In 1519 Enrique, one of the few remaining caciques, or indigenous chiefs, of the island of Hispaniola, removed himself and some of his people from the reach of Spanish authority. For nearly a decade and a half he and his followers lived in the remote and barely accessible south-central mountains of his native island, occasionally raiding Spanish settlements for arms and tools and clashing with militia units but for the most part avoiding contact with Spanish society. Enrique eluded the numerous patrols that were sent to eradicate what became a stubbornly persistent locus of defiance of Spanish authority that attracted other discontented residents of the island, including both African and indigenous slaves and servants as well as small numbers of nominally 'free' Indians.
Enrique's revolt arguably was the best-known rebellion of its time in the islands, at least in the history and literature of the Dominican Republic, where the episode is often portrayed as the last stand of a heroic leader of the Hispaniola's remaining native Tainos.1 They had been all but eliminated as a result of the violence, flight, and disease that followed the imposition of Spanish settlement and rule. The famous and influential contemporary historian Bartolomé de Las Casas, perhaps better known today for his passionate defense of the rights of America's native peoples than for the lengthy volumes of history he also produced, wrote of the rebellion sympathetically, romanticizing Enrique and portraying him as a principled and capable leader, committed to the defense of his people while avoiding unnecessary violence against the Spaniards. [End Page 587]
Enrique's story is a fascinating one, full of telling detail that sheds light on the nature of early colonial society and indigenous-Spanish relations in Hispaniola. That story will be related at some length here. Enrique's revolt and its context, however, also can be seen as more than an interesting episode that unfolded in an area that in the course of two generations went from primacy to relative insignificance in the rapidly expanding Spanish empire in the Americas. Enrique's was only one of many indigenous revolts that occurred in the large islands of the Caribbean during the early years of settlement, foreshadowing many others large and small that occurred on the mainland during the conquest period and beyond—and indeed throughout the colonial period, up until and even through the struggles for independence.2 In that light a full-scale, long-lasting Caribbean episode of indigenous revolt merits serious attention.
Consideration of the circumstances of Enrique's revolt and Spanish response also highlights aspects of indigenous-Spanish relations that perhaps are better known to scholars in the context of the conquest and early settlement of the mainland but in fact had figured from the earliest years in the Caribbean. These elements include complex social and kinship relations fostered by intermarriage and other forms of close contact, including the establishment of encomiendas,3 the role played by indigenous leaders who were empowered both by interaction with Spanish society and the continuing acknowledgment (on both sides) of the significance of indigenous rank, and the moderation of wholesale exploitation with the emergence of a pragmatic recognition of the benefits of accommodation. Not only did the Caribbean serve as the crucial staging ground for Spanish conquest of the mainland, but well beyond the conquest it contributed personnel and expertise to governmental and religious institutions and economic enterprises (gold mining, sugar cultivation) on the surrounding mainland and served as a market for exports from the mainland of everything from wheat and biscuit to indigenous slaves.4 The history of African slavery in Spanish America [End Page 588] also was strongly rooted in the Caribbean, where from the earliest years Africans worked on sugar estates and in gold mines, and frequently were sent on to booming new centers of development like Mexico and Peru, where they would do the same. And on the mainland as in the islands, as will be seen in the story of Enrique's revolt, Indians and Africans quickly developed their own complex interrelationships, even as they struggled to assert themselves in face of Spanish rule and exploitation.
Who was Enrique? The relatively little that is known of his life suggests that from the time he was born, around 1500, into a once-powerful chiefly family he was in some ways marked for distinction, despite the drastically altered circumstances of his people. He was the grand-nephew of Anacaona, who was the principal wife of Caonabó. a leading cacique of the island at the time that the Spaniards arrived with Columbus in 1492. She also was the sister of another cacique, Behechio, whom she succeeded as ruler of Jaraguá in southwestern Hispaniola at his death. Anacaona belonged to a group of chiefs executed by royal governor Fray Nicolás de Ovando in 1503 under circumstances that are far from clear.5 Born under Spanish rule, Enrique was educated at the monastery of Verapaz by Franciscans, who taught him to read and write, as well as introducing him to the doctrines of Roman Catholicism.6 They gave him the somewhat unusual baptismal name of [End Page 589] Enrique, interesting in that it was closely associated with Spanish nobility and even royalty. He was often called Enriquillo. The diminutive form could indicate affection, but perhaps its use mitigated the rather anomalous distinction of his name. Not until the conclusion of his rebellion was Enrique titled 'don' by the Spanish, although other caciques on the island were called don—possibly another indication of the ambiguity of his position, and of the ambivalence with which he was viewed and treated.
Enrique was born into a world shaped by the turmoil and rapidly unfolding events that in the space of less than a decade following Columbus's second voyage of 1493, which had marked the beginning of real Spanish colonization of the island, transformed and all but destroyed the indigenous society that Europeans had encountered when they first arrived in Hispaniola in 1492. Contrary to the rather benign image of Columbian rule on the island once accepted, by the mid-1490s Columbus had initiated military campaigns in the island's densely populated interior that were prelude to the near-destruction of the cacique group.7
Columbus's initial impressions of Hispaniola were positive. He wrote glowingly of the island's green, forested hills and friendly people, whom he saw as docile and even timid and therefore, he assumed, malleable. The Tainos constituted the island's largest group and the one with which Spaniards had most contact, although there were at least two other groups living in Hispaniola at the time Europeans first arrived.8 The Tainos were agriculturalists who for the most part lived in villages of several hundred to a thousand people, although some communities apparently had as many as two or three thousand residents when the Spaniards arrived. Taino society was organized into chiefdoms, some of which included many communities. Some caciques clearly ranked higher than others. Chiefly succession seems to have been matrilineal, and women played important roles in society and religious life. The Tainos were known for their competitive ball games and dances in which both men and women participated. Their agriculture was [End Page 590] diverse and productive, centered on the staple crop of manioc. The Tainos also were mariners and traders who built large wooden canoes, some of which could hold one hundred or more people, and they took full advantage of the resources of the sea and the island's rivers and streams.
Europeans arrived in this near-idyllic setting hoping to find wealthy peoples with whom to trade, as they would have done had they reached Asia. Establishing lucrative trade relations would provide them with the profits they needed to pay off their debts and to proceed on to other, possibly wealthier, regions. Hispaniola's rather modest agricultural economy must have disappointed the newcomers, but they noted that the Tainos had ornaments fashioned of gold (often guanin, an alloy of gold and copper, possibly imported from South America). The Tainos produced woven cotton cloth and hammocks, fine wooden carvings, and pottery. Probably of most interest to Europeans in the earliest years were tropical dyewoods. But it was gold above all that became the major focus of European interest and activities on the island, with fateful consequences for its inhabitants.9
In much of the late medieval "Old World"—Europe, Africa, and Asia—gold meant wealth in the form of bullion, with all its implications for economic and political advantage and power. The Tainos of the islands did not value gold in this sense and did not mine the ore systematically. Spaniards therefore obtained little gold through barter and were not much more successful when they attempted to impose quotas that required the islanders to hand over fixed amounts of the metal in tribute to their new rulers.10 Failing that, the Spaniards began to involve themselves directly in the mining and production of gold, a decision that had enormous repercussions not only for the people of Hispaniola but for the entire Caribbean and circum-Caribbean region, as Spaniards ventured to other islands and the surrounding mainland in search of both gold and native labor to mine it. Islands such as the Bahamas that lacked gold were judged "useless"; their people, the Lucayos, were systematically removed and put to work elsewhere, many of them in Hispaniola. [End Page 591]
The people of Hispaniola for the most part were not, after the earliest years, literally enslaved. Columbus and his brother initiated the export of slaves back to Castile, but Queen Isabel quickly put a stop to the practice and ordered that those who had survived be returned to Hispaniola, although at least some were sold in Seville.11 In the years following Columbus's 1493 voyage, Spaniards began to move into Taino communities, exacting labor and tribute from the indigenous people who often became their kin by virtue of formal or informal marriages with Taino women and the practice of name exchange, or guatiao. The area of Jaraguá in southwestern Hispaniola, with which Enrique was associated throughout his life, was an important setting for the early formation of such inter-ethnic relations and alliances, attracting Francisco Roldán, who rebelled against the Columbus regime, and a number of his followers. Jaraguá was considered by many to be the most highly developed center for Taino culture. Its people practiced irrigated agriculture and were known for their fine woven cotton goods and wood carvings. After governor Ovando asserted royal authority in the region, the town of Verapaz, where Enrique grew up, was established at what had been the site of his great-aunt Anacaona's village, and San Juan de la Maguana was founded at what was once the residence of Anacaona's husband Caonabó. Enrique and his people eventually would move to San Juan de la Maguana. Thus, despite Spanish rule and a Franciscan education, his life continued to be closely connected to the sites of the cacicazgos traditionally held by his antecedents.12
The informal division of native labor that Spaniards such as Roldán had begun to implement in the 1490s, in large part by settling among the Indians, was called repartimiento. The practice already was well established by the time governor Ovando arrived in 1502. Ovando formalized it, forging the legal basis for the encomienda system that would be extended to, and further elaborated in, the mainland areas subsequently conquered by the Spanish.
Although the elimination of their much-needed labor base could hardly have been the Spaniards' intention, Hispaniola's population, which had numbered at least a few hundred thousand (and possibly many more) at contact, [End Page 592] plummeted in the decades following their arrival.13 Family life was disrupted as men were removed from their communities to work in the mines, as was the agricultural cycle, contributing to famine.14 Europeans and their African slaves inadvertently introduced diseases to which the indigenous peoples of the islands had no resistance or immunity. Excessive labor demands, mistreatment at the hands of European masters, and military conflicts also took their toll, and people either fled the island, took refuge in its remote mountainous interior, or joined (or were forced to join) European-led expeditions to other areas. By the time Enrique began his revolt, Hispaniola probably had no more than around 20,000 indigenous inhabitants.15
Despite Spanish efforts to maintain their labor force by importing Indians from elsewhere, as well as increasing numbers of African slaves, and to diversify the economy by establishing sugar estates, economic depression and the attractions of other areas being opened for settlement meant that the Spanish presence in Hispaniola declined along with the indigenous population. The beginning and ending dates of Enrique's revolt—1519 to 1533—nearly coincided with two episodes of great significance in the history of the Spanish occupation of the Americas—Hernando Cortés's conquest of central Mexico, initiated in 1519 and completed in 1521, and Francisco Pizarro's toppling of the Inca empire in Peru in 1532. Thus, during the years that Enrique challenged colonial officials and disturbed the residents of Hispaniola's interior, Spanish attentions were turning toward the mainland. Notably, historians' attentions have largely followed suit, probably accounting for the scant interest that Enrique's revolt has attracted among scholars outside of the Dominican Republic.
Despite decline and depopulation, Hispaniola's capital city of Santo Domingo remained an important center of Spanish authority by virtue of its precocious institutional development and continued significance as a port and transit point. Although the political and economic power of the Colón family proved more tenacious than many anticipated, their predominance was challenged by the arrival of royally-appointed governors and the establishment in 1515 of the first audiencia in the Americas, with functions that [End Page 593] were as much administrative as judicial. Santo Domingo eventually had a bishop and even a cathedral, and high-ranking clergy at times were deeply involved in the governance of the island. Sebastián Ramírez de Fuenleal, for example, was both bishop and governor of Hispaniola from October 1528 until August 1531.16
Thus, after a boyhood spent at least partly with the Franciscans, Enrique grew to adulthood during a period of rapid transformation. In 1514 Spanish authorities launched a major effort to rationalize the assignment of indigenous workers in repartimientos to Spanish settlers, the holders of which were known as encomenderos.17 By this time, the heady prosperity of Spanish society in the first decade of the sixteenth century, based on profitable gold mining and plentiful native manpower, was on the wane, leaving in its wake economic and political disarray. The repartimiento effected in 1514 in some measure was a response to retrenchment and increasing competition for declining spoils. It assigned Enrique with his people, who at that point numbered fewer than one hundred, including children and the elderly, to two encomenderos, Francisco de Valenzuela and Francisco Hernández. The latter, however, most likely worked for Valenzuela, as he never again is mentioned in the records as Enrique's encomendero.18 This assignment necessitated moving to the area of San Juan de la Maguana. Although apparently willing to cooperate with officials by relocating, five years later Enriquillo repudiated Spanish authority and departed with thirty or forty of his people.
What had happened in those five years to produce such a radical response? The explanation offered by Bartolomé de Las Casas is that although Enrique had enjoyed good relations with the elder Valenzuela, when the latter died and was succeeded as encomendero by his son, Andrés de Valenzuela, the younger Valenzuela abused the cacique and treated him with considerable contempt.
Enrique apparently owned a mare, significant in that the possession of such a mount by an Indian—even a cacique—was unusual at that time and [End Page 594] would have indicated considerable prestige and favor. The story as told by Las Casas goes as follows:
Among the few and poor goods that he [Enrique] had, he owned a mare, which was taken from him by the tyrant of a young man whom he served. After this, not content with this robbery and violent act, he managed to violate the marriage of the cacique and force his wife. . . . [When Enrique] complained of this to him, asking why he had done him such an injury and insult, it is said that he beat him.19
Enrique's abuse at the hands of Spaniards did not end there, according to Las Casas. He went to complain of the encomendero's treatment to Pedro de Vadillo, the lieutenant governor of San Juan de la Maguana, who in turn threatened to do worse if Enrique did not desist from his complaint and possibly threw him in jail or put him in the stocks. After being released, Enrique made an arduous journey to Santo Domingo to bring his case before the audiencia, which issued a statement in his favor but addressed it to the same local authority, Pedro de Vadillo, who had punished Enrique previously for his temerity. Vadillo's reaction when Enrique returned with the letter from the audiencia apparently was even more violent than in their first encounter.20
Neither Las Casas nor the documents offer any explanation of Vadillo's treatment of Enrique. Vadillo was an encomendero in San Juan de la Maguana who had forged close relations with many Tainos in that area, most prominently with Teresa, the daughter of one of the two caciques commended to him.21 He never married, but had at least two mestizo sons. Possibly Vadillo's mistreatment of Enriquillo reflected an existing enmity, and Enrique's seemingly sudden decision to abandon Spanish society had its basis more in longer term problems with local Spaniards than Las Casas's story suggests. We can only surmise that the episode with Valenzuela and Vadillo might have proven the final straw for Enrique and set him on the path to rebellion. [End Page 595]
The explanation of Enrique's decision to revolt offered by Las Casas is not substantiated by other contemporary sources, but could be close to accurate. Clearly, something happened that convinced a young man who had spent virtually all of his life in proximity to Spaniards and largely complying with their demands and decisions that it was worth risking both his own life and the lives of his people to repudiate all connection with the men who were the masters of his island and therefore of his fate. Las Casas had no difficulty in arguing the justness of Enrique's cause: "He determined not to go serve his enemy, nor to send any Indian of his, and therefore to defend himself in his country. This is what the Spaniards called and today call Enrique's rising up and becoming a rebel, but if one were to speak truthfully, it is nothing more than fleeing from his cruel enemies."22
One scholar of the revolt, Fray Cipriano de Utrera, argues that events could not have occurred as Las Casas described them. He contends that at the time there existed no legal mechanism for succession to an encomienda from father to son, meaning Andrés de Valenzuela could not have inherited his father's repartimiento of Indians and authority over Enrique.23 Yet in all likelihood such successions were common, the letter of the law notwithstanding. And Las Casas did have many of the facts right. Pedro de Vadillo was an official, a prominent—and independent minded—vecino of San Juan de la Maguana. Las Casas refers to Enrique's wife as Lucía, whereas in all other contemporary sources she is doña Mencía—a minor discrepancy to be sure, but one that suggests that Las Casas was not as close to events as he later claimed. Indeed, he was absent from the island at the inception of Enrique's revolt.24 [End Page 596]
Whatever convinced Enrique to rebel—and surely there was a catalyst—a number of circumstances might have disposed him to flight. A smallpox epidemic wracked the island in 1518-1519, compounding the already notable mortality rate that had carried off such a large proportion of the island's original population in so few years. The arrival in Hispaniola of three Jeronymite friars, who were charged by Cardinal Jiménez de Cisneros (regent of Castile following the death of King Ferdinand) with looking into the possibility of reforming the encomienda, rather than ushering in an era of positive change probably introduced greater confusion into what was already a deteriorating situation for both Spaniards and Indians. The friars conducted an inquiry—among Spaniards, not Indians—as to whether it would be best to free the remaining Tainos, relocate them in pueblos under the oversight of the clergy, or leave them under the supervision of their encomenderos. Although there was some disagreement over whether relocation was harmful for the Indians, not surprisingly the encomenderos argued strongly for retaining their allotments of indigenous labor.25 The upshot of the work of the Jeronymites on the island was that some villages were removed from the authority of their encomenderos (mainly the numerous absentees, many of whom were royal officials living in Spain), while others were relocated. In all the Jeronymites established some 25 to 30 'free' villages, to be supervised by mayordomos paid by the royal treasury. The residents of these free communities might have found themselves still at the mercy of their former encomenderos, who tried to force or cajole them into returning to service. Many were said to have fled to the mountains.26
Enrique's people were not among those released from their encomenderos. The uncertainty and confusion that arose from the imposition of the limited reforms proposed by the Jeronymites might have contributed to Enrique's decision to remove himself from the reach of Spanish control. If we accept Utrera's argument, some or all of Enrique's people would have become free by virtue of the elder Valenzuela's death. Perhaps Enrique feared being assigned to another encomendero and having his people forced to move yet again and possibly merge with other groups, which could cause conflict.27 As noted, among those thought subsequently [End Page 597] to have fled and perhaps joined the rebels were some "liberated Indians"—that is, people who had been removed from their encomenderos—suggesting that the circumstances of their "liberation" might have left them more, rather than less, vulnerable to Spanish exploitation.28
The initial flight of Enrique with some of his people—probably mostly men—might have occasioned a clash of some sort with Spaniards in which several of the latter were killed.29 A more serious incident occurred when a group of Indians, presumably followers of Enrique (although he did not participate), attacked four Spaniards who had arrived by boat from Tierra Firme and were transporting gold in the area of Verapaz, killing them and retaining the gold. The town council of Verapaz sought and obtained permission from the audiencia to organize a patrol to seek out Enrique and his men. The participants were authorized to enslave any captives and receive a percentage of the gold they recovered; but instead the captain, Diego de Peñalosa, and eight other men died at the hands of the rebels, and the survivors beat a hasty retreat from the mountains.30 For some time after that incident, the Spaniards refrained from organizing punitive expeditions. The rebels for their part also avoided direct engagement, although they occasionally raided Spanish settlements and estates for tools, supplies, arms and perhaps women. Spanish authorities did not consider the so-called "war of Bahoruco"—named for the mountainous area in which Enrique and his people were located—to have begun until 1523, four years after Enrique and his followers first took flight.
Not surprisingly, from the official record we know much more about the Spanish response to the revolt than about the activities of the rebels. Over time they certainly grew in numbers, so that by the latter stages of the rebellion they constituted a sizeable and virtually independent community of several hundred that included women and children, fugitive African and Indian slaves and servants, and even some mestizos. As military pressure from [End Page 598] Spanish authorities and the militias they organized grew, Enrique shifted his base of operations, but to a great extent his tactics remained the same. Although they continued their occasional raids of settlements and estates, the rebels avoided direct engagement with military patrols to whatever extent possible and maintained carefully chosen places of refuge in the mountains that were unknown and virtually inaccessible to Spaniards, even those with long experience on the island. They cultivated crops in the mountain valleys and took advantage of other sources of food, which included not only the nearly ubiquitous pigs that had proliferated on the island since Columbus's time but also other items that Spaniards considered inedible but traditionally had formed a part of the indigenous diet.31
The rebels' ability to sustain themselves, seemingly indefinitely, from their crops and other resources stood in considerable contrast to the enormous difficulties the Spanish faced in trying to suppress the revolt. Patrols had to carry with them virtually everything they needed in the way of supplies, often including water, and could spend weeks or even months searching in vain for the elusive foe. Oidores Zuazo and Espinosa wrote in 1528 that "the rebels know the land, and so they mock the Spaniards."32 The following year they noted that the land was so rough that "for each day a pair of sandals is needed."33 The costs of organizing and sustaining these patrols were substantial, and for many years were largely borne by the island's residents.34 The audiencia encountered increasing difficulties in persuading local merchants to provide on credit the supplies needed to sustain the offensive.35
Over time, Spanish officials shifted their tactics from attempts at large-scale engagement to more targeted patrols. The oidores reported to the crown that they had at one time sent Captain Pedro de Vadillo (the same man who, according to Las Casas, had dealt so unjustly with Enrique) with three hundred armed men to Bahoruco, and Iñigo Ortiz with another three hundred. Captain Hernando de San Miguel, who eventually made contact with [End Page 599] Enrique, spent two to three years campaigning.36 The oidor Juan Ortiz de Matienzo acted as captain of a militia unit in 1523, and subsequently another oidor, Licenciado Zuazo, actually went to live for a year or so in San Juan de la Maguana in order to direct the military campaign from a vantage point close to the area in which the rebels operated. He was forced to return to Santo Domingo because of illness.37 None of these attempts had succeeded, as they wrote, "because [of] the country, its ruggedness, the lack of water and supplies." Spaniards enlisted their indigenous workers, servants and slaves as well as African slaves, who endured weeks and months of danger and discomfort seeking the elusive enemy. These men probably were conscripts. There are some references to their being paid, but it must have been a pittance. For nearly nine months of service, for example, an unspecified number of "indios y negros" of Capt. Pedro de Soria received 115 pesos.38
Eventually the officials of the audiencia concluded that small squadrons of ten to fifteen men should be stationed in strategic points from which they could respond more effectively to raids. With this strategy they attained some successes, although whether the raiders they managed to track down and eliminate were followers of Enrique is not certain. It is clear that there were other guerrillas operating on the island, although none of these groups was as well organized or enduring as Enrique's. At least one of the other rebel leaders, Tamayo, agreed to join forces with Enrique.39 Regardless of whether the Spaniards succeeded in inflicting substantial damage directly on Enrique's people, however, the activities of the newly-constituted more flexible and mobile patrols seem to have had an impact, making it more difficult for Enrique to operate in areas as close to Spanish settlements as formerly.40
Enrique proved a capable and cautious leader who left little to chance in defending his people. He combined to great advantage his background and position in indigenous society with knowledge of Spanish ways gained during his childhood. In 1529 President Ramírez de Fuenleal, who had participated [End Page 600] in the suppression of the Muslim rebellion in Granada,41 wrote that "in truth this war is not like what occurred in the past on this island nor of the character of those of New Spain and Cuba and other parts, because here it is war with Indians educated and raised among us, and they know our forces and customs and further use armor and have swords and lances."42 Captain Barrionuevo, the man who conducted the negotiations that resulted in a peace accord in 1533, noted that Enrique was highly regarded, and feared, by his followers. The long survival of his community testified to his attention to critical detail. The Spaniards who eventually entered his camp discovered that all the chickens had their tongues cut out, "so they won't crow," and reported that Enrique often forbade anyone from making fires to avoid giving away their location.
Las Casas describes how Enrique ensured his community's survival by decentralizing and shifting their settlements:
For his security he maintained good order and precautions. He had them cultivate their fields and make their straw huts in many different parts of those mountains . . . which would be ten or twelve leagues from one another, where the women and children and elderly would live at times in one and at times in another. . . . They had many dogs to hunt hogs, of which there were and are an infinite number . . . and he also ordered them to raise many chickens; and so that no one would find them from the dogs' barking and the cocks' crowing he had a certain pueblo made in a hidden place for the dogs and fowl. And no more than two or three Indians with their wives [lived] there to care for them, and he [Enrique] and his people always kept well away from there.43 [End Page 601]
Peace negotiations took place in two main phases, five years apart. In 1528 Captain Hernando de San Miguel, a veteran campaigner against the guerrillas and long-time resident of Hispaniola, finally made contact with Enrique. Apparently the Spanish captain had achieved some success against the rebels, destroying crops and inflicting sufficient damage that Enrique agreed to speak with San Miguel, although he exercised his usual caution.44 Las Casas described their initial meeting as follows:
One day one and the other found themselves in such proximity that, neither being able to harm the other, they spoke. . . . This was possible because one group was on the peak of a mountain and the other was on the peak of another, both very high and very close, except that they were divided by an extremely deep crevasse or canyon.45
Regardless of whether their initial discussion took place in such dramatic circumstances, an agreement was forged. Although ultimately the negotiations of 1528 failed because Enrique distrusted the Spaniards' good faith, it is significant that the terms he and San Miguel reached essentially were identical to those that Enrique would accept in 1533. In the five intervening years, then, the real obstacle to peace might have had little to do with the terms themselves but rather hinged on the circumstances in which Enrique would accept official Spanish guarantees.
According to those terms, Enrique and his people would be allowed to settle as a free and independent community on lands of their choosing and would receive material aid in the form of livestock and equipment.46 In return, Enrique would hand over to Spanish authorities any fugitive Africans or Indians who subsequently attempted to join him. This latter provision is important, both because it became virtually standard for future agreements made between colonial officials and groups—thereafter almost always African—in rebellion, and because Enrique's acceptance of this clause has been controversial among his historians and interpreters. For those who romanticize the cacique, his agreement to act on behalf of Spanish authorities against other would-be fugitives [End Page 602] and rebels is problematic, as it tarnishes his image as a freedom fighter and defender of the rights of oppressed people. For those who take a more cynical view, Enrique's acceptance of this provision merely confirms his opportunism. Neither view seems a fair reflection of the times and circumstances that forged Enrique's struggle (or the struggles of subsequent rebels). Most likely this provision was a deal breaker for the Spanish. By the time Enrique finally acceded to a peace accord in 1533, he had had five years in which to accept the limitations on what he could achieve in the way of freedom and security. His choice was more pragmatic than cynical.
The 1528 negotiations broke down as a result of San Miguel's rashness. The two leaders—the cacique and the captain—agreed to meet on the coast, each accompanied by eight men. Apparently in an excess of enthusiasm for the much-desired conclusion to the rebellion, San Miguel went well beyond the stipulated conditions for the meeting, bringing many more men than agreed, beating drums and firing salvos from a cannon in premature celebration. Probably suspecting betrayal, Enrique faded back into the interior. Although Las Casas claims that Enrique directed his men to offer the Spaniards hospitality and to return the gold they had stolen many years before, most likely San Miguel and his companions arrived to find a deserted beach, although they did recover 1500 pesos of gold that the Indians left for them.47
During the next couple of years one or two more attempts were made to contact Enrique and negotiate an end to hostilities. Fray Remigio de Mejía, who probably knew Enrique from his childhood at the Franciscan monastery at Verapaz and therefore was thought to have a good chance of being allowed to speak to him, played a key role.48 Accompanied on what probably was his second attempt to negotiate with Enrique by a cacique named don Rodrigo (apparently he had previously joined Hernando de San Miguel in trying to make contact), fray Remigio's mission was a disaster. Followers of Enrique who encountered the Franciscan and his entourage killed don Rodrigo—possibly seeing him as a traitor or double agent of sorts—and stripped fray Remigio of all but his underclothes. Although it is not clear, possibly the Spaniards failed altogether to make direct contact with Enrique, although Las Casas claims that Enrique subsequently spoke to the Franciscan [End Page 603] friar and apologized for the mistreatment he had suffered.49 This gloss on the events would be in keeping with Las Casas's portrayal of Enrique as a principled and restrained leader; but it also seems reasonable to assume that he bore no personal animus against the Franciscan, given his apparently positive feelings about Christianity—of which more will be said later.
In these same years violence and hostilities were escalating, probably both because Enrique's group was feeling increased pressure from Spanish patrols and because other rebels—African as well as Indian—were stepping up their own independent operations. Following the failed negotiations with Hernando de San Miguel, followers of Enrique were said to have raided some estates, including one near Yaquimo belonging to San Miguel himself, where they killed a number of people, most notoriously a young child.50 Targeting San Miguel's estate might not have been a coincidence but rather a deliberate effort to exact revenge for his recent seeming betrayal. Running out of funds, credit and manpower, in desperation the officials of the audiencia appealed to the crown for assistance, which arrived in 1533 in the form of an expedition headed by Francisco de Barrionuevo, who was accompanied by 187 men.
Barrionuevo was no newcomer to the islands, having lived there for some years before returning to Spain. He was commissioned to pacify Enrique's rebellion while en route to take up his appointment as governor of Tierra Firme. The men he brought with him, however, were mainly farmers and artisans who lacked any experience in the Indies. By the time they arrived local officials already had concluded that these men would accomplish little in Hispaniola's unfamiliar terrain, commenting that "it seemed inhumane to send them to suffer in those mountains." Nonetheless, they welcomed them as much-needed potential settlers, lodging them in the homes of Santo Domingo's principal officials and citizens. Instead of relying on the untested newcomers, Barrionuevo and the oidores chose a group of thirty-five locals considered to be the ablest and most experienced members of the seasoned patrols that had fought against Enrique, together with an equal number of indigenous servants (indios domésticos), as well as guides, an interpreter, and two relatives of Enrique's "whom he has trusted on other occasions." These relatives were women who, according to the audiencia judges, were happy to participate in the negotiations.51 [End Page 604]
Captain Barrionuevo and his company sailed from Santo Domingo to the coast of Bahoruco, where they spent two and a half fruitless months during which they found no trace of the rebels. He finally sent word to an official in a nearby town asking for more guides. This official not only sent the requested guides, but also an Indian in his custody who was said to have fled from Enrique; it was this man who led the company to where Enrique and his people were. Along the shores of a large lake (today named for Enriquillo) they encountered some of Enrique's followers in canoes, among them the mestizo son of a Spaniard. Barrionuevo explained that they sought an audience with Enrique and sent one of the Indian women with the men in canoes to act as his representative. Apparently as a result of her efforts Enrique agreed to see the captain the next day. He arrived with an entourage of eighty heavily armed Indians but without his wife, whom he claimed was ill. According to the oidores' report to the king, Barrionuevo
gave him the letter and pardon of your majesty and another that this audiencia wrote to him and they were together for a couple of hours where they had much discussion, he [Enrique] offering his apologies for past things and recognizing the favor that your majesty did in pardoning him. And they agreed on the peace so that from there onwards he would be a friend of the Spanish Christians and that all the blacks and Indians that came to his pueblo he would send back. . . . When he [Barrionuevo] finished reading him the letter in which your majesty names and titles him don Enrique, all the Indians called him don Enrique.52
Enrique agreed to return any Africans or Indians who tried to join him, having been promised he would receive four shirts for each African he delivered. The following day Enrique returned to bid farewell to Barrionuevo, sending some people to accompany the captain to his ship. They returned with wine, oil, biscuit and other things that Barrionuevo sent for don Enrique.
This meeting marked the beginning of the process by which Enrique was reconciled with his long-time adversaries. The judges of the audiencia were all too aware of how easily the peace negotiations could break down should any action on the part of Spaniards give the appearance of bad faith, so they were determined to move cautiously and offer Enrique all possible assurances.53 Enrique sent a representative with Barrionuevo to talk to the audiencia officials, who also issued orders that the peace accord be proclaimed [End Page 605] publicly in all the towns near the Bahoruco and in Santo Domingo as well. Members of Barrionuevo's company informed the audiencia that Enrique had told them that he would be happy to continue discussions with the captain and with them, but wished to wait until the peace was certain. The audiencia conferred with the bishop of Venezuela and other officials and prominent citizens as well as Barrionuevo, who together concluded that the best way to proceed would be to send another representative to visit Enrique. They chose for the mission Pedro Romero, who had been leader of one of the patrols and had accompanied Barrionuevo. Apparently Enrique "had shown that he trusted him because he knew him from past times."
Romero traveled, again by sea, with the man whom Enrique had sent with Barrionuevo as well an interpreter, Martín Alonso, and two other high-ranking Indians. This time the audiencia sent gifts—"clothes for himself and his wife and captains and high-ranking Indians and images and a bell for his church as this is what he requested from Barrionuevo, who told us that he found crosses placed in all his houses." They again sent wine and other provisions from Castile as well as tools, goods that were valued at 120 pesos.
The audiencia reported Romero's visit to the king as follows:
This Pero Romero went there and the cacique received him very well and took him to his pueblo, where he had his wife and the rest of the wives of his other Indians, which he says is in a place where the Spaniards had never arrived and one so rugged and hidden that that he tells us that it was almost impossible to find and that near it there are huge basins, something like caves, for him and his people to hide if they are found. And that there are around 400 people, young and old. Romero stayed in that pueblo eight days where he says they greatly enjoyed themselves with him. . . . And at the end he [Enrique] wrote a letter to this royal court expressing gratitude for the favor that your majesty had shown him in ordering that he be pardoned and that from here on he would be a very good friend of the Spaniards and that in order that they would have no suspicion of Indian rebels that he would travel all the sierras of the island and collect Indians and blacks in rebellion and would send them to the pueblos to which they belonged. And thus he delivered to Pero Romero six blacks that he had, which he brought to this city and in compensation for which we sent certain equipment and wine and other things that he had requested with an Indian captain of his.54
Enrique inquired through Pedro Romero as to when he could expect Franciscans to come to baptize the children among his group. He also apparently [End Page 606] wanted to see his female relatives who had accompanied Barrionuevo again, but they had departed with the captain.55
With Romero's successful visit audiencia officials began to feel more confident that Enrique would accept the peace offer as genuine. They remained cautious, however, prohibiting under threat of execution anyone from attempting to see Enrique without authorization because, they noted, such interference had caused his rebellion in the first place.56 This might have been a reference to the offenses committed by the young Andrés de Valenzuela, which Las Casas considered to have started Enrique on the road to revolt. Whether the reference was to Valenzuela's actions or to some other incident, this was the only official acknowledgment that some hostile act had instigated the rebellion.
Enrique made his own efforts to verify the authenticity of the peace accord, visiting the nearby town of Azua.
Two leagues from the town of Azua the cacique don Enrique with fifty armed Indians had come and sent to them word with one of his captains that he had come to see the magistrates of that town and to know for certain about the peace and that they should come there because he wanted to speak with them. And certain citizens of that town and other citizens of this city [Santo Domingo] that at that time were there . . . who were some thirty-five horsemen went to where don Enrique was and found him and his people in a wood and they embraced him and talked and assured him as well as they could, because it seemed to them that they were fearful, and they confirmed that the peace was real and that we had had it proclaimed . . . with which they say he showed much happiness. And they were there with him and his people more than five hours and they gave him food. . . . When Barrionuevo was with him and now that he has been with the people from Azua, although both times they have invited him to eat, he has not wanted to eat or drink anything, and his Indians have eaten and drunk everything the Spaniards have given them.57
Don Enrique signaled his final ratification of the peace accord by visiting the city of Santo Domingo in the summer of 1534. He brought an entourage of twenty of his men and captains to the capital, where they spent nearly three weeks being entertained in the homes of the audiencia judges and other leading citizens. Don Enrique with his wife and people settled on lands designated [End Page 607] for them near the town of Azua. Don Enrique again offered the audiencia his services in reining in other rebels, especially his former captain Tamayo who had not acceded to the peace accord, volunteering two of his captains to lead the search who would be designated as alguaciles.58
The audiencia officials finally had achieved what they had hoped. Enrique and his followers were settled within the sphere of Spanish society, and Enrique had promised to help suppress further disorder in the countryside. The officials tactfully deflected the king's suggestion that Enrique be exiled to Spain, pointing out his usefulness in maintaining peace and order on the island and noting that "although he is an Indian he seems to be a person of good understanding."59 At this point Enrique perhaps embodied their hopes for the future of the island, in which the much reduced Spanish and indigenous groups would coexist productively and peacefully.
Despite lingering pockets of resistance, Enrique's reconciliation with Spanish authorities more or less brought to an end the era of indigenous rebellion on the island, although don Enrique himself did not long enjoy the fruits of peace. In September 1535 the audiencia reported Enrique's recent death to the king, noting that he had "died as a Christian, having confessed and received the sacraments, and instructed that he be buried in the church of the town of Azua, which is near his pueblo." In his will Enrique had named his wife, doña Mencía, and his cousin Martín Alfaro his successors. Martin Alfaro went to the audiencia to confirm their title "so that the Indians will have them for their caciques."60
Notwithstanding his early death, the historic and unprecedented peace accord between Enrique and the Spanish crown and its officials can be seen as the symbolic culmination of reforms in the treatment of Hispaniola's native people that had long been demanded by clergymen like Bartolomé de Las Casas, but only partly implemented by the Jeronymites shortly before Enrique rebelled. With the drastic reduction of the indigenous population and the departure from the island of so many Spaniards who headed for more promising destinations on the mainland, in the 1520s Hispaniola already was on its way to becoming a fairly insignificant backwater of the Spanish empire, with little wealth and a mostly mestizo and African population. The mestizo group had grown steadily since the beginnings of Spanish settlement on the island. [End Page 608] Barrionuevo noted with disdain their increasing numbers among the island's population, recommending to the crown that they should be shipped off to Castile and out of trouble. The presence of a mestizo among Enrique's men has been noted, and it would not be at all surprising if others numbered among his followers. Barrionuevo mentioned that he had encountered another mestizo leading a group of Indian rebels in another part of the island.61 Complaints such as Barrionuevo's about the disruptive presence of mestizos were, of course, not at all uncommon among authorities in Spanish America, but perhaps it should be noted just how early these official grumblings began.
Surely the tangible results of Spanish-indigenous coexistence and interaction at the individual and personal level in the form of marriage and concubinage as well as working relationships had an impact on both groups and would account for informal and undocumented channels of communication that might have existed between Enrique and Spanish society. The extent to which Enrique received aid and information from Indians living in towns and on estates who had not joined his ranks has been debated, although certainly the audiencia officials believed that Enrique had extensive contacts and informants in both city and countryside.62 There has been little speculation, however, about ties that he might have maintained with members of Spanish society. Pedro Romero, who spent over a week with Enrique after Barrionuevo's visit, was said to have been a long-time acquaintance. Romero had been married to an indigenous woman since around 1503. He testified in 1517 that over the years he had had many dealings with the caciques and other Indians of the island, both in their villages and in Spanish settlements.63 Enrique's willingness to make overtures to the vecinos of Azua and his acceptance of their assurances that the offer of peace was genuine also suggest that he might have forged some ties with local residents near the Bahoruco, if perhaps only indirectly, well before peace was concluded. [End Page 609]
The role that Enrique's female relatives played in the peace negotiations also underscores the importance of indigenous women as potential intermediaries between Spanish and indigenous society. They not only bound the two groups together in their roles as wives, concubines and mothers of mestizo children, but possibly were viewed by Spaniards and Indians alike as neutral parties who could work on behalf of both sides to achieve accord without any stigma of betrayal. Hence we note the success of Enrique's female relatives in acting as intermediaries in Barrionuevo's negotiations, as compared to the disastrous earlier fate of a high-ranking male, don Rodrigo, who acted in the role of emissary (don Rodrigo, it will be recalled, accompanied fray Remigio and died at the hands of Enrique's followers).
Finally, the story of Enrique and his people underscores the role that religion and the clergy played in bringing the island's remaining indigenous and Spanish residents closer together. Enrique not only died as a Christian, he apparently tried in some fashion to live as one as well. His desire to have the children of his community baptized suggests that there were limitations on the autonomy of his group. To lead Christian lives they needed priests—and, therefore, some connection to Christian society.
By the time peace was concluded, Enrique's community surely was quite diverse. Although presumably his original group of thirty or forty followers had belonged to the sharply diminished chiefdom that perhaps went back to his great-aunt Anacaona, over time Enrique attracted many others, including not only people from other chiefdoms but more than likely Indians who had been brought from other areas to Hispaniola, as well as Africans and mestizos. Thus, Enrique's group in some ways became a microcosm of the demographic changes that had overtaken the indigenous society of Hispaniola, although it did not include any Spaniards. Enrique's community in rebellion both exemplified the vast demographic shifts of the early Caribbean and offered a sort of model for interethnic collaboration.
The accommodations that had been reached by the island's remaining Spaniards and Indians might have resulted in the emergence of a largely mestizo society. That society, however, already had been overwhelmed and transformed by forces that Spaniards themselves had set in motion. As indigenous populations dwindled in the Caribbean, Spaniards imported hundreds and then thousands of African slaves who very soon proved even more difficult to control than the region's native inhabitants. Rather than signaling the initiation of a period of relative peace on Hispaniola, the peace accord concluded with Enrique instead marked a shift in Spanish concerns away from the remaining indigenous population and toward the African [End Page 610] group. In October 1535, for example, barely two months after Enrique's death, the audiencia requested a reduction in the tax on gold so that the mines would not be abandoned "which would provide occasion for the blacks to revolt which would be difficult to suppress."64
By the mid-1540s complaints about Africans and fears of disorder and rebellion on their part were proliferating.65 In July 1543 Melchor de Castro, notary for the mines, claimed that no one wanted to look for new mines because of danger from rebellious slaves. "The island is large and full of cows, wild hogs and other staples," he wrote, "and so the blacks in revolt have security and food."66 Castro had personal experience of the problems of controlling slaves, since in early 1522 his estate had been attacked and he had been wounded participating in the suppression of an uprising launched by twenty Wolof-speaking slaves on the sugar estate of Diego Colón that quickly spread to other areas.67 Twenty years later the island's slave population, estimated in 1542 at 25,000 to 30,000, together with possibly two or three thousand maroons, might have been twenty or thirty times the size of the Spanish group.68 These figures may be high, but there is little question that by this time Africans far outnumbered Spaniards, Indians, or mestizos.
Spanish officials readily found parallels between the growing threat from rebellious African slaves and Enrique's revolt. Audiencia judge Licenciado Cerrato wrote to the crown in September 1544 that "it would be preferable that there weren't so many ladino slaves born in this country, because they are a bad nation, very daring and badly inclined, and they are the ones who mutiny and make themselves captains. The bozales aren't like this. The same was seen in the business of Enrique."69 Notably, many escaped Africans were active in the Bahoruco, where Enrique and his people had entrenched themselves.70 A Spanish patrol sent to the region in pursuit of a notorious leader named Sebastián Lemba found evidence that local Indians were collaborating [End Page 611] with the African rebels. In October 1547 oidores Zorita and Grajeda wrote of Lemba in terms very similar to those once used about Enrique. They called him a "black [who was] overly skilled and very understanding of the things of war and whom all obeyed and feared." By the time they wrote this letter the much-feared Lemba had been tracked down and killed.71
Although Enrique relinquished several escaped African slaves to Spanish authorities when he agreed to the peace treaty, no doubt these were not the only Africans who had spent at least some time with Enrique or other Indian groups in revolt.72 Fugitive and rebellious Africans in Hispaniola surely had learned something either directly or indirectly from Enrique or other indigenous rebels about survival in the island's mountainous terrain and how to conduct guerrilla warfare against Spanish society. Enrique's followers, after all, had achieved a substantial degree of independence and succeeded in forming a self-sustaining community, as the number of small children among them would attest. Spaniards, for their part, in face of the new threat from the very people they had imported in hopes of solving the island's labor problems, sought to apply some of the lessons they had learned from Enrique's revolt. In July 1546 Licenciado Cerrato wrote to the crown about a man named Diego de Campos, "who made himself captain of blacks," and who had been active in the Bahoruco region and carried out raids in San Juan de la Maguana and Azua, targeting sugar mills (where large numbers of African slaves were employed):
This Diego del Campo was feared in all the land. Pursued he took refuge in the house of a gentleman who lives in Puerto de Plata, asked him to pardon him and he would serve as captain against the rebels, and it was granted because of his great reputation as a brave man, because having him on our side everyone feels secure. He has begun to serve, and by now has brought to their owners many blacks who had fled.73 [End Page 612]
If Enrique's revolt in some ways serves as a coda to the dismal story of the experience of Hispaniola's native people under Spanish rule, what other historical significance does it have? The early Caribbean is often seen as epitomizing the worst extremes of Spanish exploitation and mistreatment of the native inhabitants of the Americas. Enriquillo's revolt and its outcome, however, reflect the emergence of a concept of Spanish-Indian relations that emphasized accommodation and recognition of at least limited rights for indigenous people. The revolt in itself did not create such an ethos. From an early time royal policy had promoted Spanish-Indian intermarriage in the Caribbean, and certainly the island's clergy had long advocated more just and humane treatment of the Indians. Yet it might be argued that the outcome of Enrique's revolt and the peace accord reached with him demonstrated the viability and practical benefits of accommodation and of putting an end to the harshest forms of exploitation.
The peace accord in itself was significant, in that it was the first occasion—and the last for at least two centuries—on which Spaniards concluded a treaty with an undefeated indigenous group that had long resisted Spanish authority.74 The treaty seems to have set a precedent for future dealings with relatively small, usually geographically circumscribed, groups in revolt throughout the Americas. Ironically, however, in the future these groups would be predominantly African rather than native American.75 The rule of thumb that Spaniards did not negotiate with Indians, whom they considered to be their subjects by virtue of conquest or negotiation, did not change. Not until the eighteenth century, when Spaniards attempted to expand into areas of North and South America where they had to deal with indigenous groups that were independent of their authority, were they again forced to recognize the sovereign rights of such groups.76 Viewed in this light, Enrique's [End Page 613] achievement in compelling the Spanish crown and its officials to accept the independence of his people and their right to lead their lives free of abuse and exploitation was extraordinary.
Consideration of this episode underscores that the history and historiography of the early Caribbean merit greater attention within the larger context of the development of early Spanish America. It suggests that significant precedents for or similarities to later situations and policies that would figure prominently in early Spanish American societies existed in the islands and that continuities of practice and direct connections bound developments in the Caribbean to those in mainland Spanish America for a very long time. The details of Enrique's struggle, his apparent (unsuccessful) attempts to use the Spanish legal system for redress of his grievances, the alliances that he forged with other Indians, mestizos, Africans on the island, the connections that he might have maintained with members of Spanish society even while in revolt, and the evolving views of members of the audiencia and other officials in Hispaniola as expressed in their policies and opinions, all suggest that in the course of two generations a diverse and complex society had taken hold in Hispaniola. Drastically depopulated and economically depressed as it was even before Enrique rebelled, the Spanish Caribbean nonetheless remained what it had been from the very outset—a significant site for the rapid evolution of varying modes of interaction among the representatives of a range of groups brought into close proximity as a result of European expansion across the Atlantic.77
