Nueva Cádiz de Cubagua: History and Research Antecedents

Cubagua’s pearls achieved European notoriety after Christopher Columbus’

third voyage to the New World in 1498. He was stunned by the natural abun-dance of pearls and their widespread use as indigenous body ornaments, and baptized northeastern Venezuelan region as the Gulf of Pearls (Golfo de las Perlas) (Colón [1498]1997, 79–80; de Las Casas 1981, 31). Columbus’ letter to the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella, spread the news across Europe (del Verde [1499]1989; Cantino [1501]1989) and attracted a throng of sailors to the region, also called the Coast or Island(s) of Pearls (Castellanos [1589]1987; de Las Casas 1997; del Verde [1499]1989; Fernández de Oviedo

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[1535]1986; Mártir de Anglería [1530]1988; López de Gómara [1552]1988). Voy-ages as early as 1499 by Alonso de Ojeda, Amerigo Vespucci, Pedro Alonso Niño and Cristóbal Guerra procured detailed information about the feasibility of pearl ‘businesses’ (Donkin 1998, 314–315; Sauer 1966; Zubiri 2002). The exploita-tion of this resource began soon after.

500 km

Figure 7.1 Islands and sites. Top: Margarita, Coche, and Cubagua Islands in the Caribbean;

bottom: sites referred to in this chapter

In 1521, the previously existing cluster of temporary campsites (or rancherías as they were called in documentary sources) was converted into an asiento or administrative seat. In 1526, the asiento became the villa or town hall of Santiago de Cubagua (Cunnil Grau 2004, 60), and on the 12th of September 1528, the Cédula Real (Royal Decree) proclaimed the foundation of the ciudad (town/city) of Nueva Cádiz (Otte 1977, 87). After a decade of prosperity, the yields of Cubagua pearls dwindled and a frenetic, but ultimately unsuccess-ful, search for new oyster beds was performed on almost all of the Venezu-elan islands (Arellano Moreno 1950, 180; Ramos 1976, 179–207). By 1538, a new campsite of pearl fishers from Cubagua was established in Cabo de La Vela in present-day Colombia, some 1000 km to the west (González 2002; Guerra Curvelo 1997; Vásquez 1989). Farther away still, pearls had also begun to be ex-ploited in the Pearl Islands in Panama (Camargo 1983; Cipriani et al. 2008) and in Baja California (Gerhard 1956). By the early 1540s the town of Nueva Cádiz had been abandoned (Vila 1948; see also Vela Cossio and García Hermida 2014).

All in all, Amerindian slaves, pearls and gold, in addition to the quotidian

‘bartering’ or just forceful stealing of staple foods from the indigenous peoples (maize, cassava and other foodstuffs), triggered and sustained Spanish interest in the exploration and conquest of the northeastern part of South American Tierra Firme through the initial decades of the sixteenth century (Arcila Farias 1946, 1983; Arellano Moreno 1950; Jiménez 1986; Vila 1978).

This eventful period of Venezuelan history has generated much scholarly work in Venezuelan historiography and anthropology (Ayala Lafée-Wilbert and Wilbert 2011; Boulton 1961; Brito Figueroa 1966; Cervigón 1997, 1998a;

Cunnil Grau 1993, 2004; Gabaldón Márquez 1988; Morón 1954; Otte 1961, 1977;

Rodríguez Velásquez 2017; Rojas 2008; Sanoja Obediente and Vargas Arenas 1999; Velázquez 1956; Vila 1961, 1963, 1978). Topics related to the rowdy and bois-terous social life of this early town nourished Venezuelan literature (Azócar de Campos 2009; Nuñez 1988; Pacheco et al. 2006) and cinematography (e.g.

Arreaza-Camero 1993), and stirred up the imagination of sixteenth-century en-gravers (Champlain 1989; de Bry 1990; O’Brian 1996).

However, despite Cubagua’s near omnipresence in Venezuelan narratives, these are characterized by three important drawbacks: (1) the heavy emphasis placed on Spanish deeds known from documentary sources; (2) the paucity of archaeologically grounded interpretations where Amerindian and African social actors may yet become visible and endowed with agency; and (3) the emphasis on early colonial urban spaces and lack of studies on the indigenous depopulation and desettlement and European resettlement of non-urban scapes on the islands of Margarita, Coche and Cubagua after 1498. These con-straints contribute to the perpetuation of flawed, incomplete and unidirec-tional grand narratives.

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Although several documents from the early sixteenth century mention the presence of Spanish huts and, later, buildings and urbanized spaces on Cubagua Island, the archaeological evidence of these phenomena was for a long time understudied. In Nueva Cádiz as in the surrounding region, due to the imposition of colonial regimes, indigenous peoples and European new-comers were involved in myriad new entanglements in which ethnic, linguis-tic, racial, gender and other social statuses were often violently redefined in everyday ‘civilizing’ practices (e.g., Deagan 2003; Gosden 2004; Silliman 2015;

Voss and Casella 2012). The ever-changing nature, dynamics and intensities of these processes inspired international researchers to work on the topic, es-sentially drawing from rich documentary sources (Bénat Tachot 2015; Dawson 2006; Helmer 1962; Idyll 1965; Mosk 1938; Orche 2009; Perri 2009; Quiévreux 1900; Warsh 2010, 2018; Willis 1976, 1980; Woodruff Stone 2014). The pearl fish-ery was also approached by historical ecologists (Cipriani et al. 2010; MacK-enzie et al. 2003; Romero 2003; Romero et al. 1999). But despite the evident remains of Nueva Cádiz lying in the sands of Cubagua (Rugil 1892), archaeol-ogy was long silent. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Leonard Dal-ton (1912, 183–184) summarized this situation well by arguing that on Cubagua

‘…diligent search and delving will reveal relicts of the fifteenth-century [this is an error; it should be sixteenth century] settlement [and yet] … nothing seems to have been done in the way of archaeological excavation….’

The needed excavations were finally carried out in the second half of the 1950s by José Maria Cruxent and his collaborators; but these only half-opened a fascinating Pandora’s Box (Cruxent 1955, 1964, 1969, 1972, 1980; Cruxent and Rolando 1961; Cruxent and Rouse 1958; Ferris 1991; Goggin 1960, 1968; Lister and Lister 1974; Rouse and Cruxent 1963; Vaz and Cruxent 1978; Vila 1961; Willis 1976, 1980; Wing 1961). According to Cruxent (1972), the cultural strata in the ruins of Nueva Cádiz lay only at a shallow level. We confirmed this shallow-ness by analyzing the annotations made by John Goggin who accompanied Cruxent in his initial excavation in December of 1954 as well as the data at-tached to the objects that are currently held in the Museum of Natural History in Gainesville and in the Peabody Museum at Yale University in New Haven. In general, the maximum depth of the excavation was 40 cm but approximately 98% of all excavated units reached only the depth of 15 cm. This resolution precludes any clear-cut spatial or temporal discrimination among the differ-ent categories of Amerindian materials from: (1) precolonial times (pre-1498);

(2) post-Contact but pre-Nueva Cádiz times (1498–1528); (3) the time span of the town of Nueva Cádiz (1528–1542); and (4) post-1542 to the end of the six-teenth century. In addition, there is no doubt that Nueva Cádiz’s boisterous

lives taking place on the sandy surface of a semi-deserted island contributed to the daily intermingling of the archaeological materials entrapped in the shallow superficial strata. The postdepositional processes that could bias the original deposition include centuries of almost uninterrupted human tran-sit across the ruins associated with trampling, building, transporting loads, preparing and repairing fishing gear, disposing of rubbish, goat roaming, and looting. These processes acted together with natural agents such as winds, tropical storms, salinity, high temperatures, and the bioturbation produced by land crabs (Cardisoma guanhumi and Gecarcinus ruricola), rabbits (Sylvilagus floridanus margaritae), burrowing owls (Athene sp.) and, probably, common rats (Rattus sp.). Finally, the archaeological field methods used in the 1950s also lacked the microstratigraphical and microcontextual approach, and fine-mesh sieving.

Despite the above weaknesses, some of the intricacies of the contact pe-riod on Cubagua began to be illuminated by Cruxent and Rouse (1958) within the perspective of the historical-cultural chronology of north- eastern Venezu-ela. Close to the La Aduana Archaic Age shellmidden (its beginnings date to 4150±80 BP), Cruxent and Rouse (1958, 1, 112) found a small surface scatter of potsherds painted with straight lines that seemed like the Playa Guacuco style from Margarita. This scatter was dated to between ca ad 1150 and 1500 and classified as a member of the (impoverished) Dabajuroid series from north-western Venezuela that ‘traveled’ from there through trade. Cruxent and Rouse found the Playa Guacuco pottery closely related to the early colonial pottery of Nueva Cádiz and to the Los Obispos styles, which purportedly developed subsequently in situ on Cubagua Island.

In 2008, Aníbal Carballo performed an archaeological survey on Cubagua aimed at reconstructing the changing cultural landscapes of the island. Al-though 36 new sites and 27 isolated features were added to the archaeologi-cal map of this island, the survey confirmed the scarcity of Saladoid pottery (Carballo 2014, 16, 79–80, Plano 13; 2017). This singularity was also confirmed by unsystematic surveys conducted on Cubagua by the authors in 2014. Carballo (2014, Planos 14, 15, p. 66, Lám. 25, p. 152) further reported only a small number of Playa Guacuco potsherds and found one potsherd assigned to the Krasky style from Los Roques Archipelago, pertaining to the Valencioid series from north-central Venezuela. Some new data related to the first religious sanctuary of Nueva Cádiz and its cemetery has also been yielded by excavations carried out between 2007 and 2008 by the archaeologist Jorge Armand (2017). Our re-search into the early colonial settlements on Margarita, Coche and Cubagua began to take shape based on the above-outlined scenario.

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3 Surveys of Early Colonial Sites on Margarita and Coche Islands