… a must read! As a descendant of the Caribbean’s original people, and Taíno leader, I am delighted and grateful to Mr. Kennedy. This work enlightens the reader and gives us a glimpse into the Pre-Columbian Native world of Jamaica.
Jorge Eztevez
Programme Specialist
Smithsonian Institution
HUAREO: Story of a Jamaican Cacique by Fred Kennedy is a frightening yet delightful historical-fiction novel that brings alive the life-threatening situation of the Native Americans known as Taíno on the island of Jamaica some 500 years ago. Kennedy brings the Taíno people and their incredibly advanced society for its time and place back to life in full living color.
Lynne Guitar
Historian and Cultural Anthropologist
HUAREO provides helpful insight into the indigenous culture of Jamaica and complements Kennedy’s earlier publication Daddy Sharpe. Together, by spanning two significant periods of Jamaican history, we are taken on a journey through the cultural landscape of the island.
Ivor Conolley
Archaeologist and former lecturer
University of the West Indies, Mona
When Huareo inherits the role of cacique, he leads the Taino into a prosperous life until he receives word one day from neighbouring Haiti of strangers sailing and laying waste to their villages. Determined not to let the same fate befall his people, Huareo did not welcome or trust the Spanish strangers when they first arrived in Yamaye (Jamaica) in 1494. In 1509, the Spaniards return to the island with the sole purpose of gaining control and the result is something Huareo and his people could never have imagined.
Meticulously researched from original sources such the journals of Diego Mendez and Hernando Colon who were marooned in Jamaica on Columbus’s fourth voyage, along with other primary and secondary sources and consultation with historians and archaeologists, Fred Kennedy unearths the history of Jamaica’s first ancestral heroes.
Contents
- Part One: The Chiefdom of Majagua 1490-98
- Part Two: The Chiefdom of Huareo 1498-1509
- Part Three: Sevilla 1509-14
- Part Four: Guayguata 1514-26
- Epilogue: 1535
- Afterword
- Acknowledgements
- Notes & References
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Illustrations & Photographs
About The Author
Fred Kennedy worked as a teacher and principal for over thirty years, in both Jamaica and Canada. He has devoted much of his retirement to writing historical fiction: the well-acclaimed Daddy Sharpe (2008), his present novel, Huareo (2015) and soon-to-be completed, Where the Pineapple Could Not Grow: Memoirs of a Maroon Chief. He and his wife Georgianne share their time between his native Jamaica and adopted Canada, where their three daughters and families reside.
