Caribbean Tribes and Cultures — Part 1

The oldest part of the story is known only from excavation. At Banwari Trace in Trinidad, archaeologists found heaps of shells and a human burial about seven thousand years old, among the oldest in the Caribbean. The earliest islanders are named after the places their tools were first identified — Casimiroid after Casimira in the Dominican Republic, Ortoiroid after Ortoire in Trinidad. They left stone and shell tools and middens, heaps of the shells and bones of their meals, and no pottery.

Pottery came with the people archaeologists call Saladoid, named after Saladero, a site on the lower Orinoco River in Venezuela. From about 500 BC they moved up the island chain as far as Puerto Rico and Hispaniola. Their pottery is painted white on red, and among it are flat clay griddles of the kind the Taíno later used to bake cassava bread. The Taíno whom Columbus met were their descendants.

The Taíno lived in villages under caciques — a title that could be held by women — with a central plaza and a batey ball court. They farmed cassava on mounded fields called conucos, which drained well and held moisture, and they carved zemis, figures of the spirits they honoured. Columbus's log for 13 October 1492 describes their canoes, each cut from a single tree trunk, some holding one man and some forty or forty-five. The friar Ramón Pané, who lived among the Taíno of Hispaniola from 1494, wrote down their beliefs and stories — the first book written in the Americas by a European.

Cassava fed the islands. Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, who lived on Hispaniola and published his General and Natural History of the Indies in 1535, describes the bitter root, whose juice is a deadly poison. It was grated, the pulp squeezed in a long woven press, the cibucán, and the dry flour baked on a clay griddle into round, flat loaves of cassava bread.

The Kalinago of the Lesser Antilles were described at length by French missionaries in the 1600s. Raymond Breton, who lived among them on Dominica, published a Carib–French dictionary in 1665. He and Charles de Rochefort, whose history of the Antilles appeared in 1658, record that Kalinago men and women used different words for many things. Rochefort gives the Kalinago's own account of why: their ancestors had come from the mainland, killed the men of the people who held the islands before them, and kept the women, who went on speaking their own language.

The islanders' words are in everyday English: hurricane, canoe, barbecue, hammock, tobacco, maize, iguana, cassava, savanna. A genetic study in Puerto Rico in 2003 found Native American mitochondrial DNA in about 61% of the people sampled. Taíno and Kalinago identity is kept today, and the Kalinago Territory in Dominica has its own chief.

The Caribbean islands were settled thousands of years before 1492. The book traces the peoples who came, one after another, and the Taíno way of life that grew out of them. The Taíno and their neighbours were also the first peoples of the Americas described in writing by Europeans — by Christopher Columbus, by the physician Diego Álvarez Chanca, and by the friars who came after them.

The first islanders

According to the book, the first known people in the Caribbean, called the Ciboney or Guanahatabey, settled in Cuba and other islands around 5000 BC. They were hunter-gatherers: they hunted animals and gathered plants, and lived in small groups that moved from place to place. In the Archaic Age (about 4000–200 BC) other groups arrived, which archaeologists call the Casimiroid and Ortoiroid. They brought polished stone tools and better ways of fishing. What they left behind — stone scrapers and blades, tools in caves and rock shelters, and great heaps of discarded shells called shell middens — shows how much they lived from the sea.

The Ceramic Age

Pottery reached the islands around 500 BC. The book calls this the start of the Ceramic Age. The Saladoid people came from the Orinoco River, in what is now Venezuela, and settled on islands such as Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and Hispaniola, which its people called Ayiti. They were farmers and potters, known for ceramics painted white on red. By around 1000 AD their descendants, the Taíno, had become the main people of the Greater Antilles — Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola and Puerto Rico.

How the Taíno lived

The Taíno lived in villages under leaders called caciques, a title that could be held by women. Each village had a central plaza and a batey, a ball court. They farmed cassava on mounded fields called conucos, which drained well and held moisture. They carved zemis, figures of the spirits they honoured. Columbus's log for 13 October 1492 describes their canoes, each cut from a single tree trunk, some holding one man and some forty or forty-five. The friar Ramón Pané, who lived among the Taíno of Hispaniola from 1494, wrote down their beliefs and stories. It was the first book written in the Americas by a European.

Their words live on

Taíno words are part of everyday English: hurricane, canoe, barbecue, hammock, tobacco, maize, iguana, cassava, savanna. A genetic study in Puerto Rico in 2003 found Native American ancestry, passed down through mothers, in about 61% of the people sampled. Taíno and Kalinago identity is kept today, and the Kalinago Territory in Dominica has its own chief.

Two things worth knowing

• Hurricane comes from huracán, a Taíno word for the great storm. It came into English through Spanish.
• Taíno ball courts at Caguana in Puerto Rico are still standing, lined with carved stone slabs.

The Caribbean is a sea full of islands between North and South America. People lived on these islands for thousands of years before any ship came from Europe.

The first islanders

The book tells us the first known people reached Cuba and the nearby islands around 5000 BC. Later groups came, too. They did not farm much. They hunted, fished and gathered shellfish.

• The toolmaker made scrapers, blades and points from stone, bone and shell.
• The shell gatherer collected clams and other shellfish. Archaeologists find big piles of their old shells, called shell middens.
• Caves and rock shelters were places where they stayed, and left their tools behind.

The canoe people

Around 500 BC new people paddled north from the Orinoco River in South America, where Venezuela is now. They settled on islands like Puerto Rico and Hispaniola. The Taíno people came from them.

• The canoe maker hollowed out a whole tree trunk to make a canoe. Some canoes held one person. Some held forty.
• The potter made pots painted with white designs on red.
• The farmer grew cassava, maize and sweet potatoes on round mounds of earth called conucos.
• The carver made zemis — figures of stone, wood or shell that stood for the spirits the people honoured.
• The singer led the areíto, a song and dance that told the people's stories.

Animals

• Fish and shellfish came from the sea all around.
• The iguana is a big lizard. "Iguana" is a Taíno word.

Things we still use

We still use many of their words: canoe, hammock, hurricane, barbecue and cassava. A hammock was the bed they slept in, hung between two posts.