The Caribbean before 1492

El Caribe antes de 1492

c. 1200–1492. The islands Columbus reached in 1492 were not empty.

Draft: not yet checked against its sources.

What happened

The islands Columbus reached in 1492 were not empty. The Greater Antilles, today's Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico and Jamaica, were home to the Taíno, descendants of Arawak-speaking people who had come up the island chain from South America. They lived in villages ruled by chiefs called caciques, grew cassava, maize and sweet potato in mounded fields, built large sea-going canoes and honoured spirits represented by carved zemís. The Lesser Antilles were held by the Island Caribs. The first Spanish settlements were built among the Taíno, and their language gave Spanish, and the world, its first American words: canoa, hamaca, huracán, maíz, tabaco, barbacoa.

Its events

1. between 1200 and 1492: The Taíno of the Greater Antilles

Sources

1. Introduction to Taíno art (Smarthistory) — LibreTexts Humanities
2. Waking a Language from Its Slumber — American Indian Magazine, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian