T.
1014 T Taínos classic taíno sPiritual BelieFs and Practices For the Classic Taínos, every living thing in creation, not just people and animals, but also trees, rivers, and rocks, had a goeiz, a soul, that sought to live in reciprocal balance with all the other beings. When a living being of this world died, it became an opia (or hupia), a living being of the spirit realm, the realm of the night. Some opias became cemís (or zemis)—special spirit helpers, spirit doubles. The opias inhabited caves by day, while the Taínos stayed in their bohios (homes) by night. The Taínos and the spirits, then, each inhabited their own realm—night and day—sharing one world, one vision, and interacting with each other through a complex series of rituals and artistic reminders of their need for each other—rituals and reminders that were an integral part of nearly every moment of each Taíno’s life from birth to the moment he or she passed on to the spirit realm. The Taínos are the “Indians” who were living on Kiskeya (Hispaniola, which is shared today by the Dominican Republic and Republic of Haiti), Borinquen (Puerto Rico), Cuba, Jamaica, the Turks and Caicos, the Lucayos (the Bahamas), and the Virgin Islands when Christopher Columbus and his three small ships full of Europeans first arrived in the Caribbean in 1492. (The Taínos used to be called Island Arawaks until archaeologist Irving Rouse pointed out what a misnomer it was, for the Taínos and mainland Arawaks are only very distantly related kin [see Arawak and Carib Religions ; Indigenous Religions].) Although there were once several million Taínos on the core island of Hispaniola alone—demographers have argued for five hundred years over numbers that range from less than a million to twenty million for the Taíno population on Hispaniola in 1492 (see Cook 1993; Deagan 1990)—a myth arose that the Taínos were wiped out within a few generations of the Europeans’ arrival . It’s true that traditional Taíno society was dismantled by the Spanish conquest and colonization, with their attendant battles, plagues, and abuses, but significant numbers of Taínos survived in the peripheral regions of the islands. They survived even in the very midst of the Spanish ranches, plantations, towns, and cities, where they and their children “passed” as Spaniards. Although no one in the modern Caribbean speaks Taíno or lives exactly like the Classic Taínos did, Taínos have made a strong mark on the faces and cultures of the modern-day peoples of the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and southern Cuba, where the original Taíno population was most dense. There is a Taíno revival movement based out of New York/New Jersey and Puerto Rico that is growing stronger every year. Multifaceted, the principal goals of those connected to the movement are to research, compile, and recover Taíno language and culture and to rekindle Nativist pride in all those of Taíno background. The word taíno appears to be a shortened version of nita íno, which is what the indigenous people of the region called out when European ships approached. Perhaps they meant to imply by this that they were “nobles,” for that is the word’s most frequently accepted meaning. It is more likely, however, that they meant they were “not cannibals,” which is another of the meanings for the word “nitaíno,” and it is the way in which most Spaniards who followed Columbus to the region used the term in the extant histories and documents. One thing we know for certain is that Taíno was not a collective name that these indigenous people had for themselves. Rather, they appear to have identified themselves by individual yukayeke (population centers or villages) and by kacikazgo , the extent of the region under the control of a particular kacike (cacique, chief). Most archaeologists and linguists today concur that there were six to eight different indigenous groups just on the island of Hispaniola alone in 1492, each with its own language and slightly different customs, but that they used the language of the most populous and advanced group, the Taíno, as a lingua franca. Taíno spiritual beliefs and practices appear to have been relatively uniform and widespread, too. Caribbean Indigenous Peopling Sequence Archaeologists have identified a series of migratory movements that brought different indigenous peoples to the Caribbean over many...
OR
