Taíno

Taíno
	Creole languages; Taíno (historically)
Religion
	Polytheism
Related ethnic groups
	Lokono, Kalinago, Garifuna, Igneri, Guanahatabey, Arawak

The Taíno were a historic

zemis.^[5]

Some anthropologists and historians have argued that the Taíno were no longer extant centuries ago,[6]^[7]^[8] or they gradually merged into a common identity with African and Hispanic cultures.^[9] However, many people today identify as Taíno or claim Taíno descent, most notably in subsections of the Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Dominican nationalities.^[10] Many Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Dominicans have Taíno mitochondrial DNA, showing that they are descendants through the direct female line.^[11]^[12] While some communities claim an unbroken cultural heritage passed down from the old Taíno peoples, others are revivalist communities who seek to incorporate Taíno culture into their lives.

Terminology

Various scholars have addressed the question of who were the native inhabitants of the Caribbean islands to which Columbus voyaged in 1492. They face difficulties, as European accounts cannot be read as objective evidence of a native Caribbean social reality.^[13] The people who inhabited most of the Greater Antilles when Europeans arrived in the New World have been denominated as Taínos, a term coined by Constantine Samuel Rafinesque in 1836.^[2] 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.^[14]

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. 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.^[2]

Contrarily, according to Peter Hulme, most translators appear to agree that the word taino 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.^[14]

According to

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.^[16] 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) have recognized that the Taíno developed a distinct language and culture from the Arawak of South America.^[17]^{[page needed]}^[18]

Taíno and Arawak appellations 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 natives, excluding the Puerto Rican and Leeward nations. Similarly, "Island Taíno" has been used to refer only to those living in the Windward Islands, or to the northern Caribbean inhabitants, as well as to the indigenous population of all the Caribbean islands.

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 is an Arawakan dialect or a Creole language. They also speculate that it was an independent language isolate, with an Arawakan pidgin

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), the

Lucayan archipelago, and the northern Lesser Antilles. 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 to Montserrat.^[19]

Origins

Island Carib

groups

Two schools of thought have emerged regarding the origin of the indigenous people of the Caribbean.

One group of scholars contends that the ancestors of the Taíno were
Amazon Basin. This is indicated by linguistic, cultural, and ceramic evidence. They migrated to the Orinoco Valley on the north coast. From there they reached the Caribbean by way of what is now Venezuela into Trinidad, migrating along the Lesser Antilles to Cuba and the Bahamian archipelago. 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.^[20]^[21]^[22]

The alternate theory, known as the circum-Caribbean theory, contends that the ancestors of the Taíno diffused from the
Guianas, Venezuela, and the Amazon Basin of South America.^[20]

Taíno culture as documented is believed to have developed in the Caribbean. The Taíno creation story says that they emerged from caves in a sacred mountain on present-day Hispaniola.

haplotypes found, one does not exist in the Taíno ancestral group, so other Native people are also among the genetic ancestors.^[21]^[24]

DNA studies changed some of the traditional beliefs about pre-Columbian indigenous history. According to National Geographic, "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."^[25]

Culture

*Dujo*, a wooden ceremonial chair crafted by Taínos

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.^[26] 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.^{[citation needed]}

The Taíno had a

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.^[28]^[29]

The Taíno women were skilled in agriculture, which the people depended on. The men also fished and hunted, making fishing nets and ropes from

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.^{[citation needed}

]

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.[30]

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.^[31]

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.^[32]^{[full citation needed]} 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

rubber ball. Normally, the teams were composed of men, but occasionally women played the game as well.^[33] 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.^[31] Often, chiefs made wagers on the possible outcome of a game.^[33]

Taíno spoke an
Arawakan language and used an early form of proto-writing in the form of petroglyph,^[34] as found in Taíno archeological sites in the West Indies.^[35]

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.^[36]

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.^[37]

Cacicazgo/society

Cayetano Coll y Toste's 1901 map of Puerto Rico caciques^[38]

The Taíno were the most culturally advanced of the Arawak group to settle in what is now Puerto Rico.^[39] 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.^[40] The Taíno founded settlements around villages and organized their chiefdoms, or cacicazgos, into a confederation.^[41]
The Taíno society, as described by the Spanish chroniclers, was composed of four social classes: the cacique, the nitaínos, the bohíques, and the naborias.^[40] According to archeological evidence, the Taíno islands were able to support a high number of people for approximately 1,500 years.^[42] Every individual living in the Taíno society had a task to do. The Taíno believed that everyone living on their islands should eat properly.^[42] They followed a very efficient nature harvesting and agricultural production system.^[42] Either people were hunting, searching for food, or doing other productive tasks.^[42]
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.^{[citation needed]} 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.^[43]
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.
Caribs on communities in Puerto Rico.^[46]

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.^[40]

Cacicazgos of Hispaniola

Under the cacique, social organization was composed of two tiers: The nitaínos at the top and the naborias at the bottom.^[39] The nitaínos were considered the nobles of the tribes. They were made up of warriors and the family of the cacique.^[47] 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.^[48] The naborias were the more numerous working peasants of the lower class.^[47]
The bohíques were priests who represented religious beliefs.^[47] 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.^[44]

Food and agriculture

Cassava, starchy (yuca) roots, the Taínos' main crop

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
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.^[49]

River Saliente
in Jayuya, Puerto Rico

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.^[50] Some young boys hunted waterfowl from flocks that "darkened the sun", according to Christopher Columbus.^[42]

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.^[51] 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.^[51]

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.^[52] 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.^[53]^[54]
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
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.^[51]

Spirituality

Taíno zemí sculpture
Walters Art Museum

Taíno spirituality centered on the worship 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.^{[citation needed}
]
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 floodwaters.^[56]
Iguanaboína was the goddess of good weather. She also had twin sons: Boinayel, the messenger of rain, and Marohu, the spirit of clear skies.^[57]
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.^[58]
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.
human beings arose. He was punished by being turned into stone, or a bird, a frog, or a reptile, depending on the interpretation of the myth.^[59]

Zemí, a physical object housing a zemi, spirit or ancestor
Lombards Museum

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,
snakes, and various abstract and human-like faces.^{[citation needed}
]

Cohoba Spoon, 1200–1500
Brooklyn Museum

Rock petroglyph overlaid with chalk in the Caguana Indigenous Ceremonial Center in Utuado, Puerto Rico

Some zemís were accompanied by small tables or trays, which are believed to be a receptacle for hallucinogenic 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.^[63] 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.^{[citation needed]}
One Taíno oral tradition 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).^{[citation needed]} 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 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.^{[citation needed]}
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 fruit.^{[citation needed]}

Spanish and Taíno

Battle of Vega Real

Columbus and the crew of his ship were the first
Europeans
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:

They traded with us and gave us everything they had, with good will ... they took great delight in pleasing us ... They are very gentle and without knowledge of what is evil; nor do they murder or steal...Your highness may believe that in all the world there can be no better people ... They love their neighbors as themselves, and they have the sweetest talk in the world, and are gentle and always laughing.^[64]

At this time, the neighbors of the Taíno were the
Ais nations of Florida. 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. A group of about 24 Taíno people were abducted and forced to accompany Columbus on his 1494 return voyage to Spain.^[65]

On Columbus' second voyage in 1493, he began to demand tribute from the Taíno in Hispaniola. According to Kirkpatrick Sale, 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^[66] 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.^[67]
In 1511, several caciques in Puerto Rico, such as Agüeybaná II, Arasibo, 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.^[68] 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 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.^[69]^[70] 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.^[71]

Women

Cacique (Chief) Taína, indigenous of the island of Hispaniola

Taíno society was based on a matrilineal 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.^[72] The Taínos told Columbus that another indigenous tribe, Caribs, were fierce warriors, who made frequent raids on the Taínos, often capturing the women.^[73]^[74]
Taíno women played an important role in intercultural interaction between Spaniards 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.^[75] Women appeared to have participated in all levels of the Taíno political hierarchy, occupying roles as high up as being cazicas.^[76] Potentially, this meant Taíno women could make important choices for the village and could assign tasks to tribe members.^[77] 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.^{[citation needed]}
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.^[78]

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.^[79] The maximum estimates for Jamaica and Puerto Rico are 600,000 people.^[19] A 2020 genetic analysis estimated the population to be no more than a few tens of thousands of people.^[80]^[81] Spanish priest and defender of the Taíno, Bartolomé de las Casas (who had lived in Santo Domingo), wrote in his 1561 multi-volume History of the Indies:^[82]

There were 60,000 people living on this island [when I arrived in 1508], including the Indians; so that from 1494 to 1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery and the mines. Who in future generations will believe this?

Researchers today doubt Las Casas' figures for the pre-contact levels of the Taíno population, considering them an exaggeration.^[83] For example, Karen Anderson Córdova estimates a maximum of 500,000 people inhabiting the island.^[84] They had no resistance to Old World diseases, notably smallpox.^{[citation needed]} The encomienda system forced many Taíno to work in the fields and mines in so-called exchange for Spanish protection,^[85] education, and a seasonal salary.^[86] Under the pretense of searching for gold and other materials,^[87] 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 and wealth. Historian David Stannard 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."^[88] 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.^[89]^[90]
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.^[91] The first man to introduce this forced labor among the Taínos was the leader of the European colonization of Puerto Rico, Ponce de León.^[91] Such forced labor eventually led to the Taíno rebellions, to which the Spaniards responded with violent military expeditions known as cabalgadas.^{[citation needed]} The purpose of the military expeditions was to capture the indigenous people.^{[citation needed]} 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.^[92]
In thirty years, between 80% and 90% of the Taíno population died.^[93]^[91] 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.^[94] Historians have determined that the massive decline was due more to infectious disease outbreaks than any warfare or direct attacks.^[95]^[96] By 1507, their numbers had shrunk to 60,000. Scholars believe that epidemic disease (smallpox, influenza, measles, and typhus) was an overwhelming cause of the population decline of the indigenous people,^[97] and also attributed a "large number of Taíno deaths...to the continuing bondage systems" that existed.^[98]^[99] Academics, such as historian Andrés Reséndez of the University of California, Davis, 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, 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.^[100] Reséndez says that "slavery has emerged as a major killer" of the indigenous people of the Caribbean.^[101] Anthropologist Jason Hickel estimates that the lethal forced labor in these mines killed a third of the indigenous people there every six months.^[102]

Taíno descendants today

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Modern Taíno descendant communities

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Cited sources

Further reading

External links

Taíno

Terminology

Origins

Culture

Cacicazgo/society

Food and agriculture

Spirituality

Spanish and Taíno

Women

Depopulation

Taíno descendants today

Modern Taíno descendant communities

Taíno revivalist communities

DNA of Taíno descendants

See also

References