University of Virginia Library

9. CHAPTER IX.
THE LAST FIGHT OF THE CHARAIBEE—THE WAR-DEMON HAS HIS
VICTIM.

The justly-minded reader will seldom find much pleasure
in the perusal of narratives which dwell largely upon
the conflicts between the accomplished cavaliers of Europe,
and the simple, half-naked warriors of the new world. The
inequality of the combatants revolts the mind at all solicitous
of justice. The war between these adversaries was
most generally all on one side,—and the poor Indians obtained
their occasional successes—with some few exceptions,
among which may be named the long contest of the
Spaniards with the Araucanians—simply through the contemptuous
negligence of their adversaries. Their battles,
so called, were usually little else than massacres, in which
each butcher slew his thousand victims. Mere numbers
on the part of the Indians, so far from increasing the difficulty
and the merit of conquest to the Europeans, in
reality facilitated greatly the dreadful business of arquebus
and sword; since, as the Gaul said to the Romans, “thick
grass is always easier cut than thin.” The policy of
Caonabo had been to reconcile this inequality between the
parties, by a resort to that only ally which could possibly
effect the object; but which, strange to say, our European
casuists have always found particularly detestable when
employed by any other than their own people,—namely,
treachery. As if the injured and inferior people were not
—not merely authorized, but—bound to resort to any and
every practice in order to repel and destroy the invader, who,
without pretext or right, descends upon foreign and peaceful
lands, and relying on the superiority of his arts and arms
makes unequal war for the destruction of the unoffending.

Zemaco had no other idea of war than that taught him by
the hardy valour of his people, in which personal agility
and strength furnished the chief sources of power, and no
arts were practised but those which enabled them to fling
the javelin to its mark unerringly, and in the close strife
to wield the heaviest club with the lightest effort, and
grapple the most formidable foe with heart and muscle
equally inflexible and unrelaxing. The small, and seemingly
effeminate Spaniards, were, until the influence of
their strange and godlike weapons were made known, regarded
with scorn by the gigantic warriors of Darien, who,
rushing upon them without fear, thought to annihilate
them without effort. The result of the combats of Zemaco
with his new enemies is already known to the reader; and
a demonstration to the mountain warriors of the utter inadequacy
of the arms and practice to which they had been
accustomed for successive generations, to oppose assailants
who carried thunderbolts always lighted in their hands,
left them for a brief period in a state of hopelessness which
was truly pitiable. The counsels of Caonabo had produced
a beneficial effect upon their spirits no less than fortunes;
as they taught them to oppose caution and cunning
to superiority, and to avoid the enemy with whom they did
not openly dare to contend. They fled from well-drilled
and well-commanded bodies of the Spaniards, but still
hovering along their path, they descended upon them in
their hours of indiscretion or repose; and by this partisan
policy, cut off stragglers, foragers and explorers; gradually
thinning the numbers, always few, of the power
that was destined never to prove itself more formidable to
the poor Indians than when it seemed least numerous and
most feeble. What effect this policy of the fugitive cassique
might have had upon the progress and the fortunes
of Vasco Nunez, if continued, may not be so readily affirmed;
but the inference is fair, from what is already
known, that, with the slender forces of the Spanish conqueror,
his insecure position in the regard of his sovereign,
and the restless, reckless and impatient character of
the men whom he commanded, he must have been baffled
sufficiently long in his march across the peninsula, to have
made him so unpopular with both sovereign and people,
as to have led to his deposition; and this event, by placing
the Spaniards under the command of inadequate leaders,
would, more certainly than any other, have produced that
equality between the parties which was the chief object in
all the labours of Caonabo. But the favour which the
fugitive had found in the sight of the cassique of Darien,
led, naturally enough, to a jealous hostility on the part of
those native warriors, who, hitherto, had been the exclusive
agents, and, perhaps, directors of his power. The
fierce chieftain to whom was assigned the task of opposing
the progress of the Spaniard over the mountains, first
kindled the spirit of discontent among the people of
Darien at the honours bestowed upon the stranger. A
faction had sprung into existence, of which Quarequa was
the head, the power and claims of which Zemaco found
himself unable to withstand. But the cassique did not
yield without an effort to save the fugitive, and to his resolute
defence of Caonabo may be referred the indulgence
which had been given him, by which his life was made to
depend upon the success of his own plans. The failure of one
important item in these plans—the attempt upon the life
of the Spanish captain—was, Caonabo well knew, equivalent
to the failure of his last hope, and a sure forerunner
of his own doom;—and it would not be easy to describe
the pang which the doomed warrior felt, when, in the last
moment of his interview with the wife of his bosom, he
was driven by the force of circumstances to the conviction
that to her treachery the failure was attributable wholly.
Suffering as she did, the pang would have been far greater
at her heart than any at work in his, could she have known
the dreadful consequences, following, to the chief whom
she did not less reverence than love, from an act which
seemed to her one of unmixed benevolence and good. It
was, perhaps, the noblest proof of his love for the unhappy
woman, that, in the moment of his own conviction of the
truth, he yet withheld it from her knowledge. Had he
but spoken out what he knew—had he but declared the
true meaning of that vague charge which he made her at
parting, then the death with which he threatened her had
been the very kindest boon ever offered by his hands.

But though indifferent to life, Caonabo did not go into
battle as one without hope. He did not suffer his private
wrongs, and the hostility of Quarequa, to blind him to the
remembrance that the Spaniards were their national enemies.
He prepared to exert all his capacities against

them, as much so as if the country which he toiled for was
his own, and he possessed the warmest confidence and
affections of the people. With this aim he sought out
Quarequa, while there was yet sufficient time left to suffer
them to elude the arms of the enemy and even to escape
his sight. He declared himself averse to battle, advised
that the warriors of Darien should harass the Spaniards
from the heights, and still retreat at their approach. “It
will be easy,” he said in brief, “to destroy the dogs with
our arrows when unsupported by the warriors, and by their
death we deprive the Spaniards of one of their most
powerful agents of destruction. Their thunder we can
ourselves escape behind the hills, to the tops of which we
only rise for an instant to aim a shaft or a javelin, and by
timely flight from hill to hill, baffle equally pursuit and
aim of the enemy, who, covered with heavy armour and
without horse, cannot hope to follow us. The ambuscade
you have set for them now, will surprise but not destroy
them; and failing to do this, when you have once met
them, you cannot then avoid a general conflict.”

Such was the amount of the last advice which the fugitive
offered to his uncompromising enemy. It was answered
in the language of insolence and taunt

“Let the women of Hayti fear the Spaniard. There are
men in Darien. Caonabo can go back among the mountains,
if he loves not to behold the strife—let him hide behind
the hills, and shoot his arrows down into the plain by
stealth, even as he counsels; but he cannot fly death always.
Hath he not heard the words of Zemaco? If we
conquer not the Spaniards this day, it is because the war-demon
of Darien is hungering for his victim. Caonabo will
do well to prepare himself for the Spaniard, if he loves not
the rock of sacrifice.”

For a moment the natural indignation of the man got the
better of the calm, forbearing spirit of the patriot, and the
fugitive chief replied to the insulting warrior in tones and
language which were not unfelt even by the savage enemy
whom he addressed.

“Were it not that there is an enemy before us, Quarequa,
I would tear thy dog tongue from thy throat. It will
be well for thee if the thunder of the Spaniard strikes thee
down this day, for, as surely as the war-demon of Darien
clamours for one victim, I will give him, if I survive this

battle, another; and thou shalt go to his altars tongueless,
that thou mayst neither taunt the brave warrior with thy
foul speech, nor brag of thy own worthless deeds. See
that thou make thyself worthy of death by my hand in the
doings thou shalt this day show.”

Nothing but the prompt interposition of the surrounding
warriors, and the rapid approach of the Spaniards, prevented
the mortal issue which the chiefs equally desired, and
the words of Caonabo had invited. They separated with
eyes breathing fire, and hearts in which the flame of mutual
hostility was burning almost as keenly as that which they
individually felt towards their invader. Though maddened
to momentary forgetfulness, the fugitive chief did not suffer
himself to lose sight of the cares which gathered before
him in the approaching conflict; nor did he spare any of
his efforts of mind or body to make the battle, so unwisely
risked, more hopeful on the part of the Indians. He scatterred
his men along the most broken ledges of the heights
commanding the advance of the Spaniards, and lessening
the distance in an air line between themselves and the foe,
in reality lessened the danger. Many of these, in addition
to their ordinary weapons, he provided with heavy rocks,
which had been previously heaped conveniently together,
and lay in little piles on the verge of every declivity. He
commanded his men to sling their clubs to their necks
by the thong with which they were usually tied for this
very purpose; and by a command so very unusual among
the savages of Darien, on the approach of battle, he furnished
a check to that impetuosity of disposition, which
most generally led them to rush forward to the combat
hand to hand, in utter despite of the superior arms borne
by the Spaniards. Another result of this arrangement was
to compel them at first to the free and exclusive employment
of the weapons left them,—namely, the missiles provided
on the hills, and the arrow and javelin, in the use
of which no people could be more expert. These were
the weapons which were chiefly feared by the Europeans,
since a well-aimed lance or arrow in the hands of an Indian,
was most frequently quite as fatal as the rude firelock of
that early period, and perhaps, in a closely-wooded country,
not much inferior to the more deadly rifle of our own
day. Their value as a weapon of war against an invader,
one chief part of whose strength lay in bloodhounds, was

incomputable; since a deliberate warrior, having an elevated
position, might very well disable every such assailant, if
his approach could be seasonably distinguished; and the
heavy rocks which garnished the heights were no less good
against the slow, uptoiling soldier. Thus prepared, Caonabo
waited with impatience the progress of the foe, and his
war-conch was the first to open with the signal music of
battle.

Vasco Nunez was a wary captain. He saw no foes
while ascending the ambushed pass, but his quick military
eye readily conceived the excellence of such a position for
the purpose to which Caonabo had preferred it. He commanded
a halt, and resolved to devote some time to a survey
of the ground in order to the choice of a less perilous
pathway. But, fortunately for his little army, the rash
character of the cassique who led the main body of the Indians,
now doubly stimulated to temerity by the exciting
controversy which had taken place between himself and
the fugitive chief, and no less encouraged, perhaps, by the
unexpected show of caution on the part of the Spaniards,
hastily emerged into sight from the cover which concealed
him, and rushing forward with all his force, himself entered
upon the passage, the heights overlooking which were
lined with the still hidden warriors of Caonabo. Exulting
in the feeble vanity of his heart, at an exhibition of courage
which he thought every way beyond his antagonist, he
shouted aloud to the fugitive, whom he passed in his rapid
onset, to do likewise if he was a man.

“Fool! fool!” was the bitter exclamation of Caonabo
in reply—“he hath ruined all. He hath given me, and
himself, and his country, to the barking dogs of the Spaniard.”

The prediction was accomplished almost in the instant
after its utterance. The onset of Quarequa relieved Vasco
Nunez from any apprehension of danger from the heights,
and, pouring in a dreadful volley from his arquebusses, he
rushed forward to the melée, leading the way himself for his
no less resolute followers. Quarequa paid for his temerity
in the first joining of the battle. A shot struck him in the
brain, and he fell without a groan, his own headlong followers
rushing, unconsciously for a while, over his prostrate
body. The Spaniards bearing bucklers at once closed
with the more forward Indians, and the terrific thunder of

their first-used weapons was scarcely more imposing in
its effect than the short keen cut-and-thrust, which was
the common weapon of the time. Still the Indians fought
manfully. Indeed, they had no choice but fight. Their
own immense numbers, crowded and still crowding into the
narrow passage into which their leader had so rashly descended,
not only defeated their own capacity to fight with
profit, but utterly prevented those from flight who bore the
whole brunt of the unequal battle. Meanwhile, Caonabo
looked down from his heights in an anguish that cannot be
spoken. Not an arrow could he send, not a javelin could
he fling, without danger to his own people. The Spaniards
were effectually incorporated with the confused and blinded
crowd, and the bloodhounds, now loosed, were pulling
down victim after victim without the pause of an instant,
and almost without injury in the conflict. The brave Carib
felt that he could no longer maintain his position—that he
must descend also to the hopeless strife—giving himself up
to share the dangers of the miserable victims, led like sheep
to the slaughter by the improvident and insolent rashness
of the incompetent fool who had them in command.

“Yet, were it not well,” he demanded, looking round
upon his men, “if we slay the Spaniards with our rocks,
not seeing that there are people of our own below? Let
us fling down these mighty masses which shall crush them
all, and give us freedom for ever. Zemaco will lose many
warriors, but oh! my brethren, the Spaniards will all perish—all!
all!”

The terrible proposition was received in profound silence.
There was no answering word or action. The warriors
commanded by Caonabo had imbibed no small share
of that jealousy of his power which had led the native
chiefs to a factious rashness; and though they had seen
how easy it would have been for them to have absolutely
annihilated the power of the Spaniards, under the sole
guidance of the fugitive chief, yet the daring and the death
of Quarequa had redeemed his rashness and folly in their
eyes. The appeal of Caonabo fell upon unheeding ears
—none responded to his suggestion, and a sullen reply
from more than one proposed to descend to close combat
in the already crowded gorge. With a sigh from the bottom
of his heart—a sigh which denoted the loss of the last
hope—the chief bade them get their war-clubs ready, and

leading the way, he brought them into conflict at the somewhat
auspicious moment when the Spaniards, driving the
fugitives before them, were about to ascend the table-land
of the mountain. His war-conch sounded cheerily and
encouraged the flying party, as much as it startled the successful,
by announcing the coming into combat of a fresh
band of warriors. The voice of Caonabo rang through the
field, clear as a Spanish trumpet, in encouragement to his
men. He spoke in the native dialect of Darien. He used,
in brief, every argument and phrase of bitter import which
could make them more reckless and ferocious in the conflict.

“The war-demon looks down upon you,” he cried—
“he claims, he clamours for ye all. Ye will all perish,
whether ye fight or fly, then why should ye fear this bursting
thunder of the Spaniard, or why should ye shrink from
his biting sword? Will ye not bite again with a keen tooth
—will ye not grapple him with a hearty hate? Lo! men
of Darien—I a stranger—a man of Hayti, where ye hold
the men as women—I will show ye how to grasp the Spaniard—I
will lead ye to the sort of strife ye love! Look,
where I go, ye who now tremble—let all follow, and take
ye hold, each on some such enemy as him I seek; then,
if ye die, Zemaco will have no more need of warriors,
since he will have no more enemies. Lo, ye! Follow!
follow! 'Tis a woman of Hayti shall show the warriors of
Darien how to seek their foes.”

Without heeding the effort of this taunting speech, and
seemingly only solicitous to gain the thick of the combat,
the fearless fugitive rushed forward, and it was not long
ere he attained what seemed his object. Once more he
confronted the Spanish captain, and opposed his war-club
of palm, to the keen edge of the Spanish sword. Vasco
Nunez recognized his opponent at a glance.

“Ha! thou art a bold knave to face me again, but thou
shalt not escape me now. Yet, before I strike with thee,
let thy people throw down their arms and receive mercy.
Thou seemest to be their leader—command them, that I
may spare their lives.”

“They want no life from thee, Spaniard—they seek
thy life, as I do—they will give their own lives to win it.”

“Have at thee then, for a bold savage—thou deservest
the blows of one.”

Once more the well-tempered steel of the Spaniard severed
the macana of the Indian, but the sword flew in twain
also with the stroke. Some secret fracture in the blade, or
the uncommon hardness of the opposing wood, rendered
it unequal to the collision; and the Spanish chieftain,
still confronted by the Charaibee, bore no weapon but the
fragment of the blade, scarcely a poniard's length, and without
the point of the poniard, to make it useful as such. The
Indian meanwhile threw aside his equally ineffectual club,
and grasping Vasco Nunez around the body with one arm,
heedless of the repeated strokes which the latter bestowed
with his broken weapon upon his head, he raised a dagger
with the other hand, the stroke of which was only baffled
by the keen eye and quick movement of the Spaniard.
Practised in every sleight in the use of his weapon—proverbially
“egregius digladiator,”—Vasco Nunez caught
the uplifted arm of his tenacious foe, and flinging away his
own broken weapon in the same instant, with a strength
which awakened the Indian's wonder, and which he vainly
endeavoured to resist, he wrested the dagger from his hold,
and ere he could recede a pace, he drove it, with unrelaxing
arm, deep into the eye of his enemy, the sharp point of
the steel meeting its first resistance only from the skull behind.
The hard struggle—one of the hardest to which in
a life of warlike enterprise the Spanish cavalier had ever
been subjected—was over; and he threw from him the
expiring body of a hero, who, in his own savage empire,
and during his exile in the empire of other savages, betrayed
virtues of patriotism and courage which had done honour
to the histories of a people far more advanced in those
arts which secure the awards of glory and posterity. With
the fall of Caonabo, the battle, though not over, will need
at our hands no farther development. Enough, that the
Indians fighting valiantly still, fought against hope and in
the very mockery of valour. A carnage followed, which
Vasco Nunez vainly endeavoured to restrain; and it was
with a rebuking and gloomy spirit that he walked over the
bloody field, and surveyed the grim, fearless faces of the
thousand savage warriors whom he had slain, and who
seemed still, even in death, to gaze upon him with a stern
defiance. But when he came to the spot distinguished by
his own desperate conflict with the fugitive cassique, he
was startled to hear a faint moaning arising from the place,

and to behold a woman outstretched beside the corpse of
the unconscious warrior. A second glance revealed to
him the Haytian mother—the now utterly desolate and
miserable Buru.

“Buru!” he exclaimed, stooping to the ground and striving
to raise her from it as he spoke, “is it thou, my good
Buru! What dost thou here, and who is he, the warrior
beside thee?”

She resisted his efforts to lift her, and clung with something
of violence to the corpse.

“Let Buru die with the chief!” she exclaimed, “Buru
would not have help from the Spaniard—she would die—
she would die.”

“But thou forgettest, Buru, I am thy friend—I would
help and save thee. Thou shalt go with me and be in
safety among the tents of the Spaniard.”

“No! no! not with the Spaniard,” she replied with a
passionate shriek and gesture, “not with the Spaniard.
He hated the Spaniard—the Spaniard was the enemy of
the chief. He will be angry with Buru if she goes to the
Spaniard.”

“And who was he—what was he of whom you speak,
Buru? What chief is it that you lament—can this be Zemaco?
It is no Haytien, it is a Carib!”

“Zemaco! no! Zemaco sleeps in safety on his hills
towards Darien. He!”—and she spoke in lower and
reverential tones while she pointed to the body—“was he
not the great chief of the Carib—was he not Caonabo, the
father of Zemi—and was not Buru the mother of the
boy?”

A passionate flood of grief followed this revelation; the
sobs of the woman who still clung to the corpse of the
warrior, utterly preventing all farther speech at the moment.

“This, then, was the mountain warrior that buffled our
best warriors so long—this was Caonabo.”

The half spoken eulogy which fell unconsciously from
Vasco Nunez, renewed the provocation to sorrow in the
mind of the hearer.

“Alas! for the woman—alas for the poor Buru. It is
Caonabo no more. The chief is silent like the rock, and
cold—cold. Caonabo! father! chief! He will not hear
me, or I went down to the Spaniard, and told him of the

young warriors! He is angry with the woman, and she
must die. He hath sworn when his sleep is over, to give
me in sacrifice to the angry god of the Charaibee. Buru
must die!”

The words of Vasco Nunez tended in no way to settle
the grief of the woman. She was possessed of an idea—
one, most probably, common to her people—that, as he
had doomed her to death, the doom would inevitably be
fulfilled by some agency under the instigation of the
cruel demon which the Charaibee worshipped; and all her
words and actions tended, after this, to reveal the strong
hold which this faith had upon her mind. She suffered
them to remove the corpse and to bury it—a degree of
respect especially shown to the unhappy widow, and of
which she seemed acutely conscious, as she closely regarded
every movement of the warriors to whom this duty
was assigned. But this done, she proceeded to offices
which truly indicated the insane direction of her mind;
and in the tent to which Vasco Nunez had her conducted,
and in which she was carefully watched and tended, she
busily employed herself in those preliminary rites with
which the doomed victim prepares herself for death. She
cut away her hair and consumed it by fire. Fearing that
she might employ the same instrument upon herself, Vasco
Nunez had it removed from her possession and control.
But this seemed to give her no concern. She carefully
performed her ablutions, arranged her garments, and seating
herself at the entrance of the tent, appeared like one in
waiting for a messenger. The tears were dried upon her
cheek, and she uttered no farther complaint. But the eyes
lacked all lustre, and looked out with a stare quite as full
of unconsciousness as indifference, though the busy movements
of the warriors returning from pursuit of the fugitives,
and gathering spoils and repairing armour, were all
going on before her. Vasco Nunez encamped that night
on the field of battle; his sentinels were placed and his
preparations made, as if he had not been the victor, and as
if the forces of his foe were still lurking along the hills
around him. Silence rested upon the encampment, so
deep that the very footfall of the watchful and walking soldier
disturbed the drowsy echoes, and wakened them to
startle for a moment the hungering beasts that had descended
for prey to the field of carnage. Sound, indeed, was the

sleep of that weary band, with few exceptions, which had
toiled and fought so freely and with such success. But no
ear was so dull with sleep, but would have been pierced
by the terrible and strange shriek which rang at midnight
throughout the host. It came from the tent, the only one
in the encampment, which Vasco Nunez had assigned, with
a considerate humanity, to the widow of the cassique.
Once, twice, thrice, was that shriek repeated, and every
heart trembled into instant consciousness and apprehension,
as the shrill sounds came back in prolonged reverberations
from the hills. Vasco Nunez was one of the first
to leap from his place of rest, and, snatching up his arms as
he heard the cry, to rush to the spot whence it proceeded.
One of the sentinels was already at the tent which he had
not yet entered, but from which he averred himself to have
seen a tall and shadowy figure depart, the moment after he
had been startled by the screams. The cavalier called to
the woman within, but received no answer. All was
ominous silence. He entered, and his first step was
arrested by something which seemed like a human body
at his feet.

“Bring torches—torches!” he cried aloud, as his own
anxiety grew almost intolerable. Fearing to harm the person
at his foot by any forward movement, he was about to
recede, when he felt, with a nameless horror, his sandals
almost fastened to the earth by some clammy substance,
the nature of which he too readily divined. Lights were
brought, and he found the unhappy woman on the ground
in the person before him. She was already insensible.
The blood, streaming from mouth and nostril had sluiced
the earth around her, and had exhausted the precious fountain
at her heart. There was no wound, no sign of violence
upon her person. The conflicting emotions of her
heart had been her executioner, and the sanguinary god of
the Charaibee had despatched an avenger, as silent and certain
as he had been noiseless and pathless. The poor
woman had expiated her involuntary treason to her lord;
and it may be permitted to fancy, to believe that, restored
to his favour, she still attends him, and the child she loved,
among those blue hills and green sloping valleys which
make the heaven of the humble-hoping savage.