Ian Heath The armies of the Aztec and Inca Empires, Other Native Peoples of the Americas, and the Conquistadores 1450-1608 Armies of the Sixteenth Century Vol. 2 First Published in Great Britain in 1999 by Foundry Books Hubert’s Lane Doyle Road St Peter Port Guernsey GY1 1RG Tel 01481 714241 Copyright © 1999 by Ian Heath The right of Ian Heath to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. ISBN 1-901543-38-2 ISBN 978-1-901543-38-4 Print ISBN: 9781901543032 Digital ISBN: 9781901543384 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission in writing of the publishers. Other books by the same author: Armies and Enemies of the Crusades 1096–1291 (WRG 1978) Byzantine Armies 886–1118 (Osprey 1979) Armies of the Dark Ages 600–1066 2nd edition (WRG 1980) A Wargamers’ Guide to the Crusades (Patrick Stephens 1980) Armies of the Middle Ages Vol.1 (WRG 1982) Armies of the Middle Ages Vol.2 (WRG 1984) The Vikings (Osprey 1985) Armies of Feudal Europe 1066–1300 2nd edition (WRG 1989) The Irish Wars 1485–1603 (Osprey 1993) The Taiping Rebellion 1851–66 (Osprey 1994) Byzantine Armies 1118–1461 AD (Osprey 1995) Armies of the Sixteenth Century Vol.1 (Foundry Books 1997) Armies of the Nineteenth Century: Asia Vol.1 (Foundry Books 1998) Armies of the Nineteenth Century: Asia Vol.2 (Foundry Books 1998) The North-East Frontier 1837–1901 (Osprey 1999) INTRODUCTION One of the principal problems encountered in writing this book has been the difficulty of stopping it from becoming either an anthropological survey, or a history of 16th century exploration. Preventing it from doing either has not been altogether possible, nor, perhaps, entirely desirable, since in contrast to the relative uniformity of much of Western Europe by this time, it was their cultural diversity which enabled the American peoples to be told apart, both among themselves and by the early European explorers whose writings are our main source of information. Nevertheless, I have tried to concentrate principally on those aspects of their dress and customs which are most relevant to their military rather than their social organisation — though the two were often inseparable — and to their style of fighting, both against each other and, with varying degrees of success, against the European invaders. It is not an altogether pretty story. All the early European voyages of exploration were distinguished by the pride, ignorance, greed, and casual brutality of the majority of their participants. None of the early colonial powers — Spain, Portugal, France, and England — were entirely innocent in this context, but of them all it was the Spanish conquistadores who proved to be the bravest, the most determined, and yet at the same time the very worst ambassadors that an alien civilisation could ever hope to foist upon an unsuspecting New World. They had their critics even within Spain, notably in the person of Bartolomé de Las Casas, who wrote that Spaniards operating in the Americas ‘acted like ravening beasts, killing, terrorising, afflicting, torturing, and destroying the native peoples, with the strangest and most varied new methods of cruelty.’ It was this sort of opprobrium that led to the so-called ‘Black Legend’ of Spanish malevolence, which England in particular exploited to considerable political advantage at the time, and which to a greater or lesser degree has coloured foreign attitudes towards Spain and Spanish-speaking countries ever since. Although the vaunted might of the fabulous Aztec and Inca ‘empires’ collapsed like a proverbial house of cards in the face of European military expertise, success proved progressively less easy to come by for the conquerors as the century ran its course. Despite being decimated by the new diseases which accompanied each European expedition, numerous unsophisticated American peoples proved resilient enough to withstand and sometimes even to turn back the invaders. Some were not conquered for centuries, while others chose to be decimated to the point of extinction rather than submit. As Joseph de Acosta observed in the 1580s: ‘Let no man think that the Indians are of no consequence; and if they do think so, then let them go and put it to the test.’ Wherever possible the line drawings which illustrate this volume are taken directly from, or at the very least based on, pictures by 16th century artists or published in 16th century books. Any reconstructions that have been necessitated by the absence of surviving contemporary illustrations are based instead on archaeological finds, 15th or 17th century representations, and the detailed descriptions of eye-witnesses. Needless to say, I have not attempted to deal with every Amerindian people, just those with whom the conquistadores and other European adventurers came into more than fleeting contact during the course of the period under review. Nor are individual European conquests or Indian rebellions covered in any detail, that not being the specific purpose of this series. I have concentrated instead on the organisation, fighting style, and appearance of the opposing forces, and am hopeful that the end product will surprise a great many readers who had previously thought that the conquest of the Aztec and Inca ‘empires’ constituted the sum total of Spanish military activity in the New World in Renaissance times. Ian Heath December 1998 CONTENTS The Caribbean 1492–1603 …...................... 7 Mesoamerica c.1450–1600 ….................... 26 South America 1500–1600 ….................... 85 North America 1497–1608 ...................... 121 Spanish America 1492–1600 …............... 145 Bibliography …......................................... 170 The Caribbean 1492–1603 In the four main islands of the Greater Antilles some caciques wielded considerable power over a domain which might encompass many villages extending over a considerable tract of territory. THE WEST INDIES Except in Puerto Rico, where a single cacique (Agueybaná) seems to have held sway, each island The islands that go to make up the West Indies appears to have consisted of several principal and consist of the Lesser Antilles, the Greater Antilles, numerous smaller chiefdoms, or cacicazgos, as the and the Bahamas. It is generally agreed that when Spaniards called them. Those of the principal the Spaniards arrived the four main islands of the caciques were subdivided into between ten and two Greater Antilles — Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica, and dozen smaller districts under lesser caciques. Puerto Rico — were known respectively to their Jamaica, for instance, had between eight and ten native populations as Cuba, Ayti (whence modern main cacicazgos, while Cuba had perhaps six. Haiti), Yamaye or Xaymaca (spelt ‘Jamaigua’ by Hispaniola had five, comprising those of the 1502), and Boriquén or Borichiù. However, Pietro chieftains Guacanagari of Marien, Columbus’ loyal Martire d’Anghiera (more usually referred to in ally; Guarionex of Magua; Caonabó of Maguana; English books as Peter Martyr) wrote that the Mayobanex and Cotubanama of Higüey; and native name for Hispaniola was actually Behéchio of Xaragua. Though leagues were Quizquella, and it seems that Ayti (which meant occasionally formed, individual caciques acted ‘rough highlands’) actually referred only to a largely independently of one another (on one mountainous region in the east of the island. The occasion, during the Puerto Rican rebellion against Greater and Lesser Antilles were peopled the Spaniards in 1511, an alliance was even formed principally by Arawaks1 and Caribs respectively, with the chiefs of the neighbouring island of St. while an earlier Arawak people, the Lucayos, Croix).2 Below the caciques came their blood-kin, inhabited the Bahamas (the Spaniards consequently adopted or otherwise, called nitaínos. The referring to these islands as the Islas Lucayas). Spaniards considered these to be nobles, and recorded that in wartime they provided the caciques with their bodyguards, while in peacetime they THE ARAWAKS assisted in the government of individual villages. Despite the estimates of early Spanish explorers Migrating northwards from the coasts of that there were a million or more Arawaks in Venezuela and Guiana either side of the Orinoco Hispaniola alone (a census of 1495/6 gives 1.13 delta, the Arawaks had occupied the entire West million, at a time when numbers in Spanish- Indian archipelago during the course of the first controlled areas of the island had already declined millennium AD. When the Spaniards arrived in by perhaps two-thirds), and that there were a further 1492, however, they were themselves in the throes 600,000 on Puerto Rico and Jamaica, it seems of being pushed steadily north by the Caribs. They likely that their true numbers were probably lived in large agricultural communities consisting smaller. Modern estimates of the population at first of loose, unfortified clusters of houses, each village contact vary dramatically, from 200,000 upwards, generally having a population of 1–2,000. They but it is certainly possible that there were as many were governed by hereditary chieftains called as a million in all. However, in a pattern that was to caciques, a term which the Spaniards subsequently recur repeatedly throughout the New World utilised indiscriminately to refer to the native rulers thereafter, these numbers dropped dramatically found in every corner of the Americas. Among the following the arrival of the conquistadores, as war, Arawaks the office of cacique seems to have disease, starvation, and enslavement took their toll. generally descended from father to eldest son, but if The Arawak population of Hispaniola, which may a cacique left no sons of his own then his sister’s have stood at 250–300,000 in 1492, had dropped to son inherited instead. If a cacique inherited in this 60,000 by as early as 1508, and to 11,000 by 1518. way — i.e. via his mother — then at his death it By the 1530s there were said to be less than 500. was her nearest relative who succeeded, not his. In The story was the same elsewhere. By 1550 just Puerto Rico and Hispaniola at least this method of 1,000 free Arawaks were left of Cuba’s estimated succession occasionally resulted in the existence of pre-Conquest population of 100,000, and only 60 female caciques, notable amongst whom were could be found on Puerto Rico in 1542, while the Higuanama, cacique of Higüey, and Anacaona, who Bahamas had been entirely depopulated by Spanish succeeded to the chieftainship of Xaragua at the slave-raids as early as 1513.3 Though a few isolated death of her brother Behéchio. pockets may have survived long enough to merge with the incoming Spanish population, the Arawaks Hispaniola had their heads ‘shaved in places and in of Hispaniola, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico were all places have tufts of tangled hair of such shapes that effectively extinct by the middle of the century. it cannot be described’, while Columbus himself In addition to the Arawaks proper, there was a wrote in 1492 that the Lucayos wore theirs short sub-group called the Ciguayo living in the ‘down to the eyebrows, except a few locks behind, mountains and along the north-east coast of which they wear long and never cut.’ The Ciguayo Hispaniola, who spoke a different language. wore theirs waist-length, ‘drawn back and fastened Columbus describes those of Cayabo, who he calls behind, and put into a small net of parrots’ the Macorix, as being ‘of strange speech’, and feathers’, which Columbus describes as ‘plumes of observes that they and the ‘long-haired’ Ciguayo of feathers of parrots and other birds’ worn behind the Huhabo province were more warlike than the head. Arawaks. Since, unlike most Arawaks, they are All the sources agree that they went largely recorded to have used bows, it is conceivable that naked, Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo (1525) being they were of mixed Arawak–Carib descent, alone in mentioning the wearing of ‘a certain leaf as ethnologists having noticed other distinctive Carib broad as a man’s hand’ (presumably a penis sheath) traits in ‘the meagre evidence available’. They are to conceal their private parts. It was only after the said to have been able to raise 15,000 warriors. Conquest that genital coverings were widely Vestiges of the Greater Antilles’ aboriginal adopted. The Jamaican Arawaks, however, are population also survived alongside the Arawaks in described by Andrés Bernáldez in 1494 as having some areas. Bartolomé de Las Casas says these ‘the breast and stomach covered with palm leaves’, were called Guanahacabibes, but today they are probably indicating some sort of short plaited palm generally referred to as Ciboneys (as a result of an garment. early misreading of Las Casas). Another source Most men decorated themselves extensively says they were referred to as Cenavas, meaning with black, white, red (especially for war), and ‘fleet as deer’. A considerably more primitive yellow paint, at least some such decoration taking people than the Arawaks, they followed a nomadic the form of tattoos. Bernáldez described the existence, feeding themselves by hunting and Jamaican Arawaks as ‘painted a thousand colours, fishing rather than agriculture, and living in but the majority black’, while Columbus described temporary camps which were often in caves. By the the Lucayos as painting themselves black, white, time the Spaniards arrived the Ciboney were red, or ‘any colour that they find. Some of them confined to western and isolated parts of central paint their faces, others the whole body, some only Cuba, and the south-west corner of Hispaniola. round the eyes, others only the nose.’ Oviedo tells They still constituted perhaps as much as 10% of us that the Arawaks of Hispaniola and Cuba Cuba’s population, and though experts differ tattooed their bodies with ‘the images of their regarding exactly how much territory they held, it is demons … in black colour’. The Ciboney are significant that, despite having Arawak names, the specifically described as using red and yellow paint, five western-most Cuban ‘provinces’ mentioned by while the Ciguayo are said to have stained early Spanish writers — Guanahacabibes, themselves completely black with charcoal, some Guaniguanico, Marien, Habana, and Hanábana — encountered in battle by the Spaniards in 1498 all contain widespread evidence of Ciboney being described as ‘all painted and spotted, black occupation but little of Arawak. and red’. With the exception of the Lucayos, Arawak Body ornaments comprised pendants, ear-plugs, Indians were generally shorter than the Spaniards. and nose-plugs of gold or coloured stone, and They had a copper-coloured complexion described necklaces of seeds, seashells, or beads of a variety by contemporaries as ‘reddish’, ‘clear brown’, or ‘a of materials, including marble, clay, bone, and chestnut colour’, and deformed their skulls from white, green, and red stones. One bead necklace birth so that they had broad, flat foreheads. This presented to Columbus comprised 800 stone beads, may have been a factor in the claim made by some but most comprised probably no more than a few Spaniards that ‘their skulls were so thick that the score. Green and white stones might also be Spaniards often broke their swords in hitting them.’ inserted in the cheeks and forehead. Caciques and The Ciboney, however, didn’t indulge in cranial nitaínos were distinguished by their ornaments, Las deformation. The Arawaks appear to have worn Casas describing such men as wearing in addition their black hair in a variety of styles, Las Casas bracelets, anklets, earrings as large as bracelets, describing it as long and tied in a knot either on the and, as a symbol of a cacique’s rank, a pectoral forehead or at the back of the skull. Columbus’ variously described as moon, disc, or fleur-de-lis companion Diego Chanca says that the Arawaks of shaped and ‘as large as a plate’. All these