Who were the Taíno of the Greater Antilles?
The Taíno of the Greater Antilles
Los taínos de las Antillas
between 1200 and 1492. By about 1200 the people later called Taíno, descendants of Arawak-speaking migrants from South America, had settled Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, the…
Where: The Spanish Caribbean, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Cuba
What happened
By about 1200 the people later called Taíno, descendants of Arawak-speaking migrants from South America, had settled Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, the Bahamas and eastern Cuba. They lived in villages of round houses around a plaza, ruled by chiefs called caciques, with nobles and commoners beneath them, and grew cassava, maize and sweet potato in mounded fields called conucos. They built canoes that could carry up to a hundred people, played a ball game, and kept carved zemís that embodied gods and ancestors. These were the first Americans to meet Columbus in 1492. Disease, forced labour and war devastated them within decades, and colonial officials declared them extinct, but their descendants, their words and their crops remain part of Caribbean life.
Say it
Palabras como canoa, hamaca y huracán vienen del taíno.
Words like canoe, hammock and hurricane come from Taíno.
Why it matters
The first American words in Spanish are Taíno: canoa, hamaca, huracán, maíz, tabaco, barbacoa, cacique and the names Cuba, Haití and Jamaica; Caribbean Spanish holds thousands more.
Read about it
- After: Columbus reaches America
Sources
- Waking a Language from Its Slumber — American Indian Magazine, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian
- Introduction to Taíno art (Smarthistory) — LibreTexts Humanities