Taino Myth and South America

Ricardo Alegria's Apuntes en torno a la mitología de los indios taínos de las antillas mayores y sus orígenes suramericanos is yet another study of Taino mythology using a comparative approach with South American lowland peoples. Given the fragmented nature of our understanding of Taino mythology, relying mainly on Ramón Pané  and the usual Spanish sources, one can see the advantages of an approach incorporating data from extant South American indigenous peoples. The analogies, parallels, and even repetition of the same motifs in Taino and South American mythology certainly supports it, too. In order to demonstrate this, Alegria focuses on myths about the origins of humanity, the beginning of women, divine twins, and tales of the flood or deluge. Using Pané as the basis, as well as Pedro Martir, Ulloa, and the work of Levi-Strauss and others who collected and analyzed South American myths, Alegria illustrates the mainly South American tropical origin of the Taino.

As one might expect from the linguistic, archaeological, and ethnographic evidence indicating South American origins (at least for Saladoid expansion, which seems to have included cohoba ritual paraphernalia and a specific ceramics tradition to the Antilles), Taino myth shares much of its references to cultural heroes, social norms, and ritual-religious processes with indigenous peoples across the tropical lowlands. Venezuela, Guyana, and even Brazilian indigenous peoples like the Tupi can be seen to share some of the same mythological lore. For instance, tales of the origin of women across the region refer to figures carved of stone who gain female genitalia through a wood-pecker bird. This, of course, also appears in the myths collected by Pané in Hispaniola. Moreover, several South American indigenous groups posit very similar origins of humanity. Indeed, several peoples believed humans lived in a subterranean world and only entered the surface through caves (for a notable exception, Caribs appear to have believed humans descended from the sky). They were often led out of the caves through a cord that breaks, leaving some in the other world. Those familiar with Pané can also find a similar example from Hispaniola, where humans were believed to have arose from caves. 

In addition, belief in divine twins who become culture heroes for establishing traditions and sharing their knowledge with posterity are also incredibly common. In nearly all the myths mentioned here, the divine twins are born of a woman whose husband abandons or leaves her. The father of her sons is often the Sun. After beginning a journey to take her unborn sons to meet their father, the mother is killed or faces misfortune due to a jaguar or ogro or other being. The killer of the mother then raises the twins who, after learning or mastering the skills of fire, casabe or proper behavior, seek vengeance for their mother. While several South American peoples believed these divine twins later became the Sun and the Moon, and/or one twin was brilliant and the other was a fool, the Taino myth from Hispaniola instead features 4 twin sibling (representing the four winds or cardinal directions?). Born to the same mother and an unnamed father (the Sun?), the only divine twin named is Deminan. Deminan and his brothers fulfil a similar role to Taino society as the divine twins in South American myths. Indeed, they play a pivotal role in the origins of the sea through knocking over the calabash containing Yayael. They also, through the female turtle that emerges from Deminan's back, may have become ancestors to a new generation of humans through their children with the turtle. As mentioned previously, allusions to an ancient flood that once covered the land or explains the origin of the sea also appears in Taino and South American myth.

While some of the similarities between Taino and tropical South American myth can be construed as a result of archetypes, the numerous parallels and variations of the same few details point to a distant shared past. The Taino, as explained by Alegria, would have had to modify South American traditions due to the different environment and fauna of the Greater Antilles. They were also several centuries removed from their ancient South American origins when their traditions were recorded in the 1490s. Despite the distances in time and geography, it is astonishing to see how deeply immersed South American lowland cultural traditions must have been in time. The ritual and social complex of shamanism, cohoba (or similar drug paraphernalia), and yuca culture diffused across northeastern South America along the rivers in the era preceding Saladoid expansion into the Caribbean. While some of the similarities between the Taino and their South American cousins may also be a result of later trade and migration that connected the Greater Antilles to the continent via the Lesser Antilles, the similarities across a vast region of South America suggest a far deeper antiquity. If approached cautiously, this reservoir of data can fill in some of the huge gaps in our understanding of Taino history and cultural development. 

Our Cacique, Caonabo

Although the author admits to the speculative nature of some of his conclusions, Taino Indian Myth and Practice: The Arrival of the Stranger King, Keegan's study is a thought-provoking work on the basis of cacical authority and the inter-island connections in the late precolonial Caribbean. Using Las Casas's claim that Caonabo was from the Bahamian archipelago, Keegan endeavors to use ethnohistoric and archaeological methods to identify the possible village site Caonabo came from. Of course, since the sources are problematic and our understanding of Taino worldview less than ideal, Keegan must use potentially misleading or unrepresentative writings on Taino mythology (mainly Pané) to make meaning of the Spanish sources. Indeed, this is a necessity but there is always the danger of generalizing and homogenizing based on Pané's recordings of the specific beliefs of one particular cacicazgo of Hispaniola. Despite these risks, and  the author's recognition of far greater diversity among the peoples of the Taino Interaction Sphere, he still uses Pané (and the interpretations of Taino religion from Stevens-Arroyo's scholarship) heavily to reconstruct the mythic geography of the Taino. Caonabo's alleged origins at a specific site in Middle Caicos requires heavy allegiance to Stevens-Arroyo's work on Pané.

Since Keegan accepts the greater diversity of Taino peoples and the antiquity of ceramics in Cuba and Hispaniola soon after the Saladoid culture reached Puerto Rico, the deeper history of migrations, cultural exchanges, and eventually colonization of the Bahamas is a more complex process than one would think. Indeed, if Keegan is correct about the matrilineal and avunculocal nature of the Taino chiefdoms, perhaps some specific sites in the Bahamas were short-term and long-term settlements meant to provide fish, salt, and shell beads to Hispaniola. Caciques, whose power was at least partly based on marriage alliances with numerous other communities (as well as their ability to communicate with numinous beings), could have been linked to Middle Caicos sites from northern Hispaniola. Marriage alliances could have meant Caonabo was born at the MC-6 site excavated by Sullivan and Keegan, but his mother was from Hispaniola, perhaps Maguana. Caonabo then would have been eligible to succeed to the office of cacique in Hispaniola through his mother's kin, and perhaps would have embodied aspects of a stranger "king" with roots in an island that provided salt and marine resources (or salted fish) to Hispaniola. This remains rather speculative and uncertain, and one still has to consider the reason why Las Casas believed Caonabo rose to position of chiefdom: his military prowess. Perhaps his background on Middle Caicos may have prepared him, or he displayed distinct warrior talent in his early youth after relocating to the cacicazgo of his mother? 

Since so much remains unknown of Caonabo's origins and the Spanish sources, beginning with Columbus, were guilty of creating their own myths and legends of Caribbean indigenous peoples, much remains uncertain. Columbus himself, according to Keegan, was guilty of misunderstanding the Taino reference to the Carib as part of a mythology that also included notions of guanin and an island inhabited only by women. The fact that Columbus was sometimes mistaken to be a Carib himself has apparently escaped critical attention by many scholars. In fact, if the Spanish could also be perceived as Caribs, then the alleged cannibalism of the Caribs should be seen as part of Taino mythic geography. Indeed, perhaps this is why Caonabo, who was not born on Hispaniola, could be referred to as "Carib" by Oviedo and at the same time embody some of the mythic characteristics equated with outsiders. Indeed, Keegan goes even further, suggesting that Caonabo may have cultivated or been associated with Deminan and his 3 brothers (Caonabo was said to have 3 brothers) and possibly was seen as the guardian of the Cave of the Jagua from which humans first arose. In addition, Keegan produces evidence from MC-6 and the site of El Corral de los Indios in today's San Juan de la Maguana to point to certain patterns of astronomically aligned plazas and Taino monuments reflecting the culture's mythology or cosmovision. 

Indeed, the MC-6 appears even more unique in this regard with its own plaza recalling those of Hispaniola. Since Caonabo was ruler of Maguana, and would have been familiar with the plazas of MC-6 and Maguana, one can link him to MC-6 for its exceptional qualities. After all, it is possible that only an exceptional site in the Lucayan islands would have produced someone capable of becoming the most powerful cacique of Hispaniola. And due to his position, Caonabo would have intervened with Guacanagari's chiefdom by destroying La Navidad, in order to protect his own position as the "dominant" stranger king of Hispaniola. Even if Caonabo was, through his mother, actually part of the kinship structure of Maguana or another Hispaniola chiefdom, he was still remote or enough of a stranger to accumulate possible mythological characteristics linked to his political office. He would have felt a strong threat from Columbus as a potential contender, or perhaps someone through whom Guacanagari could have become a threat. Caonabo, already allied with Beheccio through his marriage to Anacaona, may have dominated half of Hispaniola with Jaragua. A newcomer allied with a different cacicazgo could have threatened the political stability of the island.

Perhaps most interesting is the archaeological evidence for cacical authority reflected in sites such as En Bas Saline, MC-6, San Juan de la Maguana. Citing evidence from another archaeologists analysis of En Bas Saline, Keegan presents evidence that the households of caciques were not exempt from the daily tasks and chores of commoner households. Moreover, it is possible that caciques did not actually impose sumptuary restrictions on their population, but monopolized the distribution of luxuries like iguana meat for festivals or feasts. Indeed, it remains unknown to what degree caciques actually controlled production in their polities through tribute or other means. However, caciques must have had access to skilled labor for the production of luxury crafts, communities for long-distance trade or manufacturing of shell-beads and salted fish off Hispaniola, and the construction of elaborate plazas and ballcourts. Undoubtedly, the cacique's rise to supremacy over behiques with regards to contact with the divine through the cohoba ritual was an important aspect of the ideological basis for political authority. As a result, the form of a Taino village and the most elaborate plazas with astronomical alignments for the solstice and Orion must have reinforced the cacique's authority as leader of a community spatially organized in recognition of the cemis. Whether or not this means the most powerful cacicazgos were en route to state formation from a "tribal-tributary" model is up for debate. But one is led to think that at least the matunheri caciques wielded tremendous power. Indeed, some may have even sponsored short-term and long-term colonization in nearby islands to harvest resources for use in Hispaniola.

Taino Myth of the Cursed Creator

 

This short video brings to life one of the Taino creation stories reported in an account of the Indians of Hispaniola written by Fray Ramón Pané. The written account, based on his experiences on the island in the 1490s, is obviously much closer to the source material. Yet, it has its problems, too. Pané's cultural bias, disdain for Taino religion and healers, language barriers, and passion for converting what he saw as heatens produces a plethora of problems. Still, anyone who wants to reconstruct the culture, beliefs, and practices of the indigenous population of Hispaniola must use these sources in some form. His account has undoubtedly influenced the above video segment retelling the origin of the sea with beautiful artwork.

Jean Fouchard and the Taino

Jean Fouchard's Langue et littérature des aborigènes d'Ayti is an incredibly problematic text. Consisting of short chapters on language, literature, history, and the legacy of the indigenous peoples of Haiti, it is rather obvious that Fouchard's work was already outdated by the 1970s. One expected better of Fouchard given the more careful scholarship in his work on maroons in Haiti, but his questionable scholarship and unpersuasive attempts to find remnants of areytos in 19th century Haitian literature were shocking. Fouchard failed to offer enough context for the examples of areytos provided in the book to be taken seriously as likely survivals of the Taino past. For instance, the war song associated with Caonabo appears to be lifed from a book by Edgar La Selve on Haitian literature and a play by Henri Chauvet. Since Fouchard's sources are ambiguous, we are inclined to regard his Caonabo example as inauthentic. Something similar could be said of Emile Nau's elegy to Racumon, which appears to be based on earlier accounts of Kalinago funerary song but appears irrelevant to Haiti's aboriginal literature. 

Moreover, the Song of Cacique Henry, about Enriquillo, is reproduced in full in a version published in Frederic Marcelin's journal in the early 1900s. Supposedly Marcelin first encountered it in 1893 while in the north of the country. While it is a riveting poem extolling the just war of Enriquillo against the Spanish, and it contains references to cemis and aspects of Taino culture, there is nothing in the poem that suggests it was actually based on a real song or areyto of Enrique. Indeed, if anything it's another example of the ways in which 19th century Haitian authors drew from the history of Taino resistance to colonialism in their own struggles against the French. In this light, it is perhaps not surprising that the Song first appears in the court of Henry Christophe. Learned members of his court, particularly Baron de Vastey and other educated elites would have been in the perfect position to compose a poem in the Indianist mode that would soon become popular in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean.

Furthermore, the attempt to prove aboriginal survival through references to runaway slave ads in colonial Saint-Domingue or the death certificate of an "Indian" woman who died after 1804 are fundamentally dishonest. A perusal of these aforementioned runaway slave ads plus the writings of Moreau de Saint-Mery and other 18th century sources would make it abundantly clear that the vast majority of these "Indiens" were from other parts of the Americas or even the Indian subcontinent. To suggest otherwise, especially without providing any additional evidence, is just lazy. That said, Fouchard did draw on the research of Suzanne Comhaire Sylvain, Louis Elie, and other Haitians who argued for a Taino or aboriginal influence on Vodou veves, Haitian folklore, and in the pockets of Haitian communities alleged to be of partial Indian origin. Unfortunately, we have not yet located the essay by Comhaire-Sylvain on Indian influences in Haitian folklore. However, arguments in favor of a Taino origin of veve or lwa has yet to be demonstrated (Loko is likely from West Africa, veve is also of African origin). 

In spite of its numerous problems (such as asserting that Breton had lived in Saint Domingue) and the outdated beliefs of Fouchard on the peopling of Hispaniola and the Caribbean (somehow we are led to believe Macorix was the dominant language of Hispaniola, the people of the Bahamas spoke Carib, and Caonabo was from Guadeloupe), this short work contains some essential references. Now it will be easier for anyone seriously pursuing the topic to locate key articles by Haitian intellectuals on the subject. Moreover, the text does include a French translation of our favorite friar's recordings of Taino belief. This plus the addition of some of the literary texts are additional resources. If only Fouchard had included all of the nearly 500 words of indigenous origin collected by Nouel, then this could have been an even better resource for those perusing the topic of the Taino influences on Haitian Creole and culture. There is undoubtedly potential insights and new discoveries to be made with this topic. Lamentably, some of the key studies remain inaccessible, lost or in archives.

Cibuco

Sixteenth-century geographer Lopez de Velasco is one of the few accessible sources available on the mysterious "pueblo" of Cibuco by the town of Guadianilla. Although his  Geografía y descripción universal de las Indias was probably not completely accurate for the population and demographics of the Spanish Caribbean possessions, he was writing when the Cibuco settlement was, presumably, occupied by "indios." Unlike Salvador Brau, who wrote centuries later and did not always clearly provide his sources, Velasco claimed the residents of Cibuco were descendants of enslaved "Indios" brought to the island from other parts of the Americas. One can assume they were "Caribs" and Yucatecans, natives of the coast of Venezuela and probably mainland areas such as Florida and even Brazil. According to Brau's La colonizacion de Puerto Rico, Cibuco was established with 48 manumitted "Indios," suggesting a very small settlement. 

Besides these "Indios" who were presumably freed after the 1542 laws abolishing Indian enslavement (though it continued in Puerto Rico and Santo Domingo anyway), Lopez de Velasco also mentioned "algunos indios" in Arrecibo (Arecibo). Salvador Brau likewise mentioned "Indios" in Arecibo, describing them as workers on hatos who also caught turtles. The island of Mona still had "algunos indios" as well. Overall, Lopez de Velasco suggests that "Indios" were few in Puerto Rico, but this is possibly due to a large mestizo population and omission of other communities, like the "Indios" of the Quebrada de Dona Catalina, near San Juan. This community owned a "hacienda" for their conucos in the 1500s, and included people of African descent. In addition, Sued Badillo illustrated other examples, such as enslaved Indians held by the governor of the Puerto Rico in the 1560s. Samuel de Champlain wrote about "Indians" in San Juan in the late 1500s, too. Nevertheless, it is clear from Lopez de Velasco's work that Cuba had more Indian pueblos (9), and mentioned Indian families in Baracoa, Bayamo, Puerto del Principe, Santi-Spiritus, La Trinidad, and Guanabacoa. 

So, what happened to the mysterious "Cibuco," which may have been the only official Indian pueblo in Puerto Rico? Salvador Brau, in his Historia de Puerto Rico, argued that the population was resettled into the hills of the San German area. Anderson-Cordova, in Surviving Spanish Conquest wrote that the town was inhabited by Indians set free by Governor Vallejo and the settlement was already gone by 1582. Brau, again, claimed Cibuco was abandoned when destroyed by French corsairs, which is plausible. If the population of Cibuco simply moved into the hills of western Puerto Rico, perhaps they joined other undocumented groups of "Indians" and mestizos, since western Puerto Rico had a larger presence of "Indians" than San Juan, according to the de Lando "census" of 1530. 

Did they move into the hills that would later become La Indiera, only to be joined later by Mona "Indians" resettled into the region? If Abbad y Lasierra was correct, though writing in the late 1700s and not providing his sources, many of these "Indios" in the hills near San German and Anasco were actually descendants of indigenous Puerto Ricans who fled the Spanish to live in Mona, Monico, Vieques, and other islands, but later requested to return. Thus, if the "algunos indios" on Mona were resettled in the hills of western Puerto Rico sometime in the 1600s, perhaps they joined or communicated with descendants of indigenous Indians and enslaved "indios" in the region, not to mention the probably large number of mestizos and mixed-race people represented among the free peasantry in the island. This, however, still does not explain the reappearance of "Indios" in the censuses of the later decades of the 1700s, unless it was in part a response to attempts to seize their lands or labor, which Puerto Ricans of "Indian" descent mobilized against in part through claims of indigeneity? So many questions remain...

Herencia Taina

Herencia Taina is a fascinating, somewhat outdated documentary on the Taino legacy in Puerto Rico. Associated with Ricardo Alegría and featuring Jalil Sued Badillo and other scholars as consultants, one can already guess that the film promotes the tripartite identity of the Puerto Rican people. It posits that the Taino legacy in Puerto Rico is both biological and cultural. That cannot be denied, although some have rightfully criticized the way this "tri-racial" heritage has been deployed in official discourse. We assume the inclusion of commentary on women and their role in Taino society and domestic life was perhaps shaped by Sued Badillo while Alegría's dominant position framed the general portrayal of Taino society. Anyway, the brief documentary is an interesting example of how Puerto Rican media (and corporate sponsors) incorporate the indigenous past of Puerto Rico into modern national identity. 

Irving Rouse and the Tainos

Although trying to catch up with the current trends in Caribbean precolonial history and archaeology is an ongoing process, Irving Rouse's The Tainos: Rise & Decline of the People who Greeted Columbus is more nuanced and relevant than we thought. As a towering figure in "Taino Studies" and Caribbean archaeology during the 20th century, Rouse's work is inescapable. However, we were under the impression that today's scholars are more skeptical of some of Rouse's framework and assumptions of "primitive" pre-ceramic indigenes in the Greater Antilles. However, after reading Rouse, one finds that he recognized the cultural complexity of the "Taino" peoples in his division of their societies into Eastern, Classic, and Western branches. Moreover, he acknowledged that migration should be not be presumed to be the major factor behind major changes in culture or ceramics in the Antilles. 

While he perhaps exaggerated by referring to the Saladoid expansion in the Antilles as the cause of a "genocide" of archaic, earlier populations in the Antilles, they undoubtedly were among the important ancestors of the people who went on to become known as "Tainos" by today's scholars. Studies of the ancient DNA samples and mythology also suggest a rather pronounced South American Amazonian origin for the population of the Antilles. The two earlier cultures identified by Rouse, the Casimiroid and Ortoiroid, undoubtedly helped shape the development of "Tainoness" in ways that younger generations of archaeologists can hopefully uncover. But the later "Saladoid" expansion through the Antilles does seem to have played a major role among the ancestors of the Tainos. The numerous interaction spheres across bodies of water that connected different parts of the archipelago and the South American mainland are also fascinating topics, pointing to how movement across maritime highways was the avenue for exchange. Caribbean people have always been on the move, between islands and between islands and the continent.

However, Rouse's study is somewhat outdated despite its recognition of the Taino cultural legacy in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean. Despite acknowledgment of the cultural, linguistic, and biological legacy of the Taino in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, Rouse believed the Taino disappeared by 1540 or so. The full story of the disintegration of Taino communities and their role in shaping the colonial period is worthy of monograph-length study itself. Rouse did not do justice to this in the chapter on the fall of the Taino, and we are sure neo-Tainos would take issue with Rouse's description of it. In addition, a more detailed analysis of the rise of chiefdoms or more complex polities on Hispaniola and Puerto Rico could have been included in the chapters on the origins of the Classic Tainos to assist readers with understanding the origins and dynamics of political organization. If zemis, for instance, date back to the early Cedrosan Saladoid expansion in the Antilles, and evidence for conuco mound agriculture in the Cibao perhaps began in the 1200s or so, is it possible that some indigenous societies had reached the chiefdom stage earlier without conucos for yuca cultivation? What was the role of long-distance trade in this process?

Conquest and Indian Slavery in the Spanish Caribbean

For all interested in learning about the origins of enslaved indigenous peoples in the Spanish circum-Caribbean, Woodruff Stone's Captives of Conquest: Slavery in the Early Modern Spanish Caribbean is an enlightening read. Captives of Conquest demonstrates how central Indian labor and the commodification of their very lives was to the process of Spanish colonial expansion from 1492-1550. It also highlights how the Caribbean laid the foundations for Spanish America through the role of slave raiding, slave auxiliaries, and slave trading for Spanish exploration and travel to new parts of the Americas. The often weak authority of the Spanish Crown and the evolving discourse on Indian rights, labor regimes, and "race" can be seen in the pivotal half-century or so in which hundreds of thousands of Indians were, voluntarily or involuntarily, participants in the creation of European colonialism in the western hemisphere. 

Our interest in reading this work was mainly with regard to the degree or extent foreign Indian slaves intermarried and interacted with local indigenous populations of the Caribbean and the increasingly important African population of the Greater Antilles. Citing various colonial records on the trade in Indians from Tierra Firme, Mexico, Brazil, Central America, Florida, and beyond, Woodruff Stone presents clear evidence for a vast scale of slave trading that brought more Indians to Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Jamaica. Thus, despite the dwindling local indigenous population in Hispaniola or Puerto Rico, the slave trade of Indians from throughout the circum-Caribbean introduced thousands more. Their labor was essential for Spanish sugar plantations, gold mining, and domestic service, especially since African slaves were more expensive. Despite their numerical significance, high mortality rates and the lack of sufficient records (after all, many Indians were victims of illegal Spanish slave raids, including against allies of the Spanish in Venezuela), they continued to be important ever after 1542. Indeed, this proves that some of the colonial reports of Hispaniola or Puerto Rico lacking Indian populations after 1550 were partly inspired by officials eager to hide their continued enslavement of indigenous peoples. 

Drawing on pre-contact Caribbean mobility, trade, and cultural networks, Captives of Conquest establishes that the indigenes of the region had long-established connections. However, it appears that the rapid influx of thousands of foreign Indians from places as disparate as Florida and Mexico or the Yucatan and the interior of Venezuela may have further weakened Taino caciques. If local caciques, whose authority was already eroded by the repartimiento of 1514 on Hispaniola and rapid population declines and dislocations caused by the Spanish, were also losing authority because of the introduction of thousands of foreign Indians, then we are inclined to think locals had to reconceive local political and social traditions. Even if foreign Indians were slaves and locals part of an encomienda system, in practice the distinction between a free and an enslaved Indian might not have meant much. Thus, we are inclined to think foreign Indians who survived may have joined local Indian communities and helped create new identities. Evidence of this can be seen in Yucatecan and Taino marriages in colonial Cuba. According to Captives of Conquest, some of these populations also intermarried with Africans, thereby adding more cultural diversity. 

Our guess is that Puerto Rico experienced something similar as local Indians intermarried or formed new communities with those from the Lesser Antilles, the Bahamas, Yucatan, and Tierra Firme. Perhaps this may explain why the cacique of Mona, for instance, was a native of Tierra Firme living in San German during the 1590s. If non-local Indians could rise to positions of authority, and the Taino were always mobile and engaged in long-distance trade, perhaps foreign Indians were more assimilable than we can detect from the Spanish accounts. Thus, perhaps the enslaved Indians enumerated in the de Lando census of 1530, who already outnumbered "free" Indians in Puerto Rico, may have included people who adopted local Indian practices or joined their communities. Or later did so, possibly contributing to the maintenance of Indian communities and practices that were later adopted by all the free peasantry of the island.

Amerindian Presence in Saint Domingue

Grand Soleil, leader of the Natchez people. Their chief, also known as St. Cosme, was sold into slavery in Saint Domingue in the 1730s with 100s of his people. 

One topic that occasionally resurfaces is the theme of the indigenous past in Haitian history and literature. While the symbolism of the Taino or the indigenous past is worthy of research as a topic of its own merit, it is also interesting to consider French Saint Domingue's historically-documented "Indian" populations from the insular Caribbean and North and South America. These groups, rather than the Taino, were historically relevant and, arguably, significant in the early days of French settlement in Tortuga and Hispaniola. Indeed, during the time of the buccaneers and the frontier-like conditions of early Saint Domingue, indigenous peoples from the Caribbean and other lands were an important presence among the enslaved population and as trading partners of the French. By this era, the 17th century and early 18th century, there were no more indigenous Taino "Indians" on the island, unless one counts "mixed-race" descendants of Indians in corners of Spanish Santo Domingo. The village of Boya, for instance, was alleged by 18th century French and 19th century Haitian sources to have been founded as an Indian village in the 1500s, although none of its residents were "pure" Taino. Some 19th century Haitian authors such as Thomas Madiou and Emile Nau also admitted a degree of aboriginal ancestry among the Dominican population, but not for the Haitian population. Of course, that does not stop some more absurd manifestations of Taino revivalism from exaggerating Taino cultural traces in today's Haitians.

As for the indigenous populations of the island and Haiti, there seems to be very little evidence of any connection between modern Haitians and the precolonial inhabitants of the island. The "Indiens" of Saint Domingue appear to have come from Caribs, the Guianas, Louisiana, North America, and the Yucatan. To reiterate, by the time of the French presence in the 17th century, there were no more Taino groups on the island. Besides possible influence via Spanish Santo Domingo and today's Dominican Republic, one must look to the diverse "Indien" populations of the French colonial population. This makes it very unlikely that "Tainos" had any significant influence on Haitian culture, religion, and folklore, despite what one may find in Haitian literature or intellectual thought (Nau, Alexis, Beauvoir-Dominique). However, there very well could be influences from non-Taino populations in Saint Domingue, which is a topic of interest in its own right. This may explain some of the alleged "Amerindian" aspects to Haitian culture more than any far-fetched theory of cultural continuity from the pre-Columbian population of the island to modern Haitians.

Runaway ad for Joseph, a Carib. Caribs continued to appear in runaway slave ads and were imported to Saint Domingue. Even when held in low regard as captives, they continued to be exploited as chattel throughout the 18th century.

So, where does one begin with the "Indien" presence of Saint Domingue? One must go back to the origins of French colonization of the Caribbean, particularly St. Christophe and the Lesser Antilles. The French encountered "Carib" groups who were still autonomous, and occasionally a threat to Spanish and European settlements in the region. In their interactions with Caribs, the Dutch, English and enslaved Africans, the seeds of the French Antilles were planted. It was probably there, during the 17th century, that early French lexical Creoles evolved. By the second half of the 17th century, a French presence was asserting itself in Tortuga and northern Saint Domingue, propelled by expulsions from St. Christophe. According to 18th century Saint Domingue sources, many of the affranchi families claimed descent from "Indian" women and French men who left St. Christophe. Whether or not that was actually true is another question, but the French and English did interact with the Caribs in St. Christophe before slaughtering them. It is also likely the case that, due to the paucity of European women, some French married "Indian" women. Moreover, among the French and other Europeans in Tortuga were Caribs and "Indian" slaves. Indeed, in 1653, the number of "Indian" slaves was higher than those of Africans in Tortuga. "Indian" slaves from the Caribs and other groups were also acquired through raids on Spanish territories. One expedition to the Yucatan in the late 1600s brought several indigenous women to the southern part of Saint Domingue, where most ended up as wives to Frenchmen. Thus, "Indians" were, in the early period of French colonization, a significant part of the captive population while "Indian" women were probably represented among the mothers of "mixed-race" people in the colony's southern regions.

A woman departing for France listed an Indian women for sale, alongside two others of African descent, in her advertisement posted in the main Saint Domingue newspaper. The "Indienne" woman is said to have domestic skills many Indian women in the colony were employed for. She could also have been of "East Indian" origin, but Moreau de Saint-Mery mentioned the common use of "Amerindian" women for domestic labor.

"Indians" were not only captives to the French, but traders and fellow participants in French raids on Spanish colonies. The 17th century competition for Caribbean colonies among the European powers in the region led to conditions favorable for trading relations that may have created opportunities for various "Indian" groups to play Europeans against each other. For instance, 3 Indian chiefs from the Gulf of Darien, whose subjects had cooperated with French raids against Spanish colonies, were treated as guests of honor by the governor of Saint Domingue in Leogane. In 1701, a Pedre, chief of the Sambres, was also received by the interim governor in Leogane, suggesting trade relations that were still important. That "Indian" chiefs were honored guests to the political establishment of the colony in the late 17th century is a testament to trade links and raiding partnerships between French and "Indians" in the circum-Caribbean region. Indeed, Caribs and other "Indian" populations sold African or "Indian" slaves to the French, angering the monopoly company established by the French government to provide African slaves to Saint Domingue. This suggests that in those early frontier-like days of Saint Domingue, before plantation slavery was firmly entrenched and the shift to sugar and coffee plantations began, the French colony partly relied on partnerships and relations with indigenous populations in the region. Through their trading partnerships with "Indian" groups and other populations, they procured slaves, supplies, and relationships that likely profited both sides, at least initially. The "Indian" captives probably worked as domestics and, perhaps, alongside indentured French workers and African slaves on tobacco plantations in the 1600s.

Free people of "Indian" descent sometimes appeared in the newspapers. Marie-Magdelaine Nicole, for instance, is listed as a "mestive libre," and was tied to a merchant in Le Cap. While "mestives" (which was perhaps more ambiguous as a racial category than one might suspect) may not always connote "Amerindian" heritage, it often did. 

However, the transition to plantation slavery and the reliance on enslaved Africans altered the nature of "Amerindian" relations with French Saint Domingue. Tied to this process is French colonialism in Louisiana, Guyane, and Canada, as wars between the French and various native groups occasionally led to their enslavement. Or, as in the case of North America, the English colonies also sold Native Americans to the French. One particularly noticeable example occurred in the 1730s, when an estimated 500 Natchez were sold to Saint Domingue after losing a war with the French. While Indians were probably never more than a tiny minority of the enslaved population in 18th century Saint Domingue (Geggus suggests that the combined population of "Amerindian" and "East Indian" slaves in Saint Domingue was less than 1% of the total by the late 1700s), their presence shaped colonial definitions of race and inclusion. One cannot discount the possibility that they were more numerous among the free people of color, too.

 

According to Moreau de Saint-Mery, "Amerindian" slaves in the colony hailed from the "sauvages" of South America, Mississippi, the Fox and others in North America, and Caribs. While a Creole proverb would suggest Caribs were not seen as "good" slaves, a number of them appear in runaway slave ads. A few were identified as "mulatto" or mixed-race, and it is likely that Caribs were transported to Saint Domingue from other French colonies within the Caribbean, or perhaps the product of conflicts between independent Carib groups in the Lesser Antilles with the French. Indian women and children from Louisiana and North America were sometimes, per Moreau de Saint-Mery, brought by the English, and often employed as domestics. The English, it must be remembered, engaged in active slave trading of indigenous people in North America, often shipping them to colonies in the Caribbean. French Louisiana, according to Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, also engaged in a small-scale trade of Indian captives for African or black slaves, following English practices. It was probably an ongoing trade for much of the 1700s as French settlers in Louisiana expressed an interest in acquiring African slaves. The trade was common enough to the point that, as Jack Forbes cites, a Spanish ship of Santo Domingo intercepted a French vessel carrying Indians to Saint Domingue in the 1750s. Unfortunately for those interested in studying the "Indians" of Saint Domingue, quantifying the total  number of Indians in Saint Domingue from the initial French presence to the Haitian Revolution is extremely difficult. Colonial censuses stopped including them as a separate population group after 1713. Geggus's important article, "The Naming of Haiti", cites a 1681 Census that found 480 "mulattoes" and Indians, all enslaved. In 1631, the South of Saint Domingue had 128 Indians, but only 83 in 1713. The disappearing Indians probably merged into the general free people of color category.

 

Yota, a young Carib maroon, was only around 14 years old. His owner was a minister in Le Cap.

Moreau de Saint-Mery offers additional some hints, claiming there were more than 300 "Sauvages" and Indians enslaved in Saint Domingue at the beginning of the 1700s. Around 500 Natchez were sent to the colony in the 1730s, but how many actually survived the voyage is unclear. Some of their survivors lived on in the colony's chief city, today's Cap-Haitien. A study of 3 parishes by Jacques Houdaille, focusing on Jacmel, Cayes-de-Jacmel, and Fond-des Negres, found "Indiens" to have comprised 1.3% of legitimate births, 0.3% for illegitimate. Houdaille's study also claimed Indians from Yucatan and Veracruz were in the colony prior to 1700, probably a reference to Indian women from a 1685 raid. Some of the "Indiens" he located were apparently from Aruba, suggesting that there may have been a smuggling of small numbers of Indians from other parts of the region to the southern coast. For the captives from the French colony in South America, enslavement of Arouas, Palicours, Courarys was practiced, but on a small scale. Consequently, any trade of indigenous South Americans to Saint Domingue would have probably been a tiny proportion of the total Indien slave population in Guyane, which was always small. In short, a clear indication of their numbers is unavailable, but they were relatively important in the 1600s before becoming numerically negligible in the 18th century.

Indiens also appear in the parish records of Saint Domingue, such as Marie Louise, whose death was recorded in Baynet. A systematic study of each parish would likely reveal much more about the numbers and social relations of "Indiens" in Saint Domingue.

What can be said of the "Indien" presence in Saint Domingue? Occupational profiles, race relations, legacies, and other concerns remain somewhat speculative. Enslaved women may have been used primarily as domestics, and are sometimes advertised as such in newspapers. Males may have been servants, plantation workers, fishermen, cooks, or barbers. The runaway slave ads point to urban and plantation settings, suggesting they were used in both types of environments. How enslaved Indians got along with African slaves is unknown, but Contant d'Orville suggested an antipathy between Caribs and blacks in the French Caribbean. It is also clear that free people of color attempted to claim Indien descent to justify their claims to titles or political rights of whites in the second half of the 18th century. According to Hiliard d'Auberteuil, the "mixed-bloods" claimed descent from "Indians" in St. Christophe, who came to Saint Domingue in 1640. Garrigus, in Before Haiti, uncovers examples of free people of color families like the Gelée  in Les Cayes, who requested the Port-au-Prince council confirm his letters of nobility, claiming Indian descent rather than African. Clearly, by 1767, the French official position viewed Indians as "born free", unlike those of African descent. Indians, if not "stained" by African ancestry, were supposedly able to enjoy the rights of whites as assimilated peoples. And like free people of African descent, examples of "Indien" slaveholders can be found in at least one of the runaway slave ads, posted by a Roesayro, Mulatto Indian of Dondon. 

 

Like other free people of color, the "Mulatto Indian" Roesayro owned slaves. In this case, his "Senegalese" slave, Pierre, ran away.

The relationship of the "Indiens" to the free people of color population might be the best way to consider the "Indien" presence. As groups in between the enslaved majority and the white colonial population, it is not unlikely that the two often mingled, married, and combined their resources. It is possible that some may have strategically chosen Indian partners to facilitate their claims to rights increasingly taken away from those of African descent in the 1760s and 1770s. Some prominent families among the affranchis who also claimed Indien descent from St. Christophe or perhaps the early foundations of the colony were probably telling the truth in some cases. Thomas Madiou, prominent Haitian historian, also claimed an Indien ancestor in his autobiography. His mother was, according to him, the daughter of a woman of the Indien race from Le Cap. Historian Jean Fouchard found evidence of "Indian" descent among free people of color, using the example of the Dartigue family. Last, but certainly not least, relations between free people of African and "Indien" origin might explain the bizarre assertion of Amerindian ancestry Redpath assigned to President Geffrard in his Guide to Hayti. One should not be surprised if more than a few free people of color, particularly in the South of the colony, descend, in part, from Indians. It is also possible that certain names among Haitians after independence suggest "Indien" origin. The example of Benjamin Indien from Port-au-Prince in 1849 may very well reflect an "Indien" background or ancestry. 

 

After Haitian independence, one would assume formerly enslaved Indiens and free people of color of Indian origins probably stayed in the colony. Those who left may have returned from the US, France, and other lands later in the 19th century. Knowing that there was a small "Indien" population in Haiti on the eve of independence may help explain why "Indiens" were included in Haitian citizenship for various constitutions. Indeed, it could help explain why the indigenous name of the island was chosen to rename Saint Domingue. As for "Indiens" who immigrated after independence, I have yet to encounter any examples besides Benjamin Fruneau (whose mother was "East Indian). However, it is very likely that some of the African Americans who came to Haiti in the 1820s and 1860s included people of Native descent. As for "Indien" survival in Haiti after 1804, some of the more absurd theorists have even proposed sites where "Indiens" survived in isolated parts of the country. But Aristide Achille's study of the problem of Indian cultural survival in Haiti has pointed out the lack of evidence for assertions by Louis Emile Elie of Indian survival in the caves of the Grand Riviere du Nord, the "Vien-Viens" of Saltrou, habitation Lamarque in Kenscoff, and habitations Lebrun and Poulardier in Petit-Goave. It could very well be the case that some of the populations in those areas may descend, in part, from "Indien" slaves of the colonial period, but they are very unlikely to have any connection to the Taino.

 

Perhaps a testament to the loosely defined "races" in Saint Domingue, examples of runaway slaves who called themselves "Indien" appear. In this example, Francois is identified as a "Mulatto" by his owner, yet he calls himself Indian. Note that he is also described as having long, dark hair, perhaps making it easier for him to claim an "Indian" origin. It is possible that enslaved people were well aware of the legal rights of "free" Indians under French law, and may have, like free people of color, claimed it in their own interests.

Overall, the evidence for significant Taino influences and legacies in Haiti appear unfounded, or marginal at best. The story of the non-Taino Indians in Saint Domingue, however, was relevant to the history of the colony, slave trade networks, and conceptualization of race and differential status for free people of color. Although a clear understanding of their total numbers remains elusive, it is clear that Indians from other parts of the Americas were important to the colony in the 17th and 18th centuries. Their presence among the captive population and free people of color influenced the discourse of race and political rights. "Amerindian" people likely contributed to the formation of the free people of color group, whose role in the destabilizing of Saint Domingue and its racial logic cannot be forgotten.  Despite their small numbers, they may have also influenced Haitian religion, cuisine, language, and culture in ways not legible today. Considering the fact they actually interacted with the enslaved and free people of color of Saint Domingue, unlike the Tainos, any understanding of Native American influences on Haiti probably owes more to them than any alleged cultural tie to the Taino.

 

Bibliography

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Aristide, Achille, « le Problème de l'Indien et de ses survivances en Haïti », dans Bulletin du Bureau d'ethnologie, série 11, n° 13, Port-au-Prince, Imprimerie de l'Etat, 1956, p. 32-40. 

d'Orville, Contant. Histoire des différens peuples du monde, contenant les cérémonies religieuses et civiles, l'origine des religions, leurs sectes & superstitions, & les moeurs & usages de chacque nation ... par m. Contant Dorville. Paris: Herissant fils], 1770.

Forbes, Jack D. Africans and Native Americans: The Language of Race and the Evolution of Red-Black Peoples. 2nd ed. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993.

Fouchard, Jean. The Haitian Maroons: Liberty or Death. New York, N.Y.: E.W. Blyden Press, 1981. 

 

Gallay, Alan. The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South, 1670-1717. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.

 

Garrigus, John D. Before Haiti: Race and Citizenship in French Saint-Domingue. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

 

Geggus, David. "The Naming Of Haiti." NWIG: New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids 71, no. 1/2 (1997): 43-68. Accessed November 4, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41849817

Hall, Gwendolyn Midlo. Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992. 

Hilliard d'Auberteuil, Michel-René. Considérations Sur L'état Présent De La Colonie Française De Saint-Domingue: Ouvrage Politique Et Législatif, Présenté Au Ministre De La Marine. Paris: Grangé, 1976.

Houdaille, Jacques. "Quelques données sur la population de Saint-Domingue au XVIIIe Siècle." Population (French Edition) 28, no. 4/5 (1973): 859-72. Accessed November 11, 2020. doi:10.2307/1531260.

 

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Hrodej, Philippe. L'esclave et les plantations : de l'établissement de la servitude à son abolition : hommage à Pierre Pluchon. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2008.

Marchand-Thébault. "L'esclavage en Guyane française sous l'ancien régime". Outre Revue française d'histoire d'outre-mer 47, no. 166 (1960): 5–75.

McClellan, James E. (James Edward). Colonialism and Science: Saint Domingue in the Old Regime. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. 

 

Moreau de Saint-Méry, Méderic Louis Élie. Description topographique, physique, civile, politique et historique de la partie françoise de l'isle Saint-Domingue. 3 vols. Philadelphia:  1797.

 

Nau, Emile. Histoire Des Caciques D'Haïti. 2. éd. publiée avec l'autorisation des héritiers de l'auteur par Ducis Viard. Paris: G. Guérin, 1894.

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Redpath, James. A Guide to Hayti. Boston: Haytian bureau of emigration, 1861.

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Roux, Benoît. "Les Indiens caraïbes, acteurs et objets de traite aux Antilles françaises (XVIIe-XVIIIe siècle)." Cahiers d'Histoire de l'Amérique Coloniale, L'Harmattan, 2012, pp.187-188. ⟨halshs-01015141⟩

 

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The Taino Duho

Taino duhos are some of the best-known and most elaborate works of pre-Columbian Caribbean craftsmanship and art. Associated with cacical authority and the elites of Taino society, the best known duhos are often sculpted of wood. Many possess two-dimensional geometric patterns and designs and feature anthropomorphic or zoomorphic faces and features. Although stools are widely used in South and Central American indigenous cultures, among the Taino, duhos, particularly the ornate wooden ones, have stood the test of time and still serve as a testament to the artistic talent and technical brilliance of indigenous woodcarvers. As powerful artifacts associated with caciques and the elites, they can also be a powerful source or analysis for reconstructing something of Taino ruling ideology. Their restricted use, elaborateness, and the addition of symbols that may be based on cotton textiles, belts, navels, cemis (and/or ancestors) and entoptic phenomena suggest art and religion were closely entwined in an overall ideology of rulership.

Joanna Ostapkowicz, author of the thesis Taíno Wooden Sculpture: Duhos, Rulership and the Visual Arts in the 12th-16th Century, appears to be one of the world's leading experts on the subject. Her thesis, including an extended catalog of extant duhos and their provenience and museum acquisition histories, establishes that at least 147 duhos have survived. Unfortunately, several have been damaged and the original contextual location of the find is not always clear. More than a few pieces probably ended up in private hands and several more likely await discovery in the Caribbean. Haiti, for example, with La Gonave identified as one center of production during the time of Anacaona, might yield more duhos of wood that could shed light on their production and distribution. Ostapkowicz's study also includes those built of stone as well as wood, but the wooden ones are often the most remarkable. In addition to examining the known origins of over 100 duhos, she includes examples of other wooden sculpture in Taino art traditions. A sophisticated review and discussion of known scholarship on Taino chiefdoms, the role of women in production, animal symbolism, and the relationship between rituals and ideology in cacical authority and duho use cover the rest of the dissertation.

The technical aspects of production are likewise included, as she estimates that wooden duhos constructed out of dense, tropical hardwoods like guayacan, would have likely required a specialist artisan (part-time or perhaps master artisan) 4 to 6 hours per day and at least a year to finish. This does not include the amount of time required to fell a tree or the seasoning time, either. Undoubtedly, crafting elaborate duhos required a woodcarver who know how to select the appropriate tree and the mastery of techniques with adzes, heat, and cutting to produce a finished stool. At the time this was written, the specific type of wood used for the duho or more precise dating was lacking. Today, however, some duhos have been dated as far back as the 13th century. Ostapkowicz's analysis and dating of other wooden artifacts, such as cohoba stands, suggest elaborate woodcarving in guayacan probably developed centuries earlier. Indeed, some masterpieces of Taino Hispaniola wooden sculpture date back to the 11th or 12th centuries. Perhaps elaborate duhos carved from guayacan or mahogany were already in circulation by the 11th century, possibly of restricted, elite use and distribution? This would suggest an efflorescence of Taino arts and cacical authority a few centuries before the dates proposed by Rouse.

Where Ostapkowicz's analysis is most interesting is on the subject of women in production, exchange, and use of duhos. If, as indicated by Martyr d'Anghiera, women in La Gonave actually produced duhos and wooden sculptures, this would suggest women were not restricted only to ceramics, domestic duties and cotton cloth production. Moreover, if the duhos depict the anthropomorphic or zoomorphic figure wearing cotton bands, belts, and caps, produced by Taino women, then the role of goods produced by women were essential to elite accoutrement. Women were also involved in the transfer of duhos, as Anacaona herself gave duhos to the Spanish. Moreover, according to Ostapkowicz, duhos may have been inherited matrilineally and exchanged at weddings. Indeed, women were also participants in at least some of the ritual activities involving cohoba, and probably sat on duhos if in positions of authority as cacicas. The past assumptions of scholars for a strict gender segregation during cohoba rituals or the actual act of sitting on a duho, lack sufficient evidence. Even among various South American populations from whom ethnographic analogies are often sought, women occasionally use stools and participate in various hallucinogen-induced trances or rituals. 

Similarly important for understanding Taino society is the prominence of anthropomorphic features of several duhos. For Ostapkowicz, this emphasis is likely linked to ancestors and or cemis, as past cacique ancestors could also become cemis. By incorporating them into the duho, they literally and symbolically act as the foundation or support for the sitter. The sexual genitalia, linked to procreation, may have further supported this view. Moreover, the symbolism of trees with roots, trunks and branches associated with stages of life and connections to the subterranean world was likely linked to spirits, or seen as embodying or housing a spirit or being. Ostapkowicz, though skeptical of drawing too heavily on Pané, cites numerous episodes involving trees, wood, or, in one case, fruit. A tree moving on it own, and speaking with a behique through cohoba, can direct the shaman/carver into cutting it. Moreover, cemis carved of wood were also believed to be able to move on their own and escape from caciques or communities they were not interested in staying with. If ancestors were similarly venerated and could become cemis, their representation in a duho would become a powerful numinous quality that justified the sitter's right to office. Through sitting on the duho that was explicitly linked to powerful ancestors, and using the same duho in cohoba rituals or placing it in caves, the owner asserted their power to intercede between the human and other worlds in the Taino cosmos. In other words, elaborate duhos can be "read" as powerful texts of rulership. 

Surviving Spanish Conquest

Anderson-Córdova's Surviving Spanish Conquest: Indian Fight, Flight, and Cultural Transformation in Hispaniola and Puerto Rico is a must-read for everyone interested in the cultural transformations that occurred in the first two Spanish colonial conquests of the Americas. For obvious reasons, this also has relevant implications for the topic of indigenous legacies in the Spanish Caribbean and the so-called neo-Taino movement. Although some of the conclusions remain tentative due to a number of factors, such as the lack of sufficient archaeological research (such as contact-era sites in Puerto Rico) and the loss of repartimiento documents for early Puerto Rico, this careful study of acculturation (or its absence) attests to the survival of indigenous culture for several decades. The encomienda Indians of Hispaniola, for instance, were able to preserve and maintain traditions and practices well into the 16th century, even as population decline and the erosion of the authority of the caciques continued. 

Applying the theory of compartmentalization to this process in which Indians of Hispaniola and Puerto Rico paid lip-service to Spanish impositions or Christianity but retained cohoba, areytos, ballgames, ritual feasts, and other practice allows us to see how and why elements of indigenous culture were able to survive and influence the Creole peasantry that succeeded the collapse of the gold mining economy and encomienda system. The author's ability to use colonial-sources from Spanish perspectives to uncover this is also exemplary, although many of these sources leave unanswered questions about, for instance, the degree of acculturation for enslaved Indians or the types of interactions local Indians had with slaves of diverse origins. We also lack sufficient documentation for Puerto Rico's indigenous population, which could have been as low as 30,00-60,000 when the Spanish arrived. Yet, if it is indeed true that many of the island's Indians fled to other parts of the Antilles to escape Spanish rule, we can probably assume that a decent portion of the Indian captives seized by Spanish raids in the Lesser Antilles included indigenous populations who could have come from Puerto Rico. Either way, there are written sources referencing the movement of indigenous populations from smaller islands who returned to Puerto Rico or were settled there, as seems to have been the case with the Indians of Mona. 

Unlike Cuba, however, we lack the same degree of detailed ethnographic, historical, and archaeological research that indicates indigenous survival for Hispaniola and Puerto Rico. Nonetheless, the evidence does suggest that local Indians and foreign enslaved indigenous populations from other parts of the Americas remained important for the colonial economy long after 1514 (repartimiento in Hispaniola) and the de Lando census in 1530. Comparative studies of Jamaica and Cuba, plus additional archaeological and ethnographic work in Puerto Rico will likely find similar examples of indigenous survival and cultural longevity. After all, Puerto Rico is known for having noticeable levels of Indigenous Caribbean ancestry through genetic studies and historical references from Abbad y Lasierra and colonial-documents speak of an Indian population in the hills outside San German. It would be amazing for archaeologists to work in the area of San German and the Indiera for post-contact village sites showing us a Puerto Rican example like that of El Chorro el Maita in Cuba. That, with extensive oral histories could reveal ways in which Puerto Rico was similar to Cuba for indigenous survival and cultural legacies long after 1550. 

Caciques and Cemi Idols

Caciques and Cemi Idols: The Web Spun by Taino Rulers Between Hispaniola and Puerto Rico by José R. Oliver is a challenging read. Drawing from more recent scholarship that challenges the paradigm of Irving Rouse and past generations of archaeologists, Oliver focuses on the political-religious dynamics of Taino civilization through caciques and cemí idols. Pushing back against Rouse, Oliver sees Tainoness as a complex mosaic of societies (mostly) in the Greater Antilles, with diverse histories of interactions with the Archaic societies in the region. However, intense interactions and mobility linked this mosaic of societies and polities (perhaps peer chiefdoms and heterarchy is more accurate for the sociopolitical character of precolonial Puerto Rico and other islands), especially Puerto Rico and Higuey in Hispaniola. 

Moreover, Oliver contextualizes Taino religion through a multinatural, animistic cosmos similar to perspectivism among South American indigenous populations. Through that lens, the Taino cemí represents a state of being in which even deceased forebears can become cemífied. Due to their animistic, multinatural worldview, the Taino also believed humans, animals, and objects like stones or wood have personhood. However, this personhood was dividual, partible, permeable and fractal. This belief, plus the use of cohoba for communing with a cemi probably explains the fusion of human and animal features in some Taino art. Clearly, Oliver is suggesting a rather different model for understanding Taino religion than that of Arrom, but one that may be more accurate than Arrom's assumption of a Western-like individualist perspective. Either way, it suggests Taino religion was part of a much deeper history of cemí religious practices, one that may have begun as early as 700 AD. 

Most of Caciques focuses on the different types of cemí idols, such as trigonoliths and face masks, and the close relationship between said idols and cacique political authority. Cemí figures could be inherited, stolen, gifted, or exchanged in a complex set of ways that linked caciques to each other, as well as lineage groups and alliances. As persons or beings invested with personhood, a cemí could develop a lengthy biography and become part of an epic history of a cacique, their lineage, or community. This helps explain why Ramón Pané reported some were able to flee or run away, or others were very human-like. For our purposes, it would be excellent to know, if possible, the extent to which the cemís described in the famous account by Pané were objects of specific veneration across Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and parts of Cuba. 

The remainder of the book shifts to the thorny question of acculturation, transculturation, assimilation and the post-conquest conditions of Taino religion. As the political system was deeply embedded in their religion, the Spanish conquest sought to destroy both. Through native alliances, they were able to defeat the indigenous polities of Hispaniola and Puerto Rico. With the death of the cacicazgo, suppression of cohoba and cemis, Taino religion was irrevocably changed. However, aspects of Marian devotion in Cuba and archaeological evidence there suggest possible Taino influence. Early glimpses of it could be seen in the 1490s in Hispaniola and early Cuba, where some Taino adopted icons of the Virgin as another type of cemi. Perhaps most interesting was the way in which some caciques used Catholic icons against rival native chiefs. Even more impressive, Agueybana II's rebellion and the long-lasting resistance on Puerto Rico actually sought to spread indigenous rebellion to Hispaniola through their web of related kin and political allies in Higuey! Unfortunately, the movement in Hispaniola was defeated before it could have been implemented. Nonetheless, it was an interesting example of how caciques in Puerto Rico and Hispaniola continued to consult their cemis and used the guidance of said beings to guide their rebellions against Spanish authority. That type of resistance was eliminated with the destruction of the cacique's political authority's religious basis, the cemi.