Kacike Journal

Kacike

v

KACIKE: Journal of Caribbean Amerindian History and Anthropology ISSN 1562-5028
V.l, n.l, Jan 2000- Jun 2000: 1-17. © 2000 Caribbean Amerindian Centrelink

CRIOLLOS --THE BIRTH OF A DYNAMIC NEW
INDO-AFRO-EUROPEAN PEOPLE AND

CULTURE ON HISPANIOLA

by

Lynne Guitar

Ph.D. History, Vanderbilt University
lynneguitar@yahoo.com

Ke

Date received: 18 Jan. 2000 *

Date accepted: 11 Feb. 2000 ; :

Date published: 12 Mar. 2000 ^

Certainly fanaticism and militarism were underlying
factors of the reconquista...but it must be recalled that
the centuries of reconquest produced not only conflict,
but the unique pattern of convivencia in which Christians,
Jews, and Muslims lived in relative tolerance and learned
from and influenced each other. The Spaniards who went
to the New World were heirs to the traditions of both
conquest and convivencia.

THE TRIPARTITE CRIOLLOS OF HISPANIOLA

The tripartite nature — Indo-Afro-European--of both Hispaniola's people and its
culture has been little recognized or explored. In large part, this is because studies,
particularly studies of the island's conquest and colonization, have focused on Spaniards
and Santo Domingo, which was their capital and administrative center. In Santo Domingo,

as best they could, Spaniards reproduced their European infrastructures and European
cultural patterns. Nonetheless, Santo Domingo was a frontier city. The culture that
evolved there was not a perfect European replica because of:

• the background and nature of the colonists and involuntary emigrants;

• the island's indigenous people, the Tainos, who had their own cultural beliefs and
traditions;

• the island 's unique geography and climate;

• and also because of the distance of the colony from the Iberian motherland.

The Spanish colonists were even less successful at replicating their European
infrastructures and European culture in the countryside than they were in the capital. In
Hispaniola's countryside— in the gold mining regions, in the rural villages and pueblos, on
the sugar ingenios, and in the uncontrolled regions of the island— Spaniards were
outnumbered by a minimum of six-and-a-half or eight-and-a-half to one by Indians,
Africans and "others" in the 1530s (see Table 1), long after the Indians were supposed to
have disappeared and long before most of the African slaves arrived. 2

Where did all these "others" come from? Most documents and chronicles of the era
make it clear that "Spaniards" began fathering criollo children with Taino women (indias)
almost from the moment that Christopher Columbus's ships made landfall on Hispaniola on
December 9, 1492. J Royal policy officially encouraged intermarriage between Spaniards
and indias from 1501 on. The Spaniards took Indian wives because very few Spanish
women emigrated to Hispaniola. 4 They also took African wives. There were African
women on the island from at least 1501, for that is when one (who apparently was not a
slave) appears in the official records as the founder of a medical dispensary. 5 Throughout
the sixteenth century, the African population on the island — both slave and free- -increased
dramatically, particularly once the cane sugar industry replaced gold mining as the focus of
the economy in the 1520s, with its concomitant increase in the importation of experienced
supervisors and both legal and illegal African slave laborers. As the number of Africans on
the island increased, so too did the frequency of their conjugal joining with both Spaniards
and Tainos.

Each of the three different groups of people- -Indian, African and European- -had its
own complex multiethnic history. On Hispaniola, however, in the capital and in the other
Spanish- dominated towns and cities, they all lived together, worked together, and forged
closely linked networks of kinship and patronage together across all ethnic lines, 6 creating a
new people and a new culture that were outwardly "Spanish" but very, very different from
their pure Iberian counterparts. And some of these Spaniards, Tainos and Africans did not
opt to live peacefully together, outwardly adopting Spaniard dress and customs. Some of
the Africans and Indians rebelled.

The First Cimarrones

From the first entry Columbus made in the diary of his initial voyage to the
Caribbean, the Tainos were dubbed a "pacific" people. It must be remembered, of course,
that he had ulterior motives — Columbus wanted to convince King Ferdinand and Queen
Isabella that the Tainos were a peaceful people who were ripe for conversion, so that they
would send him back as governor and viceroy. There are numerous records which

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demonstrate that the Tainos were not really all that pacific when pressured. 7 Nonetheless,
their standard response to the invasion of parts of their island by Europeans was, first, to try
to join with them in reciprocal kinship and trade relations, as they would have done with a
powerful Indian group. 8 Since the "reciprocity" was so one-sided, however, many Tainos
packed up and moved into regions outside Spanish control, which the Spaniards interpreted
as a rebellious act, an act of cimarronaje—\hey called the "runaways" cimarrones?
More Tainos than ever slipped away to peripheral parts of the island after Governor Nicolas
de Ovando arrived in Santo Domingo in 1502 with a huge fleet of ships and thousands of
Spaniards, putting a heavy strain on the local resources and, therefore, on Spanish- Indian
relations. Peter Martyr wrote that, "Many of the Indians, when their caciques or leaders
call them... flee to the forests and mountains and survive during this time with forest fruits,
hiding themselves so as not to suffer from that work [assigned by Spaniards]." 10 Most of
the Spaniards who were questioned in the course of the Jeronymite Interrogatory in 1517
testified that flight was a frequent Indian response to attempted domination. Juan
Mosquera, for example, said he had personally observed Indians fleeing to the mountains,
although he said they fled in order to consume "spiders and tree roots and lizards," the
inference being that Indians needed Spanish guidance even to know what was good to eat.
Gonzalo de Ocampo, Juan de Ampies, Marcos de Aguilar, Fray Pedro Mexia, and Jeronimo
de Aguero all had experience with Indians who chose to flee rather than to live with and
serve Spaniards. Aguero's exact words were that, "Indians want very much never to see
Spaniards... so they frequently go to the mountains." 1 '

Of course, it was not just Tainos who fled from Spanish domination on Hispaniola,
but also other Indians who were brought to the island as slaves- -and Africans. It did not
take "ladinos" (Africans who had been baptized Catholic, spoke Castilian, knew Spanish
customs, and were otherwise virtually indistinguishable from Spaniards, at least in the
records) long to discover that their roles on Hispaniola were to be far more difficult, and
with fewer compensating benefits, than their roles as primarily domestic servants and
criados had been back in Spain. Nor did it take bozales (Africans brought directly from
Africa) long to discover that slavery among Spaniards was far different than back in
Africa. 12 Although individuals, no doubt, fled from Spaniards the moment they were
brought to the Americas, the first rebellion of African slaves in the New World is generally
recognized as the one which took place on Hispaniola on Christmas Day, 1521. Celsa
Albert Batista points out, however, that Governor Ovando's 1503 letter to the crown
complaining about the Africans teaching Indians "their "bad customs,'" was actually "a
complaint about the first [African] rebellions" on the island. 1 3

The Spanish conquistadores and settlers on Hispaniola tried hard to convince
themselves that Africans were content to be slaves, but dozens of documents make it clear
that, from at least 1502, many of them fled to the mountains and remote regions of the
island outside of Spanish control. There they joined ranks with Taiho rebels or became
members of isolated Taiho groups. "[B]oth the negroes and the Indians have fled to the
mountains," testified Juan de Ampies in 15 17. ' 4

It is important to understand that neither the Indians nor the Africans ran away
because they refused or were unable to change their "cultural forms," but because they were
flexible enough to change their circumstances and their customs for a lifestyle they
believed to be more acceptable, even if it meant moving to less hospitable parts of the
island. 15 Some people will always prefer a life of freedom, "however piecarious," to
domination and/or enslavement, notes David Barry Gaspar. 1 6

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It was in the cimarron communities, outside of Spanish control but not outside of
Spanish influence, that the cultural form recognized as "campesino" evolved on Hispaniola,
with its strong Taiho and African influences. The consequences will be discussed in more
detail in the "Cultural maintenance, cultural evolution" section that follows. But first, we
must explore one of the other important reasons why the tripartite nature of criollo people
and culture is so poorly understood — differences in categorization between the sixteenth
century and the modem era.

Differences in Categorization

The documents that mention categories and quantities of people on early Hispaniola
are often evasive and manipulative, and demographicalfy inaccurate. They are inaccurate,
that is, if judged by today's standards and today's terms. One of the most obvious
"inaccuracies" in the demographic record is the missing categories in the censuses of
Hispaniola from the first half of the sixteenth century. There are no categories for mixed-
blood peoples! Censuses contain categories only for Spaniards, Indians and Africans, or
for slaves (and/or commended Indians) as opposed to free people. Clearly, the early
colonists had not yet come to terms, literally, with the genetic mixture in the Americas.

To further complicate matters, "race," as such, was not an important marker to the
sixteenth-century colonists, to the census takers, nor to the crown or the church and their
advisors back in Spain. It was not until the 1580s, for example in the history book written
by Fray Juan Gonzalez de Mendoza, that "mestizos" emerged as a separate category of
people on Hispaniola. 17 In Cuba, too, categories of people did not include mestizos or
mulattoes or other categories for mixed-blood peoples until the 1580s, "though there
obviously must have been" mixed- blood criollos on the island long before then. ' 8

Birthright, social status, and economic and political clout were the important
categoric differentiators. 19 A clear example of status -based demographic counts is
Governor Francisco Manuel de Lando's 1530 census of Puerto Rico. He did not list a
category for counting any mixed- blood peoples, but neither did he count any Spaniards who
only owned a single slave woman (of any ethnic background), nor did he count the single
slave women, free Africans, minor children, nor any of the slaves owned by poor whites or
transients. 2 °

The "Invisible" Categories

Many of the children bom in the Spanish New World colonies were politically and
economically powerless; therefore, they were held in low esteem and are generally invisible
in the historical documentation. A group of Spanish residents in Santo Domingo, for
example, did not differentiate mestizos from Africans. In a letter of 1528 or 1529, they
suggested to the crown that "negros or mestizos, with their women" be shipped to the island
to repopulate the interior villages. 21 In a similar vein, Captain Francisco de Barrionuevo,
who negotiated the peace treaty with the rebel Taiho cacique Enriquillo in 1534, observed
that in the island's rural regions, "there are many mestizos, sons of Spaniards and indias,
who generally are bom on the small farms and depopulated towns." Then he made the
seemingly paradoxical statement that, despite the large numbers of mestizos he had

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observed: "Outside of this city [Santo Domingo], you could say that everything is
depopulated." 22 He meant, of course, that outside of Santo Domingo there were few
powerful Spaniards in residence and that most of the mixed- blood criollos there lived more
as Indians or as Africans than as Spaniards, thus they were politically and economically
powerless. They were not worth counting. They were virtually invisible. (Barrionuevo's
contemporaries would not have found his two statements paradoxical.)

At least Barrionuevo was able to penetrate into Enriquillo's mountain stronghold in
Bahoruco. The peoples who had fled Spanish domination- -Indians, Africans and mixed-
blood criollos alike- -were generally left out of the islands censuses because they could not
be counted by the census takers, had they been deemed worthy of counting. Even the
words "mestizo" and "mulato" appear but rarely in the early documents of discovery and
settlement, which emphasizes how unimportant these categories were (and, generally, the
people in them) to contemporary Spaniards. 23 In a letter from the crown to the Jeronymite
friars on Hispaniola dated November 15, 1516, there is mention of "the mestiza daughter of
Juan Tostado,' 24 and the 1530 will of Pedro de Vadillo identifies several of those to whom
he made bequests as "indio" or "mestizo." 25 Most documents, however, for example the
1528 letter legitimizing the son of Francisco Tostado, simply describe such children as "the
son he had with an india.' 26 Or Spaniards of the era referred to such children as "natural
['native'] and raised on this island.' 27 As for mulattoes, the only times the description is
used in the documents of early Hispaniola appears to be in reference to slaves brought to
the Indies from Spain, not to persons bom in the Indies. 2 8

Ethnic Fluidity

The very fact that they were not separately categorized, however, gave some of
Hispaniola' s early residents an advantage — the advantage of ethnic fluidity. For example,
some mixed-blood criollos were just as economically and politically powerful as Spaniards.
Categorically, they were counted among the colony's Spaniards- -even when they were what
we would call "illegitimate" today. The difference between them and their powerless
counterparts, generally, was their recognition and acceptance by their fathers, and the level
of political and economic power their fathers had. This pattern, like many others, was
imported from Spain. "Society was still sufficiently fluid even at the highest levels that
integration of illegitimate children into the main line of the family was common," notes Ida
Altaian. "Especially if there were no legitimate heirs.' 2 9

Society was even more fluid in frontier colonies like Hispaniola than it was in
Spain. Many children bom of Indian mothers and Spanish fathers on Hispaniola were
raised as "Spaniards," as integral family members, even as their fathers' legal heirs. And
many other politically and economically active "Spaniards" on Hispaniola were of mixed
Spanish and African parentage. 30 There were multiple reasons for this. Firstly, it was
because so few European women emigrated to Hispaniola that the conquistadores turned to
female partners among the Indians and, later, among the African slaves, which was made
easier because of the Spaniards' widespread and long-standing acceptance of
miscegenation. Many of these relationships, mind you, were forced upon the women,
whose rape, scholars have noted, "is symbolic of the very conquest itself.' 8 ' Other women
entered into the relationships at the request of their caciques, in an attempt to build kin
relations between the two peoples. Still others did so because these relationships offered

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not only personal advantages (albeit they also exposed the women to the possibility of more
personal abuse and exploitation), but also offered potential for socio-economic mobility for
their children. 32

Not only mixed-blood children were counted as Spaniards. Many, but not all, of the
non-European women who "married" Spaniards (whether or not the marriage was blessed
by the Church), as long as they learned Spanish, were baptized, wore Spanish clothing and
adopted other outwardly Spanish customs, were counted among the "Spanish" residents of
Hispaniola.

Which category an individual was placed in on censuses or how one was described
in documents often varied, depending upon who was taking the census or writing the
document. And the category or description could change, depending upon the goal of the
census taker or writer. Consider, for example, the law suit initiated in 1547 by Hernando
Botello of Santo Domingo, who accused Francisco Alvarez of raping his daughter. The
cover page of the law suit initially stated that his daughter was "La India Uamada." But
this was crossed out and the words, Ines Ursula, mestizo" were written above it. 3 3 Clearly,
in Santo Domingo's society of the 1540s, mestizo was a fluid category with more political
and social clout than the category of Indian 34 --but it is also clear that Uamada/Ines slipped
back and forth between the two categories.

Even pure Indians, however, could have changed their categorical status in early
colonial Hispaniola. They would have done so by becoming ladinoized--by adopting
Spanish names (which most had done anyway within one generation of the initial
encounter), language, Spanish- style clothing, manners and customs, and the Catholic
religion. 35 Unfortunately, the ecclesiastical records that might allow scholars to trace any
such ethnic "passing" for Hispaniola have disappeared. 36 The Indians there had sufficient
motivation, however, to choose to slip into the category of Spaniard, or more likely
mestizo, for by doing so they would have had more social and economic flexibility, and
they would have avoided the requirement of paying tribute. 37 Perhaps that is what the two
Taiho caciques Garcia Hernandez and Francisco de Torres had in mind in 1541 when they
pleaded for liberty for themselves and their people. They certainly had learned how to use
the Spanish judicial system well enough. They promised the crown that they would
maintain a Spanish-style village in San Cristobal de Manabao, with a church, if freed from
the onerous duty of providing tribute services to the Spaniard, "dona Leonor." And their
plea cited the Cedula of Madrid, November 5, 1540, which ordered the oidores of Santo
Domingo to see that "all Spaniards having Indians whom they treated as naborias and as
slaves, selling them and transporting them to others, etc., were to be freed, though they
could live with their owners if they wanted to do so." Garcia Hernandez and Francisco de
Torres won the suit, 3 8 but thereafter they disappear from the documentary record.

CULTURAL MAINTENANCE, CULTURAL EVOLUTION

Women as Cultural Mediators

Much of archaeologist Kathleen Deagan's work, which examines differences in
material culture in the Caribbean and circum- Caribbean before and after European
colonization, is based on her theory that the indigenous cultural attributes that survived are

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primarily those in the female domain. Clara Sue Kidwell agrees, calling Indian women
"the first important mediators of meaning between the cultures of two worlds." 39 African
women, too, were cultural mediators on Hispaniola.

Both Indian and African women slipped fluidly between and among cultures,
particularly those women who married or maintained sexual relations with Spaniards. They
had to adapt to styles of dress and speaking and other outwardly Spanish- appearing
customs, but they grew and gathered the foods that had traditionally been grown and
gathered by the Tainos on the island- -adding protein from pigs and chickens and cattle, and
cultigens such as garlic, cabbage, carrots and citrus fruits that were brought over from
Europe and thrived, as well as African poultry such as guinea hens, and African vegetables
such as okra. They cooked this amplified range of food choices for their families in
traditional Taino and African ways (albeit often modified to please the tastes of their
"husbands" and/or masters), storing it in traditional (albeit modified) Taino and African
straw, ceramic and gourd containers. 40 They raised and gathered traditional herbs and non
edible plants, and used them in traditional ways for spices, tints and dyes, poisons,
purgatives, unguents and other curatives. It is also evident that they passed on some of
their language and traditional concepts of worship, art and architecture, as well as their
ways of thinking about music, song and dance, kinship, reciprocity, child raising, and
ownership --particularly land and resource ownership. 4 '

In all of these areas on Hispaniola, a combination of historical, ethnohistorical and
archeological evidence shows a high retention level, particularly in the countryside, of
Indian traditions, complemented, reinforced and modified by African cultural traditions. 42
Sometimes, however, it is difficult to determine which is which, for there was extensive
overlap. The anthropologist Maya Deren suggested that it is the areas of overlap, the areas
where she found "cultural convergence" between peoples of Indian and African
backgrounds, that have left the most powerful cultural imprints on the island. 43 This author
agrees. It is a mistake, however, to concentrate too much time and energy on attempts to
determine which cultural traits began where, as so many anthropologists and historians
have attempted to do. What is important are the processes, for they demonstrate how
remarkably resilient human ingenuity has been across time, how even the supposedly
powerless are able to negotiate and jockey for some measure of control over their lives.

Women, then, played an incredibly important role as individuals in the processes of
biological and cultural genesis on Hispaniola, even though they were categorized as
powerless by Spanish males- -doubly so when you consider that so many of them were
females from peoples who had been conquered and/or enslaved. In the process, they gave
birth to a dynamic new multiethnic people and culture on Hispaniola and across the
Americas. 44 Indian and African women on Hispaniola also played important roles, notes
Kidwell, due to the influence that they had "on their husbands or consorts and on the
children of those liaisons.' 4 5

The Roles of the Mixed-Blood Criollos

The mixed- blood children on Hispaniola, like their mothers, were cultural
mediators. Their roles, perhaps, were even more important than those played by their
mothers, for these first American criollos could cross back and forth not only between or
among ethnic categories, but back and forth across language and cultural boundaries.

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"Those who opened paths across those boundaries could acquaint, interpret, indoctrinate,
express complaints, help manage or moderate conflict, and pass orders or instructions,"
writes Eugene Lyon. He adds that, "on a smaller scale but in an equally vital way, these
persons functioned in much the same way as did diplomats between hostile or potentially
hostile states in early modem Europe.' 46 Barrionuevo, for example, might never have been
able to negotiate peace with Enriquillo had it not been for the services of the mestizo
translator he had with him, whose help he acknowledged in his report to the crown. 47

The bulk of the population on Hispaniola was, no doubt, multiethnic criollos by the
1550s--the sons and daughters of Spaniards, Indians and Africans- -even if they did not
appear as such in the censuses and documents with demographic information. Criollos
certainly comprised the "many mestizos" that Barrionuevo reported thriving in the rural
regions of the island in 1533. No doubt, they were the bulk of the "more than twenty
Spaniards and 150 Africans and Indians" Diego Caballero bragged about having on his
ingenio in his petition of 1538. They were probably also the bulk of the uncounted
thousands of "others," the unnamed "Spaniards," and the "Indians-with-a-question-mark"
reported on the judicial census of 1530, on Alonso de Avila's ecclesiastical census of 1533,
and on don Alonso de Fuenmayor's dministrative census of 1545 (Table 1). And no doubt
it was mostly those same mixed-blood criollos, not "500 households of Spaniards" and
"even more Indians," that the British traveler Robert Tompson observed when he made a
brief stop in Santo Domingo in 1555. 4 8

Multiethnic criollos were the heirs to the mines and the great sugar estates of
Hispaniola, and of the cattle ranches and tobacco plantations that took over the economy
later. They were also the supervisors, the agricultural workers, technicians, blacksmiths,
carters, cowboys, skinners, carpenters, shoemakers, domestics.... They were included
among the runaways and the cimarrones that terrified the islands colonists because they
lived outside Spanish control. They were included among the dealers in contraband that
caused the crown to order the northern half of the island abandoned in 1605. They were
among the buccaneers^ and their "Indian" tracker companions that Alexandre Olivier
Exquemelin reported inhabiting most of the island in the 1770s. 5 ° And they were
unquestionably among the "certain Creoles... who have hair like that of the Indians, which is
to say, straight and very black, and who pretend to be descendants of the primitive natives
of the island" that Mederic Louis Elie Moreau de Saint- Mery described during his visit to
the eastern, Spanish side of Hispaniola in 1783. Moreau de Saint- Mery made the
observation that "the great majority of the Spanish colonists are mestizos, who have still
more of an African characteristic.' 6 '

Multiethnic criollos were not just to be found in Hispaniola's rural regions, of
course. They were also residents in the "Spanish" towns of the island, even in the capital.
In 1538, for example, it was reported that "more than 100 Spaniards and 600 negroes and
Indians" lived in and around Buenaventura and Azua, 52 but many of them were most likely
multiethnic criollos. "Racial" categories, after all, were social constructions that could and
did change depending upon one's background and current circumstances- -then as now.

HISPANIOLA AS A SEASONING, PROVISIONING AND PROVING GROUND
FOR SPAIN'S EXPANSION INTO THE AMERICAS

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Seasoning of People on Hispaniola

There were also thousands of multiethnic criollos among the "Spanish"
conquistadors and settlers who left Hispaniola to conquer and settle the other Caribbean
islands and mainland regions. Being able to slip fluidly between and among cultures, they
were better able to understand, negotiate with, manipulate and control the new peoples and
new conditions they encountered than were their pure Spanish counterparts, especially
those who came directly from Iberia. 53 When Juan Ponce de Leon left Hispaniola to settle
the island of Puerto Rico in 1512, for example, he took his family members, friends and
fellow soldiers with him, as did Miguel Diaz, who replaced him. Their family members,
friends and fellow soldiers included ladinoized Africans, Indians and mixed- blood criollos.

The conquistadores and settlers who left Hispaniola for other New World colonies
also took along some of their commended Indians, and slaves of Indian, African and mixed
descent. 54 These peoples were already "seasoned." That is, they were at least somewhat
accustomed not only to the climate, diseases and foods of the Americas, but to living with
and working for Spaniards, thus they provided not only their labor, but served as models in
the new regions. Another benefit of taking seasoned slaves was that the "weakest" among
them had already died off. A letter to the Emperor from Governor Cerratos dated July 15,
1546, explained these benefits as he described how "negros bozales" were first brought to
Hispaniola, where they were "instructed and then sold" as workers for the colonies of
Tierra Firme. 5 5

Hispaniola's oidores complained in 1528 that the above scenario happened
repeatedly. In the settlement of Cuba, for example, they claimed that Diego Velazquez
took along with him most of the populace of seven of the island's pueblos. 6 Seasoned
peoples of all ethnic backgrounds from Hispaniola also settled New Spain, a region that
included much of today's U.S. southwest. They went to Jamaica with Juan de Esquivel.
They went on the expeditions of Diego de Nicuesa, Alonso de Ojeda and others to settle
Tierra Firme. They went with Gil Gonzalez and Diego Lopez de Salzado to settle the
Capes of Honduras and Higueras. They went to Nicaragua, to Colombia, to San Miguel de
Gualdape in today's South Carolina with Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon and Fray Antonio de
Montesinos, and to the pearl island, Cubagua (today's Isla Margarita). And they went to
Peru. 57

Hispaniola as Provisioning Grounds

Hispaniola was not only a seasoning grounds for the people who settled and built
the other New World colonies, it also was a provisioning grounds. Conquistadores leaving
Hispaniola for new territories took cassabe with them. They were accustomed to eating it,
and it did not go wormy or moldy as did bizcocho (ships' biscuits made from wheat). And
they took horses and cattle, pigs and chickens that were initially imported to Hispaniola, but
over time had adapted to the local conditions, hence survived better than animals carried
directly from Spain- -not to mention that they were much cheaper and easier to get because
they were less distant. After new regions were conquered, Hispaniola also provided such
things as fruit trees, vegetable seeds, and sugar cane stock for the new colonies. 5 8

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Hispaniola as a Proving Ground

Needless to say, the conquistadors and settlers of the new Spanish- American
colonies also took with them their basic infrastructures: economic, governmental,
judiciary, labor and tribute systems, including the systems of encomienda and slavery as
they had evolved and been refined on Hispaniola. They took along their concepts of proper
social hierarchy, too. Europeans were at the top of the list of the elites, of course. They
took along their concept of proper socio-economic goals: get title to lots of land, Indians
and slaves, and thus get rich, but do so using favors accrued through kinship and patron-
client linkages, and other peoples' labor. Finally, they took along with them their values
and concepts of proper cultural traditions, including dress and personal adornment, property
and material possessions, the structure and use of time, religious worship, agriculture and
foodways, architecture and use of space, art and artisanry, kin and non-kin relationships,
reciprocity and social behavior, and work regimes.

The infrastructures, patterns, values and beliefs that the Spanish residents of
Hispaniola took with them to the new colonies throughout the Caribbean, South America,
Central America and North America had their origins in Europe, but they could not be
implanted intact in the new lands. Although the Europeans were politically, socially and
economically dominant, Indians and Africans outnumbered Europeans from the outset.
And very quickly, mixed-blood peoples, too, outnumbered Europeans.

All of the imported European infrastructures, patterns, values and beliefs were
tempered and modified- -in some instances only slightly, in others much more noticeably- -
by the conquistadores' and colonists' experiences with other peoples, and vice versa.
Hispaniola was a vast "proving ground" for the first-ever meeting and blending of Indians,
Spaniards and Africans- -and of their cultures.

HISPANIOLA, MOTHER OF THE OTHER ISLANDS

In a very real sense, then, Hispaniola was the birthplace of what would come to be
called "Americans" and of "American" culture — a people and a culture that are tripartite:
Indo-Afro-European. Although he did not live beyond the initial conquest of the
Caribbean, Peter Martyr DAnghiera's sobriquet for Hispaniola proved to be very accurate.
He called Hispaniola "mother of the other islands.' 69

Ida Altaian, Emigrants and Society: Extremadura and America in the Sixteenth Century (Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1989), 43.

' The author's doctoral dissertation explores this topic in more detail. Lynne A. Guitar, "Cultural Genesis:
Relationships among Indians, Africans and Spaniards in rural Hispaniola, first half of the sixteenth century,"
Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, December 1998.

The word "Spaniards" appears in quotes because it is unclear how many of the men who came to Hispaniola
from Europe were of mixed Spanish-African inheritance. There were also "ladinos," Hispanicized Africans
among them, who were not distinguished from Spaniards in the records, a subject treated in more detail in the
above-mentioned dissertation.

I use the word "criollo" (usually defined as "American born") or the term "mixed -blood" throughout
this chapter, even though "criollo" was not used in the documents of the era. I do this because the term

Lynne Guitar - Chollos — wvwv.kacike.org '

"mestizo" (literally "mixed"), which was used in the documents and chronicles, had and still retains the
concept of mixed European and Indian bloodlines, without considering the African component.

Male immigrants from Iberia to the Indies outnumbered females by a 17:1 ratio through 1539, although more
Spanish females began arriving afterward. Peter Boyd -Bowman estimated that only 308 out of 5,481 Spanish
immigrants to the New World between 1493 and 1519 were female. The overall ratio from 1493-1580 was
7.2:1. Boyd-Bowman, Patterns of Spanish Emigration to the New World (1493-1580) (Buffalo, NY: Council
on International Studies, State University of New York, April 1973). See also Analola Borges, "La mujer-
pobladora en los origenes Americanos," in Anuario de Estudios Hispanoamericanos (1972): 389-444; and
Richard Konetzke, "La emigracion de mujeres espanolas a America durante la epoca colonial," in Revista
Internacional de Sociologia 3(9-10), 1-28: 1945.

Nearly every royal document dealing with the importation of African slaves to Hispaniola in the sixteenth
century mandates ratios of one female to every three males— or more. See, for example, Archivo General de
Indias (hereafter, AGI), Indiferente General 424, L2 1 , which contains hundreds of slave permit records from
May 21, 1547 -August 27, 1549. For more detail about African women on Hispaniola, see Celsa Albert
Batista, Mujery esclavitud en Santo Domingo (Santo Domingo: Ediciones CEDEE, 1993). For the African
woman who founded the dispensary, see page 19.

See Stephanie Blank, "Patrons, Clients and Kin in Seventeenth-Century Caracas: A Methodological Essay in
Colonial Spanish American Social History," in Hispanic American Historical Review 54(2), May 1974: 260-
283; Paul Charney, "The Implications of Godparental Ties between Indians and Spaniards in Colonial Lima,"
in The Americas 47(3), Jan 1991: 295-314; George M. Foster, "Cofradia and Compadrazgo in Spain and
Spanish America," in Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 9(1), Spring 1953: 1-28; and Sidney W. Mintz
and Eric R. Wolf, "An Analysis of Ritual Co -Parenthood (Compadrazgo)," inSouthwestern Journal of
Anthropology 6(4), Winter 1950: 341-368.

Columbus himself ran into trouble with a group of agressive Tamos on the northeast coast in 1493, which
both he and later historians tried to explain away by dubbing the group "Ciguayos," not Tamos. There is no
denying that it was Tamos, however, who won the first major battle between Amerindians and Europeans,
which took place at La Vega in March of 1495. Having demonstrated their superiority, the Tamos went
home, for it was not their custom to fight to the death. Surprised, and not knowing Taino customs, the
Spaniards promptly declared themselves the winners, explaining the "miracle" of the Tamos apparent
cowardice (for hadn't they "run away"?) as the intercession of the Virgin Mary — this is the origin of the
legend surrounding the current patroness of the island, La Virgen de Altagracia.

8 See Istvan Szaszdi Leon-Borja, "Guatiao, los primeros tratados de Indias," in Actos del IX Congreso del
lnstituto Internacional de Historia del Derecho Indiano (Madrid: Editorial Complutente, 1991): 405438.

The first documentary evidence of the word "cimarron" used to refer to runaway Indians is a letter written by
Gonzalo de Guzman to the crown on Sep 18, 1530. AGI, Audiencia de Santo Domingo 54, Rl, No. 34;
available in Coleccion de documentos ineditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organizacion de las
antiguas posesiones espanoles en Ultramar, 25 volumes (Madrid: Establecimiento Tipografico, 1885-1932)
(hereafter, CDIU), Vol. 2(4), 145-148. By mid -decade, the term was in common use and can be found in
many documents as synonymous with " indios alzados," which was defined as Indians who ran away or who
otherwise resisted or refused to be subjugated, and "indios bravos," which implied "wild" or "savage" Indians.
By 1544, cimarron was also used in the documents as synonymous with "negros alzados" See Jose Juan
Arrom and Manuel A. Garcia -Arevalo, Cimarron (Santo Domingo: Fundacion Garcfa-Arevalo, 1986) and
Carlos Esteban Deive, Eos guerrilleros negros: Esclavos fugitivos y cimarrones en Santo Domingo (Santo
Domingo: Fundacion Cultural Dominicana, 1989), 12. Esteban Mira Caballos, however, notes that in the
earlier decades of the island's conquest, the Spanish documents recognized only two kinds of Indian resistance
and made a clear distinction between them: Indios alzados, he writes, were those Indians who fought,
refusing to accept Spanish domination. They were punished with enslavement. Indians who simply fled from
their encomenderos, however— if caught— were whipped and put back to work. Mira Caballos, "El pleito

Lynne Guitar - Chollos — wvwv.kacike.org ' 1

Diego Colon-Francisco de Soils: El primer proceso por malos tratos a los indios en La Espanola (1509)," in
Anuario de Estudios Americanos 50(2), 1993, 320.

Peter Martyr D'Anghiera, Pedro Martir de Angleria, Primer Cronista de Indias: Decadas del Nuevo Mundo
(Santo Domingo: Sociedad Dominicana de Bibliofilos, 1989), Fourth Decade, Book 10.

1 ' AGI, Indiferente General 1624; text available in Cesar Herrera Cabral, Coleccion Cesar Herrera,
unpublished documents, Vol. 21, No. 335 (some pages at the beginning are missing), and Emilio Rodriguez
Demorizi, Los dominicos y las encomiendas de indios de la lsla Espanola (Santo Domingo: Editora del
Caribe, 1971), 273-354. The pattern was the same in other Spanish colonies. See, for example, Peter
Bakewell, "Mining in Colonial Spanish America," in The Cambridge History of Latin America, ed. Leslie
Bethell (Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 1989), Vol. 2, 300; and Lolita Gutierrez Brockington, The
Leverage of Labor: Managing the Cortes Haciendas in Tehuantepec, 1588-1688 (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 1989), 145. Note that the Tamos did not all necessarily flee to the mountains permanently.
Some would have gone to the mountains temporarily to hunt, to fish in the mountain lakes and rivers, or to
gather forest products, and others to practice rituals that were forbidden under the Spaniards.

" See Philip Curtin, The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1990) and Economic Change in Precolonial Africa: Senegambia in the Era of the Slave Trade (Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1975); Carlos Esteban Deive, Los guerrilleros negros: Esclavos fugitivos y
cimarrones en Santo Domingo; Herbert S. Klein, African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1986); Martin A. Klein and G. Wesley Johnson, eds., Perspectives of the
African Past (Boston, Little, Brown & Co., 1972); and John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of
the Atlantic World, 1400-1680 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

Celsa Albert Batista, Mujer y esclavitud en Santo Domingo, 26.

AGI, Indiferente General 1624; text available in Herrera, Coleccion Cesar Herrera, unpublished documents,
Vol. 21, No. 335 and Rodriguez Demorizi, Los dominicos y los encomiendas, 273-354.

3 Robert Charles Padden, "Cultural Adaptation and Militant Autonomy among the Araucanians of Chile," in
The Indian in Latin American History: Resistance, Resilience, and Acculturation, ed. John E. Kicza
(Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1993), 73. For one of the best comparative collections, see Richard
Price, ed., Maroon Societies: Rebel Slave Communities in the Americas (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1979). See also Steve J. Stern, Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness in the Andean
Peasant World, Eighteenth to Twentieth Centuries (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), 10-11.
His examination of insurrections among modern-day Andean peasants as a result of "preexisting patterns of
'resistant adaptation'" has antecedents in Indian culture.

1 6 David Barry Gaspar, Bondsmen and Rebels: A Study of Master-Slave Relations in Antigua (Durham, NC:
Duke University Press, 1993), 182.

In his book, published in 1586, he wrote that fewer than 200 Indians still lived on Hispaniola, where "most
[residents] are mestizos, sons of indias and Spaniards, or negroes." Fray Juan Gonzalez de Mendoza, Historia
de las cosas mas notables, ritos y costumbres del gran Reyno de la China (Madrid, 1586), as presented in
Juan Lopez de Velasco, Relaciones geogrdficas de Santo Domingo, ed. Emilio Rodriguez Demorizi (Santo
Domingo: Editora del Caribe, 1970), 8.

The first census in Cuba listing mestizos was in 1582. Franklin W. Knight, The Caribbean: The Genesis of
a Fragmented Nationalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 44-45.

The offspring of Spanish men by Indian women "was regarded as in no way racially different from the
Spaniards," writes Hugh Thomas about colonial Cuba. He notes, however, that "imperial-born Spaniards...
from the beginning" were held to be socially superior. Hugh Thomas, Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom(New

Lynne Guitar - Chollos — wvwv.kacike.org ' 2

York: Harper and Row, 1971), 1,512. Sidney Mintz agrees, noting that the colonists were virtually "color-
blind— so far as getting the job done was concerned." He stresses demographic and economic forces as the
categoric differentiators throughout the colonial era. Mintz, Caribbean Transformations (Baltimore, MD:
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), 66. Richard Boyer found political forces to be the strongest
differentiators in seventeenth-century Mexico. "A common mistake," he writes, "... has been to assume that
the designations are descriptive rather than political." Boyer, "Negotiating Calidad: The Everyday Struggle
for Status in Seventeenth-Century Mexico," an unpublished paper presented at the Society for Historical
Archaeology conference on Historical and Underwater Archaeology, Vancouver, BC, Jan 1994, 3. See also
Leonico Cabrero, "Vision del indio americano en tiempos de Carlos V," in Cuadernos hispanoamericanos
107-108 (Nov-Dec 1958): 168-180; Douglas Cope, The Limits of Racial Domination: Plebian Society in
Colonial Mexico City (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994); Lewis Hanke, "Indians and Spaniards
in the New World: A Personal View," in Attitudes of Colonial Powers Toward the American Indian , ed.
Howard Peckham and Charles Gibson (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1969): 4-18; Elizabeth Anne
Kuznesof, "Ethnic and Gender Influences on 'Spanish' Creole Society in Colonial Spanish America," in
Colonial Latin American Review 4(1), 1995: 153-175; Miguel Angel Ladero Quesada, "Spain, circa 1492:
Social Values and Structures," in Implicit Understandings: Observing, reporting, and reflecting on the
encounters between Europeans and other peoples in the Early Modern Era, ed. Stuart B. Schwartz
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996): 96-133; Magnus Morner, Estratificacion social
Hispanoamericana durante el periodo colonial (Stolkholm: Institute of Latin American Studies, Nov 1980);
Anthony Pagden, Lords of all the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain, and France, c. 1500-c. 1800
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995); Danilo de los Santos and Valentina Peguero, "Vision
cultural en La Espanola del siglo XVI," in Erne Erne: Estudios Dominicanos 5(26), Sep-Oct 1976: 3-10;
Stuart B. Schwartz, "Colonial Identities and the Sociedad de Castas, in Colonial Latin American Review 4(1),
1995: 185-20 1 ; and Emilio Willems, "Race, sex, and miscegenation," Chapter 5 in Latin American Culture:
An Anthropological Synthesis (New York: Harper & Row, 1975: 5-50.

20

Jalil Sued-Badillo and Angel Lopez Cantos, Puerto Rico Negro (Rio Piedras, PR: Editorial Cultural, 1986),
83-93.

' Roberto Marte, Santo Domingo en los manuscritos de Juan Bautista Muhoz (Santo Domingo: Fundacion
Garcia- Arevalo, 1981), Vol. 1,292-293.

Barrionuevo's report to the crown dated Aug 26, 1533. Marte, Manuscritos de Juan Bautista Muhoz, Vol. 1,
367. Barrionuevo described the mestizos in his report as "loud and unruly, liars, and friends of everything
evil," to further demonstrate how worthless they were, in his viewpoint, and how much they needed strong
Spanish guidance. He suggested that they be sent to Spain when very young and not allowed to return to
Hispaniola "unless they turn out good." He also wrote that there were "some agitated rebellious negroes and
Indians among" the mestizos he saw, including one African with Enriquillo in Bahoruco and another African
leader with twenty followers at Punto del Tiburon. They stood out from the others because, as an armed
threat, they had gained power and had become real people who had to be dealt with.

Note that none of the terms such as zambo, grifo or alcatraz that were later used to designate the mixed
progeny of African and Indian parents appears in any of the documents pertaining to Hispaniola in the first
half of the sixteenth century that have been preserved at the AGI or in the Dominican archives and
collections.

D. Manuel Serrano y Sanz, Origenes de la dominacion espanola en America (Madrid: Nueva Biblioteca de
Autores Espanoles, 1918), Vol. 1, DXLVI.

Documentos ineditos para la historia de Colombia, coleccionados en elArchivo General de Indis de Sevilla
por Juan Friede de orden de la Academia Colombiana de Historia, 10 vols. (Bogota: Academia Colombiana,
1955), Vol. 2, 118-126; English translation in John H. Parry and RobertG. Keith, New Iberian Worlds: A
Documentary History of the Discovery and Settlement of Latin America to the Early Seventeenth Century
(New York: Times Books, 1984), Vol. 2, 349-353.

Lynne Guitar - Chollos — wvwv.kacike.org 13

Fray Cipriano de Utrera, Noticias historicas de Santo Domingo (documentos y noticias), ed. Emilio
Rodriguez Demorizi (Santo Domingo: Editora Taller, 1983), 141. Originally from AGI, Contratacion 5090.
The boy was declared officially legitimate because both of his parents were single, therefore they could have
been married, at the time of his procreation and birth. When Tostado died in 1528, the boy inherited his
ingenio, and was still listed as the owner in 1547.

2 7 From a crown request to the Audiencia of Santo Domingo to look into Juan Marques's petition for a land
grant for himself and his mestizo son, dated Feb 17, 1537. AGI, Audiencia de Santo Domingo 868, LI, f48.

See AGI, Indiferente General 1962, L5, fD30v-331 (cedula for " una esclava mulata" dated Feb 16, 1538);
Indiferente General 1963, L7, ff4r-4v (cedula for "un esclavo mulato cristiano" dated Sep 5, 1539), and
ffl4v-15 and 18r-18v (cedulas of same date for "una esclava mulata" and "una esclava mulata cristiana,"
respectively). See also Indiferente General 1963, L8, ffl88v-189, which is a royal prohibition forbidding the
further shipment of any mulatto slaves to the Indies, dated May 1, 1543.

' Altman, Emigrants and Society, 151-152. See also Kuznesof, "Ethnic and Gender Influences on 'Spanish'
Creole Society in Colonial Spanish America'; and Colin M. Maclaughlin, "The Eagle and the Serpent: Male
over Female in Tenochtitlan," in Pacific Coast Conference on Latin American Studies Proceedings^ (1976):
45-56.

Gwendolyn Midlow Hall recognized a similar pattern in her study of Louisiana 400 years later. "The extent
of race mixture and emancipation in French Louisiana has been minimized by excessive reliance upon
Spanish censuses, which overlooked the passing of mixed-bloods into the 'white race.'" Midlow Hall,
Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-Creole Culture in the Eighteen Century (Baton
Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992), 239.

Elinor C. Burkett, "Indian Women and White Society: The Case of Sixteenth-Century Peru," in Latin
American Women: Hi storical Perspectives, ed. Asuncion Lavrin (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978),
105.

For more detailed studies of rape vs. choice, and the gendered ramifications of the conquest of the
Americas, see Solange Alberro, "Beatriz de Padilla: Mistress and Mother," in Struggle and Survival in
Colonial America, ed. David G. Sweet and Gary B. Nash (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981):
247-256; Richard Boyer, "Women, La Mala Vida, and the Politics of Marriage, in Sexuality and Marriage in
Colonial Latin America, ed. Asuncion Lavrin (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989): 252-286;
Paulino Castaneda Delgado, "El matrimonio legftimo de los indios y su canonizacion," in Anuario de Estudios
Hispanoamericanos3i (1974): 157-188; Cope, The Limits of Racial Domination; Mona Etienne and Eleanor
Leacock, "Introduction: Women and Anthropology: Conceptual Problems," in Women and Colonization:
Anthropological Perspectives, ed. Mona Etienne and Eleanor Leacock (New York: Praeger, 1980); Jane
Landers, "African and African American Women and Their Pursuit of Rights through Eighteenth-Century
Spanish Texts," in Haunted Bodies: Gender and Southern Texts, ed. Anne Goodwin -Jones and Susan
Donaldson (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1998): 56-76, and "In Consideration of her
Enormous Crime': Rape and Infanticide in Spanish St. Augustine," in The Devil's Lane: Sex and Race in the
Early South, ed. Catherine Clinton and Michele Gillespie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997): 205-217;
Marietta Morrissey, Slave Women in the New World: Gender Stratification in the Caribbean (Lawrence:
University of Kansas Press, 1989); and Irene Silverblatt, Moon, Sun, and Witches: Gender Ideologies and
Class in Inca and Colonial Peru (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987).

33 AGI, Justicia 829, N4, Dec 1, 1547-Sep 26, 1548.

For another example, there is the case of the conquistador Andres de Tapia and his son Hernando, whom he
acknowledged was his son, but whom he did not hold in high enough esteem to send money for his
maintenance nor travel back to the Indies. Hernando de Tapia was obviously a mestizo, for he was the child
of a Spaniard and an india, but he was referred to in all of the documents as "el indio Hernando de Tapia"— an
indication of his powerlessness. More detail is provided about this case in Lynne Guitar, "Willing it so:

Lynne Guitar - Chollos — wvwv.kacike.org 14

Intimate glimpses of encomienda life in colonial Hispaniola," in Colonial Latin American Historical Review,
7(3), Summer 1998: 245-264.

Susan R. Parker's studies have demonstrated that Indians in St. Augustine, Florida, were consistently under
counted because of the individuals and families who moved into the town and "became" Spanish, "to all
effects and purposes." She even uncovered documentary evidence of two ladinoized Indians, Francisco and
Antonio Xavier, who married white women, which "runs counter to the widely accepted assumption that"
marriages between Spaniards and Indians were always between Spanish males and Indian females. Susan R.
Parker, "Spanish St. Augustine's 'Urban' Indians," inEl Escribano: The St. Augustine Journal of History 30
(1993), 2 and 5.

There is documentary evidence that all of the parish records were moved from Santo Domingo to Cuba for
safekeeping when Sir Francis Drake began his attacks in the 1580s, but the records themselves have not
surfaced, if they still exist. Records from the 1590s on, however, have been analyzed and reported in Jose
Luis Saez, ed., La iglesia e el negro esclavo en Santo Domingo: Una historia de tres siglos (Santo Domingo:
Patronato de la Ciudad Colonial de Santo Domingo, Coleccion Quinto Centenario, 1994).

See Charles Gibson, "Indian Societies under Spanish Rule," in Cambridge History of Latin America, ed.
Leslie Bethell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), Vol. 2, 399. See also Cope, The Limits of
Racial Domination. In colonial Guatemala, William F. Fowler, Jr., found that Indians who became ladinoized
had taken "a conscious decision made in the context of active resistance and self-preservation.... Ladinos were
and are very clearly people who have escaped the onerous exploitation officially sanctioned by the state."
Fowler, "Colonial Economy and Land Tenure in Southeastern Guatemala, 1550-1635," an unpublished paper,
Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, March 30, 1994: 1 1 .

AGI, Justicia 58 and a related document in AGI, Audiencia Santo Domingo 49, No. 117. Partial
transcriptions available in Fray Cipriano de Utrera, Polemica de Enriquillo, ed. Emilio Rodriguez Demorizi
(Santo Domingo: Editora del Caribe, 1973), 484-485.

Kidwell, "Indian Women as Cultural Mediators," 97.

In many case, those containers —of straw, wood, gourds and ceramics— were made in traditional ways but in
shapes that were modified by new cultural influences and with reduced (or missing) artistic embellishment.
See in particular, Kathleen Deagan, ""Sixteenth -Century Spanish -American Colonization in the Southeastern
United States and the Caribbean," in Columbian Consequences, ed. David Hurst Thomas (Washington, DC:
Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990): 225 -250; Manuel A. Garcia -Arevalo, "Transculturation in Contact
Period and Contemporary Hispaniola," in Columbian Consequences, ed. David Hurst Thomas (Washington,
DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990), and El Arte Taino de la Republica Dominicana (Santo Domingo:
Museo del Hombre Dominicano, 1977); and Greg C. Smith, "Indians and Africans at Puerto Real: The
Ceramic Evidence," in Puerto Real: The Archaeology of a Sixteenth-Century Spanish Town in Hispaniola,
ed. Kathleen Deagan (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1995): 335-374. Paul Hoffman, in a

discussion on Jan 10, 1998, in Seattle at the annual American History Association and Conference on Latin
American History, made the observation that, in Classic Taino society, nearly every family manufactured
their own domestic pottery. Under Spanish domination, there were fewer and fewer potters as the
manufacture of ceramics became more industrialized. His point is well taken and is one of the arguments
anthropologists use in their attempts to explain the simplified shapes and designs of "criollo" wares. On the
other hand, after 1492, the privileged groups of Classic Taino artistic specialists who designed and produced
prestige goods for the caciques and other nitafnos, for elite gift exchange, and for religious ritual, disappeared.
It was primarily domestic artisanry that survived, which is normally simpler.

Bonnie G. McEwan's studies provide archaeological material evidence of these cultural retentions in mixed
Spanish-Indian households, but she notes that the percentage of European vs. Indian or African artifacts are in
direct proportion to the status of the Spaniard in the household. The wealthier households had more Spanish
material goods and indicate fewer indigenous or African retentions. McEwan, "Domestic Adaptation at
Puerto Real, Haiti," in Historical Archaeology 25(4), 1991: 11.

Lynne Guitar - Chollos — wvwv.kacike.org ' 5

Africans and their cultural traditions increasingly dominated the attention of the Spaniards taking the
island's censuses and writing the documents by the 1540s, as well as the attention of most of the region's
historians and anthropologists. In part, Africans dominated the Spaniards' attention because they were
spending so much money on African slaves— big financial investments create big worries. In part it was
because the number of Africans on the islands was increasing decade by decade, especially in proportion to
the decreasing numbers of Spaniards on Hispaniola as well as the decreasing number of pure Indians. And in
part it may have been because, physically, Africans were easy to differentiate from Spaniards on the island.
Ladinoized Indians and many criollos, on the other hand, were much more difficult to distinguish.

Among the growing number of studies of African influences on Caribbean culture, the most
important for Hispaniola are: Gonzalo Aguirre-Beltran, "Influencias africanas en el desarollo de las culturas
del Nuevo Mundo," in Boletin Museo del Hombre Dominicano 7(1 1), Sep 1978: 185-198; Roger Bastide,
African Civilizations in the New World, trans. Peter Green (New York: Harper & Row, 1971); Carlos Esteban
Deive, "La herencia africana en la cultura Dominicana actual," in Ensayos sobre la cultura Dominicana
(Santo Domingo: Fundacion Cultural Dominicana, 1988): 105-141 and£/ indio, el negro y la vida
tradicional Dominicana (Santo Domingo: Ediciones Museo del Hombre Dominicano, 1978); Karen Fog
Olwig, Cultural Adaptation & Resistance on St. John: Three Centuries of Afro -Caribbean Life (Gainesville:
University of Florida Press, 1985); Franklin J. Franco, Los negros, los mulatos y la nacion Dominicana
(Santo Domingo: Editora Nacional, 1970); Gwendolyn Midlow Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana and
Social Control in Slave Plantation Societies: A Comparison of St. Domingue and Cuba (Baltimore, MD: The
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971); Amadeo Julian, Buncos, ingenios y esclavos en la epoca colonial
(Santo Domingo: Amigo del Hogar, 1997); Carlos Larrazabal Blanco, Los negros y la esclavituden Santo
Domingo (Santo Domingo: Julio D. Postigo e Hijos, 1967); Maurice Lemoine, Bitter Sugar, trans. Andrea
Johnson (Chicago: Banner Press, 1981); Fradique Lizardo, La cultura Africana en Santo Domingo (Santo
Domingo: Editora Taller, 1979); Sidney W. Mintz and Richard Price, The Birth of African-American
Culture: An Anthropological Perspective (Boston: Beason Press, 1992); Carlos Moore, Tanya R. Sanders
and Shawna More, eds., African Presence in the Americas (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1995); Richard
Price, First Time: The Historical Vision of an Afro -American People (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1983); Miguel Rojos Mix, Cultura afroamericana: De esclavos a ciudanos (Madrid:
Ediciones Anaya, 1988); John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1680
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); and James Walvin, Questioning Slavery (Kingston,
Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers, 1997).

J Maya Derin's study of Haiti was one of the first to point out the many areas of "cultural convergence"
among the Tamos and the various West African peoples who were brought to the island as slaves. Derin,
Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti (New York: McPherson & Co., 1991). See especially 61-71
and Appendix B, 271-286.

In explaining cultural change, Fernando Ortiz coined the term "transculturation" to replaced "syncretism,"
for the old term did not place enough emphasis on the dynamic, creative input of Indians and Africans.
Fernando Ortiz, Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar, trans. Harriet de Onis (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 1995), 98. For an in-depth discussion of the processes of cultural evolution (today often
called "creolization"), see Mintz and Price, The Birth of African-American Culture. Paul E. Lovejoy has
recently suggested that the entire concept of creolization be re-examined. Paul E. Lovejoy, "Identifying
Enslaved Africans: Methodological and Conceptual Considerations in Studying the African Diaspora,"
Identifying Ensl aved Africans: The "Nigerian " Hinterland and the African Diaspora, ed. Paul E. Lovejoy
(Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, forthcoming).

Kidwell, "Indian Women as Cultural Mediators," 98.

Eugene Lyon, "Cultural Brokers in Sixteenth-Century Spanish Florida," in Pedro Menendez de Aviles, ed.
Eugene Lyon (New York: Garland Publishing, 1995): 329-336.

Report of Sep 1, 1533. Marte, Manuscritos de Juan Bautista Muhoz, Vol. 1, 363-367.

Robert Tompson, "Robert Tompson's Voyage to the West Indies and Mexico," in Colonial Travelers in

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Latin America, ed. William C. Bryant (Newark, DE: Juan de la Cuesta, 1972): 58. Just what ratio of

Hispaniola's population was criollo at mid -century is impossible to determine, but based on these and other
reports, criollos must have surpassed Spaniards by a minimum 6:1, Indians by 12: 1, and at least equalled the
number of Africans. Thousands of others had left the island for new "Spanish" colonies.

So-named because they used Tafno-style bucans to smoke beef from the cattle that had run wild on the
island.

50 Alexandre Olivier Exquemelin, The Buccaneers of America: A true account of the most remarkable assaults
committed by the English and French buccaneers against the Spaniards in America (Santo Domingo: Editora
Taller, 1992).

5 ' Mederic Louis Elie Moreau de Saint-Mery, Description de la parte Espahola de Santo Domingo, trans. C.
Armando Rodriguez (Santo Domingo: Editora Montalvo, 1944), 95 and 50, respectively.

52

" AGI, Audiencia de Santo Domingo 868, LI, fl25v.

Europeans who had been "seasoned" on Hispan
than did Spaniards who came directly from Iberia.

AGI, Indiferente General 421, L12, f 1 16v; and Ini
General 421, Lll, ff300-303; text in CDIU, Vol. 5(9), 248-256.

Europeans who had been "seasoned" on Hispaniola also fared better in the other Spanish -American colonies

IE

AGI, Indiferente General 421, L12, f 1 16v; and Indiferente General 195, LI, f9. See also AGI, Indiferente

Marte, Manuscritos de Juan Bautista Muhoz, Vol. 1, 413 413-414.
Marte, Los manuscritos de Juan Bautista Muhoz, Vol. 1, 331-332.

5 7

See CDIU, Vol. 17, 23-31. This document is a long list that summarizes many of the licenses for "discovery
and conquest" in the Indies that were issued by the crown through the 1560s.

See Alfred W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press , 1996), "Metamorphosis of the Americas," inSeeds of Change, ed.
Herman Viola and Carolyn Margolis (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), and The
Columbian Exchange; John J. Johnson, "The Introduction of the Horse into the Western Hemisphere," in
Hispanic American Historical Review 23(4), Nov 1943: 587-610; and Elizabeth J. Reitz, "The Spanish
Colonial Experience and Domestic Animals," in Historical Archaeology 26(1), 1992: 84-91.

Peter Martyr D Anghiera, Pedro Martir de Angleria, Primer cronista de Indias: Decadas del nuevo mundo
(Santo Domingo: Sociedad Dominicana de Bibliofolos, 1989), Fourth Decade, Book 10.

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