua.
The peaceful serfs of the mountains that the idolater scouts had found hastily removed their disguises, donned their armor and weaponry, and made prayers to Lord Bacocolon. Then they swept down from the mountains like hornets on the wing, burst out of the steep jungle while the Caciques and their guards were stumbling their narrow way between the trees and the lake, and took all four kings prisoner while the vast army that outnumbered them by an order of magnitude and more had still not even entered the mountains. With its leadership taken, the idolater host disintegrated. Most eventually joined the Taiguano army rather than starve to death in the jungle.
It was March 30, 1367, and the Battle of Ximani was won. The survival of the Taiguano state was secured.
Ximani was long remembered as a “Prince among Battles.” The loss of human life had been minimal; most of the few killed had been guards and princes, the leaders that were responsible and not their oblivious followers. That had been enough to rout the enemy host. It had been something very rare, perhaps impossible: a battle that was humane.
The memory of Ximani weighed heavily on many Taiguanos after 1492.
The captured kings of Ximani were brought to the capital port city of Xaragua, now renamed Cocopan after Lord Bacocolon. They swore fealty to the Prophetess there and embraced the Taiguano faith, and in return they were allowed to return to their old lands. They did not go to war again. They all knew that the Taiguanos had saved their lives when they were all but dead, and the guilt would have crushed them had they ever fought their savior again. And that guilt, more than anything else, proved how devoted they had become to the teachings of the Prophetess.
When the Caciques died – again, according to the Taiguano hagiographic accounts – they willed their realms to be given to the Prophetess. So Maguana was annexed in 1382, Magua and Marien in 1401, Higuey, finally, in 1404. For the first time in history, all Haiti was in the hands of a single woman.
So, at least, the hagiographies go.
The End
The following text is adapted from a late Taiguano hagiography.
It was 1416, and the Prophetess was old. Her twins already ruled in her name.
They called her the Prophetess now, yet there were still things she did not know. What had become of Guaiqui? Was he still alive? Probably not—she was old and he was older than she—but nobody knew.
She looked back on her life, the choices taken and sacrifices made: her childhood terror in the idol-house, her adolescent rebellion against the gods, the slave ship, the black berry and Bacocolon, her husband and Mayapán, the return, her parents encased in earth, Huihozemi, her husband's return and departure, the reforms, Ximani, everything.
She had wept and doubted, too many times to count, and it seemed momentarily that Bacocolon had cursed her more than blessed her.
She closed her eyes and heard the crowds of Cocopan praise her name. Had she not made so many choices and so many sacrifices and shed so many tears, would they remember her name so? No—she had lived a wretched life, as they said that an old man had said, but the wretchedness was the price of her virtue, and now she was immortal in the memory and the taiguan of her people, and thus in the embrace of Bacocolon. A few decades of heartbreak seemed a trifle compared to immortality.
She had persevered. She could have ended it with the berry in the ship, but she had not. She could have ended it in happiness at Mayapán, but she had not. She could have told her husband to stay, but she had not. That was a noble thing, a taiguan thing, to pursue the duty that the god allots us, no matter how many our tears. And at the close of her life, the Prophetess said, "I regret nothing."
She saw Guaiqui next to her, and she realized that he had died after all and that she was about to die. Her brother spoke to her, and his voice was the voice of Bacocolon.
"Tell me your last request, sister."
"Tell me one last revelation to give."
There was a silence, then Bacocolon whispered,
"I reward men and women by the number of their tears."
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