The Search for La Navidad in a Contact Period Arawak Town on Haiti's North Coast Kathleen Deagan Since 1983 the Florida State Museum has been conducting archaeological investigations at the site of En Bas Saline, near Cap Haitien, Haiti. This contact period Arawak site is believed to have been the town of the cassique Guacanacaric, who assisted Christopher Columbus after the wreck of the Santa María, and who provided, for a time, a sanctuary for the 40 men left by Columbus to construct and made the first European settlement in the New World, that of La Navidad. The work is being carried out through the sponsorship of the Government of Haiti (Institut National Haitien de la Culture et des Arts), the Organization of American States, the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities, and the University of Florida's Center for Early Contact Studies. The project is being done cooperatively with Dr. William Hodges of the Hospital Le Bon Samaritain and Museum de Guahaba in Limbe, Haiti, who first discovered and tested the site. The project itself has several objectives in addition to the location of La Navidad. The first, for obvious reasons, is to achieve a detailed understanding of the size, structure and physical organization of the entire site. Another important objective is the documentation of the material patterns, the subsistence strategies, the nature of intra-site variability and the spatial organization of the late 15th century Indian of this region on the eve of European contact, and therefore on the eve of their destruction. The processes of cultural disintegration through intercultural stress can be studied and documented here, since there is a late pre-contact component, as well as a very early contact period occupation. As excavations continue, they will be organized to test hypotheses concerning overall population decline, subsistence shifts, demographic and social reorganization and the breakdown of traditional material culture patterns as a result of disease and other European influences. Because the search for La Navidad itself is still underway at this moment, I would like to first review the evidence for its location at En Bas Saline, and concentrate more specifically upon the data relating to the site's chronology and structure. La Navidad and Guacanacaric's Town The story of the wreck of Columbus' caravel, the Santa María, on Christmas eve of 1492 is undoubtedly familiar to this audience, and I will consider it here only briefly. The available 453 The Search for La Navidad in a Contact Period Arawak Town documentary sources bearing upon the disaster and the subsequent settlement of La Navidad are well known (Oviedo's version of the Columbus log [Jane, 1960; Major, 1961]; Columbus' 1493 letter to the Catholic Kings [Major, 1961]; the account of Andres Bernaldez [Jane, 1930]; Ferdinand Columbus' biography of his father [Keen, 1959], and Dr. Chancra's letter of the second voyage [Major, 1961]), and they all indicate in general that after the ship ran aground, much of the Santa Maria was dismantled. With the assistance of the Arawak cassique Guacanacaric, the timbers of the vessel were used to fortify one or two large structures in the Indian town he ruled, which was reported to be about 1.5 leagues distant from the wreck site (Morrison, 1940: 250). Guacanacaric provided two of his largest and best building for the use of the Christians, suggesting that the fortress lies within the Indian town itself. Within the space of a week, a suitable fort was completed, including a tower and a moat (Jane, 1960: 126). Other accounts suggest that a well for water and a palisade may also have been constructed (Major, 1961: 47; Jane, 1930: 322). This tiny fortified settlement was named La Navidad, and thirty nine men were left there with food and supplies for a year and instructions to trade with the Indians for gold. Columbus returned to La Navidad eleven months later, only to find the settlement and surrounding Indian town burned, all of the men dead, and the supplies dispersed among the Indians over a distance of several kilometers (Major, 1961: 50). Various accounts indicate that his men died as a result of disease, internal fighting, and Indian attacks. After investigating the circumstances, Columbus left La Navidad and continued westward to found La Isabela. The location and fate of La Navidad have captured the imaginations of many scholars over the years, but perhaps none so intensely as Samuel Eliot Morrison of Harvard and William Hodges of Haiti. On the basis of Columbus' log and other accounts, prevailing sea conditions, knowledge of sailing, and shoreline features and changes, Morrison and other concluded that the site of La Navidad should be within a kilometer of the tiny Haitian fishing village of Limonade Bord de Mer (Morrison, 1940; Taviani, 1981). Excavations commissioned by Morrison were conducted at the village in 1939, but revealed only the remains from an 18th century Freeh blockhouse (Boggs, 1940). In 1975, Dr. William Hodges located a previously unknown Arawak Indian town about half a kilometer from Limonade Bord de Mer, at the edge of a mangrove growth and saline basin that connect the site with the shore. Analysis of aerial photographs by University of Florida geologists indicates that a tributary of the Grande Riviere du Nord connected the site to the shore possibly as recently as 300 years ago. A now-dry channel of this tributary can be seem in the photographs, extending along the north part of the site and emptying into the sea at Limonade Bord de Mer. Damming activities carried out by 18th century French planters considerably altered the northern course of the Grande Riviere, and resulted in a great deal of alluvium deposit along the coast to the west of the site (Cummings, 1973). The site at En Bas Saline has been free of such accumulation, however an intact cultural deposit is present directly below the 10 cm. deep plow zone. It appears from vegetational patterns and the river channels that the En Bas Saline site lies in approximately the same relationship to the coast as it did in the time of Columbus. Dr. William Hodges carried out preliminary excavations at the site in 1977 (Hodges, 1984), and these revealed that it contained a Chicoid occupation with a dense concentration of Carrier cultural material (Rouse, 1939; Rainey & Rouse, 1941). Hodges also located part of a very large and deep feature, which he hypothesized as the possible well of La Navidad (Hodges, 1984). 454 Kathleen Deagan The site remained undisturbed after that time until the University of Florida project began in 1983. We believe that the En Bas Saline site was very likely the town of Guacanacaric, because of its location in relation to the Columbus accounts, the absence of other significant Carrier period towns in the vicinity, and our recent firm dating of the site to the time of Columbus' presence in the area. In order to identify La Navidad which is known to be located at Guacanacaric's town, it will be necessary to locate structural evidence and features, including the burned remains (or stains from) a watchtower, palisade, possibly other structures, a moat and possibly a well. The presence of European artifacts alone will not be sufficient, since these portable items could easily have reached areas unseen by Europeans at a very early date through trading activities. It is probable that all European items -including fragments of glass, metal and ceramics- were removed from La Navidad by the Indians very shortly after its demise. There should, however, be evidence for European wood fragments, seeds and animal remains known to have been there as supplies. In order to both search for La Navidad and achieve better understand the site we have implement a program of topographic mapping, a complete controlled surface collection, electromagnetic survey, aerial reconnaissance and limited testing. The site is densely covered in garden crops and other vegetation growth, creating considerable logistical problems in surveying. At this point the entire site is mapped, with about half of the data presently entered in the computer mapping program used to generate the topographic map. The electromagnetic survey is being done with an EM 31 terrain conductivity meter, which measures the conductivity of the soil (it is the reverse of soil resistivity measurement, and considerably faster, since no electrodes are used). This is being carried out on a 2 meter grid over the entire site in order to detect sub-surface anomalies corresponding to a moat or burned palisade ditch. These results are also analyzed in a computer mapping program. Because of the extensive clearing required for the survey, we have been able to carry out a complete surface collection at the site, which, as analyzed in the SYMAP program, is proving to be an extremely valuable tool for assessing functional and depositional variability within the site. In addition to the surface collection, a series of 25 cm. test pits have been placed across the entire north-south extent and east-west extent of the site. Excavated stratigraphically, these have provided a cross section of the depositional profile of the site. The 1984 season was devoted to excavations in the area of Hodge's previous test, both to investigate the possibility of the La Navidad well suggested by that work, and to obtain information about site stratigraphy, chronology and content. Because extensive areal excavations in search of La Navidad will not take place until the survey is complete and the results assessed, I would like to concentrate in the remainder of this paper upon what the project has learned so far about site structure, organization and chronology.