Myths and Realities of Caribbean History

Myth 3. Columbus Met Arawaks in the Northern Caribbean

Myth 3 Columbus Met Arawaks in the Northern Caribbean Generations of schoolchildren in the Anglophone Caribbean have been taught that the native peoples encountered by Christopher Columbus in Cuba,Hispaniola,Jamaica,Puerto Rico,and the Bahamas were Arawaks (Black 1983; Dookhan 2006; Ashdown and Humphreys 1988). However, archaeological and linguistic data indicate that the Amerindians who extensively settled in the northern Caribbean at the time of Spanish contact were very different from the peoples of South America whom we today call Arawaks.  It is impossible to write about the past without assigning names to the peoples about whom we write.Over the years a variety of names have been used to designate the precolonial peoples of the Americas. Unfortunately, the names that were selected have in some cases led to confusion regarding cultural heritage and ethnic identity. The name Arawak is one that has resulted in such significant confusion that archaeologists working in the region have now abandoned the name as it specifically relates to the Caribbean. Origins of the Word Arawak In order to recognize the substantial cultural differences between Arawak societies in mainland South America and the peoples of the northern Caribbean at the time of Spanish contact, Caribbean archaeologists now use the name Taínos in reference to the latter (Figure 3.1). This term relates specifically to natives who lived in the northern Caribbean from A.D. 1200 to 1500 and who had evolved from the Ostionoids. Although the names Taínos and Arawaks have been used interchangeably (Gilmore et al. 2003), from all accounts they were two distinct ethnic/cultural groups: the former located in northeastern Figure 3.1. The Taínos in the Caribbean at the time of Spanish contact. (Adapted from Rouse, The Taínos. Used by permission.) Columbus Met Arawaks in the Northern Caribbean / 51 South America, while the latter occupied much of the Greater Antilles and the Bahamas at the time of Columbus. In fact, neither Columbus nor any of his contemporaries came across the word Arawak (Olsen 1974). Essentially, the word Arawak does not appear in the literature until the exploration of the Guianas began in the late 1500s, almost a century after the arrival of Columbus in the New World. Sir Walter Raleigh, the famed English explorer, identified the Arawaks and at least four other Indian groups when he visited Trinidad in 1595. Centuries later, in 1894, Juan Lopez de Velasco noted the presence of people who called themselves Arawaks on the Guiana coast, and commented that a group of them had “intruded” on Trinidad. The Arawaks of Trinidad have long ceased to be an identifiable ethnic group, although the Santa Rosa Carib community based in Arima,Trinidad, is purportedly the product of the mixing of several native groups, including the Arawaks. However, there are numerous Arawak villages in Guyana, Suriname, northern Brazil, and French Guiana to this day (Carlin and Arends 2002; Martijn Vandenbel 2007, personal communication). In the past, some scholars have commented on certain linguistic similarities between these native peoples of South America and those encountered by Columbus in the northern Caribbean. In 1871, for instance, Daniel Brinton , after studying a few word lists that survived in the Greater Antilles with the modern language of the Arawaks in the Guianas, came to the conclusion that the Amerindians in the Greater Antilles also conversed in the language spoken by the Arawaks. He applied the name Island-Arawak to the Antilleans in order to distinguish them from the peoples of the mainland. Unfortunately , this distinction was lost and the peoples of the Caribbean came to be known simply as Arawaks (Carlin and Arends 2002; Vandenbel 2007, personal communication). Subsequent authors such as Sven Lovén (1935) have demonstrated a preference for Insular Arawak or the Island-Arawak (Reid 1994). Linguistic and Cultural Differences between the Taínos and the Arawaks The Taínos, who inhabited the northern Caribbean at contact, spoke a different language and were culturally distinct from the South American Arawaks. At a general level, the languages of the Taínos and the Arawaks share enough similarities to be classified as members of the Arawakan language family (Keegan 1992). However, this is not surprising as the languages of the Taínos, Arawaks, and Island-Caribs all originated from the Arawak family of languages , which extended from the Upper Amazon Basin to Venezuela, the Guianas, and the West Indies (Figure 3.2). But the differences...