Documenting the Myth of Taino Extinction

Home , Enriquillo

KACIKE: Journal of Caribbean Amerindian History and Anthropology ISSN 1562-5028 Special Issue edited by Lynne Guitar NEW DIRECTIONS IN TAINO RESEARCH http://www.kacike.org/Current.html

Documenting the Myth of Taíno Extinction1

Dr. Lynne Guitar

I am an historian and anthropologist. My are relegated to a few items of food and interests are the Dominican people and “common” things used by campesinos, to their culture. For my doctoral dissertation, a few dozen Taíno words and phrases, I studied how this fascinating culture and to a plethora of Taíno place names. began to develop. In the process of There is also a confusing range of researching my dissertation, I discovered supposedly Indian skin colors, such as many little studied documents. I am going “indio claro” and “indio oscuro,” that have to share some of them with you today. I little, if anything, to do with bloodlines. am going to show you how, using The color categories have been in historical and anthropological methods, I common use since the Trujillo Era, when ask questions of documents, of the the concept was re-initiated as part of the people who left us those documents, and dictator’s program to “Dominicanize” the of the particular situations under which country—to distinguish Dominicans from they wrote the documents—in this way I Haitians. discovered the origins of many of As in other Latin American Hispaniola’s myths. We are going to start countries that were once Spanish with something very familiar. colonies, the island’s indigenous peoples, For the past 510 years, because of the Taínos, are set upon a pedestal of the the “discovery” of Hispaniola and its past—they are identified as frozen in a colonization by Spaniards, residents of particular pre-Columbian and early today’s Dominican Republic have Columbian time frame and highly admired maintained an image of themselves as as part of the island’s unique past. As in “Spaniards.” Spanish heroes have been other Latin American countries, to be glorified in all aspects of Dominican Indian in the present Dominican era history that are taught from pre- means to be backward, rustic, gullible, or Kindergarten through the university level, even feeble minded. Dominicans deny and Spanish cultural elements have been that Taínos survived the Spanish glorified in Dominican architecture, conquest, deny that they had the oh-so- paintings, and literature. The recognized human ability to change and adapt to new Native Indian elements in modern situations like the arrival of strangers. Dominican identity, history, and culture

Dr. Lynne Guitar - Documenting the Myth of Taíno Extinction -______2

Figure 1

This is a Taíno cave guardian sculpture in today’s Los Haitses National Park. Images like these, frozen in stone, frozen in time, are the most vivid Taíno images in the minds of most people today.

Yet the Taínos whom Christopher answer, easy to compute, is nine months Columbus discovered in the Bahamas, on after Columbus’s ships landed in the Cuba, and on Hispaniola during his first Caribbean. voyage were eager to exchange foods, Can you imagine any sailors of any drinking water, parrots, and gilded jewelry nation or era, after a month at sea, not for the beads, little mirrors, and red hats taking advantage of a welcoming party that Columbus had brought as trade that includes “naked” women with, goods. They also exchanged something apparently, none of the sexual else—their genes. prohibitions that were so integral a part of I jokingly ask my students, noting the lives of Catholic Spaniards? Those first that they do not need advanced math were two of the first myths that arose nor psychic powers to figure it out: “When about the Taínos, that they went naked were the first mestizos born?” The and that they had no sexual prohibitions. Figure 2

Illustration, Histoire Naturelle des Indes: The Drake Manuscript in the Pierpont Morgan Library.

Columbus and all the other twine, would be dreadfully ashamed if the chroniclers of the era wrote that the twine were to slip off in public. Indians went naked. They often added The belief that the Taínos had no that the Indians did not cover their sexual prohibitions cost at least 39 “shameful parts.” Spaniards their lives. Columbus had to Think about the term “naked.” It’s a leave 39 men behind on the island of Eurocentric term that means not to be Hispaniola when his flagship, the Santa “dressed,” not to be covered with cloth. María, sank on a reef on Christmas Eve After describing the Taínos’ nakedness, in 1492. When he returned a year later, the Spanish chroniclers went on to with seventeen ships loaded with describe the Taínos’ elaborate arm and Spaniards eager for the gold they leg bands, tattoos and painted believed abounded in “The Indies,” they adornments, headdresses, necklaces, found the rotting corpses of their earrings, and bracelets, the caciques’ massacred countrymen. Columbus’s ally, (chiefs’) elaborate belts, masks, and the Cacique Guacanagarí, explained as feathered capes, and the naguas--finely best he could—excluding himself from woven cotton “skirts”--that some of the any blame: All of the Spaniards who had Taíno women wore. That’s a lot of stayed behind, he said, were given clothing and accoutrements for a female companions. This was standard supposedly naked people! (The women’s procedure among the Taínos and other naguas, by the way, were more loincloths Indian peoples, who appear to have than skirts, for they did not hide the known that it improved the gene pool. In women’s buttocks and were not meant to particular, visiting dignitaries were given hide their pubic areas, either. Like today’s female companions, which demonstrates Western women wear wedding bands, that the Taínos held the Spanish the naguas indicated that the women who newcomers in high esteem—at first. The wore them were married, and the nobler a Spaniards, of course, were not familiar woman was, the longer was the nagua with the norms of Taíno society. They that she wore.) appear to have assumed, because they Like the concept of nakedness, the were given a number of women to enjoy chroniclers’ reports that the Taínos did sexually, that there were no sexual not cover their shameful parts was prohibitions at all among their hosts. The ethnocentric and specific to European Spaniards did not know that the women society, for “parts” such as breasts, wearing naguas were married, or that buttocks, and pubic regions are not married women were strictly off limits to universally shameful. What was shameful anyone except their husbands. to the Taínos? The chroniclers didn’t say Furthermore, the Spaniards appear to because they didn’t know, but modern- have made the assumption that the day anthropologists have noted that Taínos did not value gold, for they traded women from distantly related indigenous it for “valueless” objects—valueless to the tribes of the Amazon and Orinoco river Spaniards, that is, but exotic, therefore valleys find it shameful to be seen in very valuable, to the Taínos.2 The public without their arm and leg bands, Spaniards also did not know that the most and the men, who pull their foreskins unforgivable offense among the Taínos forward and tie the sheaths closed with was theft. Not content with trading, the Spaniards began taking whatever gold Dr. Lynne Guitar - Documenting the Myth of Taíno Extinction -______2 objects they encountered. Doubtlessly, the uncivilized behavior of the Spaniards, the Spaniards unknowingly committed a group of Taínos led by the paramount many other social blunders during their cacique Caonabó fixed the problem by stay among the Taínos. Exasperated by getting rid of the pests.

Figure 3

This statue of Caonabó in chains guards the entrance to the third-floor exhibits at the Museum of Dominican Man.

Columbus condemned Caonabó Spaniards, were replaced by Spanish for his actions against the 39 Spaniards. structures and were overseen by Spanish The cacique died aboard ship, bound for males after 1492. But the domestic a royal trial in Spain. Little did he or the sphere, the female sphere, remained other Taínos know that, like the rats that overwhelmingly Taíno—or rather Taína, came to the Americas on the Spanish the feminine version of the word. ships, there would soon be thousands of I don’t have time to go into the Spaniards in the region, and Spanish highly controversial and virtually laws and mores would soon displace unprovable demographics of the those of the Taíno, at least in the public conquest era, but suffice it to say that, sphere. compared to the number of Taínos on the My colleague, the American island (in the millions), very few archaeologist Kathleen Deagan, Spaniards came, and those who did were developed a theory about public and overwhelmingly male.3 Most of them took domestic spheres which all of my work Taína sexual partners. Without doubt, has proven to be true. Everything in the many Taínas were unwilling sexual public sphere—the chain of public partners, but many others married leadership and administration, concepts Spaniards and formed inter-ethnic of land ownership and land use, law and families. Not only was marriage to Taínas justice, official religious beliefs and allowed by the Spanish Crown, it was practices, monetary values—all of those encouraged. The Spaniards’ wives were areas that had been in the male Taíno baptized and took Spanish names; they sphere before the arrival of the adopted Spanish dress styles; attended

Spanish churches; lived in Spanish-style African slaves arrived. (“Others” is the houses; and to all outward appearances word used in the island’s early became Spanish. But that was the censuses—terms like “mestizo” and outward, public appearance. Inside their “mulatto” did not appear on census homes, in the domestic sphere, the records until the 1580s. 4) Taínas’ lives and those of their children In fact, the Spaniards’ domination remained very Taíno. What they ate, how of the island of Hispaniola was illusory, it was stored and prepared, child-raising another myth. Between 1492 and 1510 practices, home medicinal and religious they had founded only two cities, fewer practices, storytelling, the importance of than twenty small villages, and a dozen song, music, dance, and naming fortresses in key locations—but that left a patterns—even the concept of who is lot of the island’s territory uncontrolled, family--all have remained overwhelmingly territory where there were no Spaniards Taíno in the Dominican Republic through at all, but for the occasional patrols. In the the present day. first decade of the 16th century, Spaniards Let me add that the Spaniards’ began to leave the island in massive custom of privacy within the home lends numbers seeking gold, pearls, and more support to Deagan’s thesis of Taíno Indian workers on Puerto Rico, Cuba, the continuance in the domestic sphere. islands of the Lesser Antilles, and in In Santo Domingo, which was the today’s Panama, Venezuela, Colombia, Spaniards’ capital and administrative Mexico, and Peru. center, Spaniards reproduced their The Spaniards who remained on homeland’s infrastructures and cultural Hispaniola began to pull back to regions patterns as closely as they could. closer to the capital, which was better Nonetheless, Santo Domingo was a patrolled than the villages, had more frontier city. Even in the public sphere, European conveniences, and from which the culture that evolved there was not a all shipping and commerce was perfect European replica because of the conducted—all the things that meant island’s unique geography and climate; civilized life to the Spaniards. As the the distance of the colony from the Spaniards pulled back toward Santo Iberian motherland; and the integration of Domingo, Spain’s enemies—the French, Taíno and African beliefs and cultural the Dutch, the English—began to raid the traditions. The Spanish colonists were less protected peripheries of the island. even less successful at replicating their And in those peripheral parts of the island European infrastructures and culture in lived the maroons, about whom I’m going the rural villages than they were in the to speak in a moment. capital. The year 1510 is significant Throughout the island’s rural towns because that’s the year that Fray Antonio and villages, in the gold mining regions, Montesinos was chosen by the and, later, on the sugar plantations, Dominican Order of friars on the island to Spaniards were outnumbered by an speak out against the encomienda average of six-and-a-half or eight-and-a- system. They believed it was an abusive half to one by Indians, Africans, and system that was killing off the Taínos. mixed-blood “others” long after the They wanted to eliminate the encomienda Indians were supposed to have system and relocate the Taínos into disappeared and long before most of the missionary villages, believing that it would

© 2002, Lynne Guitar KACIKE: The Journal of Caribbean Amerindian History and Anthropology http://www.kacike.org Dr. Lynne Guitar - Documenting the Myth of Taíno Extinction -______3 improve conversion efforts and halt the World, a world without the immunities that death toll. Bartolomé de las Casas was all peoples of the Old World had an encomendero until Montesino’s developed throughout thousands of years sermons. He, too, believed that the of intercontinental trade. Taínos’ massive die-off was due to Almost all of the standard histories abuses by some encomenderos. He claim that the last Taínos of Hispaniola spent the balance of his life defending the were those who rebelled with Cacique Indians and finally succeeded in getting Enriquillo from 1519-1534. In the first- the Royal Crown to outlaw the ever treaty made between Amerindians encomienda system throughout the and a European crown, Enriquillo and his Americas in 1547. That did not save the people received their own village, Boyá, Indians, however, for neither they nor the near Azua—a village that was attacked Spaniards of the era knew about all the several years later by rebellious African microscopic germs and viruses that slaves who burned down the village, accompanied the Spaniards, their killing off any inhabitants who did not flee. animals, and their slaves to the New

Figure 4

Statues and drawings of Enriquillo abound in the Dominican Republic. He has become the tragically heroic, romanticized symbol for “the last of his kind.”

The concept of Enriquillo’s people encomienda system, nor by the sporadic as the last of the Taínos is very romantic wars of the 1490s, nor by the systematic and elevates Enriquillo to superhero massacres ordered by Nicolás de status. Perhaps this is why Dominicans Ovando from 1502-1505 that were meant today take an ironic pride in the supposed to “pacify” the Indians. No. All of these fact that it is only on their island that no contributed to the decline of the native Native Indians survived the Conquest population, but most of the Taínos died of Era. But the romantic concept is quite illnesses like measles and influenza contrary to the factual evidence. Today because they had no immunities to them, we know that most of the Taínos were not and after 1519, of smallpox. In tropical killed by abuses endured under the areas like Hispaniola, between 80 and

90% of the Native Indians died of plagues 90% loss is a significant and horrifying that often preceded the actual arrival of loss. It is so horrifying that it obscures the the Spaniards, for the germs and viruses fact that 10 to 20% of the Taínos were carried by messengers bearing survived. news from plague-ridden areas. An 80-

Figure 5

The family of Eugenio Castillo, Villa Mella—Taíno inheritance on both sides. Eugenio is from the mountains of the Cibao, his wife’s family from Las Matas de Farfán, in the mountains near San Juan de la Maguana.

A re-examination of the documents Hispaniola who exaggerated their of the era reveals the origins of the myth losses in order to gain sympathy and of Taíno extinction: royal permission to import more African slaves, who were believed to · When the chroniclers wrote that all of be “stronger” than the Taínos because the Indians of Hispaniola were gone, they did not fall prey to the diseases they were, in fact, following the lead of that decimated the Indians. Las Casas, who exaggerated the Taíno population decline in order to Historians and demographers convince the emperor to abolish the generally use the censuses of the era, encomienda system and, instead, such as the census that accompanied the establish missionary villages for the 1514 Repartimiento, to confirm that which Indians’ conversion. the chroniclers wrote about the drastic · The chroniclers also wrote about the decline of the Taíno population. They Taínos in comparison to the denser forget that the Taínos fled from the populations of Native Indians later Spaniards many years before the famous discovered on the Mainland; this is episode concerning Enriquillo and his especially true about Oviedo, who people. Many maroons hid from the spent his early years in today’s Spaniards in the mountains of Bahoruco Panama. and in other peripheral regions of the island. Governor Nicolás de Ovando · The chroniclers were also repeating himself wrote in 1502 that the Tainos and what was written in letter after letter to Africans frequently ran away together, the Royal Court by encomenderos on

© 2002, Lynne Guitar KACIKE: The Journal of Caribbean Amerindian History and Anthropology http://www.kacike.org Dr. Lynne Guitar - Documenting the Myth of Taíno Extinction -______2 using the Indians’ knowledge of the social factors and the personal judgment countryside to evade the Spaniards. of the census takers, not on biological How can you pretend to count factors. If a Spaniard and a Taína had a people for a census who are hiding from child who was raised in the city or a you? The Spanish censuses, like that of European-style town, spoke Castilian, 1514, are inherently misleading. They was baptized Catholic, wore European only account for those Taínos who stayed clothes, received a European education, on the Spaniards’ encomiendas. and “acted” Spanish—then he or she was There is another problem with the listed as Spanish on the censuses. If that censuses of the era. They are same child lived in a yucayeque (Taíno misinterpreted because people were village), spoke Taíno, practiced Taíno categorized in a very different manner in religious rituals, dressed as a Taíno, and the sixteenth century than they are today. acted Taíno, then he or she was listed on Hispaniola’s residents were generally the censuses as Indian. That’s confusing recognized as Spaniards, Indians, or for modern scholars, but it was also African slaves, but a lot of “others” confusing for the colonial-era census appeared on the censuses as well. takers, who had to try to figure out how to Furthermore, the categories of Spaniard categorize people when there were, as or Indian appear to have depended upon yet, no fixed standards.5

Figure 6

Sugar-mill workers included Indians, Africans, Canarians, and many mixed-blood peoples. --Illustration by DeBry.

There are three extant censuses gathered from a headcount taken in 1530 from the first half of the sixteenth century on nineteen of Hispaniola's plantations, that give us an idea of the variety of plus a scattering of small sugar estates.6 people who lived and worked on The census enumerated 1,870 African Hispaniola’s sugar plantations. The first of workers, most of whom were probably the three censuses resulted from a slaves, and 427 “Spaniards,” most of lawsuit initiated July 19, 1533, between whom were no doubt what you and I the civil and ecclesiastical councils in would call mestizos. Although the legal Santo Domingo. The demographics were papers pertaining to the case say there

© 2002, Lynne Guitar KACIKE: The Journal of Caribbean Amerindian History and Anthropology http://www.kacike.org Dr. Lynne Guitar - Documenting the Myth of Taíno Extinction -______2 were "some" Indians working on the Indians connected to the estates, for the plantations, the only actual numbers that plantations’ owners had previously written were provided came from five plantations letters requesting royal permission to on the Río Nigua that, combined, had 200 bring in African slaves, swearing that all Indians. Such a round number is suspect; of their encomienda Indians were dead. it was probably an approximation. No Also, there was obvious confusion over numbers are provided for the category of just how to categorize the workers who Indians on the other fourteen plantations, were free Africans or people of mixed just question marks and a total of 700 blood. As previously mentioned, none of unspecified "others." Clearly, no one the censuses included categories for wanted to release the actual numbers of mestizos or mulattos until 1582.

Table 1: COMPARISON OF THREE SUGAR CANE PLANTATION CENSUSES Year Spaniards Indians Africans Others Total Ingenios 1530 427 200+ 1,870 700+? 3,197+ 14 1533 412 200+ 1,880 1,525+? 4,017+ 23 1545 --- 5,125+ 3,827+ --- 8,952+ 29

Archbishop Alonso de Avila of Santo notes that indicate people outside the Domingo ordered a census taken to fixed categories. On his census, Avila determine the number of chapels and reported 1,525 “others”--820 more clergymen required to service the twenty- “others” than in the 1530 count. In letters three sugar cane plantations that there that accompanied the census, he wrote were on the island of Hispaniola by 1533. that these unspecified persons included He reported that there were five some Spaniards, Africans, Indians, and plantations on the Río Nigua alone, plus he also admitted that there had been several cattle ranches. Altogether, Avila more persons that no one had included in wrote that there were “at least” 700 the census. He wrote in other letters that Africans, 200 Indians (note that this is the those whom nobody enumerated were same suspicious quantity provided in mostly Indians. Again, the implication is 1530), and 150 Spaniards who lived and that the number of Indians on Hispaniola worked in the region.7 For the 23 was being purposely misrepresented and ingenios, Avila enumerated 1,880 that there was confusion over how to Africans, 412 Spaniards, and 200 Indians. categorize people who did not fit That is the kind of ratio that other specifically into one or another of the historians have cited, with Africans clear categories of Spaniard, Indian, or outnumbering Spaniards by almost five to slave. one after 1520. The problem is that Twelve years after Avila’s census, historians and demographers nearly in a report that the island’s governor don always use only the quantities in the fixed Alonso de Fuenmayor sent to Emperor categories and do not mention the Charles, there was only one more “others” that the census takers made note plantation listed on the Río Nigua, but the of, nor the question marks, nor the other head count there alone had risen from

700 Africans to 962, and from 200 Indians category—everybody was plunked into to 1,212.8 Fuenmayor reported on a total the category of “African slaves” or “Indian of twenty-nine plantations and trapiches slaves.” It could be that Fuenmayor, who ("horse-powered mills"). It is notable that came to his office directly from Spain, Africans only outnumbered the counted everyone on Hispaniola who had indigenous workforce on nine of the the least bit of Indian blood as “Indian,” twenty-nine plantations. In total, he without taking into account their enumerated a little over 8,952 workers education, appearance, and behavior, (he used the symbol “+” to indicate the whereas locals would classify most of additional numbers)--43% of them he them as Spaniards if their education, identified as Africans and 57% as Indians. appearance, and behavior were those of Fuenmayor enumerated more than 5,000 a Spaniard. It could be that Fuenmayor Indian slaves! The quantities listed in his was one of the first peninsulares who report are suspect, of course, because thought that he and others like him were they reflect such a dramatic increase in superior by reason of their “pure blood,” Indians over the 1530 and 1533 counts— while criollos were thought to be “tainted” the opposite of what would be expected. with Indian blood. (Note that Alonzo There are other important differences López de Cerrato repeated the same between Fuenmayor’s census and those suspicious quantity of “more than 5,000 of 1530 and 1533. He included among Indian slaves” on the island that the “slaves” of the ingenios all the Fuenmayor wrote about in a letter to the independent farmers that the other emperor dated May 23, 1545. 9 López censuses mentioned separately. was president of Hispaniola’s Royal Court Furthermore, Fuenmayor did not mention and became governor of the island after any “others,” nor did he include question Fuenmayor.) marks, nor workers of unspecified

Figure 7

Taínos fled to the peripheral parts of the island, to the deserts and mountains.

Not all of the Taínos who survived the were “slaves”; some didn’t even work for island’s initial conquest and settlement or live with the Spaniards. In various legal

© 2002, Lynne Guitar KACIKE: The Journal of Caribbean Amerindian History and Anthropology http://www.kacike.org Dr. Lynne Guitar - Documenting the Myth of Taíno Extinction -______2 documents of the era, Spaniards testified Apparently, after fifty-some years, that an uncountable number of Taínos the Indian maroons had decided they ran away from the Spaniards. Some of could come back to the fertile coasts and the maroons left for other islands or the valleys of the north that the Spaniards mainland. Others hid out in the mountains had abandoned. I doubt very much, and desert regions of Hispaniola, however, that the inhabitants of those preferring to leave behind their fertile river four towns full of “Indians” were full- valleys and remain free in less hospitable blooded Taínos. Doubtlessly some had terrain. Remember that by the middle of Spanish fathers and Spanish the sixteenth century, the majority of the grandfathers, and others had African Spaniards had pulled back to Santo fathers and grandfathers--the same royal Domingo and its nearby towns. In 1555, a documents that provide evidence of Spanish patrol encountered four villages innumerable runaway Taínos, as well as "full of Indians about whom nobody all the documents concerning the 15- previously knew"--one of these villages year-long rebellion of Enriquillo, provide being close to Puerto Plata, on the evidence that African slaves ran away Atlantic Coast; a second one was close and joined the Indians, learning from by; a third village was in the Samaná them how to survive in what was, for peninsula; and, a fourth one was in the them, a foreign land. All had contributed norteast of the island in Cabo San to what it means today to be Dominican. Nicolás.10

Figure 8

Taíno survival is readily apparent in the faces of today’s Dominicans, both young and old, male and female. --Photos by Lynne Guitar during research trips August 15-17, 2002.

Lots of areas still need to be all Dominicans and their culture are researched, many questions about Spanish. Dominicans exhibit a tripartite identity and ethnic categories need to be biological and cultural inheritance: answered, but I hope that, at least, I have Spanish, indigenous, and African. The been able to clear up the myth of the myth of the superiority of all things extinction of the Taínos and the myth that Spanish has its foundations in a history

© 2002, Lynne Guitar KACIKE: The Journal of Caribbean Amerindian History and Anthropology http://www.kacike.org Dr. Lynne Guitar - Documenting the Myth of Taíno Extinction -______2 that has been distorted over the past 500 who wrote it were also European years, the years of the Conquest and the conquistadors, and they confused ascendance of Europeans to the top of economic superiority with social and the world economic stage. The history cultural superiority. has been distorted because the historians

Figure 9

It’s time to bury the mistaken belief that all the Taínos died. ---Photo of cemetery at La Isabela by Jeanny Wang.

I hope that you all take advantage value their indigenous inheritance. They of speaking with the special guests who can tell you details of their Taíno are with us today, like Román Pérez and inheritance, things about their culture that his family—unfortunately my friend Jorge have survived for more than 2,000 years, Estevez from the Smithsonian Museum of despite Spanish domination for the past the American Indian could not attend. 500 years—things that form an important They are Dominicans who live in the part of the Dominican culture not just of United States. There they have learned to the past, but also of the present.

NOTES

1 Details and references to most topics covered in this paper are available in the author’s dissertation, Cultural Genesis: Relationships among Indians, Africans, and Spaniards in rural Hispaniola, first half of the sixteenth century. Vanderbilt University, 1998. Available from UMI Microform (number 9915091), Ann Arbor, Michigan. Complete bibliographic information is available on UMI’s Dissertation Abstracts database at www.umi.com. 2 See Mary Helms, Ulysses’ Sail: An Ethnographic Odyssey of Power, Knowledge, and Geographical Distance. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980. 3For an excellent review of the “original population” debate, see Noble David Cook, “Disease an the Depopulation of Hispaniola, 1492-1518,” Colonial Latin American Review 2(1-1), 1993: 213-245. 4The first census in the region with a category for “mestizos” was in Cuba in 1582—90 years after the Europeans’ arrival. Franklin W. Knight, The Caribbean: The Genesis of a Fragmented Nationalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 44-45.

5An excellent exploration of how differently “ethnicity” was conceptualized in the sixteenth century than it is today is David Eltis, “Ethnicity in the Early Modern Atlantic World,” Chapter 9 of The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000): 224-306. 6Información from AGI, Justicia 12, N1, R2, as cited in Mira Caballos, El indio Antillano, 155.

7AGI, Justicia 12, 149, ff10v-15; full text of the census available in José Luis Sáez, ed., La iglesia y el esclavo negro en Santo Domingo (Santo Domingo: Patronato de la Ciudad Colonial de Santo Domingo, Colección Quinto Centenario, 1994), 267-272.

8The data is from Luis Joseph Peguero, Historia de la Conquista de la Isla Española de Santo Domingo trasumptada el año de 1762: Traducida de la Historia General de las Indias escrita por Antonio de Herrera coronista mayor de su Magestad, y de las Indias, y de Castilla; y de otros autores que han escrito sobre el particular (Santo Domingo: Publicaciones del Museo de Las Casas Reales, 1975; originally published 1763), 217-221. Peguero claims to have had access to the document written by Fuenmayor, who began compiling the information when he arrived on Hispaniola for his second term in office on Aug 3, 1545; but Peguero does not say how or where he encountered the document, which may have been in a private collection. I have not been able to locate it, nor a copy, in the AGI in Seville, Archivo General de la Nación in Santo Domingo, nor in other collections or published sources. Peguero noted that Fuenmayor's report took the ingenios' locations and their owners from the 1536 description in Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdez’s Historia general y natural de las Indias (originally published in 1535), Book 4, Chp. 8. Oviedo, however, did not list quantities of workers and he had one additional ingenio listed, called Yaguate, owned by Francisco de Tapia, that Peguero/Fuenmayor did not mention.

9Letter to the crown. AGI, Audiencia de Santo Domingo 49, R16, N101; cited in Mira Caballos, El indio antillano, 290.

10 Consejo de Indias advisory dated July 31, 1556. CDIU, Vol. 18, 10.

AUTHOR Please cite this article as follows: Dr. Lynne Guitar, from the U.S., is an historian . and anthropologist. She came to the Dominican Guitar, Lynne (2002). Documenting the Myth Republic in 1997 with a Fulbright Fellowship to of Taíno Extinction. KACIKE: The Journal of finish her doctoral dissertation for Vanderbilt Caribbean Amerindian History and University in the United States and decided to stay forever. She is a professor at The American Anthropology [On-line Journal], Special Issue, School of Santo Domingo, co-administrator of the Lynne Guitar, Ed. Available at: company Student Services, administrator of the http://www.kacike.org/GuitarEnglish.pdf [Date electronic educational program by World of access: Month Day, Year]. Classroom “Discovering a New World—The Dominican Republic,” a co-editor of the Caribbean Amerindian Centrelink website, and co-editor of their electronic journal Kacike. She is a specialist on the culture and history of the Taínos and on Hispaniola in the 16th century, is a popular speaker on these subjects, has published in many academic journals and books, and is writing a series of historical novels. Dra. Lynne Guitar Apartado Postal Z-111 Zona Colonial Santo Domingo Republica Dominicana Telephone: (809) 937-0421 (809) 396-8270 Fax: (809) 231-2513 "ATTN: Lynne Guitar" Website: http://www.studentservicesdr.freeservers.com/ E-Mail: [email protected]