1. Who were the peoples whom Europeans came into contact with in American in 1492?

The peoples who Europeans came into contact with in the American in fourteen ninety two is the Ciboney or Guanahacabible. They also met the three major Caribbean groups whom they labelled Arawak, Caribs and Maya.

2. Choose one South American indigenous group and one Caribbean indigenous group. How were they described by European explorers/ invaders [refer to appearance, religious, beliefs, gender role and political system]?

One South American indigenous group is the Taino. The Taino were very religious people, and they had very distinctive theological ideas. They expressed their religious beliefs through complex rituals and ceremonies. At the core of their religious beliefs was the recognition of a spirit world in which both humans and gods were classified and ranked.

They called their religious spirits or gods, Zemis. They displayed these gods in the shape of images made from gold, wood, stone and bones. Each person had his or her own highly personal way of worshipping Zemis and Zemi, images reflected the thinking of the individual worshipper. Each person then had his or her Zemi images; sometimes several were carried around the necks.

Many of the Zemi images have survived and we can see that they were designed to show the supernatural powers of the gods. For example, some Zemi images were carved with prominent sexual organs to show the fertility power of god; others had large focused eyes to show that this god dealt with the powers of vision and perception. These designs show how the individual worshipper believed that a god had given him or her certain capabilities as a social being.

However, the Caribbean Taino world did not develop religious rituals as extensive and complicated as their counterparts on the main land, particularly the Maya, Aztec and Inca. The exact theological relationship between chiefs who ruled the villages, gods and the community remains unclear. However we do know that the chiefs had considerable political and social power and this was based on the belief that they had been empowered by a divine spirit.

Politics
As in all civilisations the Taino political system varied from place to place. The size of communities was clearly and important determining factor in politics. The small settlements in the Lesser Antilles were organised in a similar way with minor variations, in comparison with the large settlements in the Greater Antilles.

All communities were ruled by a chief or cacique, no matter their size. The chief was usually male and was not a military person but a civic leader with responsibility for judicial or legal, cultural, political and religious functions.

Gender roles
To be effective conuco planning and management required skilful decision-making, and the recruitment of organised labour within the family. Men and women were assigned different roles, indicating developed ideas about gender and production. Young men did infrastructural work on the conuco. They felled threes, cleared the hand-dug drains, heaped the soil and planted the crops. Women took day-to-day care of the crops the clearing of weeds and the watering of planted seeds and roots. Children helped with clearing the crops of pest, weeding to clear crops of parasitic vines and chasing away birds.

Taino women would leave their villages at dawn so that they could complete a day’s labour by midday and avoid the afternoon sun and heat. So the management role of women in agriculture was very important. Women made important decisions that influenced the yield of the output of the conuco. They needed to have an in-depth understanding of relationship between crops and soil, and how different plants related to each other within the same field.

Appearance
They were describe by Columbus in letters as “naked as the day they were born”.

One Caribbean indigenous group is the Kalinago

Religion/ beliefs
The kalinago did not have spirit gods called Zemis. Their religion was entirely centred on the individual relationship with the spiritual self. Each person had a personal spirit deity or god, which took many physical forms. They offered material goods, such as water and food, to their personal deity.

They believed that the world was divided into good and evil spirits that fought each other for supremacy and that the individual mind was the battle field of this struggle. In their society, they supported persons who functioned as priest or shamans. It was their duty to help the different spirits reach reconciliation. In other words, the priest’s task was to settle conflict between people and maintain harmony within the community.

So the Kalinago did not have hereditary ruling families from which a cacique was selected. Their society was much less hierarchical than that of the Taino and leadership could come from any family. This method of creating military and spiritual leadership suited their nomadic culture and was consistent with their military objectives.

Politics
Like the Taino the Kalinago lived in housing cluster that included the extended family. They too practised Polygamy that is husbands had many wives. Usually the village chief was the head of the largest family. He was responsible for economic, political and military leadership, whereas other civil aspects came second. This was because of their recent immigrants’ status in a Caribbean world that was dominated by Tainos and later Europeans.

Gender roles
Women were also a very important part of the Kalinagos society. Gender relation is also most clearly seen in the division and organization of labour. The women were needed for planting the crops. It was believed that the fertility of the woman would transfer to the crop and vice versa. If she was barren, mother earth would transfer some of its fertility to her.

They were to care for the children and the rest of the family while the men were away on their raids, long hunting or fishing trips.

Appearance
They were medium in height and lean. They had straight, long, black hair that was worn loose. Their brown skin was always painted with a vegetable dye called rouco. They had flattened foreheads that were considered a beauty. The Carib people were usually naked except for a loin cloth that was worn around their middle. The men were lean shaven since beards were considered a deformity and they were plucked out.

They wore bracelets and necklaces made out of amber, shell, agouti teeth, seeds and coral. The men sometimes wore necklaces of their enemies’ teeth. Their ears and lips were bore and smooth fish bones and ornaments were placed in them. The Caribs wore small idols around their necks and called maboyas. On special occasions the men wore feathered head dresses.

3. What evidence is there to suggest that there was pre-Columbian contact between Africa and the Americas?

The strongest evidence of African presence in the America before Columbus comes from the pen of Columbus himself. In 1920 a renowned American historian and linguist, Leo Weiner of Harvard University, in this book, Africa and the discovery of America, explained how Columbus noted in his journal that Native Americans had confirmed the black skinned people had come from south east, trading in gold-tipped spears.

4. To what extent had Europeans infiltrated Africa prior to 1492?

Europeans colonized and infiltrated African civilization in order to make a profit and to be known as superior nation. By doing this, European colonist messed up traditional African lifestyle. Africans were willing to let the colonist join them, but the Europeans went too far when they took over governments and tried to rule over African. This colonization led to many problems in Africa that still affect modern day Africa.