Final Research Paper: Tainos, The indigenous people

Before the discovery of the new world, it has been known of the various indigenous people that once inhabited our lands. The more popular natives such as the Mayans, Incas, and Aztecs have been widely sought out in today’s age, unlike other lesser-known tribes such as the Tainos. Today many tribes have vastly decreased in number and size, but there are those who still practice and familiarize themselves with their heritage. I myself can relate to this small percentage of people, due to the fact I am descendent of the Tainos from Cuba. Hence, I decided to make my research paper based on the history of my heritage: The Tainos.
The word Taino derived from the meaning “men of the good.” Based on historical facts, the Tainos were indeed good people. These indigenous people established a culture where the human temperament was kind. Among the Taino at the time of contact, generosity and kindness were governing values in society as well as directed towards an ecological interaction with the natural surroundings. It suggested a lifestyle that tried to feed its entire people, and a spirituality that was valued, through ceremonies. The Taino lived humbly in an abundant place and so their environment was abundant.
The Tainos & Ciboneys were related to the cultural Arawak group, who was one of the main indigenous people of South America and the Caribbean. They spoke Taino, which was considered Arawak language. Up until the late 15th century, they resided in multiple areas such as Hispaniola, Jamaica, Cuba, Bahamas, and Puerto Rico.

The Arawak combined, voluntarily, into the sequential entering groups and acculturated to the point of disappearance. Remains of their poetry, songs, sculpture, and art are found today throughout the major Antilles. The Arawak and other cultural groups are accountable for the expansion of 60% of crops in collective use today and main materials like rubber.
About two hundred years ago before the Spanish arrived, it is thought that Taíno tribes were forced westward, by a vicious cannibal-eating tribe known as the Caribs. The Caribs would attack their villages, murder, and eat all of their men. The women were spared but were taken for slavery while the younger men were castrated. Luckily in Cuba, the Tainos and the Ciboneys found a fitting and ideal location to call home for their peaceful lifestyle. Due to the Tainos being more developmentally advanced, the Ciboneys would ultimately become servants of the Tainos.
The Tainos were very skilled workers; their typical duties included fishing and hunting. They also introduced agriculture to the island. Their usual crops included beans, corn, squash, peanuts, yucca, and tobacco. They made a range of artifacts and tools by using wood structures and other materials. They were also skillful potters, constructing a variety of useful pieces such as pots and weapons. They also carved animal and human figurines, which was used to symbolize spirits considered sacred by each community. The Tainos were so self-sufficient they even made their homes out of natural resources such as canes and bamboos. They grew cotton and used it to make nets in order to fish and hammocks to sleep in. The Indians were creative people who learned to strain cyanide from yucca, developed pepper gas for combat, organized a wide selection of botanical medicines, and built canoes big enough for more than 100 people and strong enough for the ocean. They also played games with a ball made of the rubbers they produced, which captivated Europeans seeing the material for the first time. Although the Taíno never developed a written language, they were highly skilled people.
Tobacco was also cultivated, used to practice religion, medicate, and in sacred ceremonies. Tainos and Ciboneys shared similar customs and attitudes, one being the sacred ceremonial practice of using narcotized tobacco smoke and sometimes inhaling through their noses. This practice was called cohoba, it is known in English as smoking. The Cuban Indians also showed the Europeans how to cultivate tobacco and use it in the form of cigars.
Chiefs or doctors mainly governed these villages. Both men and women shared equal status in society. The men wore no clothes while the women wore long aprons that covered just the front side, to the waist down. It was also noted how they enjoyed painting their bodies with vivid colors obtained by the earth. They wore jewelry that was crafted by using natural resources from the islands, such as shells and stones.
Christopher Columbus first encountered the Tainos in the Bahamas on October 12, 1492. Columbus called the Taíno "Indians", an indication that has grown to represent all the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere. His first impression of the indigenous people was very positive, contrary to his actions. Christopher Columbus once 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.”
Following the fateful arrival of Columbus in Cuba that same year, both the island and its native people’s peaceful world were forever changed. Yet, Columbus' first landings in Cuba and the West Indies carried no negative connotation for the Indians. Just the false hopes of a peaceful cultural union. His very presence: "The fair skin, the look of command, the glistening armor, the manly beard, the death-dealing carbine, all rendered Columbus supernatural divinity and power in their eyes." (Christopher Columbus by Emilio Castelar. 1892)
Of all Columbus' 'discoveries', Cuba moved him the deepest. He wrote in an ecstatic expression, of "its streams strewn with the showered petals of the myriad flowers that festooned their banks, the beautiful mountain ranges that stretched not far but rose to lofty heights. The cool and aromatic groves, the yams that tasted like sweet chestnuts, the brightly plumaged birds and the inexhaustible aloes." Such enchantments led him to pronounce Cuba the "most beautiful land that eyes ever beheld."
Even so, Columbus' bright and happy vision of Cuba and its welcoming natives could not last. His reminder to himself that the goal was not to write poems but to find gold eventually changed. Gold would be the confirmation back in Spain of his findings and earn him both everlasting recognition and imaginable riches. A group of Taíno people accompanied Columbus on his return voyage back to Spain.
Encouraged by his greediness and hope, Columbus left Cuba and navigated eastwards. He accordingly landed on Haiti where, to his dissatisfaction, he found no great treasure of gold, just small trinkets worn by the local Indians. Without integrity, he took from the innocent people, along with the “New World” for Spain. In return Christopher Columbus gave the Indians useless glass beads.
Columbus was unsuccessful on his claims and earned only fame (infamous) but no fortune. But his greedy excitement of the pursuit of gold was the enticing call to invade the Americas. They did so with intensity and quickness and caused a holocaust of horror and death for the Native people. On Columbus' second voyage, he began to require tax from the Taíno in Hispaniola. According to Kirkpatrick Sale, each adult over 14 years of age was forced to deliver gold every three months, or twenty-five pounds of spun cotton. If this were not brought, the Spanish would cut off their hands and leave them to bleed to death. These brutal practices stirred many uprisings by the Taíno and movements against the Spanish. Some attacks were successful, some were not. Exemplified in the story of Hatuey and the invasion and settlement of Cuba.
In 1511 Diego Velasquez, sailed from Hispaniola to Cuba. On landing he was attacked by Taino Indians under a chief, Hatuey, a witness to Diego's brutalities. Hatuey had fled from Hispaniola to Cuba with 400 natives to unite the Cuban natives. For some time, they courageously protected their home, cleverly making sudden assaults on the Spaniards and then retreating. Eventually, however, Spanish military power overwhelmed them. Defeated, they were subjected to ferocious cruelties. By the Spanish Crown, Hatuey was condemned to a public death and was burned alive at the stake. A Spanish priest, Bartolomé de la Casa, recorded the words of the chief to his people: "These tyrants tell us they adore a God of peace and equality, yet they use our land and enslave us. They speak of an immortal soul and of eternal rewards and punishments. They rob us, seduce our women and violate our daughters. Unable to match us in velour, these cowards cover themselves in iron that our spears cannot pierce."
In Hispaniola, a Taíno chief Enriquillo mobilized over 3,000 Taíno in a successful rebellion in the 1520s. These Taíno were rendered land and a agreement from the royal government. Despite the small Spanish military attendance in the area, they often used tactful techniques and, with assistance from powerful native allies, controlled most of the territory. In trade for a seasonal income, religious and language education, the Taíno were obligated to work for Spanish and Indian landowners. This system of forced labor was part of the “encomienda” (A grant by the Spanish Crown to a colonist in America conferring the right to demand tribute and forced labor from the Indian inhabiting the area.)

Bartolomé de la Casa described the doom of the Tainos. "A village of around 2500 was wiped out. They (the Spaniards) set upon the Indians, slashing, disemboweling and slaughtering them until their blood ran like a river. And of those Tainos they kept alive they sent to the mines, harnessing them to loads they could scarcely drag and with fiendish sport and mockery hacking off their hands and feet and mutilating them in ways that will not bear description."
Hatuey is still considered as the first martyr in the fight for Cuban independence. For the Tainos of Eastern Cuba rests a vital part of there spoken custom and every year 4an excursion is still made by them to the place of his appalling mortality. By 1527, Spanish control of the Greater Antilles was complete and some ten million Taino-Arawak Indians had perished. The few survivors, in their immeasurable misery, spoke of The Great Dying of their peoples. They did not know then that the deaths would go on and on as the Spaniards and Europeans, still thirsting after invasions and gold.
As the year 1600 commenced the holocaust had consumed a further 95 million Indians. Today, there are 40 million Indians in the Americas. In many ways they still struggle against suppression, racism, and smaller forms of genocide. But now they are strong of will and purpose and are experiencing powerful ethnic resurgence.
Despite the trying associations between the natives and the new Europeans, some collaboration was suggested. The Spanish were shown by the natives how to cultivate tobacco and consume it. There were also much unification between the large male Spanish colonists and the indigenous women. Accounts claim that their children were called mestizos, but the natives called them Guajiro, which translates as "one of us”. Modern-day reports have discovered traces of DNA that extracts physical traits comparable to Amazonian tribes DNA in individuals throughout Cuba, though the populace was destroyed as a culture and civilization after 1550.
With the Spanish New Laws of 1552 Cuban Indians were freed from encomienda, and some seven Indian towns were set up. There are still descendant Cuban Indian (Taíno) families in several places, mostly in eastern Cuba. The Indian community at Caridad de los Indios, Guantánamo, is one such location. The local Indian population left their mark also on the language with some 400 Taíno terms and location names of the island. Various cults and religions, such as Danza del Cordon and Afro-Cuban religion, incorporate Taíno spiritual practices. The name of Cuba itself, Havana, Camagüey, and many others were derived from the neo-Taíno language, and Indian words such as tobacco, hurricane and canoe were assigned to English and are used today.
In thirty years, between 80% and 90% of the Taíno population died. Because of the increased number of people (Spanish) on the island, there was a higher demand for food. Taíno cultivation was altered to Spanish approaches. In hopes of unsatisfying the Spanish, some Taino rejected to plant or harvest their crops. The supply of food became so low in 1495 and 1496 that some 50,000 died from the severity of the starvation. Historians have determined that the massive decline was due more to infectious disease outbreaks than any warfare or direct attacks. By 1507 their numbers had shrunk to 60,000. Scholars believe that epidemic disease (smallpox, influenza, measles, and typhus) was the overwhelming cause of the population decline of the indigenous people. It is said that disease was the ultimate weapon the Spanish had against the Indians.
Apart from the attacks and wars between the Tainos and the Spanish, the Spanish had more advantages including advanced weaponry. The Tainos only had spears to puncture, bows and arrows to shoot in long-range distances, and the famous wooden-like club that was said to be so strong it can break a human skull even with a helmet made out of armor. But of course, compared to the Spanish who had large knifes, guns, horses, and disease there was no match against them.
Although the history of the Tainos, the indigenous people, is not a happy one I am proud to call myself descendent of Taino heritage. For the things I grew up hearing from my fathers stories of his family have always imposed a positive outlook on my life. And also a reminder of the power of greed can have to not just a particular person but also a whole entire culture. For this serves as a reminder to not hate those that have done atrocious acts but for history to never repeat itself.

Bibliography
GreenDevilMedia (2011, May 6). Lost History: Rediscovering the Taíno People: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bcv7-ipKErg

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Thomas, Hugh. Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom (2nd edition). Chapter One

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