Historica Wiki
Historica Wiki
Advertisement
Taino

The Taíno were a Native American people who inhabited the Caribbean islands of Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, and the northern Lesser Antilles. The ancestors of the Taíno people migrated from South America and came into conflict with the Caribs of the southern Lesser Antilles, and, by the time of European contact on Christopher Columbus' arrival in the Caribbean in 1492, the Taíno were divided into several groups such as the Lucayans of the Bahamas and the Ciboney of central Cuba. The Taíno numbered up to 3 million people at the time of the Spanish Empire's arrival in the Caribbean during the Age of Discovery, and Columbus noted that the Taíno were a peaceful people who always traded with the Spanish, even for pottery shards and trinkets which the Spanish found useless. Columbus decided that the unarmed Taíno peoples would make "good servants", and from the late 15th to early 16th centuries, the Spanish conquered the Taíno chiefdoms and implemented a harsh system of slavery which decimated the population. As many Taínos were sent to work on plantations and in gold mines, there were few left to farm, leading to widespread starvation. In addition, European diseases wiped out much of the Taíno population, with a smallpox epidemic in Hispaniola from 1518 to 1519 killing 90% of the Taíno population. The remaining Taíno intermarried with the Europeans and their African slaves, a three-way admixture which came to define most Caribbean genealogies. Since 1840, activists worked to recreate a Taíno identity in the Caribbean, and the Civil Rights movement and the American Indian Movement of the 1960s led to many Puerto Ricans and Puerto Rican-Americans identifying as "Taíno" to reclaim their heritage. Up to 61% of Puerto Ricans, 30% of Dominicans, and 33% of Cubans have Taíno ancestry, and Taíno placenames such as Haiti, Havana, Batabano, Camaguey, Jarabacoa, Baracoa, and Bayamo survive today.

Advertisement