Talking Taino: Caribbean Natural History from a Native Perspective

Preface

Preface The gray beard (Bill, not Betsy) is telling. Combined, the two of us have spent forty-five years conducting archaeological research in the Caribbean. Bill started in 1978, and Betsy in 1992. Over the years we have directed research projects in Trinidad, Grenada, St. Lucia, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba, Jamaica, Grand Cayman, the Turks & Caicos Islands, and throughout the Bahamas . We have also had the good fortune to visit many of the other islands in the Caribbean. Our experiences have been remarkable. We’ve walked hundreds of miles of Caribbean coastline, dodged drug smugglers, camped on beaches miles from humanity , seen the night sky in the total absence of other light, scuba dived in pristine waters, searched for glass fishing floats on beaches that no one ever visits, and enjoyed the wonders of nature that surrounded us. Most of all, wherever we went, we were welcomed by the friendly people who today live in these islands. It is an understatement to say that we were welcomed with open arms; it is more accurate to say that they adopted us! The main reason we made these trips was to study the lifeways of the peoples who lived in the Caribbean before the arrival of Christopher Columbus. Sadly, harsh treatment and European diseases extinguished their culture, a culture we today call Taíno (also known as Arawak). In an effort to repay our debt to the past and the present we began writing a series of short essays called “Talking Taíno.” The bottom line for each essay was showing the relationship between theTaínos of the past and the present natural history of the islands. Our goal has been to bring the past to life and to highlight commonalities between past and present. We did so by emphasizing Taíno words and beliefs about the natural world. Most of the essays have a Taíno word list and English translation. The most comprehensive discussion of Caribbean languages was published by Julian Granberry and Gary Vescelius (2004). It should be noted that Taíno was not a written language, and thus there are a variety of spellings for the same word (e.g., zemí and cemí, Xaragua and Jaragua).The main issue is finding the letters that appropriately express particular pronunciations. In this regard, Granberry and Vescelius do an excellent job of capturing the proper pronunciation of Taíno words. Nevertheless, we have chosen some spellings included in Spanish publications that we feel better capture the Taíno language. We encourage anyone who is interested in talkingTaíno to consult the phonetic spellings provided in the book by Granberry and Vescelius, because the Spanish spellings for these words often yield pronunciations that would be spelled differently in English. For example, gua is pronounced wa; and the consonant c can have a hard or soft pronunciation (thus, conuco is pronounced konuko, while cemí is pronounced seme). Speaking the language requires specific knowledge of translation and pronunciation. We initially wanted to call this collection “Buffalo Sojourn.” The first meaning was a play on words that we hoped reggae fans would recognize immediately (“Buffalo Soldier”). A key line from Bob Marley’s song is, “If you know your history, then you will know where you’re coming from.” Our intent in writing these essays was to provide a more detailed introduction to the natural history of the islands. There was also a more personal connection. We began work on several archaeological research projects in theTurks & Caicos Islands in 1989, and were invited to Jamaica by Mr. Tony Clarke in 1998. One of our first (nonarchaeological) discoveries was that many of the feral donkeys that we had seen wandering the streets of Grand Turk had been airlifted to Jamaica, and were now thriving in the lush pastures of Tony’s Paradise Park dairy farm. Tony was looking for an archaeologist to investigate the site on his property, and heard of us during the process of arranging the transfer of donkeys. We have worked for donkeys in the past, but this is the first time one got us a job! Several years later we encountered many new residents. Fidel Castro presented the prime minister of Jamaica with twelve water buffalos as a special gift in recognition of their many years of cooperation. This was a very practical gift, and it shows that heads of state are not always motivated by pomp and circumstance . But no water buffalo would want to live on the...