Languages of the Pre-Columbian Antilles

11. Antillean Languages: An Afterview

In the previous ten chapters we have attempted to describe the pre-Columbian languages of the Greater and Lesser Antilles as seen through the surviving data, providing examples of the lesser known ones—Ciguayo, Macorís, Guanahatabey , and, particularly, Taíno—and referring the interested reader to additional materials on Lesser Antillean Eyeri/Island Carib/Kalíphuna/Garífuna and the Carib Karina language. We have also presented what we feel are the most important ¤ndings of archaeological work in the islands through 2001 as they relate to things-linguistic, and have, in Chapter 1 and the References section, referred the reader to additional sources on the reconstruction of Antillean prehistory . We have used the language data not as language data per se, but, as we have shown, as a comparative tool to determine if the combination of linguistic and archaeological data might lead us toward a hypothesis concerning the origins and movements of the Antillean peoples. Some in the ¤elds of linguistics and archaeology may not agree with our suggestions or conclusions , but the hypothesis is one which needs, and could readily have, further testing. Future researchers will perhaps ®esh it out, adding what needs to be added, pruning where pruning may be called for, and re¤ning the process of clari¤cation. At the time of Spanish intervention there were seven different speech communities in the Antilles: (1) Ciboney Taíno in Hispaniola (central and southern Haiti), all of central Cuba, all but the southern Lucayan Islands, and Jamaica; (2) Macorís, in two dialects, in the Dominican Republic section of northern Hispaniola; (3) Ciguayo on the Samaná Peninsula of northeastern Hispaniola; (4) Guanahatabey in Pinar del Río province of far eastern Cuba; (5) Classic Taíno in Hispaniola (primarily the section which is now the Dominican Republic ), Puerto Rico, Vieques and the Virgin Islands, and in the Leeward Islands ; (6) Kalíphuna in the Windward Islands; and (7) Karina Carib in the Windwards. 11 Antillean Languages An Afterview Fig. 8. Antillean Migrations Our reconstruction of events in the pre-Columbian Antilles, graphically shown on the map in Figure 8, encompasses ¤ve major physical migrations of peoples into the islands, commencing about 4000 b.c. and completing themselves about the year 1500–1600 a.d. Two additional migrations mentioned later in the chapter—a Huecan and a Meillacan—may have taken place, but, while archaeological and linguistic data tell us that something quite unusual was going on, we are not at all sure of the nature of the phenomena in question nor of the fact that the phenomena were caused by migrations of outside peoples. The ¤ve certain and two possible migrations are what might be called External Migrations, inasmuch as the peoples involved originated outside the Antillean region and brought their new cultures into an arena in which they had not earlier been found. There were also what can be called Internal Migrations within the islands, involving the spread of peoples and cultures already there from their homelands into other parts of the Antilles. In this afterview of the data and its implications each type of migration will be handled separately. References and substantiating data will be found in the individual earlier chapters and have purposely not been repeated here in order to present a perhaps more concise, clearer view of Antillean linguistic prehistory. EXTERNAL MIGRATIONS The First Migration (ca. 4000 b.c.) Both archaeological and linguistic data lead us to believe that the ¤rst migration into the Antilles came prior to 4000 b.c., when the people ancestral to the Ciguayo, migrating from the coast of Belize-Honduras, discovered and settled the then uninhabited Greater Antilles. The Ciguayo language of 1492 was a language whose closest parallels are with the Tolan languages of the Honduran coast of Central America, and glottochronological data suggest a separation of ancestral Ciguayo from the Tolan mainstream in Central America well before 3000 b.c. The language data we have indicate a Ciguayo presence only on Hispaniola in 1492, but archaeological data indicate an earlier presence in Cuba and Puerto Rico as well, with a probable presence in the Leeward Islands of the northern Lesser Antilles. Archaeologically de¤ned as the Casimiroid Tradition , their limited numbers and isolated geographical location at the time of European contact—inhabiting only the Samaná Peninsula of far northeastern Hispaniola—indicates a remnant population of a once larger and more widespread group, forced into its 1492 geographical cul-de-sac by pressure from later more...