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Updated: June 9, 2025
There was a great forest and bright protruding rock, and across the south the mountains. When we landed and explored we found a small Indian village that had only vaguely heard that gods had descended. Forty leagues across these forests is a long way. They had heard a rumor that the cacique of Guarico liked the mighty strangers and Caonabo liked them not, but as yet knew little more.
Gold and women again; instead of bartering or digging, the Spaniards had been stealing; and discipline had been relaxed, with the usual disastrous results with regard to the women of the adjacent native tribes. Pedro Margarite sent a nervous message to Columbus expressing his fear that Caonabo, the native king, should be exasperated to the point of attacking them again.
Great heat and sickness, and the Indians no longer prompt to bring us supplies. Sooner or later, each of these dark peoples found a Quibian or Caonabo. The most of us determined that Diego Mendez and Fiesco and their canoe were lost. Hispaniola knew nothing of us nothing, nothing! Suddenly the two Porras brothers led a mad mutiny.
The power of each cacique was supreme, but nothing like a league existed between the different provinces. When the Haytians in desperation tried the fortune of war against the Spaniards, Caonabo, the cacique of the central province in the South, like another Pontiac, rallied the natives from all quarters, and held them together long enough to fight a great battle on the Vega. But he was a Carib.
And we might find Caonabo, and what peoples were behind our own mountains, and perhaps come upon Guacanagari. We went, four hundred men and more, an army with banners. We wished to impress, and we took any and all things that might help in that wise. Drum and trumpet beat and sang. Father Buil was not with us. But three of his missionaries accompanied us, and they carried a great crucifix.
They had run down to the sea, but Caonabo's men had caught them, and after hard work killed them. Juan Lepe and Beltran, passing, saw the five bodies. I do not think that Caonabo had less than a thousand with him. He had come in force, and the whole as silent as a bat or moth.
When Anacaona, the Queen of Xaragua, had received the admiral's brother, Don Bartolome, on a former occasion, the Spaniards affirmed her to be a wise woman, of good manners, and pleasant address; and she is said to have earnestly entreated her brother to take warning by the fate of her husband, Caonabo, and to love and obey the Christians.
The Admiral he sets at defiance, and boasts of his destruction of La Navidad, and of his plan to destroy Isabella; Ojeda he respects and holds in honour, as being the only man in the island brave enough to come into his house and carry him off a captive. There is a good deal of the sportsman in Caonabo.
The immediate result of the capture of Caonabo was to rouse the islanders to further hostilities, and one of the brothers of the captive king led a force of seven thousand men to the vicinity of St. Thomas, to which Ojeda, however, had in the meantime returned.
Caonabo acceded, whereupon the Spaniard sprang upon his horse and swinging the chief upon the croup, fled from the midst of the astonished warriors and bore him a prisoner to Isabela. Caonabo was later embarked for Spain but died on the voyage. A beginning was now made of the harsh oppression which was soon to cause the entire disappearance of the native race.
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