The Ciguayos (Spanish: Ciguayos) were a group of Indigenous people who inhabited the

Samaná Peninsula The Samaná Península is a peninsula in Dominican Republic situated in the province of Samaná. The Samaná Peninsula is connected to the rest of the state by the isthmus of Samaná; to its south is Samaná Bay. The peninsula contains many beach ...

and its adjoining regions in the present-day

Dominican Republic The Dominican Republic is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles of the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean. It shares a Maritime boundary, maritime border with Puerto Rico to the east and ...

. The Ciguayos appear to have predated the agricultural

Taíno The Taíno are the Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, Indigenous peoples of the Greater Antilles and surrounding islands. At the time of European contact in the late 15th century, they were the principal inhabitants of most of what is now The ...

who inhabited much of the island. Ciguayo language was spoken on the northeastern coast of the Maguá

chiefdom A chiefdom is a political organization of people representation (politics), represented or government, governed by a tribal chief, chief. Chiefdoms have been discussed, depending on their scope, as a stateless society, stateless, state (polity) ...

from Nagua southward to at least the

Yuna River The Yuna River (Spanish: ''Río Yuna'') is the second longest river in the Dominican Republic, stretching for a length of 185.17 km (115.06 miles). It forms within the Cordillera Central, Dominican Republic, Cordillera Central mountain range south ...

, and throughout all of the Samaná Province. Since the moment of contact early Spanish writers perceived them as a threat and portrayed them flaunting long hair and brandishing bows with poisoned arrows. Their

archery Archery is the sport, practice, or skill of using a Bow and arrow, bow to shooting, shoot arrows.Paterson ''Encyclopaedia of Archery'' p. 17 The word comes from the Latin ''arcus'', meaning bow. Historically, archery has been used for hunting ...

tradition is linked to the Kalinago, or

Island Caribs The Kalinago, also called Island Caribs or simply Caribs, are an Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, Indigenous people of the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean. They may have been related to the Kalina people, Mainland Caribs (Kalina) of South ...

. Their legacy has spawned folktales, and since the 19th century, their memory has been at the center of the Dominican indigenist movement.

Society and characteristics

They were considered a separate ethnic people that inhabited the Peninsula of Samaná and part of the northern coast toward Nagua in what today is the Dominican Republic, and, by most contemporary accounts, differed in language and customs from the classical Taíno who lived on the eastern part of the island of Hispaniola then known. The ciguayos were physically distinguished from the Taínos because they were taller, they painted their bodies with black dye and allowed their hair to grow longer, which they adorned with feathers, to the entire length, according to

Bartolomé de las Casas Bartolomé de las Casas, Dominican Order, OP ( ; ); 11 November 1484 – 18 July 1566) was a Spanish clergyman, writer, and activist best known for his work as an historian and social reformer. He arrived in Hispaniola as a layman, then became ...

. Also in the expression of the countenance the ciguayos were more severe than the taínos. Their bows were larger and their arrows had poison at the tip. They spoke another language that was not the common one of most of the island. At the end of the 15th century the ciguayos occupied the Macorís de Arriba, mountain ranges of the today Cordillera Septentrional that were then called Ciguay, their ruler was Mayobanex. Wilson (1990) states that circa 1500 this was the ''

cacicazgo ''Cacicazgo'' is a phonetic Spanish transliteration (or a derivative) of the Taíno word for the lands ruled by a ''cacique''. The Spanish colonial system recognized indigenous elites as nobles in Mexico and Peru, and other areas. Nobles could ...

'' (chiefdom) of the cacique Guacangarí. According to Eustaquio Fernandez de Navarrete, they were “warriors and spirited people,” (“gente animosa y guerrera”). The Cronista de Indias, Pedro Martir accused them of cannibalism: “when they descend from the mountains to wage war on their neighbors, they kill and eat some of them” (“trae origen de los caníbales, pues cuando de las montañas bajan a lo llano para hacer guerra á sus vecinos, si matan á algunos se los comen”).

Language

Fray Ramón Pané, often dubbed as the first anthropologist of the Caribbean, distinguished the Ciguayos' language from the rest of those spoken on Hispaniola.

, who studied the Ciguayos and was one of the few who read Ramón Pané’s original work in Spanish, provided most of the documentation about this group. A single word of Ciguayo was recorded by las Casas: ''tuob'', meaning "gold". On the basis of this word Granberry & Vescelius (2004) hypothesize that the

Ciguayo language The Ciguayos (Spanish: Ciguayos) were a group of Indigenous people who inhabited the Samaná Peninsula and its adjoining regions in the present-day Dominican Republic. The Ciguayos appear to have predated the agricultural Taíno who inhabited mu ...

was related to the

Tol language Tol (''Tolpan''), also known as Eastern Jicaque, Tolupan, and Torupan, is spoken by approximately 500 Tolupan people in La Montaña de la Flor reservation in Francisco Morazán Department, Honduras. Name Tol speakers refer to themselves as th ...

Honduras Honduras, officially the Republic of Honduras, is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the west by Guatemala, to the southwest by El Salvador, to the southeast by Nicaragua, to the south by the Pacific Ocean at the Gulf of Fonseca, ...

and that the Ciguayos originated in

Mesoamerica Mesoamerica is a historical region and cultural area that begins in the southern part of North America and extends to the Pacific coast of Central America, thus comprising the lands of central and southern Mexico, all of Belize, Guatemala, El S ...

. They also suggest that the indigenous name of

Hispaniola Hispaniola (, also ) is an island between Geography of Cuba, Cuba and Geography of Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico in the Greater Antilles of the Caribbean. Hispaniola is the most populous island in the West Indies, and the second-largest by List of C ...

, ''Kiskeya'', was Ciguayo in origin and may have meant "a very mountainous, heavily forested terrain".

References

{{Ancestry and ethnicity in Dominican Republic Ethnic groups in the Dominican Republic Indigenous peoples in the Dominican Republic Extinct Indigenous peoples of the Americas