The Ten Incarnations of Adam Avatar by Kevin Baldeosingh Page A

ritual, I asked Colón many questions about the Español religion, which he was glad to answer. But his answers left me even more confused. It seemed that the cacique Ferdinand was not the chief priest – the main bohutu lived in another country and there was always much argument between him and Ferdinand about who ruled over the lesser bohutus . And, in the same season that Colón had come to Ciguayo, Ferdinand had begun something called the Inquisition. The purpose of this Inquisition was to make people worship the Español god by imprisoning, torturing and killing those who did not. The main targets were persons of a tribe named Jews, but there were too many of them to kill or put in the small rooms with iron bars. Many of these Jews, enough to fill seven hundred large villages, had been driven out of España. Their crime, Colón explained, was that their forefathers had killed the son of the Español god. Yet Colón had told me just days before that the god had sent his son to be killed. It also turned out that the Jews’ god was the same as the Españols’ god and that the son of this god was also a Jew.
    I doubted the sanity of these Españols.
    At this same ceremony, the cacique Ferdinand and his wife Isabella presented Colón with several of the soft barks upon which the Españols marked their words. These cloth pages, which he showed me afterwards, had both drawings and symbols. There were flowery designs on all the pages. One page, which Colón kept looking at again and again, was divided into four parts. The first two sections on top had a golden Español bohio against a red field on one side, and on the other side in a silver field there was a great golden beast with fangs and hair on its neck and enormous clawed paws. The lower two parts of the page showed on one side a silver ocean with many golden small lands and, on the other side, a golden continent and a deep blue ocean with five large golden anchors.
    â€˜My design,’ Colón told me, in the voice of one speaking about his newborn child.
    This cloth, he explained, gave him land and wealth and authority. Yet I could not tell what he loved more – the cloth or the small box filled with metal coins he had received from the cacique Ferdinand. The Españols used these coins for trading. When we went outside to the stone courtyard, one of the men from Colon’s ship ran up to him and tried to take the box away. There was much shouting and some of the cacique’s fighting-men came to Colon’s defence, so the sailor ran away. I understood that the box of coins was supposed to be given to the man who had seen Guacamari first, but Colón felt he deserved it since he had guided the ships from España to the Taino small lands.
    That was the moment when I began to mistrust Colón.
    In the following days, all the Tainos saw much of the country. We were carried everywhere to be shown to the Españols, who took great delight in touching our skins and hearing us speak, even though they could not understand us. It was a big country, whose land never ended. But it was not as beautiful as Bohio – the trees had less leaves and the grass was shorter and there were many parts where almost nothing grew. What shocked me most, however, was that most of the people in this rich country were poorer than even the least Taino. They had clothes and objects, but they did not have enough to eat and were not allowed to use the land to plant food as they wished. I could not understand how this could be so, and all the Español nobles I asked to explain simply laughed. But I understood that the land was owned only by the nobles, who were very few in number, and they told the other people, who were very many in number, where to live and what to plant. I did not understand how anyone could own the earth, which was created by the One above Yúcahu – and above the Español god, too – and who did not concern