Guahayona

Also Known As: older printings of the one source spell him Guaguyona, Guagugiona and Vaguoniona; after his cure he takes the fuller name Albeborael Guahayona, printed in some editions as Biberoci Guahayona
Region/Culture: Mesoamerica and the Caribbean
Mythos: Native Caribbean Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Heroes and Mortals
Mythical Attributes: He is a persuader and sea traveller who empties the first cave of its women, and who comes home wearing the first stone beads and gold-alloy ornaments.
Role in Mythos: In the Taíno origin story of Hispaniola he is the man who leads the first people’s women out of the cave Cacibajagua and so parts men from women.
Relation to Humans: He tricks the women into leaving their husbands and children, and he drowns his own brother-in-law to keep them. The ornaments a woman named Guabonito ties on him after his illness are the ones Taíno chiefs later wore as signs of rank.

Before the people of Hispaniola walked in daylight, they lived inside a mountain called Canta, in a cave named Cacibajagua, and the sun was their enemy. A watchman who came late to the cave mouth was turned to stone where he stood. Fishermen who stayed out too long became plum trees. In that close dark, with the smell of damp rock and many bodies, a man named Guahayona grew impatient.

Everything known about him comes from one small book. Ramón Pané, a friar who came out with Columbus’s second voyage and lived among the Taíno of Hispaniola, wrote down what they told him in about 1498. His Spanish original is lost, and the text survives through an Italian translation printed in Venice in 1571, which is why Guahayona’s name wanders from spelling to spelling. Pané himself admitted that he may have put the end at the beginning. The story holds together anyway.

It starts with a wash. The cave people cleaned their bodies with a herb called digo before they bathed, and Guahayona sent a man named Yahubaba out to pick some. Yahubaba left before dawn. The sun caught him on the path and made him a bird, one that sings at first light, and he never came back with the herb. Guahayona waited, grew angry, and made up his mind to go.

He did not go alone. He went to the women of the cave and talked. Leave your husbands, he told them, and we will find other lands and all the digo anyone could want. Leave the children too. We will come back for them. The women believed him, and they walked out of the mountain behind him and down to the sea.

The children were left beside a stream. When hunger came they cried for the breast, and their fathers could do nothing to quiet them. The crying went on, a thin wet sound of toa, toa, toa along the bank, until the children changed into small frogs, the kind the islanders called tona. Their call can still be heard near water after rain. The men of the cave were left with no wives and no children at all.

Out at sea, Guahayona had one more piece of business. With him in the canoe was his brother-in-law Anacacuya, a chief. Guahayona pointed over the side and told him to look at the fine conch lying in the water. Anacacuya leaned out to see it. Guahayona took him by the feet and tipped him into the sea. It was murder, plain and quick, and the story does not pretend otherwise.

Then he took the women to an island called Matininó and left them there. The island, the tellers said, has held only women ever since, and Guahayona paddled on to another island, Guanín.

The journey cost him. In the new land he found his skin breaking out in sores, which the friar who recorded the tale took for syphilis. A woman named Guabonito, whom he had left behind in the sea, was his cure. She had him wash again and again, and she put him in a guanara, a place set apart from other people, until the wounds closed. Stillness, water and time did the work. When he was whole he asked her leave to go, and she gave it.

She gave him more than leave. Guabonito tied cibas on his arms, strings of stone beads that look like marble and sit cool and heavy on the skin. In his ears she put guanines, ornaments of a pale metal the Spaniards compared to low-grade gold. With the gifts came a longer name, Albeborael Guahayona. He went home to the mountain and lived there with his father, Hiauna, and a son of that house was called Híaguaili Guanín. The beads and the ear metal stayed in the world after him. Taíno chiefs wore both, and the tellers traced them back to that sickbed.

No source says what Guahayona looked like. He has no height, no hair, no weapon. What the record gives is what was done to his body: the sores, the washing, the beads knotted on his arms. He is known by his skin and what hung on it.

His strength was his tongue. He never fights anyone face to face. He persuades a whole people’s women to follow him on a promise, he kills with a pointed finger and a lie about a shell, and he handles a canoe well enough to cross between islands with a full load. He is also the one man in the cave who seems to move freely under the sun that petrified the watchman and feathered Yahubaba.

The limits are just as clear. The same journey that made him rich made him sick, and he could not heal himself. He needed a woman’s care and a season shut away, and he could not leave until she allowed it. He did not stay with the women he stole, or on the island where he left them. He broke the first families apart and never mended them; that job fell to others, in a later chapter, with woodpeckers. What he carried back up the mountain was a new name, a few pounds of stone and metal, and a father to live with.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Guahayona in Taíno mythology?

Guahayona is a hero of the Taíno origin story from Hispaniola. He led the women of the first people out of the cave Cacibajagua, left them on the island of Matininó, and later came home wearing the first stone beads and gold-alloy ornaments.

Where does the story of Guahayona come from?

The story of Guahayona comes from one source, an account of Taíno beliefs written about 1498 by the friar Ramón Pané on Hispaniola. Pané’s Spanish original is lost, and the text survives through an Italian translation printed in 1571, which is why the hero’s name appears in several spellings.

Why did the children turn into frogs in the Guahayona story?

Guahayona persuaded the women to leave their children behind beside a stream. The hungry children cried toa, toa for their mothers until they changed into small frogs called tona.

What happened to Anacacuya?

Anacacuya was a chief and Guahayona’s brother-in-law. While the two were in a canoe, Guahayona told him to look at a fine conch in the water, then seized him by the feet and threw him into the sea.

Who is Guabonito and what did she give Guahayona?

Guabonito is the woman who cured Guahayona when he was covered in sores. She had him wash and kept him in a guanara, a place set apart, until he healed. She then gave him cibas, which are stone beads worn on the arms, and guanines, which are pale gold-alloy ear ornaments, and he took the name Albeborael Guahayona.