Januariad

Archeologists estimate that inhabitants arrived on the Pacific island of Tuchou somewhere between 200 and 700AD. While this seems like a rather indefinite estimation, island tribes generally leave very few traceable artifacts behind. Most lived a kind of surface life, using tools and weapons fashioned from wood and impacting very little on their environments. The Tuchou people left an unusual number of stone tools in their wake, possibly indicating that they originated from a more advanced civilisation than most inhabitants of the Pacific.

Archeological records suggest that the split in the tribe happened relatively quickly after the island was settled. The direct reasons are, of course, unknown. There might have been a community-wide disagreement, or possibly a chance divergence in sizes and some mysterious psychological fallout from the differing heights. All that’s known is that the people split, one group inhabiting the north end of the island, the other settling exclusively in the southwest end. What was particularly unique about this arrangement, according to researchers, is that the northern community consisted of exclusively tall people, and the southwest community exclusively short people.

As the centuries elapsed and these two groups lived in relative isolation from one another, the northerners began to value larger physiques, possibly for their advantages in hunting the hammerhead sharks living off the rocks on that end of the island. The southerners, in turn, favoured smaller workers, as they could more easily harvest coconuts and other nutritious fruits that grew high in the trees of their forests. Smaller northerners suffered in terms of marriage and reproduction, while larger southerners suffered the same fate in their community. These opposite tendencies, as skeletal remains attest, exacerbated the physical divide between the two tribes, until after hundreds of years they had separated into what appeared, if not two distinct species, could certainly be considered two separated races within one island a couple of dozen square miles in area. Northerners averaged six foot eight in height, and of bulky physique, while southerners averaged four foot four, and rarely exceeded seventy pounds.

There’s little evidence that the two groups fought much in their shared history. They appeared to live in slightly uneasy separation that rarely strayed into violence. With their largely different priorities in terms of food and resources, they really had very little to fight about, and coexisted quite peacefully until Spanish sailors arrived in the 17th century.

At this stage, the story of Nombichu is legendary. She is believed to have been born of a southern island father and a northern island mother. Who can tell how often this might have happened during Tuchou’s strange history? All that’s really known is that when sailors discovered the island in 1689, she was living alone in a shore cave on the east end of the island, cast out by both tribes on account of her strangely average size. To the northers she was a weird midget, unsuitable for work and unattractive to the eye. The southerners found her a disquieting giant, and she was politely shunned from the day she outgrew her people. She was five foot eight.

The Spaniards were terrified of the islanders, suspecting some witchery or devilment in their strange sizes. In desperate need of food and water, but too weak to take it from the islanders by force, they moored along the east shore, where they came upon a recognisably human, unfathomably beautiful woman who was more than willing to communicate with them. Nombichu acted as go-between with the islanders, both tribes quite happy to endure the discomfort of dealing with her for the magical trinkets she offered in return for food.

When the sailors left three weeks later, restocked and restored, Nombichu left with them. Ordinarily, a young woman would have much to fear from a boatload of roguish seamen, but as has been oft described, Nombichu held an unswayable power over all around her. Her self possession and fierce empathy impressed on noblemen and commoners alike. The voyage to Valencia passed without incident. Upon her introduction to Spanish society, initially as a curiosity, she soon became a popular figure in her own right. She was patronised by many of Madrid’s elite until her marriage into the Habsburg dynasty in 1694. Her contribution to that lineage is well documented elsewhere, and so I will leave this short chronicle of her origins here.

The island people of Tuchou experienced much upheaval after their discovery by Spanish traders. Within a few decades the two tribes had more-or-less reintegrated, leaving only their archeological remains and the autobiographical diaries of Nom Habsburg to tell of their unique history.