Archaeology Magazine - January/February 1992 - 106

undoubtedly saw the Spaniards as potentially valuable allies, welcomed them and
treated them like royalty.
On Christmas Eve, disaster struck.
Columbus's flagship, the Santa Maria , hit
a reef in the vicinity of present-day Cap
Haïtien and sank. With the assistance of
the local Taino cacique (chief), Guacanagari, the contents of the ship were salvaged.
Because the Niña could not accommodate
all of the Santa Martels sailors, 39 men were
chosen to remain behind and establish a
fort, called La Navidad, in Guacanagarfs
village. Columbus, meanwhile, reunited
with Pinzón and sailed for Spain.
Upon his return to Hispaniola in 1493,
Columbus found his men dead and La
Navidad in ashes. The common explanation for the murder of these men is that they
violated local behavioral rules- they stole,
looted, and raped. If such violations were
the reasons for the murders, then Guacanagari would have been the one to order the
killings. Yet the documents make it clear
that he was not held responsible by the
Spaniards. Blame and retribution centered
on caciques at the highest level of the Taino
political hierarchy. These primary caciques
acted independently of lower-level chiefs
like Guacanagari. As a matter of politics,
primary caciques could not permit a secondlevel cacique to harbor a garrison of wellarmed Europeans. The Europeans had to
be eliminated because they upset the established balance of power.
There may, however, be more to this
event than simple political expediency.
There is also evidence of how the different
participants viewed the encounter. We
know that Columbus thought that "there
cannot be a better or more gentle people"
than the Taino. We also know that he believed the Taino thought he and his men
"came from the heavens." But what did the
Taino really think of the Spaniards?
The Taino appear to have assigned a supernatural origin to the explorers. Columbus, and later Fray Ramon Pané, reported
that the Taino initially identified the
Spaniards as Caribes. Caribes were mythi52 Archaeology

The Bahamian
Lucayan
population in
1500 was
between
40, 000 and
80, 000. By the
time of Ponce de
Leon's voyagein
1513, the
Bahamas were
uninhabited.

cal beings associated with the underworld
who consumed human flesh. Rather than
beings from heaven, then, the Spaniards
were viewed as the incarnation of beings
from hell. Thus, the Taino caciques may
have justified the killing of the 39 men who
founded La Navidad as appropriate because
the Spaniards had violated mythic proscriptions. After all, mythical beings were not
supposed to remain on earth permanently.
Since 1983, Kathleen Deagan of the
Florida Museum of Natural History at
Gainesville has directed archaeological investigations of the large Taino site known as
En Bas Saline, on the north coast of Haiti.
More than seven tons of archaeological
materials have been recovered from the
site, including more than 40,000 artifacts,
some 675 pounds of shells, and 20 pounds
of animal bones. Most of the artifacts are of
Taino origin; only 17 are European (ceramics, glass, and a nail). The small number
of European artifacts is not surprising
since, as Deagan has pointed out, they
would have been so exotic during the earliest phases of contact that the Taino would
have prized them highly. It is unlikely they
would have been discarded casually.
Despite the small quantity of European
artifacts, a substantial body of circumstantial evidence is available to identify En
Bas Saline as the Taino village in which
La Navidad was built. First, the site dates
to the early Contact period. The most common artifact, Chican-style Taino pottery, has been dated using radiocarbon and
thermoluminescence
techniques to a.d.
1450 ± 80. The majority of the artifacts (62
percent) come from deposits that must be
post-Contact because they include remains
of European animals, the pig and the rat.
Second, the size and community plan - a
380-by-32-yard C-shaped earthwork with
an open plaza and centrally located chiefs
residence - are exactly what one would expect for a chief of Guacanagarfs stature.
Third, at least part of the site was burned,
as was La Navidad.
In 1493, Columbus moved his base of
operations 70 miles to the east and estab-

Archaeology Magazine - January/February 1992

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Archaeology Magazine - January/February 1992