Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean
The indigenous peoples of the Caribbean included the Taíno, the Island Caribs of the Lesser Antilles, and the Guanahatabey of western Cuba.
Introduction
Some scholars consider it important to distinguish the Taíno from the neo-Taíno nations of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Hispaniola, and the Lucayan of the Bahamas and Jamaica. Linguistically or culturally these differences extended from various cognates or types of canoe: canoa, piragua, cayuco to distinct languages. Languages diverged even over short distances. Previously these groups often had distinctly non-Taíno deities such as the goddess Jagua, strangely enough the god Teju Jagua is a major demon of indigenous Paraguayan mythology. Still these groups plus the high Taíno are considered Island Arawak, part of a widely diffused assimilating culture, a circumstance witnessed even today by names of places in the New World; for example localities or rivers called Guamá are found in Cuba, Venezuela and Brazil. Guamá was the name of famous Taíno who fought the Spanish.Thus, since the neo-Taíno had far more diverse cultural input and a greater societal and ethnic heterogeneity than the true high Taíno of Boriquen a separate section is presented here. A broader language group is Arawakan languages. The term Arawak is said to be derived from an insulting term meaning "eaters of meal" given to them by mainland Caribs. In turn the Arawak legend explains the origin of the Caribs as offspring of a putrid serpent.
The social classes of the neo-Taíno, generalized from Bartolomé de las Casas, appeared to have been loosely feudal with the following Taíno classes: naboría, nitaíno', bohique,, and the cacique. However, the neo-Taíno seem to have been more relaxed in this respect.
Administrative and/or national units
The Spanish found that most Cuban peoples for the part living peacefully in tidy towns and villages grouped into numerous principalities called cacicazgos or principalities with an almost feudal social structure Bartolomé de las Casas. They were ruled by leaders or princes, called Caciques. Cuba was then divided into Guanahatabey, Ciboney, and Classical Taíno. Then some of Western Cuba was Guanahatabey. and some Ciboney. Taíno-like cultures controlled most of Cuba dividing it into the cacicazgos. Granberry and Vescelius and other contemporary authors only consider the cazicazgo of Baracoa as classical or high Taíno. Cuban cacicazgos including Bayaquitiri, Macaca, Bayamo, Camagüey, Jagua, Habana y Haniguanica are treated here as "neo-Taíno". Hispaniolan principalities at about 1500 included Maguá ; Xaraguá ; Maguana ; Higüey also called Iguayagua ; Cigüayo, and unnamed region under Cacique Guanacagarí. These principalities are considered to have various affinities to the contemporary Taíno and neo-Taíno cultures from what is now known as Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic and Haiti, but are generally believed somewhat different.Farming and fishing
The adroit farming and fishing skills of the neo-Taíno nations should not be underestimated; the names of fauna and flora that survive today are testimony of their continued use. Neo-Taíno fishing technologies were most inventive, including harpoons and fishnets and traps. Neo-Taíno common names of fish are still used today. Agriculture included a wide variety of germplasm, including maize, peanuts, tomato, squash, and beans plus a vast array of tree fruits. Tubers in most frequent use were yuca a crop with perhaps 10,000 years of development in the Americas; boniato, and malangaTaíno pharmacopoeia
As with all Arawak and similar cultures there was considerable use of natural pharmacopoeia.Taíno studies
Taíno studies are in a state of both vigorous revival and conflict. In this conflict deeply embedded cultural mores, senses of nationality and ethnicity struggle with each other. The Syboneistas undertook studies and wrote of neo-Taínos as part and cover for independence struggles against Spain.Sexual mores
Neo-Taíno sexual freedom is well documented by such as Bartolomé de las Casas, Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés and Amerigo Vespucci. Father de las Casas writes: "The Indian women of Cuba, as once did women of many places, went naked. Married women wore a small skirt or apron, called an enagua, which did not cover their breasts and rarely reached the knee. These women in the marriage ceremony, took to the marriage chamber all the friends of the husband, and later emerged to the cry Manikato, the cry of victory.". Yet there are some who question this in a debate recalling the old controversies surrounding Margaret Mead.The legend of the mermaid is said to arise from the Ciboney account of seductive, sexually generous Aycayia, the incarnation of beauty and of sin who gave men pleasure but robbed them of will. She and her six lusty sisters were punished, and Aycayia was condemned to the care of an ancient crone Guanayoa, and sent to an isolated place called Punta Majagua. This exile did not improve the situation because she was constantly "visited" by men. Finally, sent to sea, she was said to have transmuted into a mermaid.
Neo-Taíno and Taíno art
Taíno and related art has been celebrated in several significant exhibitions survives as echoes in the rich traditions of the popular music of the Caribbean, but is believed to continue to exist in its purest form and associated spirituality among the Waroa of Venezuela.Metallurgy
The art of the neo-Taínos demonstrates that these nations had metallurgical skills, and it has been postulated by some e.g. Paul Sidney Martin, that the inhabitants of these islands mined and exported metals such as copper. The Cuban town of Guaninao means the place of copper and is surmised to have been a site of pre-Columbian mining.Peoples of the Caribbean
Taíno
The Taíno, an Arawak people, were the major population group throughout most of the Caribbean. Their culture was divided into three main groups, the Western Taíno, the Classic Taíno, and the Eastern Taíno, with other variations within the islands.Classic Taíno
The Classic Taíno lived in eastern Cuba, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico. They spoke a dialect called Classic Taíno. Compared to their neighbors, the Classic Taíno had substantially developed agricultural societies. Puerto Rico was divided into twenty chiefdoms which were organized into one united kingdom or confederation, Borinquen. Hispaniola was divided into roughly 45 chiefdoms, which were organized into five kingdoms under the leadership of the chief of each area's premier chiefdom. Beginning around 1450, Classic Taíno from Hispaniola began migrating to eastern Cuba; they are conventionally known as the Cuban Taíno. The Cuban Taíno gained power over some of Cuba's earlier Western Taíno inhabitants, the Ciboney, but no regional or island-wide political structure had developed on the island at the time of Spanish colonization of the Americas.Eastern Taíno
The Eastern Taíno inhabited the Leeward Islands of the Lesser Antilles, from the Virgin Islands to Montserrat. They had less sophisticated societies than the Classic Taíno.Western Taíno
The Western Taíno lived in the Bahamas, central Cuba, westernmost Hispaniola, and Jamaica. They spoke a dialect known as Ciboney Taíno or Western Taíno. The Western Taíno of the Bahamas were known as the Lucayans, they were wiped out by Spanish slave raids by 1520. Western Taíno living in Cuba were known as the Ciboney. There are still Tainos in Hispaniola and Jamaica. They had no chiefdoms or organized political structure beyond individual villages, but by the time of Spanish conquest many were under the control of the Cuban Taíno in eastern Cuba.Igneri
According to oral history, the Igneri were the original Arawak inhabitants of the Windward Islands in the Lesser Antilles before being conquered by the Island Caribs who are thought to have arrived from South America. Contemporary sources like to suggest that the Caribs took Igneri women as their wives while killing the men, resulting in the two sexes speaking different languages, this is not proven and, there appears to be a confusion of the reality: despite the name, the Island Carib language was Arawakan, not Cariban. Irving Rouse suggests that small numbers of Caribs may have conquered the Igneri without displacing them, and could have gradually adopted their language while retaining the Carib identity, but there is no evidence to prove this. Though they were Arawaks, the Igneri language appears to be as distinct from the Taíno language as it was from the mainland Arawak language of South America.Island Caribs
By the contact period, the caribs now commonly known as the Island Caribs inhabited the Windward Islands of the Lesser Antilles, it is from this group the Europeans named the region the caribbean, they were noted for their warlike lifestyle, due to their resistance to European colonisation. They self-identified with the Kalina or mainland Carib people of South America, and they were noted for their warlike lifestyle. Contemporary accounts asserted that the Island Caribs had conquered the Windward Islands from their previous inhabitants, the Igneri. However, the Island Carib language was Arawakan, not Cariban. Irving Rouse suggests that small numbers of South American Caribs invaded the Windwards and conquered the Igneri without displacing them; they gradually adopted the local language while maintaining the Carib identity. The Island Caribs outlasted their Taíno neighbors, and continue to live in the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean. Noteworthy Carib descendants live on within the Garifuna people, known as the Black Caribs who descend from St. Vincent in the Lesser Antilles.Guanahatabey
A separate ethnic identity from far western Cuba. They were an archaic hunter-gatherer people who spoke a language distinct from Taíno, and appear to have predated the agricultural, Taíno-speaking Ciboney.Ciguayo
A separate ethnic people that inhabited the Peninsula of Samaná and part of the northern coast toward the Nahua in what today is the Dominican Republic, and, by most contemporary accounts, differed in language and customs from the classical or high Taíno who lived on the eastern part of the island of Hispaniola then known. According to Eustaquio Fernandez de Navarrete, they were “warriors and spirited people,”. 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”. Fray Ramón Pané, often dubbed as the first anthropologist of the Caribbean, distinguished the Cigüayos’ language from the rest of those spoken on Hispaniola. Bartolomé de las Casas, who studied them and was one of the few who read Ramón Pané’s original work in Spanish, provided most of the documentation about this group. Linguists Granberry and Gary Vescelius believe that the Cigüayos emigrated from Central America. Wilson states that circa 1500 this was the kingdom Cacicazgo of Cacique Guacangarí.Macorix
Another separate ethnic group that lived on the eastern side of the island of Hispaniola. Their region today is in the Dominican Republic. According to las Casas, their language was unintelligible for the Taínos, but may have been similar to the Ciguayo.Recent studies show that the Macorix people coexisted with the Tainos on the Hispaniola. The names San Francisco de Macorix and San Pedro de Macorix in the Dominican Republic, are but indirect references to the political divisions of the cacicazgo. The Spaniards wrongly assumed that the names given to the different territories were a reference "to what they called a Cacicazgo:
Florida tribes
The Tequesta of the southeast coast of the Florida peninsula were once considered to be related to the Taíno, but most anthropologists now doubt this. The Tequesta had been present in the area for at least 2,000 years at the time of first European contact, and are believed to have built the Miami Stone Circle. Carl O. Sauer called the Florida Straits "one of the most strongly marked cultural boundaries in the New World", noting that the Straits were also a boundary between agricultural systems, with Florida Indians growing seed crops that originated in Mexico, while the Lucayans of the Bahamas grew root crops that originated in South America.It is possible that a few Lucayas reached Florida shortly before the first European contacts in the area, but the northwestern Bahamas had remained uninhabited until approximately 1200, and the long established presence of the existing tribes in Florida would have likely prevented any pioneering settlements by people who had only just reached the neighboring islands. Analysis of ocean currents and weather patterns indicates that people traveling by canoe from the Bahamas to Florida were likely to land in northern Florida rather than closer to the Bahamas. A single 'Antillean axe head' found near Gainesville, Florida may support some limited contacts. Due to the same ocean currents, direct travel in canoes from southern Florida to the Bahamas was unlikely.
The term and context of the Ciboney (Siboney)
Ciboney is a term preferred in Cuban historic contexts for the neo-Taíno nations of Cuba.Our knowledge of the Cuban indigenous cultures which are often, but less precisely, lumped into a category called Taíno comes from early Spanish sources, oral traditions and considerable archeological evidence. The Spanish found that most Cuban peoples were, for the most part, living peacefully in tidy towns and villages grouped into numerous principalities called Cacicazgos with an almost feudal social structure. They were ruled by leaders called Caciques. Cuba was divided into Guanahatabey, Ciboney-Taíno, and Classical Taíno. Some of western Cuba was Guanahatabey and some Siboney.
Taíno-like cultures controlled most of Cuba, dividing it into cacicazgos or principalities. Granberry, Vescelius, and other contemporary authors only consider the cacicazgo of Baracoa as Classical or High Taíno. Cuban cacicazgos including Bayaquitiri, Macaca, Bayamo, Camagüey, Jagua, Habana y Haniguanica are considered neo-Taíno. These principalities are considered to have various affinities to contemporary Taíno and neo-Taíno cultures from Puerto Rico and Hispaniola, but are generally believed to have been somewhat different.
Ethnic/cultural derivatives
Guajiros and Jibaros
The common name given to the rural inhabitants of Cuba is guajiros. Del Campo implies that quajiros are "native-born whites" and states that in Puerto Rico "the influence of the indigenous population is more marked than that of the native populations in Cuba".Guajiro nation
The term Guajira/Guajiro, also refers to indigenous Arawak nation of the Guajira Peninsula between Venezuela and Colombia. For a small compendium of myths of this Nation please see:de Cora, Maria Manuela 1972. Kuai-Mare. Mitos Aborígenes de Venezuela. Monte Avila Editores Caracas.