Taíno


The Taíno were the Indigenous peoples in most of the West Indies, in the Caribbean region of the Americas, whose culture has been continued today by their descendants and by Taíno revivalist communities. They were the first New World peoples encountered by Europeans. Part of the Arawak group of Indigenous peoples in the Americas, the Taíno are also referred to as Island Arawaks or Antillean Arawaks.
Extending from the Lucayan Archipelago of The Bahamas through the Greater Antilles of Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico to Guadeloupe in the northern Lesser Antilles, or the Leeward Islands, the Taíno historically lived in agricultural societies ruled by caciques with fixed settlements under a matrilineal system of kinship and inheritance, and a religion centered on the worship of zemis. At the time of European contact, they shared land with older Indigenous inhabitants, namely the Guanajatabeyes in Cuba, and the Ciguayos and the Macorix in Hispaniola, and they were engaged in conflict with the recent Carib native settlers of the southern Lesser Antilles, or the Windward Islands.
The Taíno historically spoke an Arawakan language. Granberry and Vescelius recognize two varieties of the Taino language: "Classical Taino", spoken in Puerto Rico and most of Hispaniola, and "Ciboney Taino", spoken in the Bahamas, most of Cuba, western Hispaniola, and Jamaica. These Indigenous peoples did not refer to themselves originally as Taíno; the term was first explicitly used in this sense by Constantine Samuel Rafinesque in 1836.
Historically, anthropologists and historians asserted that the Taíno were no longer extant centuries ago, or that they gradually merged into a common identity with African and Hispanic cultures. Scholarly attitudes to Taíno survival and resurgence began to change around the 21st century. Many people today identify as Taíno, and many more have Taíno descent, most notably in Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Dominica. A substantial number of Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Dominicans have Indigenous mitochondrial DNA, which may suggest Taíno descent through the direct female line, especially in Puerto Rico. While some communities describe an unbroken cultural heritage passed down through the generations, often in secret, others are revivalist communities who seek to incorporate Taíno culture into their lives.

Terminology

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 people who inhabited most of the Greater Antilles when Europeans arrived were first called Taínos by Constantine Samuel Rafinesque in 1836.
In 1871, early ethnohistorian Daniel Garrison Brinton referred to the Taíno people as the Island Arawak, because of their connections with the Arawaks of the mainland and because the Taíno language was thought to be part of the Arawak language family present throughout the Caribbean and much of Central and South America at that time. Scholars and writers continued to refer to the Indigenous group as Arawaks, Island Arawaks, or Antillean Arawaks until the 1990s.
Contemporary scholars such as Irving Rouse and Basil Reid have concluded the Taíno developed a distinct language and culture from the Arawak of South America. As such, many modern historians, linguists, and anthropologists now use the term Taíno to refer to all the formerly Island Arawak nations except the Island Caribs, who are not seen as belonging to the same people. Rouse classifies all inhabitants of the Greater Antilles as Taíno, as well as those of the Lucayan Archipelago and the northern Lesser Antilles. Modern groups with Caribbean-Indigenous heritage have also reclaimed the exonym Taíno as a self-descriptor, although terms such as Neo-Taino or Indio are also used.
Rouse also subdivides the historic Taíno into three main groups:
  • Classic Taíno in most of Hispaniola and all of Puerto Rico.
  • Western Taíno, or sub-Taíno in Hispaniola, most of Cuba, Jamaica, and the Lucayan archipelago.
  • Eastern Taíno in the northern Lesser Antilles from the Virgin Islands to Guadeloupe.

    Etymology

Taíno derives from the term nitaino or nitayno, which referred to an elite social class, not an ethnic group. According to José Barreiro, the word Taíno directly translates as "men of the good". 16th-century Spanish documents do not use the 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 Christopher Columbus's second voyage by his physician, Diego Álvarez Chanca, while in Guadeloupe. 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, the word taíno was probably used by Columbus's sailors, not by the islanders who greeted them. The sailors may have been saying the only word they knew in a Native Caribbean tongue, or were perhaps 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 to denote ethnicity, then the Spanish sailors were using it to indicate they were "not Carib" themselves.

Origins

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. Scholars have developed two theories to explain 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, as indicated by linguistic, cultural, and ceramic evidence. They migrated to the Orinoco Valley on the north coast, before reaching the Caribbean by way of what is now Venezuela into Trinidad, 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.
  • 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 and the Guianas, Venezuela, and the Amazon Basin of South America.
DNA studies have suggested that the historic Taíno descended from "a wave of pottery-making farmers" known as the Ceramic Age people, who entered the Caribbean from the northeastern coast of South America 2,500 years ago. There they encountered the earlier Archaic Age people who had arrived "some 6,000 or 7,000 years ago" from Central and South America. Ancestry studies suggest the Taíno and these earlier Indigenous populations did not often intermarry—supporting earlier theories that the Ceramic Age people supplanted the Archaic Age people—but newer evidence suggests Archaic Age people may have survived until around 900CE in western Cuba.
In Puerto Rico, 21st-century studies indicate that a high proportion of people have Amerindian mtDNA, likely as a result of intermarriage during the early part of European colonization. A small group of Taíno may also have survived in the mountains at Indiera Alta. DNA analysis suggests Puerto Ricans' Indigenous ancestry may derive from both the Ceramic Age people and the earlier Archaic Age people. The authors conclude that "a strong non-Amazonian contribution to the Taíno gene pool cannot be discarded from the data". Archaeological evidence, particularly pottery, also suggests that Taíno groups in Puerto Rico and Hispaniola may have had both Ceramic and Archaic origins.

Society

The Taíno founded settlements around villages and organized their chiefdoms, or cacicazgos, into a confederation. Individuals and kinship groups that previously had some prestige and rank in the tribe began to occupy the hierarchical position that would give way to the cacicazgo.
The Taíno society, as described by the Spanish chroniclers, was composed of four social classes: the cacique, 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. Either people were hunting, searching for food, or doing other productive tasks. They followed a very efficient nature harvesting and agricultural production system. The Taíno believed that everyone living on their islands should eat properly.
Tribal groups settled in villages under a chieftain, known as cacique, or cacica if the ruler was a woman. Chiefs were chosen from the nitaínos and generally obtained power from their maternal line.tion through their mother's noble line. The nitaínos functioned as sub-caciques in villages, overseeing the work of naborias. 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. 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 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.
The chiefs had both temporal and spiritual functions. Caciques 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, 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 enabled the cacique to have women and create family alliances in different localities, thus extending his power. 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.
As a symbol of his status, the cacique carried a guanín 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 and rare feathers, 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. Caciques sat on wooden stools to be above the guests they received.
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 of the tribes. They were made up of warriors and the family of the cacique. Advisors who assisted in operational matters such as assigning and supervising communal work, planting and harvesting 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 priests who represented religious beliefs and advised the caciques. 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, 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 rituals, such as fasting for several days and inhaling sacred tobacco snuff.