Cibuco??

Sixteenth-century geographer Lopez de Velasco is one of the few accessible sources available on the mysterious "pueblo" of Cibuco by the town of Guadianilla. Although his  Geografía y descripción universal de las Indias was probably not completely accurate for the population and demographics of the Spanish Caribbean possessions, he was writing when the Cibuco settlement was, presumably, occupied by "indios." Unlike Salvador Brau, who wrote centuries later and did not always clearly provide his sources, Velasco claimed the residents of Cibuco were descendants of enslaved "Indios" brought to the island from other parts of the Americas. One can assume they were "Caribs" and Yucatecans, natives of the coast of Venezuela and probably mainland areas such as Florida and even Brazil. According to Brau's La colonizacion de Puerto Rico, Cibuco was established with 48 manumitted "Indios," suggesting a very small settlement. 

Besides these "Indios" who were presumably freed after the 1542 laws abolishing Indian enslavement (though it continued in Puerto Rico and Santo Domingo anyway), Lopez de Velasco also mentioned "algunos indios" in Arrecibo (Arecibo). Salvador Brau likewise mentioned "Indios" in Arecibo, describing them as workers on hatos who also caught turtles. The island of Mona still had "algunos indios" as well. Overall, Lopez de Velasco suggests that "Indios" were few in Puerto Rico, but this is possibly due to a large mestizo population and omission of other communities, like the "Indios" of the Quebrada de Dona Catalina, near San Juan. This community owned a "hacienda" for their conucos in the 1500s, and included people of African descent. In addition, Sued Badillo illustrated other examples, such as enslaved Indians held by the governor of the Puerto Rico in the 1560s. Samuel de Champlain wrote about "Indians" in San Juan in the late 1500s, too. Nevertheless, it is clear from Lopez de Velasco's work that Cuba had more Indian pueblos (9), and mentioned Indian families in Baracoa, Bayamo, Puerto del Principe, Santi-Spiritus, La Trinidad, and Guanabacoa. 

So, what happened to the mysterious "Cibuco," which may have been the only official Indian pueblo in Puerto Rico? Salvador Brau, in his Historia de Puerto Rico, argued that the population was resettled into the hills of the San German area. Anderson-Cordova, in Surviving Spanish Conquest wrote that the town was inhabited by Indians set free by Governor Vallejo and the settlement was already gone by 1582. Brau, again, claimed Cibuco was abandoned when destroyed by French corsairs, which is plausible. If the population of Cibuco simply moved into the hills of western Puerto Rico, perhaps they joined other undocumented groups of "Indians" and mestizos, since western Puerto Rico had a larger presence of "Indians" than San Juan, according to the de Lando "census" of 1530. 

Did they move into the hills that would later become La Indiera, only to be joined later by Mona "Indians" resettled into the region? If Abbad y Lasierra was correct, though writing in the late 1700s and not providing his sources, many of these "Indios" in the hills near San German and Anasco were actually descendants of indigenous Puerto Ricans who fled the Spanish to live in Mona, Monico, Vieques, and other islands, but later requested to return. Thus, if the "algunos indios" on Mona were resettled in the hills of western Puerto Rico sometime in the 1600s, perhaps they joined or communicated with descendants of indigenous Indians and enslaved "indios" in the region, not to mention the probably large number of mestizos and mixed-race people represented among the free peasantry in the island. This, however, still does not explain the reappearance of "Indios" in the censuses of the later decades of the 1700s, unless it was in part a response to attempts to seize their lands or labor, which Puerto Ricans of "Indian" descent mobilized against in part through claims of indigeneity? So many questions remain...

Borno and Haiti

 

While perusing the excellent Corpus of runaway slave ads for Saint Domingue, we came across what appears to be one of the few other sources to mention "Borno" Africans in Saint Domingue. Instead of spelling the name of their homeland in the same manner as Descourtilz (Beurnon), it was rendered as Bernon. The 1789 advertisement in Affiches américaines also mentions that one of the "Bernon" fled his owners in the company of 3 Hausa named Aly, Dominique and Aza. Scipion, the man of "Bernon" nation, was likely very familiar with Hausa people due to Borno's long history in northern Nigeria. Perhaps they also shared an Islamic background that may have helped them transcend "ethnic" differences and find some commonality with other enslaved African Muslims in Saint Domingue. The text likewise mentions another maroon, Christophe of the "Bernon" nation. He was stamped Pommier and belonged to a different owner. 

One cannot help but wonder if these "Bernon" captives and runaways were part of the same group of prisoners of war who were sold into slavery and ended up in the Rossignol Desdunes plantation. "Bernon" Africans seem to have been somewhat uncommon in Saint Domingue, and clearly the mai of Borno was unlikely to intercede and ask for the return of his subjects from across the Atlantic. As an empire mostly drawn into the trans-Saharan orbit, and primarily exporting other peoples as slaves rather than their own (with a few exceptions, according to Descourtilz), it is interesting to consider the connections of Haiti with the "Central Sudan" and Borno as another dimension of Borno's global presence. Althoughly surely small in number in Saint Domingue, it is possible the "Bernon" Africans joined alongside Hausa, Fulani, Mandingue, and others to recreate, in some form, their Islamic religion. It would be an interesting find if Haitian archival sources ever point to a Muslim community in Haiti after 1804, perhaps in the Artibonite region. 

Sued Badillo on the Theme of the Indigenous

Jalil Sued Badillo's essay, "The Theme of the Indigenous in the National Projects of the Hispanic Caribbean", published in Making Alternative Histories: The Practice of Archaeology and History in Non-Western Settings should be required reading for anyone and everyone interested in Taino revivalism, Puerto Rican cultural identity, the rise of the mixed-race Creole culture of the peasantry by the 17th century, and nationalism in the Spanish Caribbean setting. Sued Badillo makes a convincing case for the survival, persistence and cultural reproduction of indigenous Puerto Rican and Caribbean peoples well after the mid-1500s. But, over time, this social and cultural reproduction became something new that people of European and African origin also participated in, leading to the distinct Creole identities of Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic. This, in turn, became a central theme for the construction of national identities, as the peasantry best represented the continuity with the indigenous past and the ""national" character. As illustrated in Sued Badillo's article, 19th century Puerto Rican nationalists called the jibaros of Borinquen the children of Agueybana.

For our interests, Sued Badillo's documentation of "Indian" communities after the middle of the 16th century was most important. It was not solely in Cuba, where "Indian" pueblos and barrios existed long after 1600. For instance, on Hispaniola, he mentions the "Indian" pueblo of Boya, an attempt by Hispaniola encomienda "Indians" to form another town, and the prominence of "Indians" and "mestizos" in western Hispaniola, where smuggling and contraband with other Europeans was common, leading to some mestizos and "mulatos" becoming wealthy. Indeed, this probably explains why Samuel de Champlain, writing in 1599, mentions "Indians" in Hispaniola who trade with the French. These "Indians" and mestizos who continued to trade with Europeans and develop their own contraband economy were also part of the creation of a new creole identity on Hispaniola as "Indians" and mestizos were joined by people of African descent that resisted the colonial government in Santo Domingo. One can see the rustic "monteros" of the 19th and 20th century Dominican Republic emerging from these forebears.

Moreover, something similar occurred in colonial Puerto Rico just as colonial officials were proclaiming the disappearance of "Indians" and mestizos. Some did so, as pointed out by Sued Badillo, to mask the fact that they continued to purchase and exploit enslaved "Indians" from other lands long after the New Laws of 1542. Such an honor appears to apply to the governor of Puerto Rico in the 1560s. Sued Badillo points out the persistence of "Indian" and mestizo communities such as the Quebrada de Dona Catalina, near San Juan. Other "Indians" and mestizos were scattered and pushed onto marginal lands and shifted into the piedmont overlooking the coastal area. These communities, joined by people of European and African origin, gradually increased in population, engaged in subsistence agriculture and commercial exchange for local and foreign markets, and continued to influence colonial society. 

Sued Badillo's analysis of the "Indians" of Mona is likewise enlightening, for it points to indigenous survival on an island which engaged in smuggling, food production (cassava) for other Spanish colonies, and their eventual relocation to the hills of San German and nearby regions sometime before 1685. Unfortunately, Sued Badillo does not explain or speculate on what happened to the "Indian" pueblo of Cibuco, but we are of the opinion that Mona "Indians" and the former residents of the 16th century Cibuco settlement must have both ended up in the region that would eventually be named La Indiera. Perhaps the reappearance of "Indians" on censuses in the late 18th century in the San German area is related to descendants of Cibuco, Mona, and "Indian" or mestizo laborers and convicts transported to Puerto Rico from Venezuela and Mexico in the late 1600s and 1700s, but the censuses do not provide adequate information to ascertain this. An alternative and equally speculative theory could be related to land control and access, as mestizos" and people who may have had distant "Indian" ancestry in western Puerto Rico tried to defend their property or local autonomy in the late 18th century and early 19th century. 

Overall, Sued Badillo's persuasive article demonstrates not only "Indian" survival" in the Spanish Caribbean, but significant "Indian" contributions to the rise of the "mestizo" creole culture. He does not seek to romanticize it, as it was not egalitarian and suffered from some of the same racial hierarchies and problems inherent to its colonial setting. Nor does Sued Badillo seek to exaggerate the population of "Indians" or mistakenly equate jibaros with "Indians" as some Taino revivalists argue. But the indigenous population and its racially mixed-progeny provided much of the basic structure of the nascent creole identity, even as officials denied the existence of "Indians" and even "mestizos" disappear. This perspective was adopted by historians who failed to see how the social and economic conditions of the Spanish Caribbean in the late 1500s and early 1600s favored "Indians" and mestizos through contraband trade, migration away from colonial towns, and a degree of autonomy that allowed for population growth. As for the fate of "mestizos" in the region, Schwartz's article suggests it is very likely that many mestizos became whites (or perhaps even "blancos de la tierra), while others were lumped into the "pardo" category in a process seen for much of Puerto Rico by Abbad y Lasierra in the 18th century. More works remains to be done on this process, as well as the experiences of "Indians" in La Indiera during the late 18th century. 

Works Cited

Castanha, Tony. The Myth of Indigenous Caribbean Extinction: Continuity and Reclamation in Borikén (Puerto Rico). New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

Peter R. Schmidt and Thomas C. Patterson --, et al. Making Alternative Histories: The Practice of Archaeology in Non-Western Settings. Santa Fe, N.M. : Seattle: School of American Research Press ; Distributed by the University of Washington Press, 1995.

Schwartz, Stuart B. “Spaniards, ‘Pardos’, and the Missing Mestizos: Identities and Racial Categories in the Early Hispanic Caribbean.” NWIG: New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids 71, no. 1/2 (1997): 5–19.

Haitian References to Indigenous Ancestry in the Dominican Republic

Although genetics is now confirming that most people in the Spanish Caribbean do indeed have indigenous ancestry from the native populations of the Caribbean and its surroundings, it is worthwhile to consider the various Haitian sources which have been saying the same thing about the Dominican people (and their ancestors) for over 200 years. While hardly new, it does shed light on some of the ethnic and racial dynamics that shaped Haitian perceptions of Dominicans, and the question of political union of Haiti and Spanish Santo Domingo under president Boyer. It may also serve as an additional "local" Caribbean source on the legacy of the indigenous Caribbean population in the Hispanic Caribbean. The following quotations are mostly drawn from Thomas Madiou, with a few from Beaubrun Ardouin, Emile Nau, and one from the Haitian government publication, Le Moniteur. Google Books and Gallica contain numerous works by the aforementioned 19th century Haitian historians, which should be consulted for additional information.

Here, Thomas Madiou references a local military commandant addressing the local population of San Juan de la Maguana, affirming indigenous ancestry among the contemporary population of the eastern half of the island. Not only did commandant Herrera draw on on the legacy of the cacique Henri, he claimed the indigenous population as ancestors. Such a speech indicates how "Dominicans" themselves were claiming aboriginal ancestry in the 19th century.

Here Beaubrun Ardouin references an address of Dessalines which explicitly refers to the population of the east as descendants of the Indian population of Hispaniola. Clearly, over 200 years ago, Haitians were already recognizing indigenous ancestry among Dominicans. In this case, it could be rhetorical in the sense of Dessalines and the indigenous army, unifying it politically under his rule to complete the avenging of the Americas. 

Emile Nau, a 19th century Haitian historian of the indigenous population of the island, mentions "Indian" traits among the people of the island. He specifies that it is used to describe women of mixed-blood in the east, and "ignes" in the west, who have features associated with "Amerindian" people. He admits that none of these people are "pure," but it shows how certain phenotypes were associated with "Indios" in the DR (and, to a lesser extent, Haiti). 

Here, in Le Moniteur, a Haitian refutes the claims of an American observer in the 1850s that the Dominican people are whites. Instead, the author argues that most of the population are "mulattoes" and blacks, and the "mulattoes" have indigenous ancestry. The Indians, according to this Haitian, have mixed principally with Africans. 

Thomas Madiou on the "Indian" village of Boya, where descendants of the indigenous population of the island were recognized as an Indian town by the Spanish for centuries. Madiou claims there were still "pure" Indiens there in the 1700s, but different sources suggest otherwise. Intriguingly, for the 19th century, Madiou clearly states that there are no more "pure" Indians in Boya or any other part of the island.

Here, Madiou interestingly states that the Dominicans always affirmed an indigenous origin. This, according to him, played a role in the eventual 1844 separation of the Dominican side of the island from Haitian unification. If true, this suggests that one of the reasons Dominicans may have resented Haitian rule was due to their indigenous heritage, which would have, perhaps, made them feel more legitimate in asserting their right to independence and autonomy. 

Here, while referencing Haitians traveling to Santiago and the valley of Vega Real. There, the inhabitants are more of a "mestizo" type and a "mulato" type, but a footnote on the same page references a higher proportion of "mestizos" in Seybe and Higuey, in the east of the island. 

Here, alluding to the 1844 separation, Madiou references an "Indian" sergeant named Jose del Carmen. This could be an allusion to Jose del Carmen Garcia, an uncle of Dominican historian Jose Gabriel Garcia.

In the first volume of Madiou's history of Haiti, he also mentions a fusion of Indian and Spanish "blood" among the population of the Spanish colony. This process occurred over time under the poor governance of the Spanish, but resulted in a population with "Indian" blood.