“Let him keep it for a year,” said the pirate. “I’ll be back to get it.”
Now he enters the city of Panama, advancing among the flames, with the English flag streaming from one hand and a cutlass grasped in the other. Two thousand men and several cannons follow him. The fire turns night into day, another summer overtopping the eternal summer of these coasts; it devours houses and convents, churches and hospitals, and licks the lips of the buccaneer who yells: “I’m here for money, not for prayers!”
After much burning and killing, he moves off followed by an endless caravan of mules loaded with gold, silver, and precious stones.
Morgan sends his apologies to the governor for the delay.
(61 and 65)
1672: London
The White Man’s Burden
The duke of York, brother of the king of England, founded the Company of Royal Adventurers nine years ago. English planters in the Antilles bought their slaves from Dutch slavers; but the Crown could not permit the purchase of such valuable articles from foreigners. The new enterprise, set up for trade with Africa, had prestigious shareholders: King Charles II, three dukes, eight earls, seven lords, a countess, and twenty-seven knights. In homage to the duke of York, the captains burned the letters DY with hot irons onto the breasts of the three thousand slaves they carried yearly to Barbados and Jamaica.
Now the enterprise is to be called the Royal Africa Company. The English king, who holds most of the stock, encourages slave-buying in his colonies, where slaves cost six times as much as in Africa.
Behind the ships, sharks make the trip to the islands, awaiting the bodies that go overboard. Many die because there is not enough water and the strongest drink what little there is, or because of dysentery or smallpox, and many die from melancholy: they refuse to eat, and there is no way to open their jaws.
They lie in rows, crushed against each other, their noses touching the deck above. Their wrists are handcuffed, and fetters wear their ankles raw. When portholes have to be closed in rough seas or rain, the small amount of air rises to fever heat, but with portholes open the hold stinks of hatred, fermented hatred, fouler than the foulest stench of slaughterhouse, and the floor is always slippery with blood, vomit, and shit.
The sailors, who sleep on deck, listen at night to the endless moans from below and at dawn to the yells of those who dreamed they were in their country.
(127, 160, and 224)
Mandingo People’s Song of the Bird of Love
But let me, oh, Dyamberé!
You who wear the belt with the long fringes,
let me sing to the birds,
the birds that listen to the departing princess
and receive her last confidences.
And you, maidens, sing, sing
softly
“la, la”—the beautiful bird.
And you, Master-of-the-terrible-gun,
let me look at the bird of love,
the bird that my friend and I love.
Let me, master-of-the-splendid-tunic,
lord of raiment more brilliant
than the light of day.
Let me love the bird of love!
(134)
1674: Port Royal
Morgan
He was almost a child when they sold him, in Bristol, to a dealer. The captain who took him to the Antilles exchanged him for a few coins in Barbados.
In these islands he learned to break with one ax blow any branch that hit his face; and that there is no fortune that does not have crime for father and infamy for mother. He spent years robbing galleons and making widows. Fingers wearing gold rings, he simply chopped off. He became chief of the pirates. Correction, buccaneers. Admiral of buccaneers. From his toadlike neck always hangs his buccaneers license, which legalizes his function and keeps him from the gallows.
Three years ago, after the sack of Panama, they took him to London as a prisoner. The king removed his chains, dubbed him knight of the court, and named him lieutenant governor of Jamaica.
The philosopher John Locke has drawn up the instructions for good government of this island, which is the headquarters of English buccaneers. Morgan will see to it that neither Bibles nor dogs to hunt fugitive slaves will ever be lacking and will hang his brother pirates every time his king decides to be on good terms with Spain.
Newly landed at Port Royal, Henry Morgan takes off his plumed hat, downs a shot of rum, and by way of a toast empties the bowl over his many-rolled wig. The buccaneers shout and sing, waving swords.
The horse that takes Morgan to the government palace is shod with gold.
(11 and 169)
1674: Potosí
Claudia the Witch
With her hand she moved clouds and brought on or held off storms. In the twinkling of an eye she brought people back from far-off lands and also from death. She enabled a magistrate of the Porco mines to see his native Madrid in a mirror; and she served at the table of Don Pedro de Ayamonte, who came from Utrera, cakes freshly baked in an Utrera oven. She caused gardens to bloom in deserts and turned the savviest lovers into virgins. She saved hunted people who sought refuge in her house by changing them into dogs or cats. For bad times, a bright face, she’d say, and hunger she’d beat off with a guitar: She played her guitar and shook her tambourine to revive the sick and the dead. If you were mute she could make you speak, if you talked too much she could stop you. She made open-air love with an extremely black devil right out in the countryside. After midnight, she flew.
She had been born in Tucumán, and this morning she died in Potosí. On her deathbed, she called a Jesuit priest and told him to take from a drawer certain lumps of wax and remove the pins that were stuck in them, so that five priests whom she had made sick could get well.
The priest offered her confession and divine mercy, but she laughed and died laughing.
(21)
1674: Yorktown
The Olympian Steeds
James Bullocke, a tailor of Yorktown, has challenged Matthew Slader to a horse race. The county court fines him for his presumptuousness and warns him that it is contrary to Law for a Labourer to make a race being a Sport for Gentlemen. Bullocke must pay two hundred pounds of tobacco in casks.
People on foot, gentry on horseback: the halo of aristocracy is the dust cloud that hooves raise along the road. Horses’ hooves make and unmake fortunes. For races on Saturday afternoons, or for horsey talk in the evenings, the knights of tobacco emerge from the solitude of the plantation in silken clothes and curly wigs, and over mugs of cider or brandy discuss and make bets while dice roll on the table. They bet money or tobacco or black slaves, or white servants of the kind that pay their fare from England with years of work; but only on big nights of glory or ruin do they bet horses. A good horse is the measure of the worth of its owner, a tobaccocrat of Virginia who lives and commands on horseback and on horseback will die, flying like the wind to the heavenly gates.
In Virginia there is no time for anything else. Three years ago Governor William Berkeley could proudly remark: I thank God, there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have either for a hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them.
(35)
1676: Valley of Connecticut
The Ax of Battle
With the first snows, the Wampanoag Indians rise. They are tired of seeing the New England frontier run south and west on speedy feet, and by the end of winter they have ravaged the Valley of Connecticut and are fighting less than twenty miles from Boston.
The horse drags its rider along the ground, his foot caught in a stirrup. An arrow has killed him. The victims of the plunder, swift warriors, strike and disappear; and so push the invaders toward the coast where they landed years ago.
(153 and 204)
1676: Plymouth
Metacom
Half of the Indian population has died in the war. Twelve English towns lie in ashes.
At the end of summer, the English bring to Plymouth the head of Metacom, the Wampanoag chief: Metacom, that is, Satan, who tried to seize from the Puritan colonists the lands that God had granted them.
The High Court of Plymouth discusses: What do we do with Metacom’s son? Hang him or sell him as a slave? Taking into account Deuteronomy 24:16, the first Book of Kings 11:17, II Chronicles 25:4, and Psalms 137 to 139, the judges decide to sell Metacom’s son, aged nine, in the Antillean slave markets.
As further proof of generosity, the victors offer the Indians a small piece of what used to be theirs: In the future the Indian communities of the region, whether or not they fought with Metacom, will be enclosed in four reserves in Massachusetts Bay.
(153 and 204)
1677: Old Road Town
Death Here, Rebirth There
The body, which knows little, doesn’t know it, nor does the soul that breathes; but the soul that dreams, which knows the most, does: The black man who kills himself in America revives in Africa. Many slaves of this island of St. Kitts let themselves die by refusing food or eating only earth, ashes, and lime; and others tie a rope around the neck. In the woods, among the lianas that drape from the great weeping trees hang slaves who by killing themselves not only kill their memories of pain but also set forth in white canoes on the long voyage back to their ancestral homes.
A certain Bouriau, owner of plantations, strolls through the foliage, machete in hand, decapitating the hanged:
“Hang yourselves if you like!” he advises the live ones. “Over there in your countries you won’t have a head! You won’t be able to see or hear or talk or eat!”
Another planter, Major Crips, the harshest castigator of men, enters the wood with a cartful of sugar pans and sugarmill pieces. He seeks and finds his escaped slaves, who have gathered together and are tying knots and choosing branches, and says to them:
“Keep it up, keep it up. I’ll hang myself with you. I’ll accompany you. I’ve bought a big sugarmill in Africa, and there you’ll work for me.”
Major Crips selects a big tree, a huge ceiba, ties the rope around his neck, and threads the slipknot. The blacks watch him in a daze, but his face is just a shadow beneath the straw hat, a shadow that says: “Let’s go, everybody! Quick! I need hands in Guinea!”
(101)
1677: Pôrto Calvo
The Captain Promises Lands, Slaves, and Honors
Early in the morning, the army moves off from Pôrto Calvo. The soldiers, volunteers, and draftees are marching against the free blacks of Palmares, who are going about the South of Pernambuco burning canefields.
Fernāo Carrilho, senior captain of the Palmares war, addresses his troops after Mass: “Great as is the host of our enemies, it is a host of slaves. Nature has created them more to obey than to resist. If we destroy them, we will have lands for our plantations, blacks for our service, and honor for our names. The blacks fight like fugitives. We will pursue them like lords!”
(69)
1678: Recife
Ganga Zumba
Thanksgiving Mass in the mother church: the Governor of Pernambuco, Aires de Sousa de Castro, picks up the tails of his embroidered coat and kneels before the throne of the Most Holy. Beside him, covered by an ample cape of red silk, kneels Ganga Zumba, supreme chief of the Palmares federation.
Peal of bells, din of artillery and drums: The governor grants to Ganga Zumba the title of sergeant at arms, and in proof of friendship adopts two of his smallest children, who will take his name. At the end of the peace talks held in Recife between delegates of the king of Portugal and representatives of Palmares, the agreement is drawn up: The Palmares sanctuaries will be emptied. All individuals born there are declared free, and those who have the hot-iron brand will return to their owners.
“But I don’t surrender,” says Zumbí, Ganga Zumba’s nephew.
Zumbí remains in Macacos, capital of Palmares, deaf to the successive groups offering him pardon.
Of the thirty thousand Palmarinos, only five thousand accompany Ganga Zumba. For the others he is a traitor who deserves to die and be forgotten.
“I don’t believe in the word of my enemies,” says Zumbí. “My enemies don’t believe it themselves.”
(43 and 69)
Yoruba Spell Against the Enemy
When they try to catch a chameleon
under a mat,
the chameleon takes the color of the mat
and they can’t tell which is which.
When they try to catch a crocodile
on the bottom of the river,
the crocodile takes the color of the water
and they can’t distinguish him from the current.
When the Wizard tries to catch me
may I take on the agility of the wind
and escape with a puff!
(134)
1680: Santa Fe, New Mexico
Red Cross and White Cross
The knots in a rope of maguey announce the rebellion and indicate how many days to wait for it. The speediest messengers take it from village to village throughout New Mexico, until the Sunday of Wrath dawns.
The Indians of twenty-four communities rise. They are those that remain of the sixty-six that existed in these northern lands when the conquistadors arrived. The Spaniards succeed in suppressing the rebels in one or two villages.
“Surrender.”
“I prefer death.”
“You’ll go to hell.”
“I prefer hell.”
But the avengers of pain advance destroying churches and forts, and after a few days are masters of the whole region. To wipe off the baptismal oils and get rid of the Christian names, the Indians plunge in the river and rub themselves with cleansing amole plants. Dressed up as monks, they drink to the recovery of their lands and their gods. They announce that they will never again work for others, that pumpkins will sprout all over the place, and that the world will be snowed under with cotton.
A noose is drawn around the city of Santa Fe, Spain’s last redoubt in these remote regions. The chief of the Indians gallops up to the walls. He is armed with arquebus, dagger, and sword and wears a taffeta strip he found in a convent. He throws down at the foot of the wall two crosses, a white and a red one.
“The red cross is resistance. The white, surrender. Pick up whichever you choose!”
Then he turns his back on the besieged enemy and disappears in a puff of dust.
The Spaniards resist. But after a few days they raise the white cross. A while back they had come seeking the legendary golden cities of Cíbola. Now they begin the retreat southward.
(88)
1681: Mexico City
Juana at Thirty
After matins and lauds, she sets a top to spinning in the flour and studies the circles it draws. She investigates water and light, air and things. Why does an egg come together in boiling oil and separate in syrup? Forming triangles of pins, she seeks Solomon’s ring. With one eye clamped to a telescope, she hunts stars.
They have threatened her with the Inquisition and forbidden her to open books, but Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz studies the things that God created, which serve me as letters as this universal machine serves me as book.
Between divine love and human love, between the fifteen mysteries of the rosary that hangs about her neck and the enigmas of the world, Sor Juana has set up a debate; and she passes many nights without sleep, praying, writing, when the endless war starts up again inside her between passion and reason. At the end of each battle, the first light of dawn enters her cell in the Jeronimite convent and helps Sor Juana remember what Lupercio Leonardo said, that one can both philosophize and cook supper. She creates poems on the table and puff pastry in the kitchen; letters and delicacies to give away, David’s-harp music soothing to Saul as well as to David, joys of soul and mouth condemned by the advocates of pain.
“Only suffering will make you worthy of God,” says the confessor, and orders her to burn what she writes, ignore
what she knows, and not see what she looks at.
(49, 58, and 190)
1681: Mexico City
Sigüenza y Góngora
Since the end of last year, a comet has lit up the sky of Mexico. What evils does the angry prophet announce? What troubles will it bring? Will the sun like the great fist of God crash into the earth? Will the oceans dry up and no drop of water remain in the rivers?
“There is no reason why comets should be unlucky,” says the wise man to the terrified people.
Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora publishes his Philosophical Manifesto Against the Stray Comets That the Empire Holds Over the Heads of the Timid, a formidable indictment of superstition and fear. A polemic breaks out between astronomy and astrology, between human curiosity and divine revelation. The German Jesuit Eusebio Francisco Kino, who is visiting these regions, cites six biblical foundations for his affirmation that nearly all comets are precursors of sinister, sad, and calamitous events.
Kino disdainfully seeks to amend the theory of Sigüenza y Góngora, son of Copernicus, Galileo, and other heretics; and the learned Creole replies: “Would you at least concede that there are also mathematicians outside of Germany, stuck though they may be among the reeds and bulrushes of a Mexican lake?”
The Academy’s leading cosmographer, Sigüenza y Góngora has intuited the law of gravity and believes that other stars must have, like the sun, planets flying around them. Calculating from eclipses and comets, he has fixed the dates of Mexico’s indigenous history; and earth as well as sky being his business, he has also exactly fixed the longitude of this city (283° 23’ west of Santa Cruz de Tenerife), drawn the first complete map of the region, and told it all in verse and prose works with the extravagant titles typical of his time.