At the time of first contact between Europe and the Americas, the Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean included the Taíno of the northern Lesser Antilles and most of the Greater Antilles, including the Lucayans of the Bahamas and the Ciboney of Cuba; the Kalinago of the Lesser Antilles; the Ciguayo and Macorix of parts of Hispaniola; and the Guanahatabey of western Cuba. The Kalinago have maintained an identity as an Indigenous people, with a reserved territory in Dominica.
Introduction
Some scholars consider it important to distinguish the Taíno from the neo-Taíno nations of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Hispaniola, and the Lucayan of the Bahamas and Jamaica. Linguistically or culturally these differences extended from various cognates or types of canoe: canoa, piragua, cayucoe.g. Zayas, 1914 to distinct languages. Languages diverged even over short distances.Wilson, 1990 Previously these groups often had distinctly non-Taíno deities such as the goddess Jagua. Strangely enough the god Teju Jagua is a major demon of Indigenous Paraguayan mythology. Still these groups plus the high Taíno are considered Island Arawak, part of a widely diffused assimilating culture, a circumstance witnessed even today by names of places in the New World; for example localities or rivers called Guamá are found in Cuba, Venezuela and Brazil. Guamá was the name of famous Taíno who fought the Spanish.
Thus, since the neo-Taíno had far more diverse cultural input and a greater societal and ethnic heterogeneity than the true high Taíno (Rouse, 1992). Boriquen (Puerto Rico) is presented in a separate section. A broader language group is Arawakan languages. The term Arawak (Aruaco) is said to be derived from an insulting term meaning "eaters of meal" given to them by mainland Caribs. In turn the Arawak legend explains the origin of the Caribs as offspring of a putrid serpent.
The social classes of the neo-Taíno, generalized from Bartolomé de las Casas, appeared to have been loosely feudal with the following Taíno classes: naboría (common people), nitaíno' (sub-chiefs, or nobles), bohique, (shamans priests/healers), and the cacique (chieftains, or princes). However, the neo-Taíno seem to have been more relaxed in this respect.
Administrative and national units The Spanish found that most Cuban peoples for the part living peacefully in tidy towns and villages grouped into numerous principalities called cacicazgos or principalities with an almost feudal social structure. They were ruled by leaders or princes, called Caciques. Cuba was divided into Guanahatabey, Ciboney, and the Classical Taíno, some of whom began arriving from Hispaniola around 1450 and many more of whom fled to Cuba from Hispaniola after the arrival of the Spanish.Granberry and Vescelius Then some of Western Cuba was Guanahatabey. and some Ciboney. Taíno-like cultures controlled most of Cuba dividing it into the cacicazgos. Granberry and Vescelius (2004) and other contemporary authors only consider the cazicazgo of Baracoa as classical or high Taíno. Cuban cacicazgos including Bayaquitiri, Macaca, Bayamo, Camagüey, Jagua, Habana y Haniguanica are treated here as "neo-Taíno". Hispaniolan principalities at about 1500 included Maguá (Cacique Guarionex); Xaraguá (Behecchio); Maguana (Caonabo); Higüey also called Iguayagua (Higüayo); Cigüayo (Mayobanex), and Marien under Cacique Guanacagarí (Wilson, 1990). These principalities are considered to have various affinities to the contemporary Taíno and neo-Taíno cultures from what is now known as Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic and Haiti, but are generally believed somewhat different.Granberry and Vescelius
Farming and fishing The adroit farming and fishing skills of the neo-Taíno nations should not be underestimated; the names of fauna and flora that survive today are testimony of their continued use. Neo-Taíno fishing technologies were most inventive, including harpoons and fishnets and traps. Neo-Taíno common names of fish are still used today (DeSola, 1932; Erdman, 1983; Florida Fish and Wild Life Commission (Division of Marine Fisheries) 2002; Puerto Rico, Commonwealth, 1998). Agriculture included a wide variety of germplasm, including maize, peanuts, tomato, squash, and beans plus a vast array of tree fruits. Tubers in most frequent use were yuca (Manihot esculenta) a crop with perhaps 10,000 years of development in the Americas; boniato (the "sweet potato" — Ipomoea batatas), and malanga (Xanthosoma sp.)
Pharmacopoeia As with all Arawak (Schultes, Raffault. 1990) and similar cultures there was considerable use of natural pharmacopoeia among the Taíno (Robineau, 1991).
Taíno studies Taíno studies are in a state of both vigorous revival and conflict (Haslip-Viera, 2001). In this conflict deeply embedded cultural mores, senses of nationality and ethnicity struggle with each other. The Syboneistas undertook studies and wrote of neo-Taínos as part and cover for independence struggles against Spain (Fajardo, 1829 - ; Gautier Benítez, 1873).
Indigenous and Taíno art Taíno and related art has been celebrated in several significant exhibitions (Alegria, and Arrom 1998; Bercht, et al. 1997; Bullen, Dacal et al.; Kerchache, 1994), most notably in Paris.Maciques, 2004 Neo-Taíno music (areíto) survives as echoes in the rich traditions of the popular music of the Caribbean, but is believed to continue to exist in its purest form and associated spirituality among the Warao of Venezuela.Olsen, 1996
Metallurgy The art of the neo-Taínos demonstrates that these nations had metallurgical skills, and it has been postulated by some e.g. Paul Sidney Martin, that the inhabitants of these islands mined and exported metals such as copper (Martin et al. 1947). The Cuban town of (San Ramón de) Guaninao means the place of copper and is surmised to have been a site of pre-Columbian mining.Zayas, 1914
Peoples of the Caribbean
Archaic Age people
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 northeastern 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 a 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."
Taíno
The Taíno, an Arawak people, were the major population group throughout most of the Caribbean. Their culture was divided into three main groups, the Western Taíno, the Classic Taíno, and the Eastern Taíno, with other variations within the islands.
Classic Taíno The Classic Taíno lived in Hispaniola and Puerto Rico and later in eastern Cuba. They spoke a dialect called Classic Taíno. Compared to their neighbors, the Classic Taíno had substantially developed agricultural societies. Puerto Rico was divided into twenty chiefdoms which were organized into one united kingdom or confederation, Borinquen. Hispaniola was divided into roughly 45 chiefdoms, which were organized into five kingdoms under the leadership of the chief of each area's premier chiefdom. Beginning around 1450, Classic Taíno from Hispaniola began migrating to eastern Cuba; they are conventionally known as the Cuban Taíno. The Cuban Taíno gained power over some of Cuba's earlier Western Taíno inhabitants, the Ciboney, but no regional or island-wide political structure had developed on the island at the time of Spanish colonization of the Americas.Granberry and Vescelius, p. 9.
Eastern Taíno The Eastern Taíno inhabited the Leeward Islands of the Lesser Antilles, from the Virgin Islands to Montserrat. They had less sophisticated societies than the Classic Taíno.Rouse, p. 7, 18.
Western Taíno
The Western Taíno lived in The Bahamas, central Cuba, westernmost Hispaniola, and Jamaica. They spoke a dialect known as Ciboney or Western Taíno. The Western Taíno of the Bahamas were known as the Lucayans and spoke the Lucayan language; they were wiped out by Spanish slave raids by 1520. Western Taíno living in Cuba were known as the Ciboney. They had no chiefdoms or organized political structure beyond individual villages, but by the time of Spanish conquest many were under the control of the Cuban Taíno in eastern Cuba.Granberry and Vescelius, pp. 9, 15, 21.
Igneri
According to oral history, the Igneri were the original Arawak inhabitants of the Windward Islands in the Lesser Antilles before being conquered by the Kalinago who are thought to have arrived from South America. Contemporary sources like to suggest that the Kalinago took Igneri women as their wives while killing the men, resulting in the two sexes speaking different languages. This is not proven, and there appears to be a confusion of the reality: despite the name, the Kalinago language was Arawakan, not Cariban. Irving Rouse suggests that small numbers of Kalinago may have conquered the Igneri without displacing them, and could have gradually adopted their language while retaining the Kalinago identity, but there is no evidence to prove this. Though they were Arawaks, the Igneri language appears to be as distinct from the Taíno language as it was from the mainland Arawak language of South America.Rouse, pp. 21–22.
Kalinago
By the contact period, the Kalinago, also known as Island Caribs, inhabited the Windward Islands of the Lesser Antilles. "Caribbean" derives from the name "Carib", by which the Kalinago were formerly known. They self-identified with the Kalina or mainland Carib people of South America. Contemporary accounts asserted that the Kalinago had conquered the Windward Islands from their previous inhabitants, the Igneri. However, the Kalinago language was Arawakan, not Cariban. Irving Rouse suggests that small numbers of South American Caribs invaded the Windwards and conquered the Igneri without displacing them; they gradually adopted the local language while maintaining the Kalinago identity. The Kalinago continue to live in the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean. Noteworthy Kalinago descendants live on within the Garifuna people, known as the Black Caribs who descend from St. Vincent in the Lesser Antilles.
While various Indigenous peoples of the Lesser Antilles are sometimes referred to as "Kalinago" because that is the preferred terminology of certain Indigenous communities in Dominica and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, it may not be accurate to refer to all of the Indigenous peoples of the Lesser Antilles throughout history as "Kalinago".
Guanahatabey
A separate ethnic identity from far western Cuba. They were an archaic hunter-gatherer people who spoke a language distinct from Taíno, and appear to have predated the agricultural, Taíno-speaking Ciboney.Granberry and Vescelius, pp= 15, 18–19
Ciguayo