Guanche army (Canary Islands) for DBA 3.0

Although I have no ancestry from the Guanches, I was born and raised in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, and since childhood I have been taught at school about the Guanches, read books and watched documentaries and publications, as well as paid many visits to places such as Castilian castles, Guanche caves, and of course, el museo Canario.

Because of that, I have thought a few times about staging skirmishers with Guanches and Conquistadores, but I was always put off by the lack of models representing the Guanches. Now thanks to 3D printing, I have found a way to get miniatures for them, and I am thinking of building an army of Guanches and another of Conquistadores for DBA. So here it is what I have done.

The Canary Islands are an archipelago off the North African coast. They were known to the ancient Phoenicians and Romans and conquered by Spain in the late Middle Ages. Columbus stayed there on his way to the New World. The native inhabitants, the "Guanches" put up a long and bitter struggle against the invaders, although their technology was only at a neolithic level.

My friend Antonio passed me some notes and also helped me to do the army lists below. There is also an old list he and another friend of him did for Hordes of the Things years ago: The Stronghold rebuilt. 

1) The Baronial Conquest

The conquest was started in 1402 by a band of Norman mercenaries in the pay of Castille, led by the knights Jean de Bethencourt and Gadifier de La Salle. They took the sparsely populated islands of Lanzarote, Fuerteventura and El Hierro and failed spectacularly in Gran Canaria. There is no record of the use of mounted troops.

The mantle was tehn taken by Castilian nobles: Hernán Peraza, his ill-fated son Guillén (who died on a beach in La Palma when his helmet failed to protect him from a well aimed stone throw), and Diego de Herrera They conquered La Gomera, raided extensively and tried (and failed) to establish fortified outposts in Gran Canaria and Tenerife.

2) The Royal Conquest

Since 1478 Castilian armies were organised by the Crown and led by royal apointees, successively Juan Rejón, Pedro de Algaba, Juan Rejón a second time (after he had Algaba beheaded), Pedro de Vera and Alonso Fernández de Lugo. Use of mounted troops was decisive in the battles of Guiniguada, Arucas and La Laguna. Legend has Saint Catherine giving a helping hand to Juan Rejón when he disembarked in Gran Canaria. These armies finally managed to subdue Gran Canaria, La Palma and Tenerife after some initial setbacks.

The lists below are not "Barker-approved" and your mileage may vary. They were drafted by my friend Antonio and later completed by me, so if there are any mistakes, they are entirely my fault.

IV/68g Castilian Army of the Conquest of Canary Islands 1478 AD - 1496 AD

1 x General, the royal apointee and his small mounted retinue (3Kn), 1 x Jinetes (LH), 6 x Castilian infantry from urban militias (Sp), 2 x urban militias (Sp) or some gentlemen adventurers (4Bd), 2 Crossbowmen (Ps) or native (Gomeran) allies (5Hd). Terrain type: Litoral. Aggression:4. Enemies: I/65.

I/65 Guanches from Canary Islands 500 BC - 1496 AD

1 x general (3Wb) or (3Ax), 1 x nobles or warriors  (3Wb) or (3Ax), 10 x Guanches with javelins and throwing stones (Ps). Terrain Type:Hilly. Aggression: 0. Enemies IV/68g.

Apart from the Conquistadores, appropriate "historical" opposition could be anybody who sailed North African waters in antiquity: Carthaginians, Romans, Arabs, West Africans. The Portuguese and Norman French tried and failed to conquer the islands before the Spaniards.

The miniatures are 28mm Wargames Atlantic Neanderthals downscaled and modified by a generous friend.

I wanted to differentiate the Warbands from the Psiloi by giving them different weapons. Then, I remember reading somewhere and long ago, something about a Canarian hero, Adargoma or Doramas, who wielded a long and very heavy wooden sword, so I thought it might be one with stone blades in it, similar to those from the Aztecs. I commented this to my friend Antonio who said it was quite possible although we have never seen one, and we decided to pay a visit to el Museo Canario to see if we could find some evidence of any kind of weapons used by the Canarian but we found none.

We also noticed the museum had shrank since our childhood due to lack of funding, but still it is worth visiting it, and we took many pictures. The most eye-catching room in the museum is the mummies.

Four months later I resumed research and found out it was Doramas who wielded a sword: Doramas was an aboriginal chieftain of Gran Canaria who lived in the late 15th century and was one of the principal leaders of the resistance against the Castilian invasion.

He joined forces with the guaire of Gáldar to fight against the troops of the Crown of Castile. He refused to surrender and took active part in numerous confrontations, such as the battle of Guiniguada, the batttle of Tenoya and the battle of Arucas. He died after the battle of Arucas, having treacherously attacked by a squire of Pedro de Vera.

The first chronicles

"The chronicles known as Ovetense and Lacunense, closely followed in wording by the accounts of Francisco López de Ulloa and Pedro Gómez Escudero, offer a vision of the last encounter of Doramas which accords with what may be expected of a late-medieval combat, adding moreover the value of locating and relating the skirmish to toponymy that still endures to this day. For example, the Ovetense tell us on this matter:

At length Governor Vera, with all the men he had and whose newly arrived, resolved very deliberately to make a great raid, whereby to terrify and dismay the Canarians, who were grown so proud; which he did, and it turned out well, for on the very first day he chanced to strike where the Canarians were gathered.

As he took the road to Arucas in order to put them in fear, and, as its customary in the art of war, he wished to represent unto them the battle from a ridge and height opposite to where they stood, which gave clear view, all the people marching at length and the horsemen taking wide ground, so that their numbers seemed more than doubled,

At last, descending into the valley called Tenoya, he mounted by the high ridges that go towards Arucas; and, coming within sight of the Canarians, with great fury he charged, and our horse and footmen together fell upon them. Yet they, with no less courage and spirit, received the attack, and defended themselves against ours while striking back.

And Dormas marked many with his sword of heavy burnt wood, so great that afterwards a very strong man of ours could scarce wield it with both arms, whereas he, with but one hand, handled it more freely. He cleared a wide field around him, for all men kept themselves from his mighty blows, which when they struck a horse, hamstrung it, or cut off arm or leg as if it had been iron  - and worse, for his wounds admitted no cure. Moreover, the lances he and the others cast, if they struck any men-at-arms, he surely died; and the stones likewise, as though they had been shot from great crossbows of ancient times."

It seems that there were two different types of swords: one made clearly of wood and another, a club tipped with sharp flints. According to the account above, I would say the second type was the one Doramas was wielding on the day he died.

I also found the following information quoted below, in a book from the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, which you can download for free if you are interested: Armas de los primitivos canarios. Enciclopedia Canaria. Aula de la Cultura de Tenerife (1968) by Luis Diego Cuscoy:

"Magado or macado. They were war clubs used in Gran Canaria, with two large balls at their ends, often armed with grinding stones or sharp flints...

...At the end of the sixteenth century, Abréu Galindo, who compiled information on weaponry scattered throughout earlier sources, offered a summary of the subject. He refers to magados as clubs which, according to him, bore sharp stone slabs embedded at one end, most likely at the thicker part..."

...The second type of sword would be the amodagas. They were pointed staffs with tips hardened by fire According to Abréu Galindo, the amodagas, in size and refinement, resembled swords. They were crafted from tea wood (resinous Canarian pine) and cut like steel. It may be assumed that they were not cutting, bladed weapons, but piercing ones, as suggested by the fire-hardened point. These references pertain to the island of Gran Canaria...

...In Antonio de Viana, author of the Poem of the Antiquities of the Fortunate Isles (1604), numerous references are found concerning the weapons of the ancient inhabitants of Tenerife. The citations are abundant - darts, suntas, lances, maces, etc. - yet descriptions are scarce. When he mentions maces, he notes that they contained sharp flakes embedded in them. Since it is known that sharp flakes of obsidian, referred as tabanas, were used, it is reasonable to assume that the maces to which Viana alludes bore inlays of this material."

After reading this information I concluded that it was very possible that Doramas was wielding a sword-club with basalt blades, and that the general of my Guanche army would be wielding one, so I proxied one from the Red Copper Aztecs, Children of the Sun range and glued it to a 28mm scaled down Barbarian from Wargames Atlantic. I also had a cloak added to the miniature to distinguish it from the rest as a chieftain. Then, I gave clubs and banots to the rest of the warriors of the warbands.

Doramas (Gn) on the left with "wooden sword" and Wb with magados and banots.

5 x Ps with javelins.

5 x Ps with throwing stones.

"...Canarians also had a variety of throwing javelins and spears, a popular one was the banot. Among Canarian historians and archeologists, Menghin's original thesis on the banot is well known. This thesis was developed on the basis of a study by Álvarez Delgado and later confirmed by Serra Ráfols in his discussion on Menghin's work. Menghin draws upon the Roman soliferreum, a weapon found in may Spanish sites, whose chronology can be dated between the 5th and 3rd centuries B.C. The soliferreum exhibited a thickening of the shaft which served as a grip, sometimes shaped into a ring for easier handling. The tip was barbed. Menghin considers this weapons as evidence of connections between Iberian and Mediterranean-North African cultures. the indigenous Guanche culture - also referred as the Canarian Neolithic substratum - suggests ties between Spain and Africa, with North Africa as the probable origin of this weapon.

Originally, the weapon was likely made of wood - in the form in which it was first introduced into the Iberian Peninsula - with a thickened grip and barbs, perhaps metallic. Today, similar weapons are still in the use among the Fulani and in Togo, in West Africa and neighboring regions. The dimensions of the soliferreum ranged from 1.60 to 2 meters in length, with tips measuring between 5 and 9 centimeters. 

A study by Figueras Pacheco on the Iberian-Punic necropolis presents examples of phalárica or soliferreum, among which one specimeb measures approximately two meters in length, with a marked thickening in the central portion of the shaft. This specimen closely resembles a weapon of shorter length, made of wood, which is documented in Tenerife. It too bears the same central thickening..."

For the army camp of the Guanches I had two options, either a stone house, often seen near the coast, or a cave up in the mountains. I leaned to the house option so I took a Celtic stone house from 3D Cults and passed it on to the friend who made the Guanches, along with a pictures I took of one at the Museo Canario as a reference, and the produced this.

The woman and the kid are also from 28mm Wargames Atlantic Neanderthals range. The goats are from Thingiverse and 3D Cults.

My friend Antonio Santana Alonso from our visit to the museum that day, posing next to a picture of the idol of Tara.

The Tara Idol is the popular name given to a terracotta figure decorated with red ochre that is displayed in El Museo Canario in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. It is associated with fertility cults and with the social role of women among the ancient inhabitants of the island of Gran Canaria, Canary Islands, and it has been considered to reflect some form of ritual fattening related to prenuptial ceremonies.