Historical Novelette

When the men who conquered the Arawak, Taino, Carib, Maya, Aztec and Inca civilizations came to these new lands, to this New World, they came with 100 years of experience fighting rugged islanders on rugged islands. Their partners and victims—their very human bloodhounds—that enabled this conquest, were the men of Gomera. After their betrayal and the conquest of their island some of them were taken on as slave sailors by the hard men who sailed in the wake of Columbus. What became of them? This author’s answer is Bruco, the last gasp of a dying people.

“I set sail for the Canary Islands, which are in the Ocean Sea.”

-Don Cristobol Colon, Admiral of the Ocean Sea, August 3, 1492

Part One: Bruco of The Exiles

Prologue: Born an Exile [1500]

A man knows how he came into the world, but does not remember.

A man is supposed to have cried when an infant, but denies.

A man knows he crawled as a babe but does not remember.

A man is supposed to be the slave of him who bought his mother, but denies.

A man is told that his forefathers were great, but cannot remember.

A man is sold—and he denies

Bruco, the son of Bruco of the Exiles, returned to Exile-island; returned from winning his Master’s war against the Guanches on Fire-island; returned with a prize woman of the Guanches, and with a big beast of a dog—a dog of the Masters; a dog of war.

The Guanches had small dogs, wild and tame, on Fire-island. But the Masters in their ships, they brought the Dogs of War. Even with these, and their snorting horses, and their singing steel, and their thundering guns, they could not defeat the Guanches of Fire-island, or the Canarians of Big-island; not even the Auaritas of Palm-island. They could only take Sacred-tree-island from the wretched Bimbachos and the easterly Flat-islands from the weaklings who had dwelt there.

The Masters gave up stealing women, and even water, from the Exiles, and came to parley; to seek the aid of the men who swam the Ocean Sea to steal wives away from Fire-island, since before the Masters came in their ships. Would the exiles assist the Masters in their floating wood-plank mud-pens, with the subjugation of their cousin-peoples?

The people of Exile-island were descendents of those Guanches originally made to swim from Fire-island to this misty cliff-rimmed wilderness, with their tongues split, as punishment for their crimes. They had taught themselves the whistling language, and eventually taught their children, born with un-spilt tongues, a variation of Fire-island speech.

Would they return to Fire-island with a banot [fighting-stick] in hand?

Among the first to answer the call was Bruco of Agulo who had swam to Fire-island by night, stolen two wives, and floated them home on goatskin bags he inflated with his own breath. He returned, and later, so did his son.

But when the warriors were off man-hunting on the larger islands with the warrior-Masters, wine-Masters, sheep-Masters, and sugar-Masters came with their crops, and built their houses, and claimed the land. This was bad enough; and eventually became intolerable when the Lady Master Beatriz began her cruelty. The people revolted successfully. But Beatriz called on Master Vera, the master of Bruco, son of Bruco, to cross from Fire-island to punish the Exiles. And so Bruco returned to his home, as an invader.

They died on high sacred ground. Those warriors who survived were sold off to ship-Masters. Only Bruco retained his right to marriage and property. A few loners hid in the sacred heights. But fields, homes, women, children and flocks, all belonged to the Masters now. Bruco was filled with sorrow. He fathered children on Tapalma, his Gaunche wife, but remained empty of all but sorrow.

After some years tending his goats Bruco went to the cliff above the whistling stones. He wore his chieftain’s skirt of woven palm, set his great dog loose in the wild, and filled his death pouch with message shards; broken pottery with scrawled news from the living to those beyond. He sailed from the cliff, taking his message beyond to the singing rocks that the Masters called the Organ Pipes.

The new Sugar-Master arrived, needing a new wife. He promptly paid Beatriz the bride price, who took off the son and daughter of Bruco with her to Spain—land of the Masters, to accompany her in her last years.

In the year before Bruco was born the Sugar-Master sowed Tapalma in hopes of a half-Spanish son, a foreman to manage the slaves brought over from Africa. But she was pious. Keeping to the belief in He-who-sustains-the-sky-and-earth, she journeyed into the highlands for purification. When she birthed a son she held him up to her husband as Spanish. But when she sang songs to her son in the Guanche-tongue, she sang to him as an Exile, a son of Fire-island and Exile-island. The Sugar-Master called him Sebastian, and wanted him as a servant to master lesser servants.

She, Tapalma, called him Bruco.

Other sons and daughters she brought into the world.

Only Bruco did she sing to in her ancestor’s language. The others she spoke to in Spanish.

Tapalma had born two children to Bruco, and later six children to the Sugar-Master.

In between, so she told him, she had been blessed with child by He-who-sustains-the-sky-and-earth; having lain with the Sacred Mountain, Garajonay, secretly, just before her wedding to the Sugar-Master. Before he could speak, long before he could understand, she sang to him, “Son of Sacred Mountain, remember me, your mother-gone…”

The Flight of the Sugar-Master’s Wife

He Who Sustains Sky and Earth [1505]

She Who Sustains He Who Sustains Sky and Earth [1509]

Song of the Exiles

Ghost on the Mountain

Dog on the Mountain

It was the Eleventh Coming of the Stinkers since his birth. He stood above the shoulder of Broken Face, and watched their reeking tubs lurch through the sparkling spring ocean across which better men had swam.

Down to the Sea

Part Two: Dog of War

Twenty Sail: 1514

Hell Hunted: 1514

The House of the Great Man: 1515

Picking the Bones of the Damned: 1516

River of Mud: 1517

Beneath the Land of Flowers: 1518

I have made every effort to remain true to the historical, archaeological, geographic, zoological and genetic record of the Canary Islands of Gomera and Tenerife. Bruco was the name of an actual 15th Century Gomero chief. The Bruco of this tale is the fictional son of his widow. Only 17% of ‘native’ Gomeros currently have aboriginal generic markers. Of these, virtually none carry paternal markers.

The men of Gomera were obliterated.

I conceived of this Bruco, in the hope that such a person actually survived the death of his people, and, more importantly, as their voice.

For the story of Bruco’s childhood on Gomera I utilized 38 sources [mostly specialized scholarly papers or fragmentary lay documents], my primary one being The Discovery of Mankind: Atlantic Encounters in the Age of Columbus, by David Abulafia, Yale, London, 2008.

The tale of Bruco’s adulthood is had from one primary and six full-length academic books, the most useful being Hernando de Soto: A Savage Quest in the Americas, by David Ewing Duncan, Crown, NY, 1996.

Bruco has appeared as a supporting character in my time-travel science-fiction. This is his historic ‘back-story’. There is nothing speculative [beyond his personal character] or fantastical about it. The men of his island were known to take ship as sailors and mercenaries, and every conquistador from Columbus to Soto took on water and food at Gomera before setting sail for The New World. Although his name was probably not Bruco, I suspect that at least one young man escaped the island grave of his forefathers in such a manner.

In The Sunset Saga Bruco appears as a supporting character in Of The Sunset World, Comes the Six Winter Night, and Thunderboy, and as a protagonist in God's Picture Maker [soon to be released]. I have outlined a historical novel about the conquest of Mexico in which Bruco will be the protagonist, titled Blood of Heaven, to be serialized here.