The Taino Indian Village Story

1968

A True Story

Written 6/2011, and rewritten 1/2020* 1679 Words*

Howard Yasgar

This story happened on my second trip to Dominican Republic, I was there to look for Columbus’s second colony, the one he called Isabella.

This time I had a copy of a 1776 map, that a friend had “Borrowed” from the archives in Haiti.

I had talked my best friend Miguel Marquez into making the trip with me.

Miguel was a Cuban refugee, and he was very nervous about having our plane hijacked back to Cuba.

On this trip I was carrying a new Whites metal detector, and when we arrived in Santo Domingo all the Customs Inspectors remembered us from our last trip and referred to us as the returning Communists.

By using the 1776 map, we easily found where the colony of Isabella should have been, but it was now being used as a farmer’s field.

We had a small shovel and I started digging a few holes in the field, I was looking for anything, like an old building foundation.

It was hot, and it wasn’t long before both Miguel and I were soaked in sweat.

Also, we had now attracted a group of local people that were curious as to what we were doing.

Standing In the group was a young boy who looked to be about fourteen years old, he became very vocal in reminding us that what we were doing was against the law, and we shouldn’t be removing any artifacts.

Not wishing for a confrontation with the kid or the military police, we decided to quit digging and we walked to the ocean’s edge to take a dip.

The water was very shallow and it was just like laying in a hot bathtub.

As we lay there in the water, we noticed the same young boy was watching us from a distance.

Miguel called him over, and asked his name, he said it was Juan Peralta.

Miguel started talking to him and soon they were both joking around.

Turns out Juan was just curious about us, I don’t think he had ever met Cuban ands American foreigners like us before.

We all walked over to our car and I took out the metal detector.

Juan had never seen a metal detector before, so I let him use it’ and he was thrilled.

It wasn’t long before Juan was our best friend, and I was able to talk to him about Christopher Columbus.

It turned out that Juan knew quite a bit about local history, and he mentioned that 475 years ago the local Taino Indians had hidden in the mountains from the Spaniards.

He said some of the hiding places were still there, and they had been untouched by anyone, since the Taino’s had abandoned them.

I couldn’t believe it, as I knew people have been scrutinizing everything the Spaniards had done in the Dominican Republic for over the last 475 years.

I felt it would be impossible for there to be a Taino Indian village site that no one knew about.

Juan said he would be happy to show us one of the places if we wanted to see it, so we agreed to meet him early the next morning.

We drove with Juan deep into the Cordillera mountains, and we drove and drove until there were no more roads to drive on.

When we stopped, I could see a mountain in the distance that looked like a haystack, it reminded me of the Haystack mountain ski resort in Vermont.

This Haystack mountain had a trail leading to the top, and I could see smoke coming from several small huts along the way.

I hefted the metal detector and Miguel put my SX 70 camera in his pocket and we followed Juan up the

mountain trail.

When we reached the top of the mountain, I was disappointed, there was nothing there that indicated there was ever an Indian village, but it was very apparent someone was farming there now.

All the ground on the mountain top had long plowed furrows with piles of rocks at the end of each furrow.

Since there presently was nothing growing there, and since we had gone to so much trouble to get to the place, I set up the metal detector and I started walking along the furrows.

It wasn’t long before I saw a strange looking rock, it was flattened on four sides.

I picked it up, and it was obviously a stone the Indians had used for rubbing on something.

Looking around to make sure Juan wasn’t watching me, I put the rock in my pocket.

That’s when I heard Juan and Miguel calling me, they were on the other side of the mountain top and both were waving their arms.

When I got there they were both excited, it was the Taino Indian dump site they were standing on. It was where the Indians had thrown all their trash.

There were piles of oyster shells, mixed with broken clay bowls. I knew Juan wouldn’t let me take anything, so when his back was turned I put a couple of small pottery shards in my pocket.

We all walked over to a large shade tree to get out of the sun, and that’s when I saw Juan looking at something.

There was someone on horseback coming, it appears they had come up the backside of the mountain and the rider on a white horse was gently picking their way towards us.

Juan nervously said he was sure it was the “Don” (the landowner).

As he got closer, the rider looked like a Mexican actor I had seen in the movies.

He was dressed in black fancy embroidered pants and jacket, and he was wearing a large heavily embroidered sombrero.

He appeared to be a short fellow, and he didn’t look like a Dominican, he looked more like what I envisioned the original Spaniards had looked like.

He was sitting on an elegant leather saddle, that had a machete in a fancy silver lined scabbard hanging off it.

I walked over and raised my hand to shake his but he didn’t make a move.

I apologized for our not having asked his permission, and I told him we were from Miami and Juan was our friend and he was just showing us the mountain.

I could see Juan was now standing far in back of us, he still appeared to be nervous.

As we spoke the fellow dismounted, and removed his machete from its scabbard.

He didn’t remove it in a menacing way, and I could see it was a heavily engraved ceremonial machete.

He walked over to a fallen log and sat down.

I sat down on his right side, Miguel sat on his left, and Juan remained standing way behind us.

I told him I was studying all about Christopher Columbus, and what he did in the Dominican Republic.

The fellow said all his property was from an original Spanish land grant, and he said his family had descended from the original Spaniards that came with Columbus.

As he spoke to us he was using his machete to poke the ground in front of us, and all of a sudden he dug up the rubber bottom part of someone’s old shoe.

Miguel, the comedian, couldn’t resist making a joke, he said, “Mira, el zapato de Christobal Colon”. (Look, the shoe of Christopher Columbus), we all had a good laugh.

As he kept playing around with his machete in the dirt, suddenly there was a loud klinking noise, as his machete tip lifted a stone out of the ground.

I was amazed, he had just uncovered the most perfect polished stone axe head I had ever seen, it was a museum quality piece for sure.

As he picked it up, he said to us, it was probably worth a lot of money in Miami.

I said I wouldn’t know, but I knew that the conversation was heading it was time for us to leave.

I took the SX 70 camera from Miguel and as we stood in the shade of the tree I took two pictures of the fellow and they came out perfectly, he was all smiles.

He asked would mind coming to his home and taking a picture of his family.

He gave Juan directions to get around to the other side of the mountain.

By the time we got to his house, we could hear a ruckus going on with his kids screaming and crying.

Then the entire family came out, they were all dressed in their Sunday best clothing.

His wife was spreading corn all around the yard, to attract their Guinea hens for a family portrait.

I didn’t realize it, but the sun was way too bright, and I didn’t have a clue as to how to use the SX 70 camera in sunlight, so none of the pictures came out.

It was all extremely embarrassing, I apologized and we quickly got in our car and left the haystack mountain.

Juan said, somebody must have seen us going up the mountain and ran to inform the owner.

Because the clothing the owner was wearing wasn’t normal, it was put on to impress us with his importance.

I’m sure that untouched Taino Indian village site is still there in the Dominican Republic.

But if you go, better get permission from the “Don” first.