The Taíno are the
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 Bahamas
The Bahamas, officially the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, is an Archipelagic state, archipelagic and island country within the Lucayan Archipelago of the Atlantic Ocean. It contains 97 per cent of the archipelago's land area and 88 per cent of ...
,
Cuba
Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is an island country, comprising the island of Cuba (largest island), Isla de la Juventud, and List of islands of Cuba, 4,195 islands, islets and cays surrounding the main island. It is located where the ...
, the
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 ...
,
Haiti
Haiti, officially the Republic of Haiti, is a country on the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean Sea, east of Cuba and Jamaica, and south of the Bahamas. It occupies the western three-eighths of the island, which it shares with the Dominican ...
,
Jamaica
Jamaica is an island country in the Caribbean Sea and the West Indies. At , it is the third-largest island—after Cuba and Hispaniola—of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean. Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, west of Hispaniola (the is ...
,
Puerto Rico
; abbreviated PR), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, is a Government of Puerto Rico, self-governing Caribbean Geography of Puerto Rico, archipelago and island organized as an Territories of the United States, unincorporated territo ...
, and the northern
Lesser Antilles
The Lesser Antilles is a group of islands in the Caribbean Sea, forming part of the West Indies in Caribbean, Caribbean region of the Americas. They are distinguished from the larger islands of the Greater Antilles to the west. They form an arc w ...
. The
Lucayan branch of the Taíno were the first
New World
The term "New World" is used to describe the majority of lands of Earth's Western Hemisphere, particularly the Americas, and sometimes Oceania."America." ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (). McArthur, Tom, ed., 1992. New York: ...
peoples encountered by
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus (; between 25 August and 31 October 1451 – 20 May 1506) was an Italians, Italian explorer and navigator from the Republic of Genoa who completed Voyages of Christopher Columbus, four Spanish-based voyages across the At ...
, in the
Bahama Archipelago on October 12, 1492. The Taíno historically spoke an
Arawakan language
Arawakan (''Arahuacan, Maipuran Arawakan, "mainstream" Arawakan, Arawakan proper''), also known as Maipurean (also ''Maipuran, Maipureano, Maipúre''), is a language family that developed among ancient Indigenous peoples in South America. Branch ...
. Granberry and Vescelius (2004) recognized two varieties of the Taino language: "Classical Taino", spoken in Puerto Rico and most 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 ...
, and "Ciboney Taino", spoken in the Bahamas, most of Cuba, western Hispaniola, and Jamaica. They lived in agricultural societies ruled by
cacique
A cacique, sometimes spelled as cazique (; ; feminine form: ), was a tribal chieftain of the Taíno people, who were the Indigenous inhabitants of the Bahamas, the Greater Antilles, and the northern Lesser Antilles at the time of European cont ...
s with fixed settlements and a
matrilineal
Matrilineality, at times called matriliny, is the tracing of kinship through the female line. It may also correlate with a social system in which people identify with their matriline, their mother's lineage, and which can involve the inheritan ...
system of kinship and inheritance. Taíno religion centered on the worship of
zemis. The Taíno are sometimes also referred to as Island Arawaks or Antillean Arawaks.
Indigenous people in the Greater Antilles did not refer to themselves originally as ''Taínos''; the term was coined by
Constantine Samuel Rafinesque
Constantine Samuel Rafinesque-Schmaltz (; 22 October 178318 September 1840) was a French early 19th-century polymath born near Constantinople in the Ottoman Empire and self-educated in France. He traveled as a young man in the United States, ult ...
in 1836.
Some anthropologists and historians have argued that the Taíno were no longer extant centuries ago,
or that they gradually merged into a common identity with African and Hispanic cultures. Many people today identify as Taíno or have Taíno descent, most notably in subsections of the
Puerto Rican,
Cuban, and
Dominican nationalities.
Many Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Dominicans have Indigenous
mitochondrial DNA
Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA and mDNA) is the DNA located in the mitochondrion, mitochondria organelles in a eukaryotic cell that converts chemical energy from food into adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Mitochondrial DNA is a small portion of the D ...
, which may suggest Taíno descent through the direct female line, especially in Puerto Rico.
While some communities describe an unbroken cultural heritage passed down from the old Taíno peoples, often in secret, others are revivalist communities who seek to incorporate Taíno culture into their lives.
Terminology
Scholars have faced difficulties researching the Native inhabitants of the Caribbean islands to which Columbus voyaged in 1492, since European accounts cannot be read as objective evidence of a Native Caribbean
social reality
Social reality refers to a socially constructed perspective of the world, consisting of the accepted social tenets of a community involving laws and social representations. It is distinct from biological reality or individual cognitive reality, ...
.
The people who inhabited most of the
Greater Antilles
The Greater Antilles is a grouping of the larger islands in the Caribbean Sea, including Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica, together with Navassa Island and the Cayman Islands. Seven island states share the region of the Greater Antille ...
when Europeans arrived have been called ''Taínos'', a term coined by
Constantine Samuel Rafinesque
Constantine Samuel Rafinesque-Schmaltz (; 22 October 178318 September 1840) was a French early 19th-century polymath born near Constantinople in the Ottoman Empire and self-educated in France. He traveled as a young man in the United States, ult ...
in 1836.
''Taíno'' is not a universally accepted denomination—it was not the name this people called themselves originally, and there is still uncertainty about their attributes and the boundaries of the territory they occupied.
The term ''nitaino'' or ''nitayno'', from which ''Taíno'' derived, referred to an elite social class, not to an ethnic group. No 16th-century Spanish documents use this word to refer to the tribal affiliation or ethnicity of the Natives of the Greater Antilles. The word ''tayno'' or ''taíno'', with the meaning "good" or "prudent", was mentioned twice in an account of Columbus's second voyage by his physician,
Diego Álvarez Chanca, while in
Guadeloupe
Guadeloupe is an Overseas departments and regions of France, overseas department and region of France in the Caribbean. It consists of six inhabited islands—Basse-Terre Island, Basse-Terre, Grande-Terre, Guadeloupe, Grande-Terre, Marie-Galant ...
. José R. Oliver writes that the Natives of Borinquén, who had been captured by the
Caribs of Guadeloupe and who wanted to escape on Spanish ships to return home to Puerto Rico, used the term to indicate that they were the "good men", as opposed to the Caribs.
According to Peter Hulme, most translators appear to agree that the word ''taíno'' was used by Columbus's sailors, not by the islanders who greeted them, although there is room for interpretation. The sailors may have been saying the only word they knew in a Native Caribbean tongue, or perhaps they were indicating to the "commoners" on the shore that they were ''taíno'', i.e., important people, from elsewhere and thus entitled to deference. If ''taíno'' was being used here to denote ethnicity, then it was used by the Spanish sailors to indicate that they were "not Carib", and gives no evidence of self-identification by the Native people.
According to
José Barreiro, a direct translation of the word ''Taíno'' signified "men of the good". The Taíno people, or Taíno culture, have been classified by some authorities as belonging to the
Arawak peoples. Their language is considered to have belonged to the
Arawak language family, the languages of which were historically present throughout the Caribbean, and much of Central and South America.
In 1871, early ethnohistorian
Daniel Garrison Brinton referred to the Taíno people as the ''Island Arawak'', expressing their connection to the continental peoples.
Since then, numerous scholars and writers have referred to the Indigenous group as ''Arawaks'' or ''Island Arawaks''. However, contemporary scholars (such as
Irving Rouse and Basil Reid) concluded that the Taíno developed a distinct language and culture from the Arawak of South America.
''Taíno'' and ''Arawak'' have been used with numerous and contradictory meanings by writers, travelers, historians, linguists, and anthropologists. Often they were used interchangeably: ''Taíno'' was applied to the Greater Antillean Natives only, but could include the Bahamian or the
Leeward Islands
The Leeward Islands () are a group of islands situated where the northeastern Caribbean Sea meets the western Atlantic Ocean. Starting with the Virgin Islands east of Puerto Rico, they extend southeast to Guadeloupe and its dependencies. In Engl ...
Natives, excluding the Puerto Rican and Leeward nations. Similarly, ''Island Taíno'' has been used to refer only to those living in the
Windward Islands
The Windward Islands are the southern, generally larger islands of the Lesser Antilles of the Caribbean islands or the West Indies. Located approximately between latitudes 10° and 16° N and longitudes 60° and 62° W, they extend from D ...
, or to the northern Caribbean inhabitants, as well as to the Indigenous population of all the Caribbean islands.
Many modern historians, linguists, and anthropologists now hold that the term ''Taíno'' should refer to all the Taíno/Arawak nations except the
Caribs, who are not seen as belonging to the same people. Linguists continue to debate whether the Carib language was an Arawakan
dialect
A dialect is a Variety (linguistics), variety of language spoken by a particular group of people. This may include dominant and standard language, standardized varieties as well as Vernacular language, vernacular, unwritten, or non-standardize ...
or a
Creole language
A creole language, or simply creole, is a stable form of contact language that develops from the process of different languages simplifying and mixing into a new form (often a pidgin), and then that form expanding and elaborating into a full-fl ...
. They also speculate that it was an independent language isolate, with an Arawakan
pidgin
A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a grammatically simplified form of contact language that develops between two or more groups of people that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often drawn f ...
used for communication purposes with other peoples, as in trading.
Rouse classifies all inhabitants of the Greater Antilles as ''Taíno'' (except the western tip of Cuba and small pockets of Hispaniola), as well as those of the
Lucayan Archipelago
The Lucayan Archipelago, also known as the Bahamian Archipelago, is an island group comprising the Commonwealth of The Bahamas and the British Overseas Territory of the Turks and Caicos Islands. The archipelago is in the western North Atlant ...
and the northern
Lesser Antilles
The Lesser Antilles is a group of islands in the Caribbean Sea, forming part of the West Indies in Caribbean, Caribbean region of the Americas. They are distinguished from the larger islands of the Greater Antilles to the west. They form an arc w ...
. He subdivides the Taíno into three main groups: ''Classic Taíno'', from most of Hispaniola and all of Puerto Rico; ''Western Taíno'', or ''sub-Taíno'', from Jamaica, most of Cuba, and the Lucayan archipelago; and ''Eastern Taíno'', from the
Virgin Islands
The Virgin Islands () are an archipelago between the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean and northeastern Caribbean Sea, geographically forming part of the Leeward Islands of the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean, Caribbean islands or West Indie ...
to
Montserrat
Montserrat ( , ) is a British Overseas Territories, British Overseas Territory in the Caribbean. It is part of the Leeward Islands, the northern portion of the Lesser Antilles chain of the West Indies. Montserrat is about long and wide, wit ...
.
Modern groups with Caribbean-Indigenous heritage have reclaimed the exonym ''Taíno'' as a self-descriptor, although terms such as ''Neo-Taino'' or ''Indio'' are also used.
Origins
Two schools of thought have emerged regarding the origin of the Indigenous Caribbean people.
* One group of scholars contends that the Taíno's ancestors were
Arawak speakers from the center of the
Amazon Basin
The Amazon basin is the part of South America drained by the Amazon River and its tributary, tributaries. The Amazon drainage basin covers an area of about , or about 35.5 percent of the South American continent. It is located in the countries ...
, as indicated by linguistic, cultural, and ceramic evidence. They migrated to the
Orinoco
The Orinoco () is one of the longest rivers in South America at . Its drainage basin, sometimes known as the Orinoquia, covers approximately 1 million km2, with 65% of it in Venezuela and 35% in Colombia. It is the List of rivers by discharge, f ...
Valley on the north coast, before reaching the Caribbean by way of what is now
Venezuela
Venezuela, officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many Federal Dependencies of Venezuela, islands and islets in the Caribbean Sea. It com ...
into
Trinidad
Trinidad is the larger, more populous island of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, the country. The island lies off the northeastern coast of Venezuela and sits on the continental shelf of South America. It is the southernmost island in ...
, migrating along the Lesser Antilles to Cuba and the Bahamas. Evidence that supports the theory includes the tracing of the ancestral cultures of these people to the Orinoco Valley and their languages to the Amazon Basin.
[Rouse, pp. 30–48.]
* The alternate theory, known as the circum-Caribbean theory, contends that the Taíno's ancestors diffused from the
Colombian Andes.
Julian H. Steward, who originated this concept, suggests a migration from the Andes to the Caribbean and a parallel migration into
Central America
Central America is a subregion of North America. Its political boundaries are defined as bordering Mexico to the north, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the southwest. Central America is usually ...
and the
Guianas
The Guianas, also spelled Guyanas or Guayanas, are a geographical region in north-eastern South America. Strictly, the term refers to the three Guianas: Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana, formerly British Guiana, British, Surinam (Dutch colo ...
, Venezuela, and the Amazon Basin of South America.
[
Taíno culture as documented is believed to have developed in the Caribbean. The Taíno creation story says they emerged from caves in a sacred mountain on present-day Hispaniola. In Puerto Rico, 21st-century studies have shown that a high proportion of people have Amerindian mtDNA. Of the two major haplotypes found, one does not exist in the Taíno ancestral group, so other Native people are also among the genetic ancestors.]
DNA
Deoxyribonucleic acid (; DNA) is a polymer composed of two polynucleotide chains that coil around each other to form a double helix. The polymer carries genetic instructions for the development, functioning, growth and reproduction of al ...
studies changed some of the traditional beliefs about pre-Columbian Indigenous history. According to ''National Geographic
''National Geographic'' (formerly ''The National Geographic Magazine'', sometimes branded as ''Nat Geo'') is an American monthly magazine published by National Geographic Partners. The magazine was founded in 1888 as a scholarly journal, nine ...
'', "studies confirm that a wave of pottery-making farmers—known as Ceramic Age people—set out in canoes from the north-eastern coast of South America starting some 2,500 years ago and island-hopped across the Caribbean. They were not, however, the first colonizers. On many islands, they encountered foraging people who arrived some 6,000 or 7,000 years ago...The ceramicists, who are related to today's Arawak-speaking peoples, supplanted the earlier foraging inhabitants—presumably through disease or violence—as they settled new islands."
Culture
Taíno society was divided into two classes: ''naborias'' (commoners) and ''nitaínos'' (nobles). They were governed by male and female chiefs known as ''cacique
A cacique, sometimes spelled as cazique (; ; feminine form: ), was a tribal chieftain of the Taíno people, who were the Indigenous inhabitants of the Bahamas, the Greater Antilles, and the northern Lesser Antilles at the time of European cont ...
s'', who inherited their position through their mother's noble line. (This was a matrilineal kinship system, with social status passed through the female lines.) The nitaínos functioned as sub-caciques in villages, overseeing the work of naborias. Caciques were advised by priests/healers known as ''bohíques''. Caciques enjoyed the privilege of wearing golden pendants called ''guanín'', living in square ''bohíos,'' instead of the round ones of ordinary villagers, and sitting on wooden stools to be above the guests they received. Bohíques were extolled for their healing powers and ability to speak with deities. They were consulted and granted the Taíno permission to engage in important tasks.
The Taíno had a matrilineal
Matrilineality, at times called matriliny, is the tracing of kinship through the female line. It may also correlate with a social system in which people identify with their matriline, their mother's lineage, and which can involve the inheritan ...
system of kinship
In anthropology, kinship is the web of social relationships that form an important part of the lives of all humans in all societies, although its exact meanings even within this discipline are often debated. Anthropologist Robin Fox says that ...
, descent, and inheritance. Spanish accounts of the rules of succession for a chief are not consistent, and the rules of succession may have changed as a result of the disruptions to Taíno society that followed the Spanish intrusion. Two early chroniclers, 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 ...
and Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, reported that a chief was succeeded by a son of a sister. Las Casas was not specific as to which son of a sister would succeed, but d'Anghiera stated that the order of succession was the oldest son of the oldest sister, then the oldest son of the next oldest sister. Post-marital residence was avunculocal, meaning a newly married couple lived in the household of the maternal uncle. He was more important in the lives of his niece's children than their biological father; the uncle introduced the boys to men's societies in his sister and his family's clan. Some Taíno practiced polygamy
Polygamy (from Late Greek , "state of marriage to many spouses") is the practice of marriage, marrying multiple spouses. When a man is married to more than one wife at the same time, it is called polygyny. When a woman is married to more tha ...
. Men might have multiple wives. Ramón Pané, a Catholic friar who traveled with Columbus on his second voyage and was tasked with learning the Indigenous people's language and customs, wrote in the 16th century that caciques tended to have two or three spouses and the principal ones had as many as 10, 15, or 20.
The Taíno women were skilled in agriculture, which the people depended on. The men also fished and hunted, making fishing nets and ropes from cotton
Cotton (), first recorded in ancient India, is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus '' Gossypium'' in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure ...
and palm. Their dugout canoe
A canoe is a lightweight, narrow watercraft, water vessel, typically pointed at both ends and open on top, propelled by one or more seated or kneeling paddlers facing the direction of travel and using paddles.
In British English, the term ' ...
s (''kanoa'') were of various sizes and could hold from 2 to 150 people; an average-sized canoe would hold 15–20. They used bows and arrows for hunting and developed the use of poisons on their arrowheads.
Taíno women commonly wore their hair with bangs in front and longer in the back, and they occasionally wore gold jewelry, paint, and/or shells. Taíno men and unmarried women usually went naked. After marriage, women wore a small cotton apron, called a ''nagua''.
The Taíno lived in settlements called ''yucayeques'', which varied in size depending on the location. Those in Puerto Rico and Hispaniola were the largest and those in the Bahamas were the smallest. In the center of a typical village was a central plaza, used for various social activities, such as games, festivals, religious ritual
A ritual is a repeated, structured sequence of actions or behaviors that alters the internal or external state of an individual, group, or environment, regardless of conscious understanding, emotional context, or symbolic meaning. Traditionally ...
s, and public ceremonies. These plazas had many shapes, including oval, rectangular, narrow, and elongated. Ceremonies where the deeds of the ancestors were celebrated, called ''areitos'', were performed here.[Rouse, p. 15.]
Often, the general population lived in large circular buildings (''bohios''), constructed with wooden poles, woven straw, and palm leaves. These houses, built surrounding the central plaza, could hold 10–15 families each. The cacique and their family lived in rectangular buildings (''caney'') of similar construction, with wooden porches. Taíno home furnishings included cotton hammocks (''hamaca''), sleeping and sitting mats made of palms, wooden chairs (dujo or duho) with woven seats and platforms, and cradles for children.
The Taíno played a ceremonial ball game called '' batey''. Opposing teams had 10 to 30 players per team and used a solid rubber
Rubber, also called India rubber, latex, Amazonian rubber, ''caucho'', or ''caoutchouc'', as initially produced, consists of polymers of the organic compound isoprene, with minor impurities of other organic compounds.
Types of polyisoprene ...
ball. Normally, the teams were composed of men, but occasionally women played the game as well.[Alegría (1951), p. 348.] The Classic Taíno played in the village's center plaza or on especially designed rectangular ball courts called ''batey''. Games on the ''batey'' are believed to have been used for conflict resolution between communities. The most elaborate ball courts are found at chiefdom boundaries.[ Often, chiefs made wagers on the possible outcome of a game.]
Taíno spoke an Arawakan language
Arawakan (''Arahuacan, Maipuran Arawakan, "mainstream" Arawakan, Arawakan proper''), also known as Maipurean (also ''Maipuran, Maipureano, Maipúre''), is a language family that developed among ancient Indigenous peoples in South America. Branch ...
and used an early form of proto-writing
Proto-writing consists of visible marks communication, communicating limited information. Such systems emerged from earlier traditions of symbol systems in the early Neolithic, as early as the 7th millennium BC in History of China, China a ...
in the form of petroglyph
A petroglyph is an image created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, or abrading, as a form of rock art. Outside North America, scholars often use terms such as "carving", "engraving", or other descriptions ...
, as found in Taíno archeological sites in the West Indies
The West Indies is an island subregion of the Americas, surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, which comprises 13 independent island country, island countries and 19 dependent territory, dependencies in thr ...
.
Some words they used, such as ''barbacoa'' ("barbecue"), ''hamaca'' ("hammock"), ''kanoa'' ("canoe"), ''tabaco'' ("tobacco"), ''sabana'' (savanna), and '' juracán'' ("hurricane"), have been incorporated into other languages.
For warfare, the men made wooden war clubs, which they called '' macanas''. It was about one inch thick and was similar to the coco macaque.
The Taínos decorated and applied war paint to their face to appear fierce toward their enemies. They ingested substances at religious ceremonies and invoked zemis.
Cacicazgo/society
The Taíno were the most culturally advanced of the Arawak group to settle in what is now Puerto Rico
; abbreviated PR), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, is a Government of Puerto Rico, self-governing Caribbean Geography of Puerto Rico, archipelago and island organized as an Territories of the United States, unincorporated territo ...
. Individuals and kinship
In anthropology, kinship is the web of social relationships that form an important part of the lives of all humans in all societies, although its exact meanings even within this discipline are often debated. Anthropologist Robin Fox says that ...
groups that previously had some prestige and rank in the tribe
The term tribe is used in many different contexts to refer to a category of human social group. The predominant worldwide use of the term in English is in the discipline of anthropology. The definition is contested, in part due to conflict ...
began to occupy the hierarchical position that would give way to the '' cacicazgo''. The Taíno founded settlements around village
A village is a human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand. Although villages are often located in rural areas, the term urban v ...
s and organized their chiefdoms, or ''cacicazgos'', into a confederation.
The Taíno society, as described by the Spanish chroniclers, was composed of four social classes: the ''cacique
A cacique, sometimes spelled as cazique (; ; feminine form: ), was a tribal chieftain of the Taíno people, who were the Indigenous inhabitants of the Bahamas, the Greater Antilles, and the northern Lesser Antilles at the time of European cont ...
'', the ''nitaínos'', the ''bohíques'', and the ''naborias''.[ According to archeological evidence, the Taíno islands were able to support a high number of people for approximately 1,500 years.] Every individual living in the Taíno society had a task to do. The Taíno believed that everyone living on their islands should eat properly.[ They followed a very efficient nature harvesting and agricultural production system.][ Either people were hunting, searching for food, or doing other productive tasks.][
Tribal groups settled in villages under a ]chieftain
A tribal chief, chieftain, or headman is a leader of a tribe, tribal society or chiefdom.
Tribal societies
There is no definition for "tribe".
The concept of tribe is a broadly applied concept, based on tribal concepts of societies of weste ...
, known as ''cacique'', or ''cacica'' if the ruler was a woman. Many women whom the Spaniards
Spaniards, or Spanish people, are a Romance-speaking ethnic group native to the Iberian Peninsula, primarily associated with the modern nation-state of Spain. Genetically and ethnolinguistically, Spaniards belong to the broader Southern a ...
called ''cacicas'' were not always rulers in their own right, but were mistakenly acknowledged as such because they were the wives of ''caciques''. Chiefs were chosen from the ''nitaínos'' and generally obtained power from their maternal line. A male ruler was more likely to be succeeded by his sister's children than his own unless their mother's lineage allowed them to succeed in their own right.
The chiefs had both temporal and spiritual functions. They were expected to ensure the welfare of the tribe and to protect it from harm from both natural and supernatural forces. They were also expected to direct and manage the food production process. The cacique's power came from the number of villages he controlled and was based on a network of alliances related to family
Family (from ) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictabili ...
, matrimonial, and ceremonial ties. According to an early 20th-century Smithsonian study, these alliances showed the unity of the Indigenous communities in a territory; they would band together as a defensive strategy to face external threats, such as the attacks by the Caribs on communities in Puerto Rico.
The practice of polygamy
Polygamy (from Late Greek , "state of marriage to many spouses") is the practice of marriage, marrying multiple spouses. When a man is married to more than one wife at the same time, it is called polygyny. When a woman is married to more tha ...
enabled the cacique to have women and create family alliances in different localities, thus extending his power. As a symbol of his status, the cacique carried a guanín
''Guanín'' is an alloy of copper, gold and silver, similar to red gold, used in Metallurgy in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, pre-Columbian central America. The name ''guanín'' is taken from the language of the Taíno people, who prized it for its r ...
of South American origin, made of an alloy of gold and copper. This symbolized the first Taíno mythical cacique Anacacuya, whose name means "star of the center", or "central spirit". In addition to the guanín, the cacique used other artifacts and adornments to serve to identify his role. Some examples are tunics of cotton
Cotton (), first recorded in ancient India, is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus '' Gossypium'' in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure ...
and rare feather
Feathers are epidermal growths that form a distinctive outer covering, or plumage, on both avian (bird) and some non-avian dinosaurs and other archosaurs. They are the most complex integumentary structures found in vertebrates and an exa ...
s, crowns, and masks or "guaizas" of cotton with feathers; colored stones, shells, or gold; cotton woven belts; and necklaces of snail beads or stones, with small masks of gold or other material.[
]
Under the ''cacique'', social organization was composed of two tiers: The ''nitaínos'' at the top and the ''naborias'' at the bottom.[ The ''nitaínos'' were considered the ]nobles
Nobility is a social class found in many societies that have an aristocracy. It is normally appointed by and ranked immediately below royalty. Nobility has often been an estate of the realm with many exclusive functions and characteristics. T ...
of the tribes. They were made up of warrior
A warrior is a guardian specializing in combat or warfare, especially within the context of a tribal society, tribal or clan-based warrior culture society that recognizes a separate warrior aristocracy, social class, class, or caste.
History
...
s and the family of the cacique. Advisors who assisted in operational matters such as assigning and supervising communal work, planting and harvest
Harvesting is the process of collecting plants, animals, or fish (as well as fungi) as food, especially the process of gathering mature crops, and "the harvest" also refers to the collected crops. Reaping is the cutting of grain or pulses fo ...
ing crops, and keeping peace among the village's inhabitants, were selected from among the ''nitaínos''. The ''naborias'' were the more numerous working peasants of the lower class.[
The ''bohíques'' were ]priest
A priest is a religious leader authorized to perform the sacred rituals of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and one or more deity, deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in parti ...
s who represented religious beliefs.[ Bohíques dealt with negotiating with angry or indifferent gods as the accepted lords of the spiritual world. The bohíques were expected to communicate with the ]gods
A deity or god is a supernatural being considered to be sacred and worthy of worship due to having authority over some aspect of the universe and/or life. The ''Oxford Dictionary of English'' defines ''deity'' as a God (male deity), god or god ...
, soothe them when they were angry, and intercede on the tribe's behalf. It was their duty to cure the sick, heal the wounded, and interpret the will of the gods in ways that would satisfy the expectations of the tribe. Before carrying out these functions, the bohíques performed certain cleansing and purifying ritual
A ritual is a repeated, structured sequence of actions or behaviors that alters the internal or external state of an individual, group, or environment, regardless of conscious understanding, emotional context, or symbolic meaning. Traditionally ...
s, such as fasting for several days and inhaling sacred tobacco snuff.[
]
Food and agriculture
Taíno staples included vegetables, fruit, meat, and fish. Though there were no large animals native to the Caribbean, they captured and ate small animals such as hutia
Hutias (known in Spanish as jutía) are moderately large cavy-like rodents of the subfamily Capromyinae that inhabit the Caribbean islands. Most species are restricted to Cuba, but species are known from all of the Greater Antilles, as well as ...
s, other mammals, earthworms
An earthworm is a soil-dwelling terrestrial animal, terrestrial invertebrate that belongs to the phylum Annelida. The term is the common name for the largest members of the class (biology), class (or subclass (biology), subclass, depending on ...
, lizards
Lizard is the common name used for all squamate reptiles other than snakes (and to a lesser extent amphisbaenians), encompassing over 7,000 species, ranging across all continents except Antarctica, as well as most oceanic island chains. The ...
, turtles, and birds
Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class (biology), class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the Oviparity, laying of Eggshell, hard-shelled eggs, a high Metabolism, metabolic rate, a fou ...
. Manatees were speared and fish were caught in nets, speared, trapped in weir
A weir or low-head dam is a barrier across the width of a river that alters the flow characteristics of water and usually results in a change in the height of the water level. Weirs are also used to control the flow of water for outlets of l ...
s, or caught with hook and line. Wild parrots
Parrots (Psittaciformes), also known as psittacines (), are birds with a strong curved beak, upright stance, and clawed feet. They are classified in four families that contain roughly 410 species in 101 genus (biology), genera, found mostly in ...
were decoyed with domesticated birds, and iguanas were taken from trees and other vegetation
Vegetation is an assemblage of plants and the ground cover they provide. It is a general term, without specific reference to particular Taxon, taxa, life forms, structure, Spatial ecology, spatial extent, or any other specific Botany, botanic ...
. The Taíno stored live animals until they were ready to be consumed: fish and turtles were stored in weirs, hutias and dogs were stored in corrals.[Rouse, p. 13.]
The Taíno people became very skilled fishermen. One method used was to hook a remora, also known as a suckerfish, to a line secured to a canoe and wait for the fish to attach itself to a larger fish or even a sea turtle. Once this happened, someone would dive into the water to retrieve the catch. Another method used by the Taínos involved shredding the stems and roots of poisonous senna plants and throwing them into nearby streams or rivers. After eating the bait, the fish would be stunned and ready for collection. These practices did not render fish inedible. The Taíno also collected mussel
Mussel () is the common name used for members of several families of bivalve molluscs, from saltwater and Freshwater bivalve, freshwater habitats. These groups have in common a shell whose outline is elongated and asymmetrical compared with other ...
s and oyster
Oyster is the common name for a number of different families of salt-water bivalve molluscs that live in marine or brackish habitats. In some species, the valves are highly calcified, and many are somewhat irregular in shape. Many, but no ...
s in exposed mangrove roots found in shallow waters. Some young boys hunted waterfowl from flocks that "darkened the sun", according to Christopher Columbus.[
Taíno groups located on islands that had experienced relatively high development, such as Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, and Jamaica, relied more on agriculture (farming and other jobs) than did groups living elsewhere. Fields for important root crops, such as the staple crop yuca, were prepared by heaping up mounds of soil, called ''conucos''. This improved soil drainage and fertility as well as delayed erosion while allowing for the longer storage of crops in the ground. Less important crops such as corn were cultivated in clearings made using the ]slash-and-burn
Slash-and-burn agriculture is a form of shifting cultivation that involves the cutting and burning of plants in a forest or woodland to create a Field (agriculture), field called a swidden. The method begins by cutting down the trees and woody p ...
technique. Typically, ''conucos'' were three feet high, nine feet in circumference, and were arranged in rows.[Rouse, p.12.] The primary root crop was yuca or cassava
''Manihot esculenta'', common name, commonly called cassava, manioc, or yuca (among numerous regional names), is a woody shrub of the spurge family, Euphorbiaceae, native to South America, from Brazil, Paraguay and parts of the Andes. Although ...
, a woody shrub
A shrub or bush is a small to medium-sized perennial woody plant. Unlike herbaceous plants, shrubs have persistent woody stems above the ground. Shrubs can be either deciduous or evergreen. They are distinguished from trees by their multiple ...
cultivated for its edible and starch
Starch or amylum is a polymeric carbohydrate consisting of numerous glucose units joined by glycosidic bonds. This polysaccharide is produced by most green plants for energy storage. Worldwide, it is the most common carbohydrate in human diet ...
y tuberous root. It was planted using a ''coa'', a kind of hoe made completely from wood. Women processed the poisonous variety of cassava by squeezing it to extract its toxic juices. Roots were then ground into flour for bread. ''Batata'' (sweet potato
The sweet potato or sweetpotato (''Ipomoea batatas'') is a dicotyledonous plant in the morning glory family, Convolvulaceae. Its sizeable, starchy, sweet-tasting tuberous roots are used as a root vegetable, which is a staple food in parts of ...
) was the next most important root crop.
Tobacco was grown by pre-Columbian peoples in the Americas for centuries before 1492. Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus (; between 25 August and 31 October 1451 – 20 May 1506) was an Italians, Italian explorer and navigator from the Republic of Genoa who completed Voyages of Christopher Columbus, four Spanish-based voyages across the At ...
in his journal described how Indigenous people used tobacco by lighting dried herbs wrapped in a leaf and inhaling the smoke. Tobacco, derived from the Taino word "tabaco", was used in medicine and in religious rituals. The Taino people utilized dried tobacco leaves, which they smoked using pipes and cigars. Alternatively, they finely crushed the leaves and inhaled them through a hollow tube. The Natives employed uncomplicated yet efficient tools for planting and caring for their crops. Their primary tool was a planting stick, referred to as a "coa" among the Taino, which measured around five feet in length and featured a sharp point that had been hardened through fire.
Contrary to mainland practices, corn was not ground into flour and baked into bread, but was cooked and eaten off the cob. Corn bread becomes moldy faster than cassava bread in the high humidity of the Caribbean. Corn also was used to make an alcoholic beverage known as chicha
''Chicha'' is a Fermentation, fermented (alcoholic) or non-fermented beverage of Latin America, emerging from the Andes and Amazonia regions. In both the pre- and post-Spanish conquest of Peru, Spanish conquest periods, corn beer (''chicha de jo ...
. The Taíno grew squash, beans
A bean is the seed of some plants in the legume family (Fabaceae) used as a vegetable for human consumption or animal feed. The seeds are often preserved through drying (a ''pulse''), but fresh beans are also sold. Dried beans are tradition ...
, peppers, peanut
The peanut (''Arachis hypogaea''), also known as the groundnut, goober (US), goober pea, pindar (US) or monkey nut (UK), is a legume crop grown mainly for its edible seeds. It is widely grown in the tropics and subtropics by small and large ...
s, and pineapple
The pineapple (''Ananas comosus'') is a Tropical vegetation, tropical plant with an edible fruit; it is the most economically significant plant in the family Bromeliaceae.
The pineapple is indigenous to South America, where it has been culti ...
s. Tobacco
Tobacco is the common name of several plants in the genus '' Nicotiana'' of the family Solanaceae, and the general term for any product prepared from the cured leaves of these plants. More than 70 species of tobacco are known, but the ...
, calabashes (bottle gourds), and cotton
Cotton (), first recorded in ancient India, is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus '' Gossypium'' in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure ...
were grown around the houses. Other fruits and vegetables, such as palm nuts, guava
Guava ( ), also known as the 'guava-pear', is a common tropical fruit cultivated in many tropical and subtropical regions. The common guava '' Psidium guajava'' (lemon guava, apple guava) is a small tree in the myrtle family (Myrtaceae), nativ ...
s, and '' Zamia'' roots, were collected from the wild.
Spirituality
Taíno spirituality centered on the worship of zemis (spirits or ancestors). Major Taíno zemis included Atabey and her son, Yúcahu. Atabey was thought to be the zemi of the moon
The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It Orbit of the Moon, orbits around Earth at Lunar distance, an average distance of (; about 30 times Earth diameter, Earth's diameter). The Moon rotation, rotates, with a rotation period (lunar ...
, fresh waters, and fertility. Other names for her included Atabei, Atabeyra, Atabex, and Guimazoa. The Taínos of Kiskeya (Hispaniola) called her son, "Yúcahu, Yucahú Bagua Maorocotí", which meant "White Yuca, great and powerful as the sea and the mountains". He was considered the spirit of cassava, the zemi of cassava – the Taínos' main crop – and the sea.
Guabancex was the non-nurturing aspect of the zemi Atabey who was believed to have control over natural disasters. She is identified as the goddess of hurricanes or as the zemi of storms. Guabancex had twin sons: Guataubá, a messenger who created hurricane winds, and Coatrisquie, who created flood
A flood is an overflow of water (list of non-water floods, or rarely other fluids) that submerges land that is usually dry. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods are of significant con ...
waters.
Iguanaboína was the goddess of good weather. She also had twin sons: Boinayel, the messenger of rain, and Marohu, the spirit of clear skies.
Minor Taíno zemis are related to the growing of cassava, the process of life, creation, and death. Baibrama was a minor zemi worshiped for his assistance in growing cassava and curing people of its poisonous juice. Boinayel and his twin brother Márohu were the zemis of rain and fair weather, respectively.[Rouse, p. 119.]
Maquetaurie Guayaba or Maketaori Guayaba was the zemi of Coaybay or Coabey, the land of the dead. Opiyelguabirán', a dog-shaped zemi, watched over the dead. Deminán Caracaracol, a male cultural hero from whom the Taíno believed themselves to be descended, was worshipped as a zemí. Macocael was a cultural hero worshipped as a zemi, who had failed to guard the mountain from which human beings
Humans (''Homo sapiens'') or modern humans are the most common and widespread species of primate, and the last surviving species of the genus ''Homo''. They are great apes characterized by their hairlessness, bipedalism, and high intellige ...
arose. He was punished by being turned into stone, or a bird, a frog
A frog is any member of a diverse and largely semiaquatic group of short-bodied, tailless amphibian vertebrates composing the order (biology), order Anura (coming from the Ancient Greek , literally 'without tail'). Frog species with rough ski ...
, or a reptile, depending on the interpretation of the myth
Myth is a genre of folklore consisting primarily of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society. For scholars, this is very different from the vernacular usage of the term "myth" that refers to a belief that is not true. Instead, the ...
.
Zemí was also the name the people gave to physical representations of Zemis, which could be objects or drawings. They took many forms and were made of many materials and were found in a variety of settings. The majority of zemís were crafted from wood, but stone, bone
A bone is a rigid organ that constitutes part of the skeleton in most vertebrate animals. Bones protect the various other organs of the body, produce red and white blood cells, store minerals, provide structure and support for the body, ...
, shell
Shell may refer to:
Architecture and design
* Shell (structure), a thin structure
** Concrete shell, a thin shell of concrete, usually with no interior columns or exterior buttresses
Science Biology
* Seashell, a hard outer layer of a marine ani ...
, pottery
Pottery is the process and the products of forming vessels and other objects with clay and other raw materials, which are fired at high temperatures to give them a hard and durable form. The place where such wares are made by a ''potter'' is al ...
, and cotton were used as well. Zemí petroglyph
A petroglyph is an image created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, or abrading, as a form of rock art. Outside North America, scholars often use terms such as "carving", "engraving", or other descriptions ...
s were carved on rocks in streams, ball courts, and stalagmite
A stalagmite (, ; ; )
is a type of rock formation that rises from the floor of a cave due to the accumulation of material deposited on the floor from ceiling drippings. Stalagmites are typically composed of calcium carbonate, but may consist ...
s in caves, such as the zemi carved into a stalagmite in a cave in La Patana, Cuba. ''Cemí'' pictograph
A pictogram (also pictogramme, pictograph, or simply picto) is a graphical symbol that conveys meaning through its visual resemblance to a physical object. Pictograms are used in systems of writing and visual communication. A pictography is a wri ...
s were found on secular objects such as pottery, and tattoos. Yucahú, the zemi of cassava, was represented with a three-pointed zemí, which could be found in ''conucos'' to increase the yield of cassava. Wood and stone zemís have been found in caves
Caves or caverns are natural voids under the Earth's surface. Caves often form by the weathering of rock and often extend deep underground. Exogene caves are smaller openings that extend a relatively short distance underground (such as rock ...
in Hispaniola and Jamaica. ''Cemís'' are sometimes represented by toads, turtles, fish, snakes
Snakes are elongated Limbless vertebrate, limbless reptiles of the suborder Serpentes (). Cladistically Squamata, squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping Scale (zoology), scales much like other members of ...
, and various abstract and human-like faces.
Some zemís were accompanied by small tables or trays, which are believed to be a receptacle for hallucinogen
Hallucinogens, also known as psychedelics, entheogens, or historically as psychotomimetics, are a large and diverse class of psychoactive drugs that can produce altered states of consciousness characterized by major alterations in thought, mo ...
ic snuff called '' cohoba,'' prepared from the beans of a species of '' Piptadenia'' tree. These trays have been found with ornately carved snuff tubes. Before certain ceremonies, Taínos would purify themselves, either by inducing vomiting (with a swallowing stick) or by fasting
Fasting is the act of refraining from eating, and sometimes drinking. However, from a purely physiological context, "fasting" may refer to the metabolic status of a person who has not eaten overnight (before "breakfast"), or to the metabolic sta ...
. After communal bread was served, first to the zemí, then to the cacique, and then to the common people, the people would sing the village epic to the accompaniment of maraca and other instruments.
One Taíno oral tradition
Oral tradition, or oral lore, is a form of human communication in which knowledge, art, ideas and culture are received, preserved, and transmitted orally from one generation to another.Jan Vansina, Vansina, Jan: ''Oral Tradition as History'' (19 ...
explains that the Sun and Moon came out of caves. Another story tells of the first people, who once lived in caves and only came out at night because it was believed that the Sun would transform them; a sentry became a giant stone at the mouth of the cave, and others became birds or trees. The Taíno believed they were descended from the union of the cultural hero Deminán Caracaracol and a female turtle (who was born of the former's back after being afflicted with a blister). The origin of the oceans is described in the story of a huge flood that occurred when the great spirit ''Yaya'' murdered his son ''Yayael'' (who was about to murder his father). The father put his son's bones into a gourd
Gourds include the fruits of some flowering plant species in the family Cucurbitaceae, particularly '' Cucurbita'' and '' Lagenaria''. The term refers to a number of species and subspecies, many with hard shells, and some without. Many gourds ha ...
or calabash. When the bones turned into fish, the gourd broke, an accident caused by Deminán Caracaracol, and all the water of the world came pouring out.
Taínos believed that Jupias, the souls of the dead, would go to Coaybay, the underworld, and there they rest by day. At night they would assume the form of bats and eat the guava
Guava ( ), also known as the 'guava-pear', is a common tropical fruit cultivated in many tropical and subtropical regions. The common guava '' Psidium guajava'' (lemon guava, apple guava) is a small tree in the myrtle family (Myrtaceae), nativ ...
fruit.
Spanish and Taíno
Columbus and the crew of his ship were the first Europeans
Europeans are the focus of European ethnology, the field of anthropology related to the various ethnic groups that reside in the states of Europe. Groups may be defined by common ancestry, language, faith, historical continuity, etc. There are ...
to encounter the Taíno people, as they landed in The Bahamas on October 12, 1492. After their first interaction, Columbus described the Taínos as a physically tall, well-proportioned people, with noble and kind personalities.
In his diary, Columbus wrote:
At this time, the neighbors of the Taíno were the Guanahatabeys in the western tip of Cuba, the Island-Caribs in the Lesser Antilles from Guadeloupe
Guadeloupe is an Overseas departments and regions of France, overseas department and region of France in the Caribbean. It consists of six inhabited islands—Basse-Terre Island, Basse-Terre, Grande-Terre, Guadeloupe, Grande-Terre, Marie-Galant ...
to Grenada
Grenada is an island country of the West Indies in the eastern Caribbean Sea. The southernmost of the Windward Islands, Grenada is directly south of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and about north of Trinidad and Tobago, Trinidad and the So ...
, and the Calusa and Ais nations of Florida
Florida ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders the Gulf of Mexico to the west, Alabama to the northwest, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the north, the Atlantic ...
. Guanahaní was the Taíno name for the island that Columbus renamed ''San Salvador'' (Spanish for "Holy Savior"). Columbus erroneously called the Taíno "Indians", a reference that has grown to encompass all the Indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere
The Western Hemisphere is the half of the planet Earth that lies west of the Prime Meridian (which crosses Greenwich, London, United Kingdom) and east of the 180th meridian.- The other half is called the Eastern Hemisphere. Geopolitically, ...
. A group of about 24 Taíno people were abducted and forced to accompany Columbus on his 1494 return voyage to Spain.
On Columbus' second voyage in 1493, he began to demand tribute from the Taíno in Hispaniola. According to Kirkpatrick Sale
Kirkpatrick Sale (born June 27, 1937) is an American author who has written prolifically about political decentralism, environmentalism, luddism and technology. He has been described as having a "philosophy unified by decentralism" and as bei ...
, each adult over 14 years of age was expected to deliver a hawks bell full of gold every three months, or when this was lacking, twenty-five pounds of spun cotton. If this tribute was not brought, the Spanish cut off the hands of the Taíno and left them to bleed to death These savage, cruel practices inspired many revolts by the Taíno and campaigns against the Spanish—some being successful, some not.
In 1511, Antonio de Montesinos, a Dominican missionary in Hispaniola, became the first European to publicly denounce the abduction and enslavement of the Indigenous peoples of the island and the Encomienda system.
In 1511, several caciques in Puerto Rico, such as Agüeybaná II, Arasibo
Aracibo (born c. 1480s) was a Taíno ''Cacique'' in Puerto Rico who governed the area which is now named after him (now spelled Arecibo).
Pre-Columbian era
Aracibo governed a tribe whose village was located by the shore of the river "Abacoa" (n ...
, Hayuya, Jumacao, Urayoán, Guarionex, and Orocobix, allied with the Carib and tried to oust the Spaniards. The revolt was suppressed by the Indio-Spanish forces of Governor Juan Ponce de León. Hatuey, a Taíno chieftain who had fled from Hispaniola to Cuba with 400 Natives to unite the Cuban Natives, was burned at the stake on February 2, 1512.
In Hispaniola, a Taíno chieftain named Enriquillo
Enrique (1498–1535), best known as Enriquillo, was a Taíno people, Taíno cacique who rebelled against the Spaniards between 1519 and 1533. Enriquillo's rebellion is the best known rebellion of the early Caribbean period. He was born on the ...
mobilized more than 3,000 Taíno in a successful rebellion in the 1520s. These Taíno were accorded land and a charter from the royal administration. Despite the small Spanish military presence in the region, they often used diplomatic divisions and, with help from powerful Native allies, controlled most of the region. In "exchange" for a seasonal salary, and religious and language education, the Taíno were forced to work for Spanish and erroneously-labeled "Indian" landowners. This system of labor was part of the ''encomienda
The ''encomienda'' () was a Spanish Labour (human activity), labour system that rewarded Conquistador, conquerors with the labour of conquered non-Christian peoples. In theory, the conquerors provided the labourers with benefits, including mil ...
''.
Women
Taíno society was based on a matrilineal
Matrilineality, at times called matriliny, is the tracing of kinship through the female line. It may also correlate with a social system in which people identify with their matriline, their mother's lineage, and which can involve the inheritan ...
system and descent was traced through the mother. Women lived in village groups containing their children. The men lived separately. As a result, Taíno women had extensive control over their lives and their fellow villagers. The Taínos told Columbus that another Indigenous tribe, Caribs, were fierce warriors, who made frequent raids on the Taínos, often capturing the women.
Taíno women played an important role in intercultural interaction between Spaniards
Spaniards, or Spanish people, are a Romance-speaking ethnic group native to the Iberian Peninsula, primarily associated with the modern nation-state of Spain. Genetically and ethnolinguistically, Spaniards belong to the broader Southern a ...
and the Taíno people. When Taíno men were away fighting against intervention from other groups, women assumed the roles of primary food producers or ritual specialists. Women appeared to have participated in all levels of the Taíno political hierarchy
A hierarchy (from Ancient Greek, Greek: , from , 'president of sacred rites') is an arrangement of items (objects, names, values, categories, etc.) that are represented as being "above", "below", or "at the same level as" one another. Hierarchy ...
, occupying roles as high up as being '' cazicas''. Potentially, this meant Taíno women could make important choices for the village and could assign tasks to tribe members. There is evidence that suggests that the women who were the wealthiest among the tribe collected crafted goods that they would then use for trade or as gifts.
In contrast to the significant autonomy granted to women in Taíno society, Taíno women were taken by Spaniards as hostages to be used during negotiations. Some sources report that Taíno women became so-called commodities for Spaniards to trade, seen by some as the beginning of a period of more regular Spanish abduction and systemic rape of Taíno women.
Genocide and depopulation
Early population estimates of Hispaniola, thought to have likely been the most populous island inhabited by Taínos, range from 10,000 to 1,000,000 people. The maximum estimates for Jamaica and Puerto Rico are 600,000 people. A 2020 genetic analysis estimated the population to be no more than a few tens of thousands of people. Spanish priest and defender of the Taíno, 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 ...
(who had lived in Santo Domingo
Santo Domingo, formerly known as Santo Domingo de Guzmán, is the capital and largest city of the Dominican Republic and the List of metropolitan areas in the Caribbean, largest metropolitan area in the Caribbean by population. the Distrito Na ...
), wrote in his 1561 multi-volume ''History of the Indies'':
Researchers today doubt Las Casas' figures for the pre-contact levels of the Taíno population, considering them an exaggeration. For example, Karen Anderson Córdova estimates a maximum of 500,000 people inhabiting the island. The ''encomienda
The ''encomienda'' () was a Spanish Labour (human activity), labour system that rewarded Conquistador, conquerors with the labour of conquered non-Christian peoples. In theory, the conquerors provided the labourers with benefits, including mil ...
'' system forced many Taíno to work in the fields and mines in so-called exchange for Spanish protection, education
Education is the transmission of knowledge and skills and the development of character traits. Formal education occurs within a structured institutional framework, such as public schools, following a curriculum. Non-formal education als ...
, and a seasonal salary. Under the pretense of searching for gold and other materials, many Spaniards took advantage of the regions now under the control of the '' anaborios'' and Spanish ''encomenderos'' to exploit the Native population by seizing their land
Land, also known as dry land, ground, or earth, is the solid terrestrial surface of Earth not submerged by the ocean or another body of water. It makes up 29.2% of Earth's surface and includes all continents and islands. Earth's land sur ...
and wealth
Wealth is the abundance of valuable financial assets or physical possessions which can be converted into a form that can be used for transactions. This includes the core meaning as held in the originating Old English word , which is from an ...
. Historian David Stannard
David Edward Stannard (born 1941) is an American historian and Professor of American Studies at the University of Hawaii. He is particularly known for his book ''American Holocaust (book), American Holocaust'' (Oxford University Press, 1992), in wh ...
characterizes the encomienda as a genocidal system that "had driven many millions of native peoples in Central and South America to early and agonizing deaths." It would take some time before the Taíno revolted against their oppressors—both Native and Spanish alike—and many military campaigns before Emperor Charles V eradicated the ''encomienda'' system as a form of enslavement.
Disease played a significant role in the destruction of the Indigenous population, but forced labor was also one of the chief reasons behind the depopulation of the Taíno. The first man to introduce this forced labor among the Taínos was the leader of the European colonization of Puerto Rico, Ponce de León. Such forced labor eventually led to the Taíno rebellions, to which the Spaniards responded with violent military expeditions known as ''cabalgadas''. The purpose of the military expeditions was to capture the Indigenous people. This violence by the Spaniards was a reason why there was a decline in the Taíno population since it forced many of them to emigrate to other islands and the mainland.
In thirty years, between 80% and 90% of the Taíno population died. Because of the increased number of people (Spanish) on the island, there was a higher demand for food. Taíno cultivation was converted to Spanish methods. In hopes of frustrating the Spanish, some Taínos refused to plant or harvest their crops. The supply of food became so low in 1495 and 1496 that some 50,000 died from famine. Historians have determined that the massive decline was due more to infectious disease outbreaks than any warfare or direct attacks. By 1507, their numbers had shrunk to 60,000. Scholars believe that epidemic
An epidemic (from Greek ἐπί ''epi'' "upon or above" and δῆμος ''demos'' "people") is the rapid spread of disease to a large number of hosts in a given population within a short period of time. For example, in meningococcal infection ...
disease (smallpox
Smallpox was an infectious disease caused by Variola virus (often called Smallpox virus), which belongs to the genus '' Orthopoxvirus''. The last naturally occurring case was diagnosed in October 1977, and the World Health Organization (W ...
, influenza
Influenza, commonly known as the flu, is an infectious disease caused by influenza viruses. Symptoms range from mild to severe and often include fever, runny nose, sore throat, muscle pain, headache, coughing, and fatigue. These sympto ...
, measles
Measles (probably from Middle Dutch or Middle High German ''masel(e)'', meaning "blemish, blood blister") is a highly contagious, Vaccine-preventable diseases, vaccine-preventable infectious disease caused by Measles morbillivirus, measles v ...
, and typhus
Typhus, also known as typhus fever, is a group of infectious diseases that include epidemic typhus, scrub typhus, and murine typhus. Common symptoms include fever, headache, and a rash. Typically these begin one to two weeks after exposu ...
) was an overwhelming cause of the population decline of the Indigenous people, and also attributed a "large number of Taíno deaths...to the continuing bondage systems" that existed. Academics, such as historian Andrés Reséndez of the University of California, Davis
The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Davis, California, United States. It is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University ...
, assert that disease alone does not explain the destruction of Indigenous populations of Hispaniola. While the populations of Europe rebounded following the devastating population decline associated with the Black Death
The Black Death was a bubonic plague pandemic that occurred in Europe from 1346 to 1353. It was one of the list of epidemics, most fatal pandemics in human history; as many as people perished, perhaps 50% of Europe's 14th century population. ...
, there was no such rebound for the Indigenous populations of the Caribbean. He concludes that, even though the Spanish were aware of deadly diseases such as smallpox, there is no mention of them in the New World until 1519, meaning perhaps they did not spread as fast as initially believed, and that, unlike Europeans, the Indigenous populations were subjected to enslavement, exploitation, and forced labor in gold and silver mines on an enormous scale. Reséndez says that "slavery has emerged as a major killer" of the Indigenous people of the Caribbean. Anthropologist Jason Hickel estimates that the lethal forced labor in these mines killed a third of the Indigenous people there every six months.
Taíno culture today
Histories of the Caribbean traditionally describe the Taíno as extinct, due to being killed off by disease, slavery, and war with the Spaniards. Contemporary scholarship is more ambivalent, accepting that some degree of Taíno cultural heritage survives in the Caribbean, though many disagree on the extent and meaning of this. Many Caribbean people also have a degree of Indigenous descent, usually on the maternal side. Present-day peoples with Caribbean Indigenous heritage may identify as ''Taíno'', ''Taíno descendants'', or other localised terms, and often come from rural mestizo
( , ; fem. , literally 'mixed person') is a term primarily used to denote people of mixed European and Indigenous ancestry in the former Spanish Empire. In certain regions such as Latin America, it may also refer to people who are culturall ...
communities such as the jíbaro. Although ''Taíno'' was originally an exonym, contemporary descendants of the Taínos have begun to reclaim the name and publicly assert a shared Taíno Caribbean-Indigenous identity. They typically describe traditions that have been passed on in secret to evade enslavement or persecution. Groups advocating this point of view are sometimes known as ''Neo-Taínos''—though this is not usually a term they use to describe themselves—and are also established in the Puerto Rican communities located in New Jersey and New York. A few Taíno groups are pushing not only for recognition but respect for their cultural assets.
Scholars who remain sceptical that Taíno culture survived in recognizable form point to the process of ''mestizaje'' or creolisation as evidence of the modern Taíno's actual origins. Most Taíno descendants argue that this is evidence ''for'' their continued survival, rather than evidence against it, since creolization allowed their culture and identity to persist while evolving and adapting. According to Antonio Curet, this part of the modern Taíno argument is frequently ignored by sceptical scholars, even though, as he believes, creolization itself "does not disprove the claims of indigenous survival". Curet suggests, however, that modern Taíno views about creolization may downplay the contribution of European and especially African heritage, and that this may be seen as anti-African sentiment. Other scholars, such as Pedro Ferbel-Azcarate, dispute this, suggesting that Taíno identities are part of an ongoing process of resisting a Eurocentric mestizo identity which already ignores both African ''and'' Indigenous heritage.
Despite the recorded extinction of the Taíno across the Caribbean, historian Ranald Woodaman says the survival of the Taíno is supported by "the enduring (though not unchanged) presence of Native genes, culture, knowledge and identity among the descendants of the Taíno peoples of the region". He also notes the Indigenous and African heritage of communities such as the Maroons, and how these remained distinct from the larger populations while honouring their Taíno predecessors. Taíno-derived customs and identities can be found especially among marginalised rural populations on the Caribbean islands such of Cuba
Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is an island country, comprising the island of Cuba (largest island), Isla de la Juventud, and List of islands of Cuba, 4,195 islands, islets and cays surrounding the main island. It is located where the ...
, the 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 ...
, Jamaica
Jamaica is an island country in the Caribbean Sea and the West Indies. At , it is the third-largest island—after Cuba and Hispaniola—of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean. Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, west of Hispaniola (the is ...
and Puerto Rico
; abbreviated PR), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, is a Government of Puerto Rico, self-governing Caribbean Geography of Puerto Rico, archipelago and island organized as an Territories of the United States, unincorporated territo ...
.
Cuba
In isolated parts of eastern Cuba (including areas near El Caney, Yateras and Baracoa), there are Indigenous communities who have maintained their Taíno identities and cultural practices into the 21st century. Reports of Indigenous communities surviving in the east of Cuba date at least as far back as the 19th century, from sources as varied as anthropologists, missionaries, military officials and tourists. Abolitionist and British consul to Cuba David Turnbull, who visited the island in the 1830s, said the inhabitants of Guanabacoa
Guanabacoa is a colonial township in eastern Havana, Cuba, and one of the 15 municipalities (or boroughs) of the city. It is famous for its historical Santería and is home to the first Afro-Cubans, African Cabildo (Cuba), Cabildo in Havana. Guanab ...
, El Caney and Jiguaní had Indigenous heritage, and recorded Spanish stories of Taíno who had migrated to "the Yucatan and the Floridas". In the 1840s, José de la Torre reportedly saw 50 "pure blooded" Taíno dancing at El Caney and researcher Miguel Rodríguez Ferrer reportedly found various Taíno families living in the footholds of the Sierra Maestra mountains. In the 1880s, author Maturin M. Ballou, a sceptic of Taíno survival, said there were reports of an Arawak-Taíno village living near the copper mines "northwest of Santiago de Cuba", and Nicolas Fort y Roldan described encountering the "almost extinct race ''lucaya''", and their settlements in El Caney and Yateras. In the 1890s, author and photographer José de Olivares documented nomadic Indigenous Cubans whom he identified as "the last remnants of that interesting and sorely persecuted race". Most famously, Cuban national icon and poet José Martí reported the aid of "los Indios de Garrido" during the 1895 war of independence.
In the early 20th century, scientist B. E. Fernow reported "twenty-eight families" of mixed Indigenous people still living in isolated settlements in the foothills of the Sierra Maestro mountains, and archaeologist Stewart Culin noted the presence of "full-blooded" Indians near Yateras and Baracoa. The former group had apparently migrated from Santo Domingo; the latter group comprised 800 local Indigenous people, largely from three families: Gainsa, Azahares, and Rojas. Culin also met a Taíno man named José Almenares Argüello, or "Almenares", who said the town of El Caney had once been reserved only for Indians. In 1908 and 1909, explorer Sir Harry Johnston shared reports of "pure-blood" Taínos and recounted seeing mestizos who were "almost as pure breeds" in eastern Cuba, some of whom lived on former "reservations". He distinguished these from the general populace of 1.2 million Spanish Cubans who had various degrees of mixed "Amerindian-Arawak" heritage. Others such as Jesse W. Fewkes and Mark Raymond Harrington reported similar findings, including an additional settlement near Jaruco. Later, between the 1910s and 1920s, archaeologist J. A. Cosculluela discovered Indigenous families in the Zapata swamps, and apparently corroborated their lineage by visiting the local cemetery. In the 1940s, archaeologist Irving Rouse reported the existence of "pure blooded" Taíno or "Indios de las orillas" at Camagüey
Camagüey () is a city and municipality in central Cuba and is the nation's third-largest city with more than 333,000 inhabitants. It is the capital of the Camagüey Province.
It was founded as Santa María del Puerto del Príncipe in 1514, by Sp ...
. Historian Pichardo Moya, in his address to the Cuban Academy of History in 1945, criticized "the widely accepted opinion" that the Indigenous Cubans were "practically exterminated". He blamed this viewpoint on nationalistic histories that overlooked evidence of "Indian" heritage. Anthropologist and geneticist Reginald Ruggles Gates also reported many "Indian descent people" and people who were "pure Indians", especially women, noting Indigenous families with the surnames Gainsa, Ramírez and Rojas. When anthropologists Manuel Rivero de la Calle and Milan Pospisil analysed Cuba's Indigenous communities, they suggested those in the east were likely of Taíno heritage, rather than from the newer Yucatecan Mayan community living in the west. There are also Indigenous communities who migrated to Cuba from Florida and other parts of the mainland, who in some cases intermarried with local Taíno communities.
Jason M. Yaremko says there are many organised communities of Amerindians currently living in Cuba, many of whom have an Arawak-Taíno identity, and that a number of these are even "pure bloods". He suggests that Euro-American views from the 18th century onward, which saw race and Indigeneity in terms of essentialism
Essentialism is the view that objects have a set of attributes that are necessary to their Identity (philosophy), identity. In early Western thought, Platonic idealism held that all things have such an "essence"—an Theory of forms, "idea" or "f ...
and "primordiality", insisted on "narratives of disappearance" for Indigenous peoples and imposed upon them alternate identities as "white, black, or mulatto". In his view, Eurocentric perspectives saw the decline of the Indigenous peoples—whether through extinction or dilution—as the inevitable conclusion of the "heroic saga of civilization". Subsequent attempts to promote a singular Cuban national identity which transcended race and ethnicity, he says, may have "suffocated" more complex identities for the sake of "national unity", impacting both Afro-Cubans and Amerindian Cubans. But he says this Amerindian identity has nevertheless persisted in Cuba, "whether as 'Indios' in ''pueblos indios'', as individuals in cities and towns, or together in vibrant, if 'invisible' (until recently), rural communities like Yateras". He also suggests that, although the oral histories are "compelling", to address controversies over modern Cuban Taíno identities, this heritage could be "corroborated and reinforced by fieldwork conducted, to begin with, in documentary records contained in Cuba’s former 'Indian towns' and parishes, among other repositories in the country".
Dominican Republic
Frank Moya Pons, a Dominican historian, documented that Spanish colonists intermarried with Taíno women. Over time, some of their mixed-race descendants intermarried with Africans, creating a tripartite Creole culture. Census records from the year 1514 reveal that 40% of Spanish men on the island of Hispaniola had Taíno wives. Nevertheless, Spanish documents declared the Taíno to be extinct in the 16th century, as early as 1550.
Despite this, scholars note that contemporary rural Dominicans retain elements of Taíno culture including linguistic features, agricultural practices, food ways, medicine
Medicine is the science and Praxis (process), practice of caring for patients, managing the Medical diagnosis, diagnosis, prognosis, Preventive medicine, prevention, therapy, treatment, Palliative care, palliation of their injury or disease, ...
, fishing practices, technology
Technology is the application of Conceptual model, conceptual knowledge to achieve practical goals, especially in a reproducible way. The word ''technology'' can also mean the products resulting from such efforts, including both tangible too ...
, architecture
Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and construction, constructi ...
, oral history
Oral history is the collection and study of historical information from
people, families, important events, or everyday life using audiotapes, videotapes, or transcriptions of planned interviews. These interviews are conducted with people who pa ...
, and religious views, even though such cultural traits may be considered backward in the cities. Among these rural communities, some families and individuals also identify as Taíno.
Jamaica
Evidence suggests that some Taíno women and African men intermarried and lived in relatively isolated Maroon
Maroon ( , ) is a brownish crimson color that takes its name from the French word , meaning chestnut. ''Marron'' is also one of the French translations for "brown".
Terms describing interchangeable shades, with overlapping RGB ranges, inc ...
communities in the interior of the islands, where they developed into a mixed-race population who were relatively independent of Spanish authorities. For instance, when the colony of Jamaica
The Crown Colony of Jamaica and Dependencies was a British colony from 1655, when it was Invasion of Jamaica (1655), captured by the The Protectorate, English Protectorate from the Spanish Empire. Jamaica became a British Empire, British colon ...
was under the rule of Spain (known then as the colony of Santiago), both Taíno men and women fled to the Bastidas Mountains (currently known as the Blue Mountains), where they intermingled with escaped enslaved Africans. They were among the ancestors of the Jamaican Maroons
Jamaican Maroons descend from Africans who freed themselves from slavery in the Colony of Jamaica and established communities of Free black people in Jamaica, free black people in the island's mountainous interior, primarily in the eastern Pari ...
of the east, including those communities led by Juan de Bolas and Juan de Serras. The Maroons of Moore Town claim descent from the Taíno.[Agorsah, E. Kofi, "Archaeology of Maroon Settlements in Jamaica", ''Maroon Heritage: Archaeological, Ethnographic and Historical Perspectives'', ed. E. Kofi Agorsah (Kingston: University of the West Indies Canoe Press, 1994), pp. 180–1.]
United States, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands
Indigenous peoples are recorded later in Puerto Rico than on many other Caribbean islands. The Puerto Rican census of 1777 listed 1,756 ''indios'', while the 1787 census listed 2,032. It is not clear, however, exactly which groups were counted as indios at the time and how accurate the census data was—some indios may have remained hidden or lived in isolated and remote communities to avoid enslavement or worse. Puerto Rican historian Loida Figueroa has suggested that all Native Puerto Ricans were considered Indian until the beginning of the 19th century, when they were subsequently labelled pardos by Governor don Toribio Montes, who struggled to fit the multiethnic non-whites into American racial categories. Oral histories collected by Juan Manuel Delgado in 1977 also support the idea that "Indians" were widespread until the 19th century.
By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Puerto Rico was subjected to various attempts at Americanization, including through educational institutions. This often included learning English and Spanish, and being required to wear Anglo-American clothing. Some Puerto Rican children were sent to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, the flagship among American Indian boarding schools, including children with Taíno heritage.[Brave Heart, Maria Yellow Horse. "The impact of historical trauma: The example of the native community." In Marian Bussey & Judith Bula Wise (eds.). ''Trauma transformed: An empowerment response'' (Columbia University Press, 2007). 176–93.] Despite this, there is widespread recognition that Taíno customs and culture have survived in some form in Puerto Rico, where these customs are celebrated as a part of Puerto Rico's creole identity.
At the 2010 U.S. census, 1,098 people in Puerto Rico identified as "Puerto Rican Indian", 1,410 identified as "Spanish American Indian", and 9,399 identified as "Taíno". In total, 35,856 Puerto Ricans identified as Indigenous. A consistent explanation given by modern Taíno/Boricuas for their survival is that their families lived, at least for a time, close to the mountainous interior of the island, which they call ''Las Indieras'' ("the place of the Indians"). Anthropologist Sherina Feliciano-Santos says these areas typically have an increased prevalence of Indigenous foods, customs and vocabulary than elsewhere.
People with Indigenous heritage in Puerto Rico may call themselves ''Boricua,'' after the Indigenous word for the island, as well as or instead of Taíno. Local Taíno/Boricua groups have also begun attempts to reconstruct a distinct Taíno language, called ''Taíney'', often extrapolating from other Arawakan languages and using a modified version of the Latin alphabet.
The Guainía Taíno Tribe has been recognized as a tribe by the governor of the US Virgin Islands.
Taíno revivalist communities
As of 2006, there were a couple of dozen activist Taíno descendant organizations from Florida to Puerto Rico and California to New York with growing memberships numbering in the thousands. These efforts are known as the ''Taíno restoration'', a revival movement for Taíno culture that seeks to revive and reclaim Taíno heritage, as well as official recognition of the survival of the Taíno people. Historian Ranald Woodaman describes the modern Taíno movement as "a declaration of Native survival through ''mestizaje'' (genetic and cultural mixing over time), reclamation and revival".
In Puerto Rico, the history of the Taíno is being taught in schools, where children learn about the Taíno culture and identity through dance, costumes, and crafts. Martínez Cruzado, a geneticist at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez said celebrating and learning about their Taíno roots is helping Puerto Ricans feel connected.
Scholar Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel sees the development of a ''Neo-Taíno'' movement in Puerto Rico as a useful counter to the domination of the island by the United States and the Spanish legacies of island society. She also notes that "what could be seen as a useless anachronistic reinvention of a 'Boricua coqui' identity can also be conceived as a productive example of Spivak's 'strategic essentialism'". Scholar Gabriel Haslip-Viera suggests that the Taíno revival movements which emerged among marginalised Puerto Rican communities, especially from the 1980s and 1990s, are a response to US racism and Reaganism, which produced hostile political and socioeconomic conditions in the Caribbean.
DNA of Taíno descendants
In 2018, a DNA
Deoxyribonucleic acid (; DNA) is a polymer composed of two polynucleotide chains that coil around each other to form a double helix. The polymer carries genetic instructions for the development, functioning, growth and reproduction of al ...
study mapped the genome
A genome is all the genetic information of an organism. It consists of nucleotide sequences of DNA (or RNA in RNA viruses). The nuclear genome includes protein-coding genes and non-coding genes, other functional regions of the genome such as ...
of a tooth belonging to an 8th- to 10th–century "ancient Taíno" woman from the Bahamas
The Bahamas, officially the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, is an Archipelagic state, archipelagic and island country within the Lucayan Archipelago of the Atlantic Ocean. It contains 97 per cent of the archipelago's land area and 88 per cent of ...
. The research team compared the genome to 104 Puerto Ricans who participated in the 1000 Genomes Project (2008), who had 10 to 15 percent Indigenous American ancestry. The results suggested they were more "closely related to the ancient Bahamian genome" than to any other Indigenous American group.
Although most do not identify as such, DNA evidence suggests that a large proportion of the current populations of the Greater Antilles
The Greater Antilles is a grouping of the larger islands in the Caribbean Sea, including Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica, together with Navassa Island and the Cayman Islands. Seven island states share the region of the Greater Antille ...
have Taíno ancestry, with 61% of Puerto Ricans, up to 30% of Dominicans, and 33% of Cubans having mitochondrial DNA
Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA and mDNA) is the DNA located in the mitochondrion, mitochondria organelles in a eukaryotic cell that converts chemical energy from food into adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Mitochondrial DNA is a small portion of the D ...
of Indigenous origin. Some groups have reportedly maintained Taíno or ''indio'' customs to some degree.
Sixteen autosomal
An autosome is any chromosome that is not a sex chromosome. The members of an autosome pair in a diploid cell have the same morphology, unlike those in allosomal (sex chromosome) pairs, which may have different structures. The DNA in autosome ...
studies of peoples in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean and its diaspora (mostly Puerto Ricans) have shown that between 10% and 20% of their DNA is Indigenous. Some individuals have slightly higher scores, and others have lower scores or no Indigenous DNA at all. A recent study of a population in eastern Puerto Rico, where the majority of persons tested claimed Taíno ancestry, showed that they had 61% mtDNA (distant maternal ancestry) from Indigenous peoples and 0% Y-chromosome DNA
In human genetics, a human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup is a haplogroup defined by specific mutations in the non- recombining portions of DNA on the male-specific Y chromosome (Y-DNA). Individuals within a haplogroup share similar numbers of ...
(distant paternal ancestry) from the Indigenous people. This suggests part of the Creole population descends from unions between Taíno women and European or African men.
See also
* Ciboney
* Garifuna
* Hupia
In Taíno people, Taíno culture, the hupia (also ''opia'', ''opi'a'', ''op'a'', ''operi'to'') is the spirit of a person who has died.
In Taíno spiritual beliefs, hupias (ghost spirits of those who had died) were contrasted with goeiza, spirits ...
, spirit of the dead
* Indigenismo
** Indigenismo in Mexico
* Indigenous Amerindian genetics
The genetic history of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas is divided into two distinct periods: the Peopling of the Americas, initial peopling of the Americas from about 20,000 to 14,000 years ago (20–14 kya), and European colonization of ...
* List of Taínos
* Palapa (structure)
* Pomier Caves
* Tibes Indigenous Ceremonial Center
* Yamaye
References
Cited sources
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*
Further reading
* Nieves-Rivera, Ángel M., José Muñoz-Vázquez, and Carlos Betancourt-López, "Hallucinogens used by Taíno Indians in the West Indies." ''Atenea'' 15.1-2 (1995): 125–139.
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* wikisource
Wikisource is an online wiki-based digital library of free-content source text, textual sources operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikisource is the name of the project as a whole; it is also the name for each instance of that project, one f ...
*
* DeRLAS
"Some important research contributions of Genetics to the study of Population History and Anthropology in Puerto Rico"
Newark, Delaware: ''Delaware Review of Latin American Studies''. August 15, 2000.
* "The Role of Cohoba in Taíno Shamanism", Constantino M. Torres in ''Eleusis'' No. 1 (1998)
* "Shamanic Inebriants in South American Archaeology: Recent Investigations" Constantino M. Torres in ''Eleusis'' No. 5 (2001)
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* (Chapter 1: "The Art of the Taino Indians of Puerto Rico")
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External links
United Confederation of Taíno People (UCTP) / Confederación Unida de el Pueblo Taíno (CUPT)
A dictionary of words of the Indigenous peoples of Caribbean from the encyclopedia "Clásicos de Puerto Rico, second edition, publisher, Ediciones Latinoamericanas. S.A., 1972" compiled by Puerto Rican historian Dr. Cayetano Coll y Toste of the "Real Academia de la Historia".
2011 ''Smithsonian'' article on Taíno culture remnant in the Dominican Republic
''USVI Taino Chief Seeks Members.''
Amy H. Roberts. The St. Thomas Source. St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands. 6 April 2022. Accessed 5 May 2022
Archived.
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Social history of Puerto Rico
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