Nicole Plummer

 Thegeographical formation of the Caribbean

took place about 70 million years ago.

 All
of the Caribbean islands are defined as
oceanic rather than continental because with
the exception of Guyana.

 Trinidadis also unique as it was once joined

to the South American continent.
• The first wave of people arrived in the
Caribbean ca. 5000 BC.

• They originated in South and Central America

and established small seaside communities.

• Called the Paleo–Indians, they relied on basic

tools made from stones and shells; had little or
no knowledge of pottery and ate a diet
comprising wild berries, fish and game.
 Around500 BC arrived the Meso-Indians from
South America called the Ciboneys or
Siboneys.

 Theirmain settlements were located in

Trinidad, Cuba and Hispaniola.

 They possessed more advanced pottery and

tools. And their settlement were not
relegated to the seashore.

 They subsisted by fishing and hunting.

 The third group of Amerindian people
recognized in the region was the Neo-
Indians.

 They had a more varied diet resulting from

hunting, fishing and advanced
agricultural methods.

 Thisgroup of neo-Indians was divided into

two closely related groups known
collectively as the Salodoid people.
 The Salodoid people arrived in the region
around 300 B.C. and spoke a language called
Arawakan and possessed a more developed
social structure than their predecessors in the
Caribbean.

 They spread throughout the Greater and

Lesser Antilles and also in the Bahamas,
eventually settling mainly on the islands of
the Greater Antilles.
 These people are today most commonly
referenced in the literature as Taino meaning
men of the good.

 They have been called Arawaks by some

historians since they descended from the
Arawaks of north-eastern South America.

 TheTainos can be divided into three main sub-

groupings:
The Tainos who inhabited Jamaica, Hispaniola and
Cuba;
The Lucayans who settled in the Bahamas;
The Borequinos who lived in Puerto Rico.
 The second major sub-division of Salodoid
people spoke a language called Cariban.

 By AD 1000, the Kalinago came from the

Orinoco delta reaching Trinidad and Tobago
then moving northwards.

 Atthe time of the Spanish incursion into the

region, this group was actively involved in an
expansionist phase.

 Theirattacks on Taino communities had begun

on the mainland.
 In most cases they destroyed the Taino
villages and formed their own communities
building their distinctive carbets or communal
houses where more than 100 hammocks could
be hung.

 They made relentless progress through the

islands of the Lesser Antilles defeating and
replacing the Tainos.

 Theonly island in the Greater Antilles which

they conquered was Puerto Rico.
 According to early descriptions, they were brown
skinned and peaceful; they generally wore little
clothes; painted their bodies with dyes from
certain fruits and tree barks and wore colourful
feathers in their hair.
 Mothersflattened the foreheads of their infants
between two boards.
 Women wore ornaments such as bracelets made
of beads, shells and gold pieces on their arms and
legs.
 Hair
was seen as a mark of beauty and even in
men hair loss was considered bad luck.
 FromSouth America they brought guava
and introduced animals such as the
agouti and opossum.

 They utilised shifting agricultural

methods to avoid exhausting the soil on
small plots of land called conucos.

 Flour was obtained from cassava or

manioc from which the poisonous juice
was extracted. Other basic crops
included tobacco, sweet potato, beans
and peanuts and to a lesser extent
corn/maize.
• They also gathered fruits, hunted and
fished for food. They used harpoons and
caught the fish by hand.

• Birds and small animals were hunted and

grilled on barbecues.

• The Tainos were skilled sailors, utilising their

sturdy canoes to trade beyond the Caribbean
Sea, venturing to South and North America to
ply goods such as cotton and ceramics.
 The Taino food consumed cassava cakes
and pepper pot and smoked meat and
fish in order to preserve them.

 Shelterfor the communities was made from

wood and reeds. These round houses (called
caney) were grouped together around an open
square and the largest house in the village,
which was usually rectangular in shape (the
bohio) was where the chief lived.

 Most people slept in hammocks (hamaca) and

high ranking Tainos had carved wooden stools
(duho) in their houses.
 Taino
chiefdoms varied in size from one village in
some cases to several villages in others.
 Taino society was communal and revolved around
extended families which formed settlements
usually by the seashore or on the banks of a river
of up to 500 people.
 Each village had a chief or cacique. This was a
hereditary position passed down either to the
eldest son of the cacique’s chief wife or the child
of her eldest sister if she were childless. The post
could also be passed on to the eldest son of the
dead cacique’s eldest sister.
 While
the position was normally occupied by a
man, women could be caciques, e.g.
Anacaona of Hispaniola.

 The position of the cacique was symbolized by

his dress in a coat made of feathers, strings of
beads and sometimes decorations of gold.

 Taino caciques operated as ceremonial

leaders. Their duties included making and
enforcing the law, judging cases and being
chief priests. The duties of the cacique also
involved the occasional conscription of men
for military purposes.
 The cacique was aided in his duties by the
leaders of the families and tribes called the
(nitaino or nitaynos): it was they who
planned which fields should be planted and
when crops would be reaped.

 InTaino societies, labour division was undertaken

on the basis of age and sex. Men and boys did
fishing and hunting; cleared the fields and
defended the villages. They played integral roles in
house construction and canoe making.

 Women were in charge of crop cultivation,

preparing food and drink, spinning and
weaving of cotton, making handicrafts
(baskets, hammocks, aprons and utensils)
and child rearing.
 Tainos traced their ancestry through their
mothers; property was inherited matrilineally.
Males resided in the village of their mothers.

• Polygamy was practiced amongst the noble

classes deemed able to support many wives.
A man had to “compensate’ his wife’s family
for her loss by working for her family for a
while (bride price).

• Men brought their wife/wives to their villages.

The number of wives a man had came to
represent his standing in society.
 Central to Taino worldview was a trinity of
gods:
A male figure associated with cassava and
volcanoes.
A female fertility god related to the sea and moon.
A dog-like deity who looked after the recently
dead.

• According to some scholars, the chief gods of

the Taino were the God of the Sky, the
Goddess of the Earth, the God of the Moon,
and Vocahu, the god of manioc (cassava).
 Otherslike Irving Rouse say that Yucahu was
the lord of the manioc while Atabey (his
mother) was the goddess of fresh water and
human fertility.

 The Tainos also believed that the dead

returned as spirits called opia.

 Therewas a belief in the spiritual power of

nature and dead ancestors. These forces were
worshipped in the form of zemis made of the
remains of the dead (bones) or from cotton,
wood or stone.
 Zemis often took the forms of humans, reptiles
and birds. Within each household, the zemi
occupied a special place; offerings of food were
made before them (to satisfy the spirit and to
guard the individual against misfortune).

 While religion was primarily the realm of males,

females were significant in religious preparation.
Additionally Taino societies revered women
because legend had it that they were taught
cultivation techniques by an older woman.

 During times of illness, the spiritual healer or

shaman (bohuti) carried out cleansing rituals and
communicated with the spirits in order to
ascertain the cause of the illness, and the cure.
 TheTainos engaged in a number of feasts
and games.

 Theceremony involved in naming a child was

one that involved the whole community. The
wedding of a cacique and the naming of a
new cacique were times of great celebration.

 Singing and dancing (arieto) were integrated

into Taino religious ceremonies.
 TheTainos played a sophisticated team game
on special ball courts using a rubber ball
which they propelled to the opposing team
with their bodies sans hands or feet.

 Neo-Indians possessed well crafted stone tools

including knives, scrapers and axes which
helped in their day to day lives. The Tainos
were accomplished in woodwork and pottery
made from clay.

 Theirmaterial culture also included things

such as hammocks (hamacas) made of cotton
or bark rope.
 TheKalinagos were mainly to be found in the
smaller islands of the Eastern Caribbean.

 According to the Europeans, the

Caribs/Kalinas/Kalinagos were ‘brown-skinned’
people who also flattened their foreheads,
whose men were usually naked while women
wore a loin-cloth.
 Both sexes wore and bracelets (rassada) and
necklaces (made from amber, shell, seeds,
corral etc.); they were said to decorate their
bodies with a vegetable dye and oil (roucou)
and they pierced their ear lobes and lips.

 They took great pride in their long hair and

hygiene was high on the daily agenda; on
special occasions, they wore cloaks made of
feathers.
Unlike the Tainos, the Kalinagos were
highly mobile. They had a settled society
based on agriculture and fishing.

Kalinago social and political organization

exhibited great emphasis on their military
orientation.

Warfare constituted a very integral part of the

male Kalinago's occupational activity.
They were comparatively advanced in military
technology within the Caribbean islands and
possessed a formidable arsenal of bows and poisoned
arrows, javelins and clubs, and built huge dug‑out
canoes (piragas) capable of transporting over 100
warriors from one island to another.

The Great Captain (ouboutou), who led all the

warriors, was elected to that position for life. He was
chosen because of his strength, bravery and success
in battle. It was he who decided on the timing of the
raids and presided over victory celebrations.

Kalinago men were continuously involved in raids

against Tainos from whom they took food and slaves.
In times of peace, the Kalinagos turned to other
sorts of leaders, lesser governors of the villages, the
tiubutuli hauthe, who were usually heads of
families.

They had very few laws, and personal revenge for

injury was an expected and accepted part of the
society.

Kalinago houses were rectangular. The important

building was the men’s house (taboüii or carbet).

The houses contained hammocks and highly

polished stools (made from red and yellow wood)
and tables. And inside every home was a
representation of the family’s god (moboya).
Men and women lived in different houses.

Children lived with their mothers until they

were about five years old, at which point, the
boys were removed to the carbet where most
were trained as warriors, while a select few
were trained as priests. Girls were obliged to
grow crops, cook and weave.

Women brought food and drink to the carbet

for men and also groomed them.

Kalinago men spoke a different pidgin

arguably used for trading or for initiation
ceremonies.
Even though women sometimes went on the
raids, they served as guards for the boats, and
attended to the needs of the warriors.

Boys went through a difficult initiation which

symbolized their transition from childhood and
into adulthood when he was given a new name
and taught the art of war.
 TheKalinagos found time for fun and worship.
Entertainment among them involved singing to
music made by reed pipes, drums and whistles.

 Thereligious life of the Kalinago was focused

on the relationship with a personal deity, the
maboya.

 Thereligious life of the community came under

the direction of the priestly class was called the
boyez. Many of their duties had to do with
controlling evil spirits.
 TheKalinagos ate a great deal of seafood and
pepper; but they did not eat salt or turtles.

 Many meals were accompanied by a very

strong cassava beer (ouicou).

 Kalinago artefacts reveal a much less

developed style of pottery than that of the
Tainos.
• The Spaniards saw the indigenous people as
inferior and degenerate them. Neo-Indian women
were seen as promiscuous and lacking sexual
inhibitions.

• The
Spaniards ignored the reality that these people
had their own established civilizations and cultural
norms and practice.

• Early
accounts of Carib cannibalism owe much to
the fertile imagination of Christopher Columbus.

• Columbusinterpreted Taino facial expressions to

mean that their feared enemies, the caniba or carib
ate people.
• He described the Kalinago as men with one eye
and others with dog noses. This was popularised
by late medieval writer John Mandeville.

• Anyone resisting Spanish imperialism was called

a Carib and thus a cannibal. Hilary Beckles
therefore writes :
Primarily because of their irrepressible war of resistance,
which intimidated all Europeans in the region, Kalinago
were targeted first for an ideological campaign in which
they were established within the European mind, not as
‘noble savages’, a was the case with the less effective
Tainos, but as ‘vicious cannibals’ worthy of extermination
within the context of genocidal military expeditions.
• The result of Spanish belief in the cannibalistic
tendencies of the Kalinagos and Tainos that
opposed them led to almost immediate steps
taken to enslave and hence civilise and
Christianise them.

 Neo-Indians with whom the Europeans had

favourable relations were seen in a more positive
light. Peter Martire, a courtier of Charles I felt
strong sympathy of the Tainos and painted them
as innocent sheep. (1532)
The Kalinagos he felt were brutal, cruel and terrible
beings who lived off human meat.
They impregnated captured women so as to have a
constant supply of food.
Dr. Chanca who travelled with Columbus repeated such
claims.
Philip Boucher’s work shows that the negative
depictions of the indigenous people served to
justify the atrocities done by Europeans.

Boucher contends that linguistic evidence

exists that suggests that there was a long
standing relationship between the Spaniards
and the Kalinagos. According to Boucher,
There is some linguistic evidence to suggest
that the Spanish-Carib relationship was
characterised by years of cautious entente as
well as periods of war; as late as the 1650s,
after many years of intense French contact, the
Carib vocabulary contained more Spanish than
French words – despite the contemporary
conviction that Caribs loved the French as
much as they hated the Spanish.
TheNeo-Indian societies as we have described
them no longer exist today.

Spanish greed is a contributory factor. To

acquire gold, they enslaved the indigenous
people resulting in their eventual destruction.

Accounts provided by Christopher Columbus

and Bartolomé de las Casas note that the
population of the indigenous people was
extensive.
In Brevisima relacion de la destruccion de las Indias,
Las Casas illustrated, the atrocities committed against
the Indian people. Between 1535 and 1542, Las Casas
tripled his early estimate (from 1.1 million to 3 million).

The1496 census indicate that there were

approximately one million Neo-Indians in Hispaniola.

Many estimate that the total number upon Spanish

arrival was six million.

Cook and Borah using sources ranging from

Columbus’s journal, the works of Las Casas and the
alleged 1496 century repartimiento argue that there
were approximately 8 million Indians living in Hispaniola
at the time of Columbus’ arrival.
Within the next four years this number was
halved and by 1514, there were about 30,000
Indians living on the island. By the middle of the
sixteenth century, there were almost no Indians
alive.

David Henige concludes that the figures

offered by Cook and Borah are exaggerated.

Nonetheless, the Neo-Indians were decimated

by:
Disease
Overwork via the encomienda system.
Spanish sadism
Miscegenation