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Julián Carrisoli’s legitimacy with the Indians had been based on his adoption by a respected Tule elder. Because Julián had taken an Indian wife, his son Luis enjoyed an even firmer foothold within the indigenous culture. Under the Tule system of matrilineal descent, Julián Carrisoli’s offspring would trace their lineage through their mother’s family, a situation that would have obtained whether Julián had been a full-blooded Tule Indian or a European. 2 | |
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Luis’s familial connection to the Tule had resonance on both sides of the cultural divide that he tried to bridge; his parentage could be deployed to advantage in either the Spanish or the Indian realm. In fact, the exact details of his cultural paternity lost their specificity in Indian country, and the story of his parentage was subject to change. For example, as I discussed in the previous chapter, Julián Carrisoli was a polygamist with several Indian wives when he made contact with the Spanish in 1635. In his later years Julián–as well as his superiors–studiously forgot this transgression. A generation later, his son, seeking confirmation in his father’s offices, informed officials in Panamá City and Madrid that his mother had been nothing less than the empress of all of the Darién. 3 | |
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Luis Carrisoli concocted this patently false assertion because he knew that his embellished lineage would resonate more deeply with the officials on the King’s Council of the Indies than his real one would. His aim–which was to make the long-term conquest of the Darién recognizable, predictable, and palatable to the imperial bureaucrats in Madrid–would certainly be assisted by this grandiose fabrication. The marriage of his father with the empress of the Darién Indians would bring to mind the dynastic unions that had joined several of the Spanish conquistadors in Peru and Mexico with the indigenous ruling classes during the sixteenth century. 4 | |
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Luis Carrisoli aimed to reorient the Spanish conception of the Darién, changing his superiors’ image from one that saw the region as a chaotic wilderness teeming with hostile Indians into an indigenous empire with an illustrious political lineage. If the Darién Indians could be proven to possess a viable usable past, then perhaps their future within the Spanish empire could be equally viable. 5 From the Tules’ vantage point Luis’s actions were equally creative, inasmuch as he worked to gather under his command a community of young men who were willing to perform as a militia unit. Carrisoli’s goal was a modest one: to have at his disposal a reliable party of men who could be led into battle whenever the isthmus was threatened. Luis hoped to force the indigenous culture to conform to the Spanish preconceptions of it, and to place on his own shoulders the mantle of a native warlord, whether the Tule had previously recognized such a position or not. The young man hoped to place himself, at least in the eyes of the Spanish officials to whom he wrote, at the apex of the indigenous tribal system. Tribes were, after all, organized around the warriors who empowered them to carry out the acts of aggression and warfare necessary to their survival. | 5 |
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Luis Carrisoli’s attempt to create a new nexus of Tule power had many unintended consequences. Several village leaders established contact with the Spanish and other European intruders independent of Luis Carrisoli’s mediation. These men, acting on their own, would challenge his claims to primacy within the Hispano-Tule structure that he had established. They could organize parties of troops as easily as he had, and they did not need his mediation in order to convince Europeans entering the region that they had all of the attributes of a powerful native lord. | |
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The Carrisolis were the first to craft pieces of the puzzle to fit into a somewhat coherent pattern of indigenous leadership that Spanish officials could recognize. But nothing about that puzzle required a Carrisoli’s presence to hold it together. A Tule village leader simply needed a modicum of local support and the ear of a Spanish official or a foreign intruder in order to lay claim to a position of leadership within the province. | |
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This chapter focuses on how Luis Carrisoli staked his own claim to indigenous and imperial leadership in Indian country and cemented a tribal system in eastern Panamá where none had existed before. Chapter 4 studies the activities of a cadre of Indian leaders who arose to challenge Carrisoli’s monopoly on the foreign affairs of the province. Those Tule men had succeeded in creating their own axes of local power and would soon upset the position Luis had fashioned for himself. A Mestizo Spanish Official | |
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On June 17, 1667, the presidente of the Audiencia of Panamá, Don Juan Pérez de Guzmán, named Luis Carrisoli maestre de campo of the province of the Darién, an office that had fallen vacant due to the death of his father, Julián, who had held the same office. 6 The young Carrisoli, however, was awarded a yearly salary of only 300 pesetas, half of what his father had enjoyed. Although the presidente mentioned the good will that the Indians of the province held toward the young man as a sign most positive in his favor, he still saw fit to award him the position on a probationary basis. Luis would need to carry out tangible services to the crown before Spanish officials in Panamá City would fully accept the Carrisoli family as the bearer of a tradition of honor and good service worthy of instant royal reward. | |
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The persistent attacks of the buccaneers would give Luis Carrisoli many opportunities to prove his worth to his superiors. Whenever Spain and England were at war after 1660, Portobelo and Panamá City, the only two cities worthy of the name on the isthmus, came under attack by pirate forces. These two settlements were not considered important due to their wealthy populations or their inherent worth, though they did straddle strategic Caribbean and Pacific sea-lanes. The isthmus was such a tempting target for the pirates primarily because it served as the great warehouse at which the riches of the Spanish system of monopoly trade were stored and exchanged as they awaited shipment back to Seville. 7 | 10 |
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When news arrived that the galleon fleet was en route to the isthmus, officials at Portobelo issued an official summons to the merchants at Lima and Quito and set in motion the preparations for the Portobelo fair, at which the merchants would trade for the goods from Spain and Europe. 8 The goal of the pirates was to attack Portobelo when the fleet was at anchor and the silver was temporarily stored in local warehouses. Sir Francis Drake had established this reliable pattern of operations in the sixteenth century. 9 | |
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The failure of Drake’s expedition of 1595, however, exposed the dangers that freebooters faced in attempting to operate on the isthmus for an extended period of time when the fleets were not in port. 10 The entire lesson of Drake’s failure, however, would not be fully established until the middle of the seventeenth century, when the activities of Captain Henry Morgan would make clear to all future buccaneers that the cities of the isthmus were of no value in themselves, having precious little treasure to yield. Profits would come only to those crews that chose a strategy of high mobility and were willing to operate for extended periods on land. Seaborne operations in the Caribbean had to be followed by an overland journey across the isthmus so that operations in the South Sea could be initiated and the riches of Peru could be plundered. | |
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Morgan came close to achieving the ideal of greatest mobility, executing several attacks, primarily land operations, on the isthmus. Morgan’s crews comprised large numbers of ex-soldiers recruited at Jamaica, and his assaults on Portobelo in 1668 and 1671 and his capture of Panamá City in 1671 were examples of well-coordinated amphibious operations. 11 Although Morgan became a hero in England when he captured and destroyed Portobelo and Panamá City in 1671, his men failed to carry away an impressive amount of plunder from the burning cities. When the spoils were divided at the close of the campaign, a single man’s share was calculated at a mere £15 to £18. From a financial point of view, therefore, Morgan’s dramatic assaults on the isthmus amounted to Pyrrhic victories, the rewards of which did not justify the risks incurred. 12 | |
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Morgan’s attacks, and those carried out in the following decade by the remnants of his crews, provided opportunities for Luis Carrisoli to prove himself as an active defender of the Spanish crown. It was a chance for the young man to show that the foundations laid by his father had provided him with means he might use to defend the colonial center at Panamá City. Julián Carrisoli’s project of incremental colonial control had secured the Darién, and, it could be argued, freed the region’s indigenous warriors to be deployed by his son to defend the entire colony. | |
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Throughout the early years of the 1670s, Luis strove to convince the Audiencia and the crown that he deserved the same salary that his father had enjoyed. 13 Luis Carrisoli would soon have definite actions to back up his previous requests, for on December 15, 1670, the presidente learned that Morgan’s expedition had set off from Jamaica, and he immediately ordered Luis to come to Panamá City with a hundred Indian auxiliaries for the conservation and defense of the first city of the isthmus. 14 | 15 |
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Luis was to come with his Indians and their weapons, and they were expected to be trained and prepared for militia service. Most important, Luis was ordered to take care to leave affairs in the Darién in good order, for it would be a grave disaster if a rebellion erupted in Indian country while Carrisoli was bogged down in Panamá City. Luis and his squadron of Indian archers arrived in a timely fashion, and although a hundred men could do nothing to turn the tide against Morgan’s forces, the agility with which he responded to the summons was noted. Several months after the danger passed, the presidente informed the crown of his good services. On November 26, 1672, 15 and again on December 31, 1673, 16 Carrisoli was commended by the crown for his great contributions to the defense against Morgan’s incursion. His Indian archers were praised for having performed their duties in an orderly fashion and for boosting the morale of the besieged at Portobelo. In addition, after Panamá and Portobelo had fallen into enemy hands, the young maestre de campo worked to organize the Spanish refugees who had amassed at the Chagres river, ignoring the impulse to turn his back on a lost cause and return to the relative safety of Indian country. 17 The Carrisoli Family, Royal Rewards, and Status | |
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In the years following Morgan’s attack, the Spanish crown made several outward displays of gratitude to Luis Carrisoli. By those acts the crown recognized the Carrisoli family as a prized asset in the consolidation of the Darién. In 1676, for example, Luis’s salary was finally upgraded to match what his father had enjoyed, 18 and royal gratitude embraced Luis’s brother Antonio as well: he was praised as a man willing to share the burdens of defending the Spanish position in Indian country. In recompense for these many valuable services, the crown recognized a responsibility to the Carrisoli family as an entity. 19 | |
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Evidence that the crown was extending preference to the entire Carrisoli clan, and not just to Luis or his brother as individuals, appeared in the provisions made for Isabel Carrisoli, Luis and Antonio’s sister. Following a petition the brothers had placed before the Audiencia on November 26, 1672, the crown granted Isabel Carrisoli 4,000 pesos if she wished to enter a convent, or 6,000 pesos to be used for her dowry. The crown allowed her to choose either option in consultation with her family. 20 | |
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The royal grant to Isabel was an extraordinary act on several levels, and it reflected the Carrisolis’ desire to make their mark within the stratified social order at the administrative center in Panamá City. There were no convents in the Darién to which Isabel could be entrusted at that time, nor were there marriage prospects in Indian country that would justify the provision of so large a dowry. Luis and Antonio had clearly decided that their services to the crown, in conjunction with their royal offices and titles, entitled them to the treatment afforded to a family of high social standing. They wished consideration as men of importance on a provincial scale, and prestige of the sort they desired could carry weight only in Panamá City. 21 | |
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The young men took the story of their mother’s exalted birth very seriously, and in their request on behalf of their sister Isabel they used it to lay claim to higher social status within the Spanish world. The petition was a clear announcement to the members of the Audiencia that the Carrisoli brothers wished to be regarded as the leaders of an honorable family that had, by design, mixed its Spanish blood with that of the imperial rulers of the Darién Indians in order to direct those Indians along the path to hispanicization. The brothers wished to put to rest any lingering doubts Spanish officials might still be entertaining about their allegiances, and their desire to ensure their sister’s ability to marry a Spaniard of a suitably elevated station was aimed to allay those doubts. 22 | 20 |
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The Carrisoli brothers illustrated that they not only understood but had also internalized the Iberian code of family honor. Even though they had the blood of an Indian empress coursing through their veins and lived among the untamed savages of the Darién, the Carrisolis wanted there to be no question that their family was made up of good Catholics who thought like Spaniards, acted like Spaniards, worshipped as Spaniards did, and, most important, wished to provide for their dependents in the manner in which Spaniards of their status provided for theirs. Frontier Exploration | |
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In keeping with the image of the ideal frontier official that he was creating for himself, Luis Carrisoli next undertook an expedition to explore the Chocó region of the kingdom of New Granada. 23 If the Carrisoli brothers wished to announce to their superiors that they were utterly indispensable to the operation of Spanish colonialism throughout the isthmus and that the conquest of the Darién was going according to schedule, the pacification of an equally problematic neighboring region would be an ideal way to do it. | |
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Leaving his brother Antonio in command in the Darién, Luis entered the Chocó in 1675 with a party of Tule auxiliaries, the entire group being supplemented by some men who had had prior commerce with the Indians of the area. 24 The expedition was brief and had been planned to make a display for Luis’s superiors rather than to impose any change on the Chocó’s condition as a troubled region of the empire. Entering the Chocó without having been specifically ordered to do so seems to have been meant to show the imperial bureaucrats that Luis Carrisoli could assess local situations on his own and take action to regulate local situations without burdening the crown. The Chocó entrada was the logical next item on an increasingly impressive résumé signaling to the presidente in Panamá City that what threats remained to the Carrisolian colonial project were external ones. | |
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Carrisoli’s expedition, although presented as a bold thrust into unknown, unexplored territory, was actually a foray into terrain familiar to him. Despite the fact that local officials in Panamá imagined that the Indians at the Gulf of Urabá were of an entirely different tribe than those living in the Darién, in reality Tule Indians inhabited the region that straddled eastern Panamá and the Kingdom of New Granada. Although Luis Carrisoli’s expedition simply extended his reach further eastward, in his report of his activities he took care to note that he had made contact with the untamed "Chocó Indians" and a tribe he called the "Zitara." These groups of Indians were, in fact, Tule who lived at the Gulf of Urabá. 25 Gifts for the Indians: The Paniquiri and the Mora | |
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The first recorded gift exchange between a Spanish official and the Darién’s Tule Indians occurred in 1676. The presence of this official record of a gift exchange reflected the local administration’s acceptance of the conventions that were thought to apply in eastern Panamá and beyond. 26 The Carrisolis, father and son, had learned through experience that the loyalties of individual Indians, even those to whom they were related, had to be continually reinforced through the open exchange of ceremonial gifts. Luis Carrisoli convinced the presidente of Panamá that the paniquiris, textiles exchanged with the Indians as gifts, should be paid for with royal funding, and hence the practice appeared in the colonial record. 27 | 25 |
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The practice of gift-giving smoothed friendly overtures to strangers or unallied leaders, and it could initiate or seal a peace between former enemies. The appearance of gifts called paniquiris and moras in the Spanish colonial records occurred after 1676, the time when foreign intruders were at their most active in the region. Not coincidentally, this corresponds to the period in which the newly minted chieftains were coming to the fore and establishing operations independent of Luis Carrisoli. During their interactions with the English buccaneers, Indian leaders used skills, tools, and weapons acquired and honed through their dealings with the Carrisolis. 28 | |
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By the middle of the eighteenth century gift exchanges had become an integral component of Spanish-Tule relations. As I will discuss in chapter 8, by that time the act had been transformed from an entirely indigenous practice into an accepted facet of the colonial relationship. The paniquiri and the mora would mutate, changing from an entirely personal affair carried out between individuals in Indian country into a bureaucratized practice marked by the entries in the Audiencia’s ledger books. The usage of the Spanish colonial administration on the isthmus adapted to recognize the paniquiri and mora as a part of its vocabulary of empire. In the seventeenth century the exchange items known as paniquiris and moras were cloth goods that the Tule fashioned into clothing, but by the end of the eighteenth century a Spanish encyclopedist defined the terms simply as the garments of clothing worn by the peoples of the isthmus. 29 The dictionary definition illustrated the manner in which indigenous language, ideas, and practices insinuated themselves into the discourse of the metropolis. The magisterial Diccionario was designed, like Wafer’s text, to serve practical imperial purposes as a repository of useful knowledge available to colonial planners and administrators in Spain and the Americas. The compendium encapsulated the available knowledge deemed vital to the operation of the empire, and any official who had consulted the tomes before being posted to the isthmus would arrive there armed with the knowledge of what the exotic Tule paniquiri and mora were. 30 | |
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The records reflect that Luis Carrisoli received cash from his superiors in Panamá City that he used to purchase textiles and other cloth items to exchange with Indian leaders. Rather than serve as a cash transaction made with the chiefs in which the textiles were seen as marketable commodities, the paniquiri and mora were gift items proffered by Spanish officials in Indian country. The freely given textiles were necessities the Tule did not manufacture in the quality or quantities the Spanish could provide. | |
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After the treaty process that formalized the leadership positions of the new Tule chiefs in the 1740s (see chapter 7), Indian leaders demanded the paniquiris and moras as part of the compensation packages that comprised their administrative salaries, and, most important, those leaders accepted the gift in the form of a cash payment. By this point in the relationship the paniquiri and mora had become a fully colonial entity and had become unmoored from the Tule definition and usage it had once carried. No longer an exotic innovation formalized by the Spanish and carried out by the Carrisolis, it had become part of the common language used in the practice of Spanish-Indian relations. | |
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In the seventeenth century the paniquiri and mora had single, Tule meanings that the Carrisolis were privileged to comprehend. In the world girded by exchange in which the Tule leaders operated, a paniquiri or a mora was not to be quantified into the fixed sums of cash that had purchased the textiles, nor was the exchange to be made on regular or fixed dates. Gift exchange was a fluid process that took place whenever leaders came into contact: a host offered food, shelter, and fellowship to his guest, who in turn provided items brought with him in exchange. 31 | 30 |
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A Spanish official could not rest assured after having distributed paniquiris to the men he had assessed to be the most important Indian leaders. The very next day a crisis could arise in the form of a pirate invasion, or a rift could change Indian allies into enemies, eventualities that would make an outreach to new leaders necessary, requiring new gifts. In addition, leaders whom one considered allies or clients would need to have these alliances reinforced and renewed, a matter especially vital in a time of crisis. 32 The Carrisolis were looking for allies during a crisis, while the Tule leaders looked for assurances that they were interacting with a reliable partner who understood and would protect their interests. | |
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Julián Carrisoli and his son Luis had lived for so long in the region that they understood the importance of gift-giving and exchange in Tule society. They also understood, although they did not pass this information along to their superiors, that the Tule were a widely dispersed people who were not organized under a hierarchical system of coercive, small-scale chiefdoms. Father and son both strove to present a narrative of gradual and incremental progress in their management of Indian affairs to their superiors. 33 Relations with allied groups were maintained and solidified; exploration and diplomatic effort continually brought outlying tribes into the fold as allies; and the number of Indians willing to accept Christianity was continually rising. According to this official story, 34 it would only be a matter of time and persistent effort before all of the tribes living on the isthmus and in the nearby regions would be added to the roster of Tule leaders and peoples who pledged an allegiance to the Carrisoli family. When that occurred, the once-troublesome Darién could be declared conquered. | |
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The reality of what was being accomplished through the Carrisolian process of incremental diplomacy and gift-giving was not completely removed from the official story they told, but the distance between the two was great enough for them to be read as two distinct narratives. A member of the king’s Council of the Indies, who would read many similar dossiers in a day, could probably not distinguish the official from a truer or more objective version. The presidente in Panamá City, by contrast, might make the distinction only after long personal experience, or following a thorough and careful survey of the region. In reality the Carrisolis were engaged in the gradual collection of Tule leaders under their personal influence and allegiance. Julián Carrisoli’s adoption had made him a known entity to other Tule leaders, while his son, through his Tule blood and lineage, could operate from a slightly stronger position. | |
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The Carrisolis acted upon a tight, circular syllogism, pushing it to its logical and dangerous conclusion. Their reasoning was as follows: (1) The Darién Indians comprised a number of finite tribes, each with a specific leader. (2) It seemed possible, given their standing within one of the tribes, to come to an arrangement with each of the other leaders. (3) Therefore, the entire indigenous population of the Darién could be placed under Spanish administration once a sufficient number of such agreements had been made. Following the syllogism provided a dangerous course; its perils became exposed most starkly when the possibility appeared that perhaps the Indians were not organized into separate autonomous tribes. In short, the Spanish colonial project in Indian country consisted of the collection of self-styled leaders of an Indian polity known as the Darién Indians that did not actually exist. | |
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Neither Carrisoli had reported to their superiors that they were engaged in a process of attaining, and holding on to, individual autonomous Tule leaders as allies. Their reports instead described their endeavors as the harvesting of Indian souls for the Catholic faith, which lays bare the dichotomy at the core of the Carrisolian colonialism operating on the ground in eastern Panamá. On one hand, the Carrisoli clan made use of their connections in Indian society in order to manage the Indians’ relationship to Spanish authority. On the other hand, the problem inherent in constructing a coercive colonial structure through indigenous leaders who possessed neither hierarchical nor coercive power doomed the endeavor to fail, even if the futility of the effort would not become readily apparent for many years to come. | 35 |
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Luis Carrisoli’s policy of maintaining a strong personal presence in Indian country by establishing his position as a gift-distributing war leader was not an innovation over which he retained a monopoly. Buccaneers wishing to use the Darién as a base from which to attack the Spanish realms in South America also used this method in order to draw upon Tule auxiliaries in their own projects. 35 As they had for Luis Carrisoli, these attempts bore fruit for the pirates. European outsiders searched assiduously for reliable Indian allies, and, due to their success, by the close of the seventeenth century the Spanish had to concede that they could not commit the resources necessary to conquer the Tule. | |
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The Carrisolian diplomatic program placed the least cultural pressure on the Indians, in that the acquisition of alliances did not lead to Spanish intrusion into the Tule villages. Leaders did on occasion agree to make villagers available to settle the reducciones, but these Indians were volunteers who retained cultural ties to their home villages, which neither the Carrisolis nor the missionaries were able to penetrate. Although they described their actions in language meant to bring to mind the activities of the sixteenth-century conquistadores, the scope of what the Carrisolis were actually doing on the ground was, in the end, rather modest. 36 | |
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In spite of this fact, Julián Carrisoli was able to convince his superiors that his methods and actions were sound, even in the face of persistent Tule rebellions and the stubborn refusal by individual bands of Indians to allow missionaries to enter the region. The chasm between the reality and the reportage was deep and wide, as the rising of 1651 made evident. The chasm was also on display when the murders, attacks, and indifference suffered by Dominican, Augustinian, and Franciscan missionaries in the 1660s and 1670s are taken into account. 37 This period, ominously, coincided with that in which Julián Carrisoli was so generously rewarded by the Spanish crown on several occasions. | |
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Official acceptance of the Carrisolian narrative is explained by the utter lack of options open to the Spanish. The pirate invasions that followed Morgan’s attack of 1670 provided the perfect opportunity for Luis Carrisoli to prove to his superiors that he was an indispensable imperial asset. During a period in which foreigners were making constant incursions into Indian country, he was the only Spanish-appointed official with a foothold in the region who had any standing with the native groups. And if Carrisoli informed his superiors that gifts were required to keep the Indians from assisting the pirates, then the Audiencia would provide for those gifts. In 1676 the sum of 485 pieces of eight were paid out to provide paniquiris for the Tule, and in 1680, 600 pieces of eight were paid out to Luis Carrisoli "for different things which were brought in order to be distributed amongst the Indians so that they will act against the pirate invaders, and to reduce the Indians to friendship with us." 38 | |
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Spanish officials clearly understood that Luis Carrisoli was carrying out acts of diplomacy in which expensive, and possibly profligate, gift-giving was central. They assumed, however, that Carrisoli was gathering his Indian friends to the "Spanish side," and that if he kept vigorously to his project the number of Indians on the "Spanish side" would eventually have to outnumber those locked into commerce with their enemies. In reality, Luis Carrisoli needed the paniquiris in order to solidify and reinforce the amity of the Tule leaders whom he had already reported to be on Spain’s "side," for Spanish allegiances were being established and nurtured on an expanding indigenous model, not an imposed European one. Adding to the difficulties were the foreign interlopers who also sought Indian allies to aid in their activities, and who came to the region with their own gifts, paniquiris, and moras to distribute to Indian leaders. As a final component of this novel and fluid system, the large number of competitors on the ground multiplied exponentially the level at which Tule villages interacted with outsiders. Tule leaders and, in some cases, leres came forward and proved themselves adept at managing interactions with those outsiders. 39 English Literary Creations of a Tribal Darién | 40 |
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The bands of buccaneers that entered the isthmus in 1680 were not engaging in first contact encounters with the indigenous population of the isthmus, but they stubbornly proceeded to act and describe their activities as if they were. 40 Lionel Wafer, introduced in the first chapter, constructed an exemplary martial aristocrat named Lacenta, a man who loved hunting as much as he enjoyed the perquisites of indigenous rule, was a gracious and generous host, and was ultimately prepared to offer Wafer the hand of one of his daughters in marriage in order to entice the pirate into remaining in the Darién as his royal guest. 41 | |
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The Lacenta of Wafer’s New Description was a literary creation who stood as an exemplar of the kind of sturdy Indian man on whom English-speaking intruders could anchor their plans to plant a colony or harass the Spanish. Because alliances with the Indians were a necessity in order to counteract Spanish influence in the region, Lacenta and other leaders like him would be ready to serve the English interest. Luckily for the intruders, the Darién Indians were organized under a formal tribal structure, and it was equally fortunate that the tribe’s aristocratic leaders were open to English influence. | |
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Wafer had been attached to a party of 332 men under the command of Captain John Coxon that sacked Portobelo in February 1680. Three other men from this buccaneer band wrote accounts of their experiences, and although the writers all shared Wafer’s understanding that the Indians had been vital to the success of their activities, their depictions of Tule leaders were less credible than Wafer’s, though of similar literary value. The texts were written by an anonymous "W. D.," Basil Ringrose, and Bartholomew Sharpe. | |
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The accounts agree in reporting that Indian auxiliaries were of vital importance to the buccaneers. Young men increased the armed strength of the pirate bands by acting as warriors; guides provided practical assistance; and Tule villages provided food and hospitality. After the Portobelo raid, Indian informants pointed the pirates in the direction of their main target in the Darién, the gold-rich town of El Real de Santa María. 42 Where the accounts diverge from one another is in their description of the indigenous political system. | |
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Two Tule leaders named Andréas and Antonio accompanied Coxon’s buccaneers from Portobelo to the Darién, and when, after the sack of El Real de Santa María, John Coxon defected from the main band, the chiefs and their people left with him. The accounts disagree as to the level of authority these men wielded within the Indian culture, with the anonymous W. D. reporting that Andréas was in fact the emperor of the Darién, and Ringrose stating that Andréas was a lieutenant under a greater king of the Darién. 43 | 45 |
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W. D.’s text makes very brief mention of Andréas, stating that the Indian’s primary use to the pirates was in providing intelligence about the nature of the Spanish forces in the region. 44 The author did register some surprise when he learned that the emperor of these Indians, who had been rumored to be the blood enemies of the Spanish, had a Christian name. W. D., recognizing that his earlier statements about the hatred of the Indians for the Spanish were perhaps challenged by this information, speculated that "some footsteps of Christianity had been planted in [Andréas’s] country by the Spaniards, and that either he or his ancestors had been by them baptized, though at present they seemed to regard but little what belonged unto Christian religion." | |
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Ringrose’s text provided a much more detailed narrative relating to the negotiations with the "king" of the Darién, and it even included a description of the kind of gift-giving that was required in order to conduct diplomacy in Indian country. This king, a man whom Ringrose markedly differentiated from W. D.’s "emperor" Andréas, was described as "wearing royal robes" and a "crown of small white reeds." 46 The king’s children, and all the Indians present, went bareheaded before the monarch in a sign of deference and respect, and the text recorded that "with these Indians we made an exchange, or had truck as it is called, for knives, pins, needles and other such like trifles; but in our dealing with them we found them to be very cunning.… The King ordered us to have three plantains, with sugarcanes to suck, by way of a present. But, when these were consumed, if we could not truck we must have starved, for the King himself did not refuse to deal for his plantains." 47 | |
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The published pirate accounts all wished to establish that the marauders had some legal basis for carrying out operations on the isthmus. This was especially important during the late seventeenth century, a moment of rapprochement between the English and Spanish governments that had recently resulted in a treaty in which the two nations promised to respect the legality of each another’s territories in the Americas, a practice that banned the commissioning of Caribbean privateers. 48 Legal privateering required a letter of marque from a regal personage, and the descriptions of the pirates’ own treaties with the kings and emperors of the Indians were scripted to provide the outlaws with some form of legal justification for their actions–or so they hoped. | |
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This group of authors sought to prove that their destructive activities had been carried out to provide relief to the oppressed Indians of the Darién. It was especially important in this regard that their leaders be presented as regal, capable men who had been willing to direct, oversee, and take part in the depredations the pirates had visited on the Spanish. This delicate fact, coupled with the authors’ prejudicial expectations that the Tule society had to be organized around chiefs, explains the nature of the embellished descriptions of the native royal personages. 49 | |
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Ringrose’s description, packing a large amount of information into a brief space, presented the King of the Darién as a benevolent tyrant who ruled a population of sharp traders who got the better of the buccaneers in their exchanges. The author’s derogatory description of the tight-fisted Indians, though problematic, contains a useful description of the level of disorientation that attended the intruders’ attempts to negotiate on Indian ground. 50 | 50 |
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Although the particulars of the descriptions of indigenous royalty contained in these texts are easy to discount, their authors do realistically depict the manner in which outsiders needed to practice a form of indigenous diplomacy in order to attain the assistance they required. Even though the pirates were able to convey to the Indians that the two groups might be one in their enmity to the Spanish, certain indigenous protocols needed to be followed before Tule leaders would offer their assistance to the buccaneers. Whether intentionally or not, these texts provided ample evidence of this crucial facet of the Tule relationship with the outsiders. Luis Carrisoli and the Failure of Success | |
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The pirates were not the only Europeans gathering Tule auxiliary leaders to their side. Luis Carrisoli was forced to mobilize his Indian troops to confront the buccaneers, and in April 1680 he escaped the assault on El Real de Santa María in a canoe and brought news of the attack to Panamá City. In mid-May the presidente of Panamá, Don Alonso de Mercado, ordered Luis and two aides to reenter the Darién and entreat the region’s Indians to join in the defense against the pirates. This entrada was deemed successful, having produced a series of peace agreements that were duly confirmed in the Darién in 1681 by the bishop of Panamá, Lucas Fernández de Piedrahita. 51 | |
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Luis was commended by the Audiencia for the care and solicitude he showed toward the bishop, in what would be an extraordinary visit by the highest-ranking prelate in the isthmus. Luis served as the bishop’s translator while he was in the Darién, and with Carrisoli’s assistance Piedrahita founded new reducciones at Cambu, Río Tuíra, and Paya. A letter from the bishop, written in 1683, made mention of Luis’s selfless use of his own goods and personal funds in order to attract Indians to the newly founded towns. 52 | |
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Missionization, however, was to take up but a small portion of Luis Carrisoli’s energies, for he was in constant motion in confronting the incessant intrusions of buccaneers. Counterattacking against a band of pirates in 1685, for example, Luis claimed that his party of auxiliaries had killed forty-six of the invaders. The following year Carrisoli confronted an enormous army of more than three hundred French and English pirates 53 and forced them to retreat to the South Sea. 54 Later that year indigenous shock troops killed eighteen pirates while they attempted to form an encampment at Rancho Viejo, and soon thereafter the Spaniards resident at the Gulf of Urabá induced the Indians there to kill twenty Frenchmen who had settled down in the area, among them the well-known commander named Lorencillo. 55 Luis Carrisoli performed two additional services that particularly endeared him to his superiors. In 1691 he deposited 2,175 castellanos 56 of gold in the treasury as the quinto tax levied on gold production; and in 1697 he donated 466 pesos of his own salary to the defense of the American realms. 57 | |
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After twenty years of loyal service and active responses to the foreign assaults, the mestizo warlord had achieved the highest measure of respect and recognition that an official in his position could have even dreamed of attaining. It had been Luis Carrisoli’s goal to gather a force of Tule auxiliaries on whom he could rely to confront threats of invasion on the isthmus. He succeeded brilliantly at this, and he had even managed to extend his reach to the region surrounding the Gulf of Urabá. The presidente of the Audiencia of Panamá could report to the crown that Carrisoli could handle invasion forces as large as three hundred men strong on site, without need for reinforcement. 58 | |
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The period from 1680 to 1695 was tumultuous and eventful, filled with raids, sieges, and other crises. The course that Luis Carrisoli had set for the Darién, however, was the single constant in the midst of all the tumult and change. He could always be found in the center of the maelstrom, defending the empire with his bands of Indian warriors. For his willingness to confront danger on a moment’s notice, Luis received the crown’s and the Audiencia’s demonstrations of gratitude. The officers of the Spanish state could rest easy knowing that they could expect to call on a small, yet highly mobile, armed indigenous force to confront crises throughout the isthmus. However, under the pressure of the assaults, no one in Madrid or Panamá City had the time to catch their breath for long enough to inquire if Carrisoli’s defensive strategy was furthering the consolidation of the Darién or simply providing the Spanish with a barely tenable position in the region that might erode under continued stresses. | |
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Notes: Note 1: Relación de servicios del Maestro de Campo don Luis Carrisoli de Alfaraz, 1699; Archivo General de Indias (AGI) Panamá 181, ff. 811r-818r. For a discussion of the petitioners' relación as a distinct American genre of official literature, see F. Fernández-Armesto, "Philip II's Empire: A Decade at the Edge," in Annual Lecture of the Hakluyt Society 1998 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1999), pp. 3-5. I have supplemented the literary, printed relación with the copies of documents that supported the petition at ff. 865r-971r. The relación listed many of Luis Carrisoli's achievements; I have included information only on those events for which I could find supporting documentation.Back. Note 2: The matrilineal system is discussed in N. M. Chapin, "Curing Among the San Blas Kuna of Panamá" (Ph.D. diss., University of Arizona, 1983), pp. 10-11; and A. Prestan Simón, El uso de la chicha y la sociedad Kuna (México: Instituto Indigenista Interamericano, 1971), pp. 61-63. For an anthropological analysis of the issue, see R. Fox, Kinship and Marriage: An Anthropological Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967).Back. Note 3: AGI Panamá 164, f. 136; 181, ff. 1071r.Back. Note 4: For the intermarriage of some of the conquistadores and noble Indians in Peru, see K. Burns, Colonial Habits: Convents and the Spiritual Economy of Cuzco, Peru (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999), pp. 21-22; J. Lockhart, Spanish Peru 1532-1560: A Social History, 2d ed. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994), pp. 236-245; for Mexico, see C. Gibson, Aztecs Under Spanish Rule: A History of the Valley of Mexico, 1519-1810 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1964), pp. 160-163.Back. Note 5: Created and viable pasts are the subject of I. Silverblatt, "Becoming Indian in the Central Andes of Seventeenth-Century Peru," in G. Prakash, ed., After Colonialism: Imperial Histories and Postcolonial Displacements (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), pp. 279-298; and B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London: Verso, 1991).Back. Note 6: Relación de servicios, AGI Panamá 181, f. 811; 181, ff. 865r-867r.Back. Note 7: For the chronically anemic levels of the population of the isthmus, see A. Castillero Calvo, Conquista, evangelización y resistencia: ¿Triunfo o fracaso de la política indigenista? (Panamá: Instituto Nacional de Cultura [Editorial Mariano Arosemena], 1995), chaps. 1-3; and O. Jaen Suárez, La población del istmo de Panamá del siglo XVI al siglo XX (Panamá: n.p., 1979), pp. 1-83. On the importance of the South Sea as a route to greater riches for the pirates, see G. Williams, "The Inexhaustible Fountain of Gold: English Projects and Ventures in the South Sea, 1670-1750," in J. E. Flint and G. Williams, eds., Perspectives of Empire (London: Longman, 1973), pp. 27-53; Williams, The Great South Sea: English Voyages and Encounters 1570-1750 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), esp. pp. 76-105; and P. R. Galvin, "The Pirate's Wake: A Geography of Piracy and Pirates as Geographers in Colonial Spanish America, 1536-1718" (Ph.D. diss., Louisiana State University, 1991), pp. 79-187.Back. Note 8: For the centrality of the Portobelo fair to Spanish American trade, see E. Vila-Vilar, "Las ferias de Portobelo: apariencia y realidad del comercio con las Indias," Anuario de Estudios Americanos 39 (1982): 275-340; G. R. Dilg, "The Collapse of the Portobelo Fairs: A Study in Spanish Colonial Reform, 1720-1740" (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1975); and G. J. Walker, Spanish Politics and Imperial Trade 1700-1789 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979).Back. Note 9: For Drake's operations against Spain in the sixteenth century, see Z. Nutall, ed., New Light on Drake (London: Hakluyt Society, 1914); I. Wright, ed., Spanish Documents Concerning English Voyages to the Caribbean, 1527-68 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1929), Documents Concerning English Voyages to the Spanish Main, 1569-80 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1932), and Further English Voyages to Spanish America (London: Hakluyt Society, 1951).Back. Note 10: For Drake's 1595 expedition, see K. R. Andrews, ed., The Last Voyage of Drake and Hawkins (London: Hakluyt Society, 1972).Back. Note 11: For a complete account of Morgan's activities based on Spanish documentary sources, see P. Earle, The Sack of Panamá (London: Jill Norman and Hobhouse, 1981).Back. Note 12: Earle, Sack of Panamá, p. 244. Morgan's assaults on the isthmus had a great literary impact after Morgan's exploits were described in the popular text written by Alexander Oliver Esquemeling, The History of the Buccaneers of America.Back. Note 13: Luis complained that the salary was not adequate in a memorial dated 4 October 1667; AGI Panamá 181, ff. 869r-871v.Back. Note 14: AGI Panamá 181, ff. 878r-879r.Back. Note 15: Relación de servicios, AGI Panamá 181, f. 812r.Back. Note 16: AGI Panamá 181, f. 879r-879v.Back. Note 17: Relación de servicios, AGI Panamá 181, f. 811v.Back. Note 18: AGI Panamá 181, ff. 896r-900v.Back. Note 19: Relación de servicios, AGI Panamá 181, ff. 811v-812r; and AGI Panamá 181 ff. 881r-883r.Back. Note 20: Relación de servicios, AGI Panamá 181, ff. 812r-812v; and AGI Panamá 181, f. 882v.Back. Note 21: For a discussion of the place of honor in Hispanic society in the Indies, see the essays in L. L. Johnson and S. Lipsett-Rivera, eds., The Faces of Honor: Sex, Shame, and Violence in Latin America (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998), and R. A. Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico, 1500-1846 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), esp. pp. 176-227.Back. Note 22: Making provision for funds to purchase Isabel a place as a member of one of the religious orders was an equally emphatic statement of loyalty. Burns, Colonial Habits, pp. 146-152, provides a discussion of the manner in which elite families made decisions for their daughters and sisters.Back. Note 23: C. A. Hansen, "Conquest and Colonization in the Colombian Chocó," (Ph.D. diss., University of Warwick, 1991), provides a discussion of the troubled region, see especially pp. 60-113; and W. F. Sharp, Slavery on the Spanish Frontier: The Colombian Chocó (Norman: Oklahoma University Press, 1976), pp. 9-98.Back. Note 24: The Chocó entrada is described in the Relación de servicios, AGI Panamá 181, f. 812v; and AGI Panamá 181, ff. 884v-890v.Back. Note 25: Following Spanish administrative boundaries, historians have segmented the study of a region that contemporaries viewed as a single unit. For an interesting corrective see W. Bray, "Across the Darién Gap: A Colombian View of Isthmian Archaeology," in F. Lange and D. L. Stone, eds., The Archaeology of Lower Central America (Santa Fe, N.M.: School of American Research Press, 1984).Back. Note 26: For a discussion of gift exchange among the indigenous peoples of the Americas, see S. Loven, "The Orinoco in Old Indian Times: Economy and Trade," Atti del XXII Congreso Internazionale Degli Americanisti, 1922, volume 2, 711-725; E. F. Im Thurn, Among the Indians of Guiana, Being Sketches Chiefly Anthropologic from the Interior of British Guiana (London: Kegan Paul, 1883), 269-274; and D. W. Lathrap, "The Antiquity and Importance of Long-Distance Trade Relationships in the Moist Tropics of Pre-Columbian South America," World Archaeology 5 (1973), 170-185. For anthropological examinations of trade, see M. Sahlins, "On the Sociology of Primitive Exchange," in Stone Age Economics (Chicago: Aldine, 1972), 185-275; N. Arvelo-Jimenez and H. Biord, "The Impact of Conquest on Contemporary Indigenous Peoples of the Guiana Shield: The System of Orinoco Regional Interdependence," in Anna Roosevelt, ed., Amazonian Indians from Prehistory to the Present (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1994), pp. 55-79; G. Dalton, "The Impact of Colonization on Aboriginal Economies in Stateless Societies," Research in Economic Anthropology 1 (1978): 131-184; A. Rosman and P. G. Rubel, "Exchange as Structure, or Why Doesn't Everyone Eat his Own Pigs," Research in Economic Anthropology 1 (1978): 105-130; A. Johnson, "Horticulturalists: Economic Behavior in Tribes," in S. Plattner, ed., Economic Anthropology (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989), pp. 49-77; and C. A. Gregory, "Exchange and Reciprocity," in T. Ingold, ed., Companion Encyclopedia of Anthropology (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 911-939.Back. Note 27: AGI Panamá 164, f. 714r-734r. For a breakdown of spending on the paniquiris from 1676 to 1699, see f. 730r.Back. Note 28: For the opportunities available to indigenous peoples at the interstices of the competing empires, see Adelman and Aron, "From Borderlands to Borders: Empires, Nation-States, and the Peoples in Between in North American History," American Historical Review 104, no. 3 (June 1999) : 814-841; and R. White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991).Back. Note 29: A. de Alcedo, Diccionario geográfico de las Indias occidentales o América (Madrid, n.p. 1786-89); the entry "Darién" states that the paniquiri was the male cloth covering, and the mora was that of the female.Back. Note 30: A perceptive discussion of Alcedo's Diccionario is provided by C. Pérez-Bustamente, Antonio de Alcedo y su 'Memoria' para la continuación de las 'Decadas' de Herrera (Madrid: Instituto Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, 1968), pp. 10-18.Back. Note 31: For descriptions of Tule hospitality, see L. E. Elliott Joyce, ed., A New Voyage and Description of the Isthmus of America by Lionel Wafer (London: Hakluyt Society, 1933), p. 16; I. Blackwell, A Description of the Province and Bay of Darian: Giving a Full Account of all it's Situation, Inhabitants, Way and Manner of Living and Religion, Solemnities, and Product; Being Vastly Rich in Gold and Silver... (Edinburgh: n.p., 1699), p. 12; Anon., A Letter, Giving a Description of the Isthmus of Darian (Glasgow: n.p., 1700), pp. 17-19. For an anthropological examination of the practice among the modern-day Kuna, see James Howe, The Kuna Gathering: Contemporary Village Politics in Panama (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), pp. 85-89; and Joel Sherzer, Kuna Ways of Speaking: An Ethnographic Perspective (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983), pp. 91-95.Back. Note 32: The accounting of the funds laid out for the paniquiri and the moras show definite spikes during the periods of crisis in the seventeenth century; AGI Panamá 164, f. 730r and f. 734r.Back. Note 33: For these Carrisolian narratives, see Julián's petition, AGI Panamá 65; and Luis' petition, AGI Panamá 181.Back. Note 35: I use the term official story in the sense that J. C. Scott does in his Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), esp. chap. 1. Here it defines a written version of the Darién's history and reality created by the Carrisolis and accepted as true without independent verification by their bureaucratic superiors.Back. Note 36: For a perceptive recognition of the importance of the buccaneer-Tule alliances, see J. S. Bromley, "Outlaws at Sea, 1660-1720: Liberty, Equality and Fraternity among the Caribbean Freebooters," in F. Krantz, ed., History from Below: Studies in Popular Protest and Popular Ideology (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), pp. 293-318, esp. 317-18.Back. Note 37: An entrada of 1739 that followed the peace treaty brought Spanish officials to parts of the Darién at which the Indians claimed they had never seen a white man before. The diario of Joaquín Balcárcel de Miranda's entrada is at AGI Panamá 305, ff. 285r-310r.Back. Note 38: These efforts at Christianization are discussed by Severino de Santa Teresa, O.C.D., História documentada de la iglesia en Urabá y el Darién desde el descubrimiento hasta nuestros días (Bogotá: Biblioteca de la Presidencia de Colombia, 1956-57), vol. 4, chap. 4, "Misiones de los padres agustinos recoletos en Urabá y el Darién," pp. 103-141; chap. 5, "Los hijos de San Francisco en las misiones del Chocó y Urabá," pp. 143-160, and chap. 7, "Misiones de los padres capuchinos en Urabá y el Darién," pp. 175-195. For another treatment, derived from the same sources, see Castillero Calvo, Conquista, evangelización, y resistencia, chaps. 13 (pp. 291-311) and 19 (pp. 391-429).Back. Note 39: AGI Panamá 164, f. 730r.Back. Note 40: The fallacy of the projection of lordship onto a few self-selected Indians would not become readily apparent until the Spanish attempted to build a full-fledged colonial administration on the shoulders of these newly made chiefs nearly a hundred years later. See chapter 8 for an analysis of this process.Back. Note 41: On conceptions and problems relating to the concept of "first contact," see Ida Altman and Reginald D. Butler, "The Contact of Cultures: Perspectives on the Quincentenary," American Historical Review 99 (1994): 478-503; and Olivia Harris, "'The Coming of the White People': Reflections on the Mythologization of History in Latin America," Bulletin of Latin American Research 14 (1995): 9-24.Back. Note 42: See my discussion of this interaction at the close of chapter 1. English royalty's love of the hunt was proverbial in the seventeenth century, see G. P. V. Akrigg, Jacobean Pageant: or The Court of King James I (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962), pp. 159-161; and F. C. Turner, James II (London: Macmillan, 1948), pp. 62-64.Back. Note 43: Santa María was not the site of the mine itself but, rather, a gathering place for the region's gold. The pirate texts here elide the town of El Real de Santa María and the Espiritu Santo mine at Santa Cruz de Cana. For a description of that mine's operation in the early modern period, see V. Restrepo, Estudio sobre las minas de oro y plata de Colombia, 2d ed. (Bogotá: n.p., 1888), pp. 119-129.Back. Note 44: For the defection of "Admiral" Coxon and his Indian Allies, see Ringrose, "Dangerous Voyage," in Esquemeling, The Buccaneers of America, part IV, pp. 35-36.Back. Note 45: "W.D.," "Brief Account," in Esquemeling, The Buccaneers of America, part III, chap. 12, pp. 66-67.Back. Note 46: "W.D.," "Brief Account," p. 67.Back. Note 47: Ringrose's description of the royal crown actually conforms well to the ceremonial headdresses used by some of the modern-day San Blas Kuna; "Dangerous Voyage," p. 6. For an image, see Mari Lyn Salvador, ed., The Art of Being Kuna: Layers of Meaning Among the Kuna of Panama (Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 1997), p. 213.Back. Note 48: Ringrose, "Dangerous Voyage," p. 7.Back. Note 49: For a discussion of the Treaty of Madrid of 1670, see J. Lynch, A History of Spain: The Hispanic World in Crisis and Change, 1598-1700 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1992), p. 258.Back. Note 49: Bromley, "Outlaws at Sea," p. 318, discusses the Indians' inclusion as "brethren of the coast" by the buccaneers. My point here is that there was a literary, rather than a historical, imperative for the Indians to have been described as a part of the piratical brotherhood. Back. Note 50: For an interesting discussion of the disorientations that attend European activities in Indian country, see J. M. Merrell, "'The Customes of Our Countrey': Indians and Colonists in Early America," in B. Bailyn and P. D. Morgan, eds., Strangers within the Realm: Cultural Margins of the First British Empire (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), pp. 117-157.Back. Note 51: Relación de servicios, AGI Panamá 181, f. 813r; AGI Panamá 181, ff. 904r-906v.Back. Note 52: AGI Panamá 181, ff. 905vr-906r.Back. Note 53: Relación de servicios, AGI Panamá 181, f. 814v; letter of 30 August 1685, AGI Panamá 181, ff. 906v-909r.Back. Note 54: Relación de servicios, AGI Panamá 181, f. 814v; Letter of 23 October 1685, AGI Panamá 181, ff. 909r-910r.Back. Note 55: Certificación, AGI Panamá 181, ff. 910r-918v.Back. Note 56: One gold castellano was equal to 2.72 silver pesos.Back. Note 57: Relación de servicios, AGI Panamá 181, f. 815v; and AGI Panamá 181, ff. 929r-930v.Back. Note 58: AGI Panamá 181, ff. 910r-918v.Back.
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