Ethnos

Taino

The Taíno are the pre-Hispanic Amerindian inhabitants of the Greater Antilles, which includes Cuba, Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), Puerto Rico, Jamaica and the Bahamas. The Taíno are the seafaring relations of the Arawakan peoples of South America. Those of the Bahamas were known as Lucayan. Their language is a member of the Arawakan linguistic family, also found in South America.

The Taíno culture ceased to exist in the 16th century, wiped out by genocide, introduced disease, and assimilation into the plantation economy that Spain imposed in its Caribbean colonies, with its subsequent importation of African slave workers. It is well documented that the Spaniards who first arrived in the Bahamas, Cuba and Hispanola in 1492 and later in Puerto Rico in 1508 did not bring women. They would come to take Taino women as wives in civil marriages, having many mestizo Taino children in the process. Taino Indians had been noted in Puerto Rico's island census of 1771 and 1778. [1] (http://www.taino-tribe.org/tainos.htm). In Hispanola, a Taino Chieftain named Enriquillo also mobilized over 3000 remaining Taino in a rebellion on that island in the 1530s.

At the time of Columbus' arrival in 1492, there were five Taíno "kingdoms" or territories on Hispaniola, each led by a principal Cacique (chieftain), to whom tribute was paid. Another indigenous group called the Carib lived in the islands. This group is said to be another Arawakan related people originally from South America. The Tainos and the Carib sometimes battle each other but there were many instances of mutual respect and cooperation recorded in the pre and post-colonial contact periods. At the time of the Spanish Conquest, the largest Taíno population centers are said to have contained around 3,000 people or more. ***