Taino Elite Integration and Societal Complexity on Hispaniola

Taino Elite Integration and Societal Complexity on Hispaniola Samuel M. Wilson Introduction The historical accounts of the Taino woman Anacaona, her brother Behecchio, and her husband Caonabo, are among the best known from the chronicles of the conquest of Hispaniola, and contain some of the most detailed material available on the sociopolitical system of the Taino. When Columbus returned to Hispaniola on his second voyage to find the small colony of Navidad destroyed, the local cacique Guacanagari (after avoiding the Spaniards as long as possible) began to throw the blame for the deaths onto the cacique Caonabo, whose seat was more than 100 miles distant, across the mountains. Of the five caciques accepted by the Spaniards as the principal kings of the island, Canoabo (during the second voyage at least) was perceived as the most dangerous. When the fortaleza of Santo Thomas was built in the gold fields of the Cordillera Central, Caonabo led a small coalition of other forces in its abortive seige, but was ultimately captured without a fight by a dubious-sounding ruse by Alonzo de Hojeda. Caonabo's wife was the famous Anacaona, the "gracious, clever and prudent" queen who captured the imagination and respect of the Columbus family. Upon the capture and death of her husband, Anacaona returned to Xaraguá, the Cacicazgo of her brother Behecchio, near modern Port-au-Prince. Xaraguá's reputation as the most civilized and "political" of the kingdoms of Hispaniola was perpetuated by Las Casas, Martyr and others, and their accounts provide more clues to the socio-political structure there than in the other large cacicazgos of the island. Anacaona's story is very compelling, and provides a metaphor for the tragedy of the occupation of the Antilles by the Europeans. It is also appealing for the glimpse it offers of the fabric of taino society. From the gifts exchanged during the Adelantado's visit to Xaraguá, and the descriptions of the prestige goods (finely woven, feathers, elaborate ceramic, and carved wooden objects) in Anacaona's store house, we can understand something of the importance of such objects as gifts and trade items between high-ranking people. From the Spaniard's visits to Xaraguá we have descriptions of the ceremonial uses of the bateyes or plazas known archaeologically. Also, Behecchio's ability to make a tribute agreement with the Adelantado on behalf of 30 or more allied Caciques offers insight into the functioning hierarchy of political power. 517 Taino Elite Integration and Societal Complexity on Hispaniola Most important, for this paper, are the indications of the extent of interaction that went on between the rulers of the various parts of Hispaniola and beyond, this interaction was conducted via several channels - the prestige good system, the ball game, intermarriage of members of elite families, warfare - and had important ramifications for the structure of the Taino sociopolitical system. This material allows us to speculate about the ways in which the sociopolitical system was changing. Making reference to the events in Xaraguá and other aspect of the ethnohistory of the Greater Antilles I argue that the sociopolitical system of the Taino was one which, because of its very structure, was growing more complex, both in terms of the stratification of social classes and the fusion of political units. Critical to this trajectory of change were two elements: the first was the extent to which the elites from different cacicazgos and even different islands were interacting, especially through the intermarriage of members of elite lineages; the second factor leading to political consolidation involved the patterns of leadership succession following the death of a Cacique. These two factors, it is argued, combined to produce both increasing social stratification, or separation between the "commoner" and "elite" strata of society, and to the consolidation of political units. Xaraguá's association with neighboring Maguana, via the marriage of Anacaona to Caonabo, has parallels throughout the ethnohistory of the Caribbean. Other evidence for the importance of marriage alliances is seen in the Cacique Guarionex's offer of the marriage of his sister to Diego Colón, a Caribbean native taken to Spain during the first voyage, and the adopted son of Christopher. The brief description of this event suggests careful negotiations on both sides that we can only guess about. That is, why Diego and not the Admiral himself?... Taino hedging or Colon's moral propriety? A further example is Guarionex, the powerful cacique of the vast Vega Real in central Hispaniola, who, when he could no longer both placate the Spaniards and maintain the loyalty of the nobility of his region, fled north to the protection of the leader Mayobanex, apparently a kinsman by "royal" marriage, who sheltered him at the cost of his kingdom and life. There are suggestions, in another case, that the trade contacts across the Mona passage between Puerto Rico and Hispaniola also were cemented by ties of elite marriage. The phenomenon of politically and socially motivated elite intermarriage is extremely widely known. It is a common characteristic of a political environment of aggressive, competing political units. The practice was certainly familiar to the conquistadors: the marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon to Isabella of Castile united the two largest medieval kingdoms of what was to become (within the years of their reign ) the nation-state of Spain. One implication of a system in which it is politically advantageous to have ties of kinship with the rulers of other surrounding political units in that the stratum of society involved in the process, will possess ancestral lines not shared (initially) by the other social strata of the society. In a system where the preferred marriages, for reasons of political necessity and social advantage, were with "foreigners" rather than commoners, the strength of kinship ties between the class participating in intermarriage and the class that is not - between elite and commoner - 518 Samuel M. Wilson will weaken. Eventually, as seems to have occurred in the Greater Antilles, there will emerge a ruling lineage, or a series of lineages, that spreads across political boundaries. Members of these lineages would in some cases be more closely related to one another than to their subjects, a phenomenon widely documented in other historical cases (feudal Japan, post-medieval Europe, Polynesia, Maya lowlands). In the terms of Morton Fried, we are seeing, in continual elite intermarriage, the process of change from "ranked" to "stratified" society. The impact of this pattern of elite intermarriage on Taino sociopolitical structure is closely tied to the difficult issues of inheritance and succession among the Taino. The brief and often contradictory accounts of Las Casas, Oviedo, Martyr, Benzoni and others offer at once a general outline of the patterns of succession, and the clear impression that the real traditions of succession and inheritance are much more complex than we can currently understand. Helms' analysis of succession in the circum-Caribbean chiefdoms illustrates this confusion: she draws the distinction between categories of statuses that could be inherited by virtue of family lines alone and others which were acquired by an individual's own efforts during his or her lifetime. The inheritance rules pertaining to these two categories apparently differed, but in ways we do not wholly understand. There also seem to be different rules of inheritance associated with statuses passing through matrilines and patrilines - between statuses inherited from one's mother and those inherited from one's father. Possibly reflective of this confusion are the elaborate five-part names possessed by Caciques (as well, not surprisingly, as by the principal Taino Gods). These names undoubtedly contain element's of the Cacique's "pedigree", but they also probably signify (in prefixes and suffixes, if not in the words themselves) the inherited and acquired statuses of the individual. Although complex, the accounts we have agree generally on the cultural preferences in the succession of Caciques. Oviedo states that the cacique's son inherited his title (the exact extent of this status Oviedo did not specify), and when no sons were available, the office fell to the son of the cacique's sister. The explanation for this, dwelled upon by the morally suspicious chroniclers, was that one could be more certain that the son of a sister was of one's line than the son of a brother's wife. Benzoni, the master of second-hand information, says that this is so that "they can depend on their being her sons, not so as to a man's supposed sons. The reason is, that in those countries there is very little chastity...". A further and perhaps more salient reason for the practice lies in the importance of the statuses carried through the matriline. If the preferred (and pre-determined) successor to the cacique was his son, or failing a son, the son of his sister, we are faced with a quite significant prospect when the dying cacique's sister is wed via elite intermarriage to another cacique. If we understand the rules of succession correctly, her son could stand heir to both cacicazgos: As the sister's son, he could in inherit from his uncle, and he could inherit from his father (his mother's husband) as well. Something like this appears to have happened upon the death of Caonabo, when Anacaona returned to Xaraguá. When the Adelantado and his company marched west

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