|
The First Major European/Indian
Battle
Origin of the Legend of the Virgin
de las Mercedes, the Island’s
Patroness
The Founding of Concepción
de la Vega
--by
Dr. Lynne Guitar,
Ph.D. History & Anthropology,
Vanderbilt University
On March 14, 1495,
Admiral/Governor/Viceroy Christopher
Columbus and 200 armored Spanish infantrymen,
20 armored horsemen, and an uncounted
number of Taínos (Cacique Guacanagarí’s
men ), arrived at the site known today
as Santo Cerro (“Holy Hill”).
They had left the settlement of La
Isabela on the north coast and marched
through the Pass of the Hidalgos en
route to the main cacicazgo of Guarionex,
in the heart of the mountainous, gold-bearing
Cibao. How long the march took is
not mentioned in any of the surviving
records. The Indians in the group
probably outnumbered their Spanish
allies by a minimum of 3:1, but as
with victorious battles later in European-American
history, the Europeans took all the
credit, leaving their Indian allies
out of most of the official accounts.
The army of Spanish and Taíno
warriors led by Columbus had, as their
goal, stamping out the increasing
Indian attacks against the Spaniards
(who were scouting around in small
groups throughout the Cibao seeking
gold and food and women. They also
wanted to establish a firm foothold
in the gold-bearing region where,
until now, they had only one small
fort, Santo Tomás on the Jánico
River—the name Santo Tomás,
after “Doubting Thomas,”
was a riposte to those who had publicly
expressed their doubt that Columbus
would find much gold on Hispaniola.
The Taíno cacique who had given
them the most trouble to date, Caonabó
(who was supposedly the leader of
the Taínos who massacred the
39 Spaniards whom Columbus left behind
at Fort la Navidad on his first voyage)
had been captured, put aboard a ship
bound for trial in Spain, and had
died at sea. Now his brother Manicaotex
was leading the attacks against the
Spaniards out of the cacicazgo of
the Cacique Guarionex, which was tributary
to Caonabó’s cacicazgo
of Maguá.
Columbus appears
to have chosen the site of Santo Cerro
at which to make his stand because
it provided a clear view of the Cibao
Valley below and because it was relatively
easy to defend. It is a high, steep
mountain, easternmost in the vast
chain called the Cordillera Central.
From atop Santo Cerro, one can see
across the entire Cibao Valley (approximately
24 kms. wide at this point), all the
way to the narrow but high mountain
pass of the Cordillera Septentrional
beyond Mocca that gives way to the
Atlantic Coast near today’s
Puerto Plata. Columbus and his men
appear to have arrived in late afternoon.
Columbus ordered his Indian allies
to build a palenque, a palisaded area,
on top of the mountain, and he planted
a cross made out of the wood of a
local nispero tree, where they all
prayed for success in the next day’s
battle.
What a sight awaited Columbus and
his men as they looked down upon the
valley in the early light of dawn
on March 15. Reports vary, and the
numbers probably grew over time, as
often happens with legendary battles,
but somewhere between 30,000 and 100,000
Taínos, the combined forces
of Manicaotex and Guarionex, were
gathered at the foot of Santo Cerro,
ready to do battle with the Spaniards.
Witnesses later testified that there
were “Indians as far as the
eye could see.” The Spaniards
descended to do battle and, despite
their Indian allies, their cavalrymen,
arquebuses, and advanced fighting
strategies that had been polished
throughout 800 years of fighting Moors
back in Spain, they could not gain
any headway against the Taíno
warriors. Outnumbered and out fought,
by nightfall the Spaniards were beaten
back into their palenque where, say
the witnesses, they wailed and prayed,
dreading the dawn and the deaths that
they were certain awaited them in
the next day’s battle.
Certain defeat was avoided by a series
of miracles that occurred during the
night, or so eyewitnesses reported.
In the early hours after nightfall,
enemy Indians tried to burn down the
Spaniards’ cross, but they could
only scorch it, despite all the dry
firewood they piled around it. Unsuccessful
in burning down the Christian symbol,
they tried to pull the cross down,
using thick vines of the bejuco plant,
but couldn’t pull it down. Frustrated,
they tried to chop the cross down
with their stone axes, but were also
unsuccessful. Fray Juan Infante of
the Order of Mercederians was Columbus’s
private confessor. He not only witnessed
all of the above Indian attacks on
the cross, but was witness to a far
more miraculous event. At about 9
PM, he claims he saw a light descend
and envelop the cross, while a lady
dressed all in white, with a baby
in her arms, appeared on the right
arm of the cross. He declared that
the Virgen de las Mercedes (The Virgin
of Blessings) had come to save the
day for the Spaniards. And it certainly
appeared to be so. In the morning,
when the weary, bloody, frightened
troops got up, ready to descend the
mountain to do battle to the death,
there was no one there to fight! Columbus
ordered his men to kneel and pray
in thanks to the Virgen de las Mercedes
for their miraculous victory and to
build a fortress at the foot of Santo
Cerro, just one-half league from Cacique
Guarionex’s main population
center.
That’s how the story of the
first major battle between Europeans
and Indians, and the legend of the
Virgen de las Mercedes, have come
down to us in history. But, as the
truism goes, victors write the histories--and
they very seldom include the viewpoint
of the “other,” in this
case the Taínos, who left us
no written account of their own. As
an anthropologist who specializes
in the history and culture of the
Taínos, however, I think I
know how the above events can be explained:
That battle was a clash not only of
warriors and weaponry, but of cultures
and rituals. The Taínos did
not know that Spaniards fought to
the death, or at least until one side
officially surrendered and a treaty
agreement was negotiated, spelling
out the terms of both the conquest
and the defeat. Conversely, the Spaniards
did not know that Taínos fought
(albeit rarely) until one side was
clearly the winner. No official surrender
or official treaty was needed—the
win was clear for all to see—no
need to lose face by rubbing it in.
When an Indian battle was over, it
was over! Both sides went back home
to continue the normal cycle of planting,
hunting, harvesting, living….
In the case of that first-ever Amerindian/European
battle at Santo Cerro, however, it
appears that both sides thought they
had won. Neither side understood the
other’s beliefs and rituals
concerning warfare. The Taínos,
knowing that they were clearly the
victors, just went home the night
the battle ended, as was their norm.
The attacks on the cross may have
been a final nose-flip at the losers,
perhaps by one particular group of
Indians who had been particularly
maltreated by marauding groups of
gold-seeking Spaniards. But when the
Spaniards awoke to an empty battlefield,
they preferred to believe that the
Taínos had fled. It may have
been the sight of the empty battlefield
that morning that led Fray Juan Infante
to relate his tale of having seen
the blessed Lady in White the night
before, thereby “explaining”
the miraculous sight of no Indians
instead of the even more thousands
of strong warriors than the day before
that the Spanish troops had expected
to see.
As for the indestructible cross, I
suggest that Columbus didn’t
have the nispero tree cut down to
“plant” the cross as witnesses’
testimony suggests, but that he made
it out of a living tree that was rooted
deeply into the earth and whose green,
living wood would be difficult to
burn, difficult to pull down, and
difficult to chop down with stone
axes. Explanation of the white light
and descent of the Virgin onto the
arm of the cross that only Fray Juan
Infante saw, I leave to the faithful.
Details of the next days and weeks
are not available. More battles must
have occurred, for Columbus and his
men took over Guarionex’s main
population center and built Fort Concepción
de la Vega there. The site quickly
became a major European-style city,
center of the island’s early
gold mining industry until an earthquake
destroyed it on November 2, 1564.
How did the Spaniards manage to take
over? My best guess is that Guarionex
was caught off guard, thinking the
battle over, and Manicoatex and his
warriors probably had returned to
Maguá. It is also quite likely
that, with so many Spaniards in the
vicinity, the Taínos of the
Cibao began to fall ill of diseases
to which they had no natural immunities,
thus didn’t put up much of a
fight. At any rate, by 1508, the year
in which the Spanish Royal Crown granted
it a royal city shield, Concepción
de la Vega was larger and more populous
than the capital city of Santo Domingo,
and in 1511 it was raised to a bishopric
(the famous Bartolomé de las
Casas, a Dominican friar and Royal
Protector of the Indians, gave his
first Mass at the church here).
The wood of the original cross that
Columbus planted at Santo Cerro was
divided into thousands of little pieces,
which were enshrined at churches all
over the island. Some fragments were
sent to Spain, to Italy, and other
European countries, fetching high
prices, for it was said that they
had magical powers: One only had to
drink a “tea” made of
a powder of wood from the holy cross
to be cured of any fever. Another
legend arose connected to the cross
and the Virgen de las Mercedes: It
was said that, no matter how many
splinters were taken from the cross,
it “grew new wooden arms”
to replace them. (One doesn’t
have to be a scholar to guess that
human greed was the origin of that
particular legend.) A small hermitage
was built at the site where Columbus
had, supposedly, planted the cross,
and many of the faithful made pilgrimages
to it over the centuries.
The city of Concepción de la
Vega was abandoned in 1564, after
it was destroyed by an earthquake
and long after the easily-mined gold
had run out. The town of La Vega,
much smaller than the original city,
was relocated to its present site,
a few kilometers to the southwest.
In 1880, the beautiful white church
that presently stands atop Santo Cerro
was built to replace the small hermitage.
Today, Santo Cerro is still a popular
pilgrimage site for the faithful as
well as an attraction for tourists.
The view across the Cibao Valley from
its outdoor amphitheater is breathtaking.
A tall nispero tree grows beside the
church, with signs explaining that
Columbus’s cross was made of
the wood of this tree. Inside the
church, in a small chapel to the south
of the central nave, is the glassed-over
hole where Columbus’s cross
once stood—the miracle must
have finally run its course, for there
is no sign of wood to be seen in the
hole and no splinters of the cross
for sale. Canny merchants of the little
town that’s grown up on the
site do, however, sell holy paintings
of the famous Virgin de las Mercedes
on everything from t-shirts to miniature
crosses and holy cards, in addition
to icy-cold water, soft drinks, fast
food, and the region’s special
bread, ojardra, which is tasty little
“beads” of yucca starch
baked in unusual beehive-shaped ovens,
then strung on strings.
The Church of Santo Cerro is open
daily from 9 AM to 6 PM, but is closed
from 1-2 PM. There is no fee to enter
and no particular dress code, but
please remember that it is a Catholic
church and a holy shrine.
The ruins of part of the original
city of Concepción de la Vega
(now called La Vega Vieja) are now
preserved in the National Park of
La Vega Vieja. The park is open daily
from 8:30 AM- 3:30 PM. There is an
entry fee of RD$45 for foreign visitors;
RD$20 for Dominican nationals. It
is located 8 kms. from the main Autopista
Duarte, along the road that leads
east from La Vega to Moca.
Excavation and restoration of the
ruins of La Vega Vieja began in 1976.
There is a small museum on site with
a collection of both Taíno
and Spanish artifacts that were uncovered
during the work, though many of the
finds are now at the Museum de las
Casas Reales in the capital. The original
Fuerte de la Concepción is
in amazingly good shape, including
the fort’s six (ironically)
cross-shaped window slits that allowed
Spaniards inside to shoot at the Indians
outside, while remaining protected
behind a circle of thick brick-and-stone
walls. The rest of the old city’s
buildings, however, with the exception
of the brick building that protected
the community’s water reservoir,
were shaken down by major earthquakes
in 1564 and 1842, as well as by the
passage of time. Only foundations
remain and as-yet-unexcavated mounds,
but it is easy to see how extensive
the city once was. The major residential
and church area has yet to be excavated
because the family that owns the land
(and lives in buildings built among
and over top of the ruins) will not
cede permission. About 1 km. west
of the national park are the ruins
of the Franciscan Monastery, which
was built beside a vast Taíno
cemetery. Eager guides will show you
what the various rooms of the monastery
used to be and will lift the lids
off the graves to show you the Taínos
buried in fetal position. There is
no official entrance fee, but the
guides appreciate RD$50-100 for their
services.
|
