The Chicken or the Iegue: Human-Animal Relationships and the Columbian Exchange

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IN 1543, A TAINO MAN HAD BEEN living in the mountains in the central southern part of Hispaniola for twelve years. Though fluent in Spanish and familiar with Spanish ways, he had fled to escape the oppressive exploitation of the encomienda. The man survived in the wilderness through a special relationship with three formerly feral pigs, two males and a female. The man and his pigs would go hunting for “wild” pigs, in the same way Europeans hunted prey with dogs—one pig tracking, one seizing, and one assisting, with the Indian giving the final thrust of death with a make-do spear. Once the prey was killed, the man would preside over the ritual distribution of the carcass, as was done in traditional hunts in Europe with dogs, “giving the interior parts to his companions,” while he made a barbecue for himself and salted the flesh for several days’ consumption. When prey was not readily available, the man also foraged for roots and plants, which he ate and shared with his porcine company. “At night,” wrote the conquistador-turned-chronicler Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo, “the said Indian went to bed among that bestial company, petting for hours one and then the other, devoted to the swine [la porcesa].” Tragedy ensued, however, when the pigs were spotted by several Spanish soldiers who were in the mountains looking for runaway slaves after a recent rebellion. Assuming that these were feral pigs who roamed the countryside rather than the property of an individual, the soldiers slaughtered them. Bereft over their loss, the man told the three soldiers, “Those pigs gave me life and maintained me as I maintained them; they were my friends and good company; one I gave this name, and the other was called so-and-so, and the female pig was called so-and-so.” Oviedo reported that “the deaths of these three