Indian Swimming Hole

We had heard rumors of a beautiful swimming area in bedrock, with a 50‐foot Indian head carved into a cliff near the pools, somewhere near Monción. We decided to see if we could find the swimming hole. Besides just wanting to see the sights, we also wanted to see if the Indian head, which some say is just a geologic anomaly and others say is a carving, was really there.

Padre Las Casas, the priest who accompanied Columbus in his initial “discovery”, settlement, and exploitation of the Island of Hispaniola (of which the modern nation of the Dominican Republic occupies the eastern two thirds) reported the devastating elimination of the majority of the Taino people on the island within just a few decades of European arrival. Disease, starvation, and vile conditions of servitude in the gold mines all contributed to the genocide. It was not the intent of Columbus or his colleagues to wipe out the native population, particularly, but by 1509 (just 17 years after their first arrival) the Europeans were importing the first African slaves, having run out of Tainos.

What happened to the Tainos? Conventional wisdom, fueled by the Spanish reports, was that they were eliminated as a people. Other folks believe they ran for the hills and mountains and survived in hiding. Some stories say that Monción, among other mountain towns, has a high proportion of blood types that would indicate Taino heritage. We heard on this visit that someone was planning DNA studies to further trace Taino heritage.

Many Taino customs are found in Dominican culture, including multi‐cropping in “conucos” (a Taino‐derived word), the cultivation of yuca (another Taino‐derived word) and the production of the flatbread casabe (yet another Taino‐derived word) from a ground paste made from the roots of the yuca plant. Tainos played a form of baseball and spent a lot of their spare time in the shade discussing politics—traditions still going strong in the Dominican Republic.

So, though there is no surviving indigenous culture separate from the more general Dominican culture, there certainly is recognition of Taino heritage among our friends and acquaintances. The swimming holes have consistently been called “of the Indians”, for example, and the locals did know that the cliff was said to be a head, though some said they didn’t think so. We started asking around, first in our extended Dominican family and then in our little neighborhood, looking for someone who could guide us.

We went across the alley/street to the neighbor’s house, since they are reliable, steady folk. They both readily said that they’d heard of the place but didn’t know how to get there. Pablo started talking to the boys playing baseball in the vacant lot next to his house—did they know how to get there? There were several braggarts in the group who of COURSE knew how to get there but couldn’t go just now. Then there was Berto.

Berto is the grandson of our milk‐selling neighbor, Martín. Martín and his family have not been the best of neighbors, what with the cows and the dogs and the many roosters raised for the fight. They have been the fence‐moving sort of neighbors. But they are our neighbors, and Berto’s father let him off his milking chores to serve as our guide. His father wanted to point out that he’d recently bought the boy a replacement motorcycle, since someone had stolen his bike on Christmas Eve. Berto’s father and his grandfather both have pinched, closed faces, but Berto’s face was open and clear. He was happy to take us and very solicitous of both the “old” gringos during the adventure. He also took a younger cousin along.

We loaded up the two wide gringos on the smallest of the motorcycles—a Honda 70. We followed Berto and his cousin and our neighbors had decided to come along—Pedro and Maritza loaded up on their motorcycle and off we went. We had helmets—Dominicans don’t wear helmets except where they fear the AMET—the transit cops—who will fine them on the spot if they catch them without helmets. We do not fear the AMET—we fear injury and wear ours.

Our route led us through the “rotunda” at the entrance of Monción and straight through on a dirt road that followed a ridge—probably a logging road from the 40s and 50s. That road led us past an old dumping site and to a gate adjacent to a milking barn and cow loafing area. The gate was closed only with a rope, and Berto opened it for us, then closed it behind us. We continued down the ridge until the ridge became much steeper. We stopped at a fence (belonging, we were told, to Berto’s uncle) and left the motorcycles. We covered them with large dry palm leaves (cana) that had been leftovers from the last load of thatching palm leaves hauled out of this area. Past the cana palms now harvested for thatching, we crossed a dry field of bitter yuca, used to produce casabe flatbread (Monción produces probably 80% of this staple for national and international consumption). The cultivation of yuca on steep slopes contributes dramatically to erosion and lack of rainwater retention during and after a storm, but it produces a reliable income for the farmer. The field was recently created from a remnant pine forest—you can still see a few barely‐surviving pines among the yuca plants.

From the yuca field we descended the ridge and finally reached the bed of the Rio Gurabo. It might once have merited the title of “River” but when we saw it, there were dry stretches and even as a creek it was sickly. We followed it along, noting the trash caught up in the branches of the brush along the river bed and looking up the sides a bit for evidence of the most recent high water—probably 8 or 10 feet above the sandy bed where we trudged.

Along the river bed were growing “guano” palm, which are much prized for their leaves and are used to weave all kinds of baskets, from the big disposable packages used for tobacco (serones) to saddlebags for a burro, a mule, or a motorcycle (álganas, pronounced “aiganas” in Monción) to the common shoulder‐bags used by men and women alike to carry essentials, including lunch (macutos). The words, the weaving, and the tradition are all Taino, though few Dominicans give that much thought.

After more trudging than I quite expected, we finally rounded a bend and found ourselves in bedrock country. We were on top of a series of bedrock pools, and even though the water was very low, they were still beautiful. The water was quite deep, even mid‐drought, and the boys were glad when the women‐folk headed back, so they could strip to their underwear and go swimming.

Sure enough, there was a big red cliff with some caves in it. We never did see the face as clearly as others have seen it (see photo bellow from Google search for Charcos de los Indios). What we saw was rather the worse for wear—perhaps an earthquake had removed a part of it.

For my part, I was much more worried about hiking back OUT of the hole we’d so cheerfully hiked into, and after enjoying the view for a bit, Maritza and I started out. We were in no hurry and moseyed along, making our way along the river and then across a short‐cut to avoid a big bend. On the short cut Maritza identified “broom brush” and promptly started picking branches of the brush. She said these branches would make excellent outdoor brooms (for sweeping the road and the grass, as needed). I obediently collected a broom worth of brush also, then watched with admiration as she broke off a couple of spiky leaflets of the cana palm with which to bind the brooms up, making them easier to carry. We got back to the ridge and the motorcycles with plenty of low sunlight left, right about the time Pablo and David also climbed out of the river bed. The boys, who had stayed behind to swim, must have run up the hill, because they joined us before we’d wheeled the motorcycles back on to the road and were there to close the gate behind us as we lurched back on to the back roads and on up to Monción once again.