Taíno facts for kids
The Taínos were an indigenous people that lived in the Americas before Columbus arrived there. They came from the Caribbean coast of South America. Around 1200 CE, they moved northward to the island chain of the Lesser Antilles and the Greater Antilles.
When Christopher Columbus came to the Americas, the Taínos were living in the Bahamas, the Greater Antilles (Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola and Puerto Rico), and some islands of the northern Lesser Antilles. Their culture was different from the culture of the Arawak people (another indigenous group of South America). They were the first people that the Spanish met in the Americas.
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Name
The name Taíno was given by Columbus. When he met some native men, they said "Taíno, Taíno", meaning "We are good, noble". Columbus thought that taíno was the name of the people.
Rouse divides the Taínos into three main groups. One is the Classic Taíno, from Hispaniola and Puerto Rico. Another is the Western Taíno or sub-Taíno, from Jamaica, Cuba (except for the western tip of the island) and the Bahamas. The third is the Eastern Taíno, from the Virgin Islands to Montserrat.
The Taínos of the Bahamas were known as the '"Lucayan". (At that time, the Bahamas were called the Lucayas). Lucayos were Taínos, but their culture was less developed. Archeologists call them "sub-Taínos".
Origins
The Taínos' ancestors went from the center of the Amazon Basin to the Orinoco Valley. From there, they went through Guyana and Venezuela and got to the Caribbean islands.
A different theory says that the Taínos' ancestors came from the Colombian Andes.
The Taíno culture developed in the Greater Antilles.
Culture and lifestyle
Taíno society was divided into two classes. There were the naborias (common people) and the nitaínos (nobles). Both classes were governed by chiefs known as caciques. The caciques could be either male or female. There were also bohiques (medicine men).
The Taínos lived in villages called yucayeques. . The villages in the Bahamas were the smallest. The Taínos built large round houses called bohio, where several families lived. The cacique and his family lived in a rectangular house called caney. People slept on cotton hammocks (hamacas).
The Taínos often played a ball game called batey. Batey was also the name of the place where they played and had dances. The cacique sat on a chair of wood called duho, or dujo.
Culture
Taíno society was divided into two classes: naborias (commoners) and nitaínos (nobles). They were governed by male chiefs known as caciques, 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 system of kinship, 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 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. Men, and sometimes women, might have two or three spouses. 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 wives 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 and palm. Their dugout canoes (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 did not usually wear clothes but 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 rituals, 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.
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 his 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 ball. Normally, the teams were composed of men, but occasionally women played the game as well. 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 and used an early form of proto-writing in the form of petroglyph, as found in Taíno archeological sites in the West Indies.
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. 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 founded settlements around villages 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, 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, known as cacique, or cacica if the ruler was a woman. Many women whom the Spaniards 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, 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. 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.
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. 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.
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 hutias, other mammals, earthworms, lizards, turtles, and birds. Manatees were speared and fish were caught in nets, speared, trapped in weirs, or caught with hook and line. Wild parrots were decoyed with domesticated birds, and iguanas were taken from trees and other vegetation. 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.
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 mussels and oysters 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 technique. Typically, conucos were three feet high, nine feet in circumference, and were arranged in rows. The primary root crop was yuca or cassava, a woody shrub cultivated for its edible and starchy 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) was the next most important root crop.
Tobacco was grown by pre-Columbian peoples in the Americas for centuries before 1492. Christopher Columbus 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. The Taíno grew squash, beans, peppers, peanuts, and pineapples. Tobacco, calabashes (bottle gourds), and cotton were grown around the houses. Other fruits and vegetables, such as palm nuts, guavas, and Zamia roots, were collected from the wild.
Taíno descendants today
Modern Taíno descendant communities
Although Taíno was originally an exonym, contemporary descendants of the Taínos have begun to reclaim the name and assert a Taíno Caribbean-Indigenous identity. Rural communities which have retained Taíno-derived customs and identities can be found on Caribbean islands such as Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Puerto Rico.
Cuba
In isolated parts of eastern Cuba (including parts of Yateras and Baracoa), communities of people of substantial Taíno ancestry have survived into the present, and preserve cultural practices of Taíno origin.
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—550.
Despite this, scholars note that contemporary rural Dominicans retain elements of Taíno culture including linguistic features, agricultural practices, food ways, medicine, fishing practices, technology, architecture, oral history, 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 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 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). There the Taíno intermingled with escaped enslaved Africans. They were among the ancestors of the Jamaican Maroons 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.
United States
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 Native American.
The Guainía Taíno Tribe has been recognized as a tribe by the governor of the US Virgin Islands.
DNA of Taíno descendants
In 2018, a DNA study mapped the genome of the tooth belonging to an 8th- to 10th–century woman from the Bahamas. "Comparing the ancient Bahamian genome to those of contemporary Puerto Ricans, the researchers found that they were more closely related to the ancient Taíno than any other indigenous group in the Americas." 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, which was "closely related to the ancient Bahamian genome."
DNA evidence shows that a large proportion of the current populations of the Greater Antilles have Taíno ancestry, with 61% of Puerto Ricans, up to 30% of Dominicans, and 33% of Cubans having mitochondrial DNA of Taíno origin.
Images for kids
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Caguana Ceremonial ball court (batey), outlined with stones
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Taíno zemí sculptureWalters Art Museum
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Cohoba Spoon, 1200–1500Brooklyn Museum
See also
In Spanish: Taíno para niños
