![]() Their language is considered to have belonged to the Arawak language family, the languages of which were historically present throughout the Caribbean, and much of Central and South America. The Taíno people, or Taíno culture, has been classified by some authorities as belonging to the Arawak. Īccording to José Barreiro, a direct translation of the word "Taíno" signified "men of the good". If taíno was being used here to denote ethnicity, then it was used by the Spanish sailors to indicate that they were "not Carib", and gives no evidence of self-identification by the native people. The sailors may have been saying the only word they knew in a native Caribbean tongue, or perhaps they were indicating to the "commoners" on the shore that they were taíno, i.e., important people, from elsewhere and thus entitled to deference. Ĭontrarily, according to Peter Hulme, most translators appear to agree that the word taino was used by Columbus's sailors, not by the islanders who greeted them, although there is room for interpretation. Oliver writes that the natives of Borinquén, who had been captured by the Caribs of Guadeloupe and who wanted to escape on Spanish ships to return home to Puerto Rico, used the term to indicate that they were the "good men", as opposed to the Caribs. The word tayno or taíno, with the meaning "good" or "prudent", was mentioned twice in an account of Columbus's second voyage by his physician, Diego Álvarez Chanca, while in Guadeloupe. No 16th-century Spanish documents use this word to refer to the tribal affiliation or ethnicity of the natives of the Greater Antilles. The term nitaino or nitayno, from which "Taíno" derived, referred to an elite social class, not to an ethnic group. Taíno is not a universally accepted denomination-it was not the name this people called themselves originally, and there is still uncertainty about their attributes and the boundaries of the territory they occupied. The people who inhabited most of the Greater Antilles when Europeans arrived in the New World have been denominated as Taínos, a term coined by Constantine Samuel Rafinesque in 1836. They face difficulties, as European accounts cannot be read as objective evidence of a native Caribbean social reality. Various scholars have addressed the question of who were the native inhabitants of the Caribbean islands to which Columbus voyaged in 1492. Reconstruction of a Taíno village in Chorro de Maíta, Cuba While some communities claim an unbroken cultural heritage to the old Taíno peoples, others are revivalist communities who seek to incorporate Taíno culture into their lives. Many Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Dominicans have Taíno mitochondrial DNA, showing that they are descendants through the direct female line. However, many people today identify as Taíno or claim Taíno descent, most notably in subsections of the Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Dominican nationalities. Some anthropologists and historians have claimed that the Taíno were exterminated centuries ago or they gradually went extinct by blending into a shared identity with African and Spanish cultures. Taíno religion centered on the worship of zemis. They lived in agricultural societies ruled by caciques with fixed settlements and a matrilineal system of kinship and inheritance. The Taíno spoke a dialect of the Arawakan language group. The Lucayan branch of the Taíno were the first New World peoples encountered by Christopher Columbus, in the Bahama Archipelago on October 12, 1492. At the time of European contact in the late 15th century, they were the principal inhabitants of most of what is now Cuba, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Haiti, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, and the northern Lesser Antilles. The Taíno were a historic indigenous people of the Caribbean whose culture has been continued today by Taíno descendant communities and Taíno revivalist communities. Lokono, Kalinago, Garifuna, Igneri, Guanahatabey Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Bahamas ![]()
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