Shamans and Jaguars

Reichel-Dolmatoff's The Shaman and the Jaguar: A Study of Narcotic Drugs Among the Indians of Colombia is one of those detailed studies of a South American tropical lowland population with potential relevance for the Taino. Although the Tukano live in the Colombian Amazon region and are rather far removed from the Antilles, they share a reliance on manioc, consumption of hallucinogens, ritual purging and fasting and shamanistic practices with the Taino peoples. Indeed, when Reichel-Dolmatoff begins the book with a historical overview, it becomes rather clear that the Taino peoples shared some of these deeply-held and cherished beliefs like the Tukano. Indeed, the prominence of the shaman in healing and the art inspired by hallucinations from using drugs suggests a very deeply rooted use of plants for hallucinations and entry into the other realms. Where the Desana and other related groups differ, however, is the lack of powerful chiefs. Based on Reichel-Dolmatoff's work, one can say that most Tukano in the Vaupes River region lived in malocas with headmen, but the headmen were not nearly as powerful as, say, the caciques were reputed to be. Instead, the indigenous peoples of this region of Colombia resided in exogamous groups who followed similar prohibitions on incest. Their neighbors, including an Arawakan group and the use of Lengua Geral (Tupi), connected them to other ethnic groups who, in the distant past, may have frequently went to war.

In spite of the significant differences between the Tukano and the Taino, one can still find utility in this book for understanding elements of Taino art and culture. The role of phosphenes in the visions seen by the Tukano after yaje and other rituals, for instance, has a direct impact on the decoration motifs and styles used in ceramics, gourd rattles, and house paintings. In addition, some of the vivid images, shapes and colors seen by the Tukano are always interpreted via cultural norms and mythological beliefs. The Taino case was likely similar in which certain recurring motifs and geometric patterns likely reflect the use of cohoba and long-term impact from its use. It is also possible that the Taino Sun lore and astronomical lore likely reflected a possibly similar belief in the role of the Sun, Moon, Stars, and the origins of humanity, culture heroes (like Deminian) and the creation myths. While there may only be a few superficial parallels between the two cultures, the Taino mythology, or the fragments of it available from Pane, indicate similar incest taboos and beliefs in bush spirits and possible anthropomorphic animals. However, without the amazing jaguar and other large feline predators, the island population of the indigenous Caribbean may have mythologically substituted the jaguar with a type of dog and other animals. This may explain some of the elaborate duhos with human and animal features. Moreover, the Taino may have also restricted at least some of the cohoba rituals to males, although we lack enough evidence to understand gender dynamics of Taino shamanism and the ingestion of hallucinogens.

Overall, Reichel-Dolmatoff's work reveals an important role played by yaje and other substances in Tukano ritual, society, and myth. The historical overview of Colombia's indigenous peoples indicates shared or similar practices, such as the Kogi and Muisca. The paye or shamans of the Tukano are, of course, products of specific historical, cultural, and geographic conditions. That said, their practice, background, and intellect suggest possible ways to interpret the Taino behiques of the pre-Columbian Antilles. A study of shamans, hallucinogens and jaguar transformation among coastal lowland populations in northern South America would be even better for our purposes. That said, without an animal comparable to the jaguar, one wonders how Taino beliefs in transformation and possibly perspectivism may have operated. Were there similar beliefs about the role of transforming into a type of dog that allowed one to violate social norms on sex and violence? And is Reichel-Dolmatoff too obsessed with applying a Freudian analysis emphasizing sex in every aspect of Tukano myth and ritual?

En Bas Saline

Kathleen Deagan's En Bas Saline: A Taino Town Before and After Columbus is a dry study of an important Taino town on the northern coast of Hispaniola. Possibly the site of La Navidad as well as the main settlement of cacique Guacanagaric, En Bas Saline's indigenous population appears to have been a Chican culture occupying an area of Meillacoid populations. Of course, due to the lack of adequate excavations across northern Haiti, the degree to which the Meillacoid and Chican ceramic styles really indicate cultural identity is unknown. Indeed, despite research at the site of En Bas Saline conducted since the 1980s, we still lack enough information about the nature of the site and if it really was the capital of Guacanagaric. However, analysis of ceramic remains, evidence of structures and the central mound and plaza, faunal remains, ornaments, tools, and postcontact artifacts collectively suggest the site was the settlement of a cacique. Lamentably, the exact nature of Taino sociality and the degree to which Taino cacicazgos were corporate chiefdoms or centered in an individual remains a debate. It is too early to say definitively what exactly was the basis for chiefly authority and to what extent they controlled or redistributed goods and the economy. It was also strange that Deagan did not find evidence of cemis or other artifacts associated with caciques. While evidence for some degree of stratification can be traced in the elite residences and an elite infant burial, it would seem that Guacangaric was a minor cacique compared to the well-known figures of Caonabo or Beheccio. 

The Indigenous Influence in Puerto Rican Spanish

Manuel Alvarez Nazario's El influjo indígena en el español de Puerto Rico is an important study and constant entry in the bibliographies of studies on the Taino legacy in the Caribbean. A short study using the existing corpus of known Taino lexicon and expressions in Puerto Rico and the Hispanic Caribbean, Alvarez Nazario extrapolates from the Island Carib and Garifuna language to glimpse at the deeper structure and evolution of the Taino tongue. Since the Island Carib and Garifuna language is, drawing on Taylor's research, an Arawakan language that survived through the Igneri women subjugated by Caribs, Alvarez Nazario believes it may be a reliable indicator on some of the features of the Taino language. Indeed, by drawing on data from linguistic studies of Garifuna, Igneri, Lokono and other Arawakan languages of South America, one can deduce some of the vocabulary and grammatical features of the Taino tongue. Unfortunately, however, the author seems to think the Taino language spread through a late migration into the Greater Antilles that supplanted or possibly conquered the earlier Igneri. Thus, like the later Carib conquerors, the Taino become an invasive force who may have defeated the Igneri and possibly even imposed naboria status on them. Needless to say, the evidence for this is lacking. It nonetheless reflects earlier scholarship in which linguistic and ceramic changes necessarily implied migration rather than local evolution or adaptation.

Despite the issue with the assumptions of migration and a possible "conquest" of the Igneri by the Taino, using the scholarship on Island Carib languages available since the 17th century enriches our understanding of the Taino language. These sources buttress Alvarez Nazario's identification of indigenismos in Puerto Rican Spanish with likely or possible explanations for changed in pronunciation as the words entered the Spanish vernacular. Indigenismos in the case of Puerto Rico, like the Dominican Republic and Cuba, tend to be most obvious with place names, references to everyday life, flora, fauna, and domestic architecture or instruments (yuca, casabe, cayos, canoa, batey, enagua, maraca, bohio, and conuco, for instance). Unsurprisingly, the material culture of the indigenous people survived long after the dissolution of the Taino sociopolitical order. Words reflecting this culture, which was adopted by the Spanish, Africans, and mixed-race progeny of all three groups left a permanent imprint in Puerto Rican Spanish. In the countryside especially, this legacy of the Taino language and culture is quite strong. Indeed, indigenismos from the Taino language even referring to forms of dress, weapons like the macana, and even eyes (macos in Puerto Rican Spanish) suggest indigenous vocabulary was possibly pervasive in other aspects of criollo life. Unfortunately, no surviving voabularios of the Taino language survive from the 1500s, although Fray Domingo de Vico was said to have composed one in the 1540s based on the language spoken in Hispaniola. 

The remainder of Alvarez Nazario's study gives multiple examples of how indigenismos were incorporated into the Spanish language. Additional suffixes and adaptations turned or adapted many local terms into verbs or new meanings in colonial and modern Puerto Rican Spanish. Indigenismos from other languages of the Americas also left an imprint, including Nahuatl, Carib, and South American Guajiro (ture, for stool, is supposedly derived from Guajiro). Overall, the indigenous influence profoundly shaped Puerto Rican Spanish as it provided the lexicon for the local features of land, flora, fauna, agriculture, peasant homesteads, and perhaps even the term jibaro. Even if the Taino really was no longer spoken by the end of the 16th century, survivors and their children laid the foundation for the Creole culture of our rural majority. Indeed, the linguistic evidence provides further support for the proponents of of Taino survival as some of the vocabulary, expressions, and toponyms were likely retained by those descending from the indigenous population. 

Girard and the Tainos

Although we have issues with Philippe Girard's scholarship on Haiti, this is a decent introduction to the history of the Taino. Except for the suggestion that ganja or marijuana was part of the cohoba ritual, Girard does a decent job covering the history of the Taino. Of course, accepting the demise of the Taino as an organized society after the Spanish conquest makes Girard a supporter of the Taino extinction narrative. 

Justin Elie and Indianist Music in Haiti

Currently reading Largey's Vodou Nation and found the chapter on Ludovic Lamothe and Justin Elie fascinating. Unfortunately, unlike Lamothe, it's much harder to find recordings of Elie's music on the internet, so I can't locate examples of Elie's use of stock exotica for his Indianist compositions that appealed to the US market. It's amazing, Elie's music reflected a strain of Haitian thought that reveres the indigenous people of Hispaniola as 'symbolic ancestors' and key figures in anti-colonial movements (a practice seen among elites, such as Nau's Caciques d'Haiti published in the 19th century or peasant armed resistance to the US Occupation naming themselves cacos after the caciques), but his music really had no authentic connection to the music of the pre-colonial inhabitants of Haiti. Furthermore, I am a little disappointed that I cannot locate recordings of his work that reflect the Afro-Caribbean and Vodou heritage of Haiti, except for "Legende Creole" (which Largey attributes to Haitian Vodou influences). Alas, if only I could locate more of his meringues. "Chants de la montagne" has some stereotypical "Indian" traits, while 'Legende Creole" is based on a Haitian children's song with Vodou references ("Zonbi Ban-n Mannan").

One of these days, I'll have to track down Elie's "Prayer at Eventide," "Nostalgie," Kiskaya and other works that were popular in New York. It's astonishing how reviews and promoters in New York actually seemed to believe Elie's music was grounded in years of research in Central and South America (Elie did indeed tour throughout the Caribbean before moving to New York, but never engaged in ethnographic research with indigenous groups). Regardless, Largey's research on this Indianist legacy in Haitian literature, intellectual thought, and music is useful for future studies of indigenism and indigenous revivalism elsewhere in the Caribbean. 

Of Cannibals and Kings

Neil Whitehead's Of Cannibals and Kings: Primal Anthropology in the Americas has been on our reading list for some time. A short book consisting of English translations of early Spanish sources on the indigenous Caribbean and an introductory essay by Whitehead, it is important for offering a new translation (based on the Italian) of Ramon Pané and a translation of Rodrigo de Navarrete and Rodrigo de Figueroa. Although Whitehead unconvincingly posits possibly "Taino" or Amerindian influences on Haitian Vodou and West Indian obeah, suggesting Damballa, zombi and perhaps even bokor may be at least in part derived from native Caribbean spirituality and religion, his essay raised a number of legitimate questions about the ways in which scholars have engaged in linguistic analysis of Pané's brief account. Moreover, the translation of Rodrigo de Navarrete's brief relation of the "Aruacas" (who appear to have been centered in the area of Guyana) provides an interesting description of indigenous South American "allies" of the Spanish. Indeed, if the category of caribe was a political rather than ethnic identifier, at least in how it was used by Columbus, Chanca, Figueroa and Navarrete, that dichotomy was clearly understood by indigenous actors who, like the Aruacas, appear to have used trade and alliances with the Spanish to expand their power and settlements against their caribe enemies. Even more intriguing is the unnamed morisco survivor of a shipwreck who lived for years among the Aruacas. He was one of the main informants of Navarrete and perhaps would have given his native hosts a more nuanced perspective on Castile and its history of aggression and expansion. Unfortuantely, Navarette did not share all of the details he learned about the Aruacas (Arawaks), but his brief relation indicates a culture in which astronomical knowledge and lore was important to the shamans. Indeed, similar astronomical lore appears to have been important for the "Carib" and "Taino" shaman class, who likewise played a pivotal role in the ceremonies using song to record history, genealogy, and the deeds of great men. 

Hunters of the Caribbean

I recall watching this old documentary on the Taino several years ago. In my memory, it was better than this, though we were even more ignorant of indigenous Caribbean history and cultures in those days. Nonetheless, this documentary is effective as a brief introduction. I would have chosen a different title and emphasize more of the agricultural practices of the Taino.