Guaízas part II: "Guaízas are a cacique's best friend."

Part two of the triptych on the guaízas. Last week I explored some of the material properties of the guaíza, but what was the object used for? I think there are multiple answers to this question, but I will focus on two for this week’s episode of Angus’s Artefacts.

You might have guessed correctly that the guaíza (with or without gold or guanín inlays) was some sort of ornament. We know of its ornamental function from the perforations on many of the guaízas, similar artefacts, available ethnohistorical information and a rare depiction of a guaíza on a petroglyph at Caguana, Puerto Rico (see picture above). Although exceptions would have existed guaízas would have been worn in one of three ways: (1) as pectoral pendants probably together with feathers and other beads, (2) as part of cotton belts together with other beads and (3) as part of headbands. You can imagine that these bright objects were conspicuous centrepieces of a rich set of adornments that consisted of body paint, feathers, cotton, precious stones and perhaps some precious metals.

In our mind such a costly display of riches immediately conjures the notion of a powerful man or woman and therefore the guaíza has always been seen as one of the regalia of a cacique. Only one excerpt of the ethnohistoric records — once again by Las Casas — speaks about the high status of the guaíza (paraphrased here): “They took these faces that they called guaízas out from their colliers to place them over the heads of their lords and kings, suspending them with two strings like in the manner we suspend the mitres of our bishops.” We should be careful, though, to base too much on this one statement: the first Spanish chroniclers were often blind for  uses of “elite objects” by people of the supposed indigenous lower classes. There is an additional argument if one wants to connect the guaíza to persons of higher status. Through a structural analysis of the placements of the different petroglyphs at the Caguana ballcourt José Oliver has argued that the petroglyph above depicts a mythical prototype of a cacique. This would indeed lend more credibility to an interpretation of guaíza-like ornaments as a marker of high status in the Greater Antilles.

Guaíza from the Dominican Republic

In my Master thesis I used the historic descriptions of interactions between indigenous caciques and Columbus to suggest that aside from their use as conspicuous, possibly elite ornaments they have a, to me much more interesting, social function: as gifts from one powerful individual to another. The historic descriptions make mention of a wealth of different objects being exchanged between the indigenous people and the Spaniards, especially those from the First and Second journey to the Caribbean while the relations where still relatively peaceful. However, the guaíza is one of the only objects that is mentioned continuously in exchanges from the indigenous people to Columbus. Perhaps the most telling is how the exchange of guaízas seems to have structured the relationship between Columbus and Guacanagarí (Wa-ka-na-ga-RI) who was a cacique on the north-coast of Haiti with an ambivalent role in the ethnohistorical narrative of the early years of contact.

Courtesy of K. Deagan

According to the chroniclers Las Casas and Oviedo, Admiral Colombus has several friendly encounters with Guacanagarí in the final days of 1492, just before Christmas. When, in the night before Christmas Day Colombus’s flagship the “Santa Maria” comes aground on a reef and has to be abandoned, Guacanagarí helps Columbus rescue the cargo of the ship and offers him shelter in his village. Also, on Christmas day a huge feast is held in honour of Columbus and the other Spaniards and at this feast the first guaíza is ceremoniously presented to Colombus, which he and the chroniclers have interpreted as a sign of respect and friendship. The following day the “Pinta,” one of the other ships, comes back to collect the Spaniards and continue the journey. Columbus gives the orders to use the flotsam of the wreck of the Santa María to build a small fort in the vicinity of Guacanagarí’s village that he calls “La Navidad” — “Christmas” in remembrance of the fateful shipwreck on Christmas day. He leaves a small group of his men to man the fort.

Dominican Republic

When Columbus returns on his second journey in November 1493 with a larger fleet he finds that La Navidad is burnt to the ground and his men are nowhere to be found. Of course, Colombus goes to Guacanagarí who is at rest in his hammock in his village to demand an explanation. As an explanation Guacanagarí states that a rival cacique came and attacked the Spaniards and that he himself tried to help them but got wounded in the attack, which is why he needs to rest. The documents are unclear on whether the Admiral believed his story or not and neither has it become clear through archaeology what exactly happened at La Navidad between December 1492 and the return of the Spaniards in late 1493 — in fact we do not even know its exact location, but read Kathleen Deagan's excellent book on Puerto Real if you want to know more about this. What we do know from the historic sources is that after this “little hiccup” Columbus and Guacanagarí’s bond of friendship continues.

This is exemplified by the large number of guaízas that he receives mainly from Guacanagarí but also from other caciques at the new Spanish settlement of Isabela. We know exactly when Columbus received these guaizas and what their appearance was because all the gifts received at Isabela have been catalogued by Queen Isabella I’s treasurer, Sebastián de Olaño, who accompanied Columbus on his second journey. The image I get from this is that Guacanagarí and other caciques continuously doted Colón with gifts, among which many guaízas, with the goal to bind him to their cause as their ally. Especially the guaízas were well loved by the Spanish crown because many of them contained gold-like inlays.

Quantities and different types of objects presented to Columbus at La Isabela

When these objects were brought to Europe they were probably destroyed and their inlays were smelted to be minted into coins. From an art-historial and archeological standpoint it is a great shame that so many guaízas and  similar objects were destroyed just for their gold-like inlays. However, I can’t help but feel a strange sense of vindication that when many of these gold-like inlays and objects were smelted they proved to be worthless for minting: a good quantity of the indigenous objects that were smelted turned out to be of the guanín gold-copper alloy and the Spanish smelters were not able to separate the copper to obtain the pure gold.

Even though many guaízas would have been destroyed there is still much to learn from the objects that are on display in museums and are recovered by archaeologist's in the field. One of these things is the question why guaízas featured so centrally in indigenous-outsider exchange relations such as those between Columbus, Guacanagarí and many other caciques? Why did they make such excellent gifts from an indigenous perspective? I’ll delve deeper into this complex issue in next week’s post.

Guaízas: Face to face with the indigenous Caribbean

Last week I gave a lecture for a Master’s course on something that had been on the forefront of my mind for a long time, but for a long time really hasn’t: the subject matter of my 2005 Bachelor and 2007 Master’s thesis. Although I was a bit rusty I really enjoyed revisiting the artefact type that was my intellectual bread and butter for three years. That’s why I felt that I should give them a place of honour as this and the next few weeks “artefact of the week.” So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, I present you the guaíza.

Cuban guaíza from the Gabinete de Arqueología, Havana

When Caribbean archaeologists are speaking about a guaíza (pronounce: wa-i-sa)  they are talking about a 3-12 cm large shell object that depicts a human face — sometimes with animal features —, crafted either from the lip of a Lobatus gigas shell or from a complete, conical shell like smaller Lobatus spp.. The faces that are displayed on these shell objects are all unique “individuals”, but they all belong to a range of one artefact-type. This is apparent from their shared features: deep-set eyes, prominent cheekbones and a big set of grinning teeth. Very often they have additional motifs that I interpret to be some kind of headband, sometimes sporting a big jewel as centrepiece, and earrings. For those who are more familiar with Pre-Columbian Caribbean iconography they look like a “normal” indigenous depiction of a face (in a Chicoid style), but for those who see them for the first time the faces often reminds them of miniature skulls (and you wouldn’t be far off, but you’ll have to wait a few weeks more for my explanation of your intuition).

Altos de Chavón, Dom. Rep.

As you might have understood from its exotic sound and form, the word guaíza cannot be found in any European language, but is of local, indigenous origin (probably from a language belonging to the Arawakan language family). Faithful readers of my blog might have suspected this already, but the indigenous people of the Caribbean left no written sources and as far as we know all speakers of the indigenous language(s) of the Greater Antilles have all been eradicated by the violence, disease and famine following the beginning of the contact period. Normally, a language that has no speakers and no written sources does not get preserved. How then, you might wonder, did archaeologists come to identify these shell faces with the local, indigenous term guaíza?

This is because these shell faces were among the first objects that Columbus brought back from the Caribbean after his first voyage. During his “homecoming” party he presented several of them to the Spanish queen and king, Isabela I and Ferdinand II. In his description of that ceremony at the court in Sevilla Bartolomé de las Casas (one of the main chroniclers of Columbus’s journeys) mentions that: Colón brought […] guaycas, which were masks/faces made out of fish bones in the manner of pearl and contained a great quantity of fine gold.” This rare direct translation of an indigenous word in a Spanish source lets us connect this term with an artefact that still can be recovered by archaeologists during excavations today.

Cuban guaíza

What also becomes apparent from the description by Las Casas is that — at least some of —these shell faces were covered with gold. In actuality this might have been true gold — caona in the indigenous tongue — or it might have been the guanín of which I spoke in last week’s post. Some have suggested that there were faces that consisted completely of gold/guanín, but these have not been preserved. Although they haven’t been preserved either it is more likely that most guaízas were made of shell or maybe even some other material like wood or cloth that was then inlayed with gold/guanín at central places such as the eyes and the mouth. The remains of resin used to glue the metal inlays into place in the picture of the Cuban guaíza above is evidence of this.

It is a popular misconception that archaeologists are all after the “gold X” (coin, amulet, idol, city, etc.). Although I do profess that a golden guaíza would be the find of my lifetime it is not the fact that some of them might have been covered in gold that made them worthy of my continued attention for a 3 year stretch. So, why are they such tantalizing artefacts? Find out next week…

Artefact of the Week: Poporos, Saving the World Since the First Millenium AD.

Poporo from the Gold Musem in Bogotá, Colombia

The artefacts of the week before (the Jamaican historic pipe and the Cuban Ídolo del Tabaco) were both connected to a certain drug. One was obviously linked to “sexuality” while the other is a symbol of power. This artefact of the week combines all these aspects and then some into one object.

This Colombian poporo of the archaeological culture we know as Quimbaya was probably made somewhere in the 4^th to 7^th century AD. It looks like it is made of gold, but it is actually tumbaga or guanín, which is an alloy of 80% gold and 19% copper with minor inclusions of silver. It is therefore yellower than most pure gold, much harder and has a distinct odour. Contrary to what may be expected, among indigenous peoples objects made from this alloy were far more appreciated than those made of pure gold . Before European contact the indigenous peoples of Colombia were widely renowned craft masters of tumbaga and pure gold objects and their beautiful creations can be found far from their Colombian homelands.

Aside from the fact that the material from which this particular object was made was highly valued, the poporo would have been an important personal artefact that was probably used for the ingestion of burned coca leaves and lime. We know this because using poporos in this way is a still surviving, longstanding tradition among Colombian indigenous peoples, especially those living in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. Part of the traditional dress of the men of these peoples consists of a gourd and a stick — probably organic poporos were used in the past as well, but they were not preserved, leaving only a few durable, gold examples. The gourd is filled with a mixture of burned coca leaves and lime which is scooped out of the gourd with the stick. Ingesting this mixture has a slight narcotic effect  — although in no way comparable to the effects of using the party-drug cocaine, which also has coca leaves as raw material. A man will use his gourd multiple times per day in this way.

Taken from Reichel-Dolmatoff 1990

From ethnographic fieldwork, among for example the Kogui of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, we know that a poporo is given to a boy at his passage into adulthood and that he will not be willingly separated from his poporo for the rest of his life. The stick will be swiped clean after each use, so, over time, lime accretes on the top of the gourd. Therefore the poporo of an old man will have a thick crust of lime as can be seen in the picture below. So, it is actually possible to estimate the age of a certain person by looking at his poporo. I think that the only object that comes close to having a comparable close bond with its owner in our society is the wedding ring, although even these are becoming more and more easily disposable.

Still, a poporo is not only important for the personal identities of these people. It is also a vital tool for safeguarding the future of all of creation. First of all the act of dipping the stick into the gourd is seen as analagous to the act of procreation (you don’t need Freudian psychology to recognize the suggestive nature of this act) and it is actually believed that the gourd and stick are a micro-model of the layout of the cosmos.

Taken from Reichel-Dolmatoff 1990

Additionally, in the belief of the resident indigenous peoples the Sierra Nevada is literally the heart of the universe and the indigenous priests, called mamás among the Kogui, are its caretakers — more about this in this TED presentation by anthropologist Wade Davis (at 10 minutes 30 seconds). So, if anything goes wrong with the Sierra Nevada, every living thing everywhere will suffer. Nowadays the mamás guard the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta by raising global public awareness on the importance of the Sierra Nevada and similar natural resources. Aside from this they actively contribute to the well-being of the cosmos by carefully manipulating ‘time cycles’ that act as the gears in the mechanism of life. In order to do this the mama needs to become 'master of time', which, among other things, is achieved by ingesting the mixture of coca and lime inside the poporo. Experienced mamás claim they can actually phase out of time and while being phased out can see and manipulate the time cycles that makes the cosmos run.

It is not known for sure if these ideas were present among indigenous cultures of the first millennium AD, but the fact that poporos were made of expensive and durable materials such as tumbaga suggests that it was already an important artefact at that time. Additionally we know that trying to understand or have a measure of control over cyclical processes of time has great antiquity in many places in the Caribbean basin and that those persons who were adept at these sorts of things often held important political and religious offices.  It is not unlikely that the poporro has already been used to save the world from harm since before the birth of a certain other saviour of humanity.