Chapter 32: The Story of Avee

Resha asked about the story she heard from the women of the Colony. While planning the bachelor party, they talked about Avee, who was the oldest of the ten indian maidens on the island and first bride of the Colony. The party was using Avee and her tale as a loose theme. “They said that this young girl swam from one of the islands in the river, walked naked from the waters, and as a greeting was passed around the barracks by the 25 Spaniards who wiped out her tribe. That seemed kind of brutal. Is that what happened?”

Marta answered her. “Well, that is a very unflattering presentation of something that both sides wanted. As far as wiping out the Amazon ‘tribe,’ there was originally one tribe, which split into two after a civil war. The two sides fought a war about every 20 years, when the male-female ratio shifted. This time the smaller tribe was ready to attack the larger tribe when the Spanish appeared. The 75 native warriors, ready for war, had a bad attitude, they were all tuned up to attack across the river and steal the best women from their neighbors - really, there was nothing else worth stealing. The indians were mostly naked and armed with pointed sticks, and knew nothing of metal. They were approached from behind by 25 Conquistadors who were vets of the Nuevo Inca campaign, professional soldiers who were very used to hacking up a hundred indians in a day per soldier, without mercy. That was what they were paid for. The Spanish were wearing iron armor, and armed with swords, shields, crossbows and gunpowder weapons. As soon as the lines engaged the calvary broke cover and came to the party and then the slaughter really took off. Nets were deployed. Attitude did not help the tightly packed indians much.”

“When it was over there were no Spanish casualties and no native warriors alive. According to custom the Spanish took in some of the younger war widows for conversion when a padre arrived. They gave gifts to the indians across the river, and urged them to accept the surviving dependents of the smaller tribe. But that really did not work out, short term they were not worth the efforts to feed them. Within a year all the natives on both sides of the river were dead from plagues. This was a time of plagues you know, and they had no resistance. The fact is that survival was a full-time job for the rain forest natives, so if anybody in a hut got sick, they were all dead.”

“All that remained of the Amazon tribes were 10 maidens being trained by a few elder women on the island at the north end of the lake, which was sort of an all-female boarding high school. All girls from both tribes were sent there in their tween years to learn how to be adults, and stayed at least 6 years. You understand, girls of these ages can be charming or troublesome, both tend to distract people who must working hard to survive. In school they could be taught together, efficiently. Isolation was critical. The Spanish Captain noticed the lack of teenage females in both native camps. He was told about the island, and left the girls alone. He did supply them with food but kept the diseases away.”

“Girls on the island were not allowed to ‘graduate to real life’ until they were ready and had passed a test. It was two years after the Spanish arrived that the oldest girl, who had been on the island for more than a half-dozen years, finally passed and was ready. She came ashore virtually naked looking to become a woman, to have a husband and to make babies - that was the custom. She was driven to have children as a woman. The first night she asked the Captain to give her an adult name, that was an Inca custom that many tribes used in some form. He naming her Avee. She asked for adult clothes (children were naked) so he gave her a poncho as her adult clothing. Next he pierced her to make her a woman, the final tradition. All the native women were pierced. The maiden thought ‘piercing’ was with a thorn through the ear, but that was their external sign of another piercing. The Captain explained about babies and did the significant piercing as well, she had a very weak barrier and, since this was the path to children, she asked him to pierce her again the first night. Possibly more than once.”

“Avee asked how she would be matched with a husband in his tribe. The Captain had about 17 men who were charged to make a colony, and who had been without a woman for over a year. He had long considering this issue. His orders were to establish a settlement on the river east of the Andes. Obviously wives were needed. But any one-on-one matching would not work, and waiting for more maidens would take years. Rotation was the only solution. The Captain had decided that each maiden would live with two temporary husbands - men who were physically distinctive in some way - for two months in temporary marriage. Then two more men for the next two periods, and so on. In time each maiden would be the wife of all 25 men.”