Here goes nothing.
*****
The night was deep on Guanahani Island, and the world was asleep. The heavens were black, the stars and the half-moon’s steady light alone illuminating the rows of ripening maize and drying fish. Even the parrots were quiet. Only the whistles of the hutias and the crashing of the waves disturbed the silence of the night – not that there was anyone to hear them. It was the time of day and year when women and children dozed in their cottages, waiting for the men to return from the country of the Caniba.
“Don’t go in the woods after dark,” mothers here would tell their children, “there might be Caniba out there, and they’re more than happy to eat you.” The people of these islands called themselves Yucayans, “Islanders.” But to be a Yucayan was more than to simply live on an island. Yucayans possessed the spirit of taiguan, the essence of civilized life. The Caniba, the Yucayan name for the tribal peoples to their north and south, did not. So they were inferior. The Caniba, it was said, did not know how to build with stone. They were too ignorant to read or write, to irrigate their maize and manioc, or even to have monarchs and ministers. If you believed the rumors, some Caniba had sex with their daughters and feasted each night on human flesh.
In a word, they were savages.
Men from Guanahani and the other Cicayan Islands had more experience with the Caniba than almost any other Yucayan. The Military Governor of the Cicayans led annual expeditions against the Caniba who lived in the big peninsula to the north. Many decades ago, the old men said, every adult man had had to serve in these campaigns. Those days were long past. Nowadays the Governor conscripted men from only a few islands at a time. It was Guanahani’s turn this year, and so the young chief of the island and most of the other men were absent from the island. Some of the Guanahani youth even wondered whether the expeditions would still take place when they were old. With every passing year, it seemed there were more and more Yucayans and less and less Caniba.
No wonder this was happening; the Military Governor had to capture 1,500 Caniba slaves each year, preferably women and children. Demand for slaves was high in the city of Cocopan, and enslaving the Caniba was an easy way for the His Highness the Guacayaraboque to both make money and introduce the barbarians to civilization. The Cicayan men themselves partook in the profits of slaving. The women and children left behind on Guanahani may have known little about the exact way slaves were caught and sold, but all but the very youngest could remember what the men would bring back with them upon their return.
There were rolls and rolls of fine cotton cloth, straight from the Cocopan workshops and colored with every hue of red cochineal dye, some so brilliant that the women said the cotton plants must have been watered with blood, others the very shade of the clouds at sunset. There was gold and guanin and pearls galore, in every conceivable form of jewelry: necklaces, earrings, bracelets, piercings… The men brought Cocopan ceramics, too, just like the skin of toddlers: perfect, unblemished, and marvelously smooth to the touch. The people of Guanahani called them “baby-skin pots.”
Some of the islanders brought things from further afield, across the vast western seas. Silver, copper, and bronze jewelry from the mysterious land of Tzintzuntzan never failed to dazzle the villagers. A gaggle of adolescent boys would always crowd about the newest obsidian blades from faraway K'iche' country, while their mothers hurried to see if their husbands had managed to bring high-quality salt and honey from the Yucatan (a rare commodity nowadays, ever since the Maya started embargoing Cocopan). There had been great commotion on Guanahani a few years ago when the chief arrived with a treasure the likes of which not even the oldest islanders could remember seeing: a golden statuette of some mythological four-legged beast. The chief announced that this marvel hailed from a land very far to the south where every house was made of gold and silver, and where these four-legged beasts actually existed and were used to carry goods. Nobody believed him, of course. How could a dumb animal ever do what only human porters could? Still, people marveled.
And what stories the men brought back with them! They always began believably enough:
But their tales would grow wider with each gulp of the palm wine:
And nobody believed what the drunk men said as the last flames of the return feast died out:
No matter how farfetched the men’s tales might be, they were the amusement of the decade for the villagers of Guanahani. The treasures the men brought back were likewise irreplaceable. Whenever the men returned, the islanders lived like kings for a few months: the sweetest honey, the reddest cloth, even a little jewelry for everybody. Guanahani men risked their lives in the lands of Caniba, remembering how admiring their wives’ and children’s eyes would be.
Not all men went, but most did. Two hundred had gone this year, leaving a mere fifty adult men behind. A few were too old, like the chief’s thin and sallow father who ruled the island in the absence of his son. About twenty warriors were left behind to protect the island against any Caniba attack, though nobody alive could remember any such event in Yucayan territory these past fifty years. There was a group of fishermen, too, whose presence was the talk of the year. They had been judged unfit to fight due to having broken legs, but everyone knew that they had injured their legs intentionally to avoid conscription. “Cowardly bastards,” the women said out loud whenever they happened to hobble by. “You’ll see what happens when our husbands come back, with gold in their hands, not your fish.”
But it was night now. Those fishermen, and the other men who had been left behind, and the hundreds of women and children too, were asleep. Guanahani dozed, dreaming of another year of prosperity, of gold and silver and adventure stories.
As Guanahani slumbered, three ships approached from a world away.
*****
Excerpt from the Journal of Christopher Columbus.
*****
The night was deep on Guanahani Island, and the world was asleep. The heavens were black, the stars and the half-moon’s steady light alone illuminating the rows of ripening maize and drying fish. Even the parrots were quiet. Only the whistles of the hutias and the crashing of the waves disturbed the silence of the night – not that there was anyone to hear them. It was the time of day and year when women and children dozed in their cottages, waiting for the men to return from the country of the Caniba.
“Don’t go in the woods after dark,” mothers here would tell their children, “there might be Caniba out there, and they’re more than happy to eat you.” The people of these islands called themselves Yucayans, “Islanders.” But to be a Yucayan was more than to simply live on an island. Yucayans possessed the spirit of taiguan, the essence of civilized life. The Caniba, the Yucayan name for the tribal peoples to their north and south, did not. So they were inferior. The Caniba, it was said, did not know how to build with stone. They were too ignorant to read or write, to irrigate their maize and manioc, or even to have monarchs and ministers. If you believed the rumors, some Caniba had sex with their daughters and feasted each night on human flesh.
In a word, they were savages.
Men from Guanahani and the other Cicayan Islands had more experience with the Caniba than almost any other Yucayan. The Military Governor of the Cicayans led annual expeditions against the Caniba who lived in the big peninsula to the north. Many decades ago, the old men said, every adult man had had to serve in these campaigns. Those days were long past. Nowadays the Governor conscripted men from only a few islands at a time. It was Guanahani’s turn this year, and so the young chief of the island and most of the other men were absent from the island. Some of the Guanahani youth even wondered whether the expeditions would still take place when they were old. With every passing year, it seemed there were more and more Yucayans and less and less Caniba.
No wonder this was happening; the Military Governor had to capture 1,500 Caniba slaves each year, preferably women and children. Demand for slaves was high in the city of Cocopan, and enslaving the Caniba was an easy way for the His Highness the Guacayaraboque to both make money and introduce the barbarians to civilization. The Cicayan men themselves partook in the profits of slaving. The women and children left behind on Guanahani may have known little about the exact way slaves were caught and sold, but all but the very youngest could remember what the men would bring back with them upon their return.
There were rolls and rolls of fine cotton cloth, straight from the Cocopan workshops and colored with every hue of red cochineal dye, some so brilliant that the women said the cotton plants must have been watered with blood, others the very shade of the clouds at sunset. There was gold and guanin and pearls galore, in every conceivable form of jewelry: necklaces, earrings, bracelets, piercings… The men brought Cocopan ceramics, too, just like the skin of toddlers: perfect, unblemished, and marvelously smooth to the touch. The people of Guanahani called them “baby-skin pots.”
Some of the islanders brought things from further afield, across the vast western seas. Silver, copper, and bronze jewelry from the mysterious land of Tzintzuntzan never failed to dazzle the villagers. A gaggle of adolescent boys would always crowd about the newest obsidian blades from faraway K'iche' country, while their mothers hurried to see if their husbands had managed to bring high-quality salt and honey from the Yucatan (a rare commodity nowadays, ever since the Maya started embargoing Cocopan). There had been great commotion on Guanahani a few years ago when the chief arrived with a treasure the likes of which not even the oldest islanders could remember seeing: a golden statuette of some mythological four-legged beast. The chief announced that this marvel hailed from a land very far to the south where every house was made of gold and silver, and where these four-legged beasts actually existed and were used to carry goods. Nobody believed him, of course. How could a dumb animal ever do what only human porters could? Still, people marveled.
And what stories the men brought back with them! They always began believably enough:
“Let me tell you about that one time I fought a Caniba with my bare hands…”
“You should’ve been with us at Cocopan! A single street there has more houses than our entire island, can you imagine?”
“The Guacayaraboque’s ships could hold ten of our fishing boats. They have as many sails, too!”
“You should’ve been with us at Cocopan! A single street there has more houses than our entire island, can you imagine?”
“The Guacayaraboque’s ships could hold ten of our fishing boats. They have as many sails, too!”
But their tales would grow wider with each gulp of the palm wine:
“The people at Cocopan build mountains out of stone!” “You mean the city sits around a mountain?” “No, no, you wouldn’t understand. They built a square mountain out of bare stone with their bare hands, all to honor their quetzal god.”
“The Caniba don’t eat maize. Well, it’s more than that. They don’t eat anything at all that comes from the earth. Only meat.” “What kind of meat?” “Human, of course. What else could such savages eat?”
“Has anyone told you about the Mexicans in Cocopan? These folks build stone mountains, too, in their ward by the harbor. Every day they hold a lottery, and the Mexicans kill whoever is selected the next day. They carve the hearts out, like some other people do down south in the city.” “Have you seen those Mexican lotteries, uncle?” “Well, no, but what they say is…”
“The Caniba don’t eat maize. Well, it’s more than that. They don’t eat anything at all that comes from the earth. Only meat.” “What kind of meat?” “Human, of course. What else could such savages eat?”
“Has anyone told you about the Mexicans in Cocopan? These folks build stone mountains, too, in their ward by the harbor. Every day they hold a lottery, and the Mexicans kill whoever is selected the next day. They carve the hearts out, like some other people do down south in the city.” “Have you seen those Mexican lotteries, uncle?” “Well, no, but what they say is…”
And nobody believed what the drunk men said as the last flames of the return feast died out:
“Come here, girl… I’ll tell you what your papa did in the north. I fought Caniba. They had five legs! Can you believe that? Five legs! And as many heads! They have eyes on the back of these six heads – or was it five heads? I’m not sure now, but they sure had heads, the savages. And when the savages look at us Yucayans with these eyes – hiccup – what was I saying now? Ah, right, their evil eyes. See, girl, let me tell you about these eyes…” “Dad, it’s the dead of night. Let’s go home now.”
No matter how farfetched the men’s tales might be, they were the amusement of the decade for the villagers of Guanahani. The treasures the men brought back were likewise irreplaceable. Whenever the men returned, the islanders lived like kings for a few months: the sweetest honey, the reddest cloth, even a little jewelry for everybody. Guanahani men risked their lives in the lands of Caniba, remembering how admiring their wives’ and children’s eyes would be.
Not all men went, but most did. Two hundred had gone this year, leaving a mere fifty adult men behind. A few were too old, like the chief’s thin and sallow father who ruled the island in the absence of his son. About twenty warriors were left behind to protect the island against any Caniba attack, though nobody alive could remember any such event in Yucayan territory these past fifty years. There was a group of fishermen, too, whose presence was the talk of the year. They had been judged unfit to fight due to having broken legs, but everyone knew that they had injured their legs intentionally to avoid conscription. “Cowardly bastards,” the women said out loud whenever they happened to hobble by. “You’ll see what happens when our husbands come back, with gold in their hands, not your fish.”
But it was night now. Those fishermen, and the other men who had been left behind, and the hundreds of women and children too, were asleep. Guanahani dozed, dreaming of another year of prosperity, of gold and silver and adventure stories.
As Guanahani slumbered, three ships approached from a world away.
*****
Excerpt from the Journal of Christopher Columbus.
In the Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ…
Friday, 12 October, 1492.
At two o'clock in the morning the land was discovered, at two leagues' distance. They [Columbus’s crew] took in sail and remained under the square-sail lying to till day, which was Friday, when they found themselves near a small island... Presently they descried people, naked, and the Admiral landed in the boat, which was armed, along with Martin Alonzo Pinzon, and Vincent Yanez his brother, captain of the Nina. The Admiral bore the royal standard, and the two captains each a banner of the Green Cross, which all the ships had carried; this contained the initials of the names of the King and Queen each side of the cross, and a crown over each letter. Arrived on shore, they saw trees very green, many streams of water, and diverse sorts of fruits…
Numbers of the people of the island straightway collected together. Here follow the precise words of the Admiral [Christopher Columbus]:
“Though the Indians were stark naked even to their private parts, they appeared to be fishermen by their hooks and nets. We thought it curious that they all walked with a limp. I presented them with some red caps, and strings of beads to wear upon the neck, and many other trifles of small value. They did not deign to take any of what we offered, or even to touch us. To such a degree did the barbarians fear our arms.
“The Indians being naked and unarmed, I saw it fit to plant the banner of the Cross and the standard of the Most Christian King and Queen of Spain on the soil of this land. This furthermost island of the Indies was thus taken into possession by Their High and Excellent Highnesses. The Indians muttered and looked at us with approbation as we did so. One of them, an old man, approached us, shouting, and touched the length of the blade of our sword, as innocently as if he had never seen steel before. He cut himself on the finger and flinched, crying out to his people again and again: ‘Rucanacu, rucanacu, macuri!’ Then the Indians fled into the woods, hobbling all the way.
“We Christians watched them go with some anxiety. We were alone in a foreign land, the country of a strange and unknown people whom we could no longer see. The Indians had fled, and the Christians knew no longer where the barbarians might be.
“An hour or so passed in such a manner. At last, about twenty Indian warriors came down to meet us, at their head the king of the island, an old man with a thin beard and equally thin of countenance. This lord was wrapped in a red and white cotton robe that trailed below the litter on which they carried him aloft, and the delight of the cloth and its radiant patterns, I remember, defied all description. The gold and pearls of his many ornaments – earrings, necklaces, bracelets – glittered in the sun. The Christians looked at him and said: ‘Look at that gold! We are really in the Indies! This man can be no other than a vassal of the Great Khan!’
“From head to toe, the Indian royal guard was all dressed in padded white cotton, this seeming to serve as their armor. They were armed but with long wooden javelins in one hand and a bow in the other, with a quiverful of arrows tied to the back by some string. All their arms had only stone for tips. The warriors of this quarter of the Indies are, then, a poor match for the armies of Christendom. So inexperienced did they appear in war-like matters that I thought I could surely conquer the whole island with only a small company.
“The Indian warriors had been murmuring all along, yet when their king spoke, they all fell silent at once. The lord spoke at length, uttering a long tirade in his language (much like the speech of Florence) and in a most mellifluous voice, though we understood not a word of it. Only a few sounds which he repeated over and over again could be made out: ‘Copao, Mecica, Coatiziti.’ We wondered, as if in a dream, what all these flowing words might mean.
“When the king stopped speaking and gazed at us with an inquiring expression, we asked him in our turn, in each language that we knew: ‘Are you Christians? Do you know the Great Khan?’ The Indian seemed to understand our questions as little as we had his. One of us pointed to his earrings and repeated slowly, ‘Gold, gold. Is there gold here?’ The king responded, ‘Tatiqui!’ and swatted his ear, making his earrings chime. Perhaps this was their word for gold. I do not know.
“Upon us repeating for him the word ‘Great Khan,’ the Indian king seemed to ponder, then spat out the words ‘Cannibal!’ and frowned in disgust. From this gesture, and from the first three letters of this Indian word ‘Cannibal’ [“Khan” was Can in Columbus’s Spanish], we supposed that these so-called Cannibals were the soldiers of the Great Khan of whom Marco Polo spoke. By the king’s revulsion the people of this island must have been enemies rather than vassals of the Khan.
“We were all disappointed to have known this. Yet what joy we still evinced, to have found that this king from the farthest ends of the earth had heard of the Khan, to know that the Khan was near!”
Friday, 12 October, 1492.
At two o'clock in the morning the land was discovered, at two leagues' distance. They [Columbus’s crew] took in sail and remained under the square-sail lying to till day, which was Friday, when they found themselves near a small island... Presently they descried people, naked, and the Admiral landed in the boat, which was armed, along with Martin Alonzo Pinzon, and Vincent Yanez his brother, captain of the Nina. The Admiral bore the royal standard, and the two captains each a banner of the Green Cross, which all the ships had carried; this contained the initials of the names of the King and Queen each side of the cross, and a crown over each letter. Arrived on shore, they saw trees very green, many streams of water, and diverse sorts of fruits…
Numbers of the people of the island straightway collected together. Here follow the precise words of the Admiral [Christopher Columbus]:
“Though the Indians were stark naked even to their private parts, they appeared to be fishermen by their hooks and nets. We thought it curious that they all walked with a limp. I presented them with some red caps, and strings of beads to wear upon the neck, and many other trifles of small value. They did not deign to take any of what we offered, or even to touch us. To such a degree did the barbarians fear our arms.
“The Indians being naked and unarmed, I saw it fit to plant the banner of the Cross and the standard of the Most Christian King and Queen of Spain on the soil of this land. This furthermost island of the Indies was thus taken into possession by Their High and Excellent Highnesses. The Indians muttered and looked at us with approbation as we did so. One of them, an old man, approached us, shouting, and touched the length of the blade of our sword, as innocently as if he had never seen steel before. He cut himself on the finger and flinched, crying out to his people again and again: ‘Rucanacu, rucanacu, macuri!’ Then the Indians fled into the woods, hobbling all the way.
“We Christians watched them go with some anxiety. We were alone in a foreign land, the country of a strange and unknown people whom we could no longer see. The Indians had fled, and the Christians knew no longer where the barbarians might be.
“An hour or so passed in such a manner. At last, about twenty Indian warriors came down to meet us, at their head the king of the island, an old man with a thin beard and equally thin of countenance. This lord was wrapped in a red and white cotton robe that trailed below the litter on which they carried him aloft, and the delight of the cloth and its radiant patterns, I remember, defied all description. The gold and pearls of his many ornaments – earrings, necklaces, bracelets – glittered in the sun. The Christians looked at him and said: ‘Look at that gold! We are really in the Indies! This man can be no other than a vassal of the Great Khan!’
“From head to toe, the Indian royal guard was all dressed in padded white cotton, this seeming to serve as their armor. They were armed but with long wooden javelins in one hand and a bow in the other, with a quiverful of arrows tied to the back by some string. All their arms had only stone for tips. The warriors of this quarter of the Indies are, then, a poor match for the armies of Christendom. So inexperienced did they appear in war-like matters that I thought I could surely conquer the whole island with only a small company.
“The Indian warriors had been murmuring all along, yet when their king spoke, they all fell silent at once. The lord spoke at length, uttering a long tirade in his language (much like the speech of Florence) and in a most mellifluous voice, though we understood not a word of it. Only a few sounds which he repeated over and over again could be made out: ‘Copao, Mecica, Coatiziti.’ We wondered, as if in a dream, what all these flowing words might mean.
“When the king stopped speaking and gazed at us with an inquiring expression, we asked him in our turn, in each language that we knew: ‘Are you Christians? Do you know the Great Khan?’ The Indian seemed to understand our questions as little as we had his. One of us pointed to his earrings and repeated slowly, ‘Gold, gold. Is there gold here?’ The king responded, ‘Tatiqui!’ and swatted his ear, making his earrings chime. Perhaps this was their word for gold. I do not know.
“Upon us repeating for him the word ‘Great Khan,’ the Indian king seemed to ponder, then spat out the words ‘Cannibal!’ and frowned in disgust. From this gesture, and from the first three letters of this Indian word ‘Cannibal’ [“Khan” was Can in Columbus’s Spanish], we supposed that these so-called Cannibals were the soldiers of the Great Khan of whom Marco Polo spoke. By the king’s revulsion the people of this island must have been enemies rather than vassals of the Khan.
“We were all disappointed to have known this. Yet what joy we still evinced, to have found that this king from the farthest ends of the earth had heard of the Khan, to know that the Khan was near!”
