Talking Taino: Caribbean Natural History from a Native Perspective

18. Birds of a Feather (2005)

18 Birds of a Feather [The men] were very anxious to have women, and on many occasions while it rained, they had sought to find traces of their women, but they were not able to find any news [of them]. But that day when they washed, they saw fall from some trees . . . a certain kind of persons, who were neither men nor women, nor had the sexual parts of either male or female. After they had captured the creatures, they took counsel about how they could make them women . . . They sought a bird whose name is Inriri . . . This bird bores holes in trees, [and in our language is called a woodpecker]. They took the women without sexual parts . . . and they tied their hands and feet. Then they took this bird and tied it to the bodies. Thinking that the creatures were logs, the bird began to do the work to which it was accustomed, boring open and pecking away at the place where the female’s private is usually found. In this way, the Indians had women. —Ramón Pané, 1496; translated by Antonio Stevens-Arroyo (1988) The Spanish recorded about forty Taíno names for birds. It is likely that there were many more named species, but that these did not catch the attention of the chroniclers. Some names were recorded because the birds were similar to those in Europe, so it has been possible to use the published descriptions to decipher their modern common and scientific names. Other birds were described and their names recorded because they were novel. For example, the insectivorous smoothbilled ani, a long-tailed, glossy black cuckoo with an extraordinary bill that is deep at the base with a high and thin ridge on top (“culmen”), still bears its Taíno name (ani). Finally, some birds entered the lexicon through their prominent roles in Taíno mythology.The best example is the industrious woodpecker (inriri). By fashioning women from creatures without genitalia, this bird achieved everlasting esteem in the hearts and minds of men. Indeed, birds with long pointed beaks are relatively common in Taíno symbolic arts. Oviedo claimed that there were “so many different species of parrots” that it would be tedious to describe them all. The Spanish recorded two Taíno words for parrot: higuaca for the larger amazon parrot and jajabi for a smaller parrot, per- Birds of a Feather / 101 haps referring to parakeets. The beautiful feathers of parrots were an important part of Taíno vestments. The Taínos made feathered capes and crowns and used brightly colored feathers for other decorative purposes. A common type of stone pendant has both horizontally and vertically drilled holes. The string for suspending the pendant passed through the horizontal hole, and feathers were inserted into the vertical holes at the top and bottom of the pendant. These objects and feathers were traded widely through theTaíno realm. Although there are no native flocks of macaws left in the West Indies, they used to brighten the Taíno skies and their feathers were the most valuable of all. Macaws were called guacamayo by the Taíno. While excavating sites on Middle Caicos in 2000 we lived in the two rooms of the Vera Hamilton Elementary School in Bambarra. True to his morning routine Keegan fixed a cup of coffee and sat on the front porch to watch the sunrise. It might have been just like every other morning if not for the visitors of the previous day. A representative of the Darwin Initiative (United Kingdom) and the director of the NationalTrust had visited them to consider adding the trail to MC-6 and the south coast to the Crossing Path trail and to look into the possibility of converting the schoolhouse into an interpretation center for tourists (the interpretation center was officially opened in 2006). They were very excited when they arrived because on the previous day they had seen a bee hummingbird on North Caicos. The male TAÍNO WORD TRANSLATION Ani Smooth-billed ani Inriri Woodpecker Higuaca Amazon parrot Jajabi Small parrot (parakeet) Guacamayo Macaw Guani Bee hummingbird Guacarigua or Hummingbird zum-zum Curua Cormorant Maubeca Heron Yaguasa Great blue heron Tujuy Coot Sora Sora Querequete Nighthawk Yaboa Night heron 102 / Chapter 18 of this species is the smallest bird in the world. These birds had not been reported in the islands for many years, although Dr. Steadman...