Spanish conquest. When Christopher Columbus reached Hispaniola, he found the native peoples ruled by chiefs, or caciques (Kern, 1973, 2). Although the tribes to whom this word was native were all but wiped out in a few decades, the term and concept of the cacique were applied by the Spaniards to other Indians in most of the areas they conquered, and remain in currency to this day (Kern, 1973, pp. 157 62).
The cacique was more than simply a "chief;" he exercised broad traditional powers over his people. Most of the Indians whom the Spanish encountered had a strongly hierarchical social system in which most of the population was conditioned to complete obedience to the cacique; it was largely because of this culture of obedience that so few Spaniards were able to dominate so many Indians after the initial conquest. Only at the extreme north and south of the Spanish conquest, against the Comanches and Araucanians respectively, was a more stubborn resistance encountered; the Comanches and Araucanians were in fact not con
...