Taíno
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The Taínos were pre-Columbian indigenous people that came from the Caribbean coast of South America, going northward to the island chain of the Lesser Antilles to the Greater Antilles, around 1200 CE.
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. They had a culture different from that of the Arawaks of South America. They were the first people that the Spanish met in the Americas.
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[change] Name
The name Taíno was given by Columbus when he met some native men and they said "Taíno, Taíno", meaning "We are good, noble"; Columbus thought that Taíno was the name of the people.[1]
Rouse divides the Taínos into three main groups: Classic Taíno, from Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, Western Taíno or sub-Taíno, from Jamaica, Cuba (except for the western tip of the island) and the Bahamas, and Eastern Taíno, from the Virgin Islands to Montserrat.[2]
The Taínos of the Bahamas were known as the Lucayan (the Bahamas being known then as the Lucayas); Lucayos were Taínos but with a culture less developed and archeologists call them as sub-Taínos.
[change] Origins
The ancestors of the Taínos went from the center of the Amazon Basin to the Orinoco valley. From there they got to the Caribbean islands through Guyana and Venezuela.[2]
Another theory says that the ancestors of the Taínos came from the Colombian Andes.[2]
The Taíno culture developed in the Greater Antilles.
[change] Culture and lifestyle
Taíno society was divided into two classes: naborias (common people) and nitaínos (nobles). These were governed by chiefs known as caciques (who were either male or female). There were also bohiques (medicine men).[3]
The Taínos lived in villages called yucayeques; those in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico were the largest and those in the Bahamas were the smallest villages. They built large round houses called bohio where several families lived. The cacique and his family lived in a rectangular house called caney. They slept on cotton hammocks (hamacas).[4]
They 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.[4]
[change] References
- ↑ Anglería, Pedro Mártir de (1949). Décadas del Nuevo Mundo (in Spanish). Buenos Aires: Editorial Bajel.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Rouse, Irving (1992). The Tainos: Rise and Decline of the people who greeted Columbus. New Haven: Yale University Press.
- ↑ Caciques, nobles and their regalia. elmuseo.org. Retrieved on 29 February 2008.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Fernández de Oviedo y Valdéz, Gonzalo (1959). Historia General y Natural de las Indias (in Spanish). Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Españoles.
