Talking Taino: Caribbean Natural History from a Native Perspective

8. Gone Fishin' (2004)

8 Gone Fishin’ Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat drinking beer all day. —Anonymous Fishing is a social experience. Even if you don’t fish with other people, some part of your day fishing will involve socializing. In our culture we have the bar at the marina, but every culture has some form of this. When working at an archaeological site on a tiny island off the north coast of Haiti, a stream of Haitian fishing sloops visited us each afternoon. The fishermen would tie up to the dock, build a lean-to to shield themselves from the sun, and hang out. They ate, drank, went to the bathroom on the island, smoked, and told stories. So a day of fishing was really a morning of fishing and an afternoon of being with friends.This was sufficient to make a living even in the over-fished waters of present-day Haiti. Imagine the ease of feeding oneself in an environment with a natural abundance of resources, such as the landscape of the prehistoric Lucayan Islands. You can imagine theTaíno Indians fishing in much this same way. Women were often responsible for horticulture, gathering shellfish and wild plants, and preparing meals. Fishing was likely the major male activity in this culture. Men fished and, we can hypothesize, socialized. Fish were a symbol of life and nourishment in Taíno mythology and the most important animal food to the Taínos. The Taíno mostly fished in waters on the lee side of islands and off small cays.This is also where most of the archaeological sites are located. Reconstructing the behaviors of peoples who lived in the past requires a complicated sequence of logic and inference. (This is why archaeologists spend more 48 / Chapter 8 years in college than do medical doctors!) On the one hand, we often possess written descriptions of activities that were practiced when Europeans arrived on the scene, along with the names of particular animals that were of importance to those making these written records. On the other, we have archaeological materials that include various tools that have been preserved and the bones of animals that have survived hundreds of years of burial in archaeological sites. There are numerous problems with assigning a particular use to a particular object (which often requires an analysis of form as well as use-wear evidence). Moreover, our samples are only subsets of the range of materials that were used in the past. For example, large conch shells were typically discarded on the beach so the number, size, and characteristics of the conch shells excavated in a site will not reflect the full range of conch use. In sum, we are left trying to piece together puzzles in which many of the pieces are missing. Bartolomé de las Casas reported that the Lucayan Islanders used bow and arrow to capture fish. The Taíno word for bow was baira. This technique was well adapted to the calm, clear waters of these islands. It is likely that spears were used in the same way. There is also evidence for the use of hook and line. Several fishhooks made from the whelk (West Indian top shell) were recovered from the Anse à la Gourde site in Guadeloupe, and a single broken specimen was excavated from the MC-6 site on Middle Caicos. Wooden fishhooks have been recovered from a cave site on Crooked Island in the Bahamas. If wooden hooks were used, then it is difficult to assess how important this technique was because they are not likely to have survived hundreds of years in the soils of open-air sites. Another clue may be various shells that could have been used as lures or “spinners.” For example, modified flamingo tongue snail shells have been recovered from archaeological sites with a rough hole or holes that would facilitate their attachment to a cord. These are often considered jewelry (and called pendants), yet the expedient hole or holes TAÍNO WORD TRANSLATION Baira Bow (of a bow and arrow) Cabuya Fishing line Jico (or Hico) Rope/cord to hang hammock Carobei (or Sarobey) Cotton Henequen Sisal Potala Stone net weight Guaicán or Pez reverso Remora Gone Fishin’ / 49 indicate that less care was given to making this artifact than was used in making...