Documenting the Myth of Taino Extinction
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KACIKE: Journal of Caribbean Amerindian History and Anthropology ISSN 1562-5028 Special Issue edited by Lynne Guitar NEW DIRECTIONS IN TAINO RESEARCH http://www.kacike.org/Current.html Documenting the Myth of Taíno Extinction1 Dr. Lynne Guitar I am an historian and anthropologist. My are relegated to a few items of food and interests are the Dominican people and “common” things used by campesinos, to their culture. For my doctoral dissertation, a few dozen Taíno words and phrases, I studied how this fascinating culture and to a plethora of Taíno place names. began to develop. In the process of There is also a confusing range of researching my dissertation, I discovered supposedly Indian skin colors, such as many little studied documents. I am going “indio claro” and “indio oscuro,” that have to share some of them with you today. I little, if anything, to do with bloodlines. am going to show you how, using The color categories have been in historical and anthropological methods, I common use since the Trujillo Era, when ask questions of documents, of the the concept was re-initiated as part of the people who left us those documents, and dictator’s program to “Dominicanize” the of the particular situations under which country—to distinguish Dominicans from they wrote the documents—in this way I Haitians. discovered the origins of many of As in other Latin American Hispaniola’s myths. We are going to start countries that were once Spanish with something very familiar. colonies, the island’s indigenous peoples, For the past 510 years, because of the Taínos, are set upon a pedestal of the the “discovery” of Hispaniola and its past—they are identified as frozen in a colonization by Spaniards, residents of particular pre-Columbian and early today’s Dominican Republic have Columbian time frame and highly admired maintained an image of themselves as as part of the island’s unique past. As in “Spaniards.” Spanish heroes have been other Latin American countries, to be glorified in all aspects of Dominican Indian in the present Dominican era history that are taught from pre- means to be backward, rustic, gullible, or Kindergarten through the university level, even feeble minded. Dominicans deny and Spanish cultural elements have been that Taínos survived the Spanish glorified in Dominican architecture, conquest, deny that they had the oh-so- paintings, and literature. The recognized human ability to change and adapt to new Native Indian elements in modern situations like the arrival of strangers. Dominican identity, history, and culture Dr. Lynne Guitar - Documenting the Myth of Taíno Extinction -____________________________ 2 Figure 1 This is a Taíno cave guardian sculpture in today’s Los Haitses National Park. Images like these, frozen in stone, frozen in time, are the most vivid Taíno images in the minds of most people today. Yet the Taínos whom Christopher answer, easy to compute, is nine months Columbus discovered in the Bahamas, on after Columbus’s ships landed in the Cuba, and on Hispaniola during his first Caribbean. voyage were eager to exchange foods, Can you imagine any sailors of any drinking water, parrots, and gilded jewelry nation or era, after a month at sea, not for the beads, little mirrors, and red hats taking advantage of a welcoming party that Columbus had brought as trade that includes “naked” women with, goods. They also exchanged something apparently, none of the sexual else—their genes. prohibitions that were so integral a part of I jokingly ask my students, noting the lives of Catholic Spaniards? Those first that they do not need advanced math were two of the first myths that arose nor psychic powers to figure it out: “When about the Taínos, that they went naked were the first mestizos born?” The and that they had no sexual prohibitions. Figure 2 Illustration, Histoire Naturelle des Indes: The Drake Manuscript in the Pierpont Morgan Library. © 2002, Lynne Guitar KACIKE: The Journal of Caribbean Amerindian History and Anthropology http://www.kacike.org Columbus and all the other twine, would be dreadfully ashamed if the chroniclers of the era wrote that the twine were to slip off in public. Indians went naked. They often added The belief that the Taínos had no that the Indians did not cover their sexual prohibitions cost at least 39 “shameful parts.” Spaniards their lives. Columbus had to Think about the term “naked.” It’s a leave 39 men behind on the island of Eurocentric term that means not to be Hispaniola when his flagship, the Santa “dressed,” not to be covered with cloth. María, sank on a reef on Christmas Eve After describing the Taínos’ nakedness, in 1492. When he returned a year later, the Spanish chroniclers went on to with seventeen ships loaded with describe the Taínos’ elaborate arm and Spaniards eager for the gold they leg bands, tattoos and painted believed abounded in “The Indies,” they adornments, headdresses, necklaces, found the rotting corpses of their earrings, and bracelets, the caciques’ massacred countrymen. Columbus’s ally, (chiefs’) elaborate belts, masks, and the Cacique Guacanagarí, explained as feathered capes, and the naguas--finely best he could—excluding himself from woven cotton “skirts”--that some of the any blame: All of the Spaniards who had Taíno women wore. That’s a lot of stayed behind, he said, were given clothing and accoutrements for a female companions. This was standard supposedly naked people! (The women’s procedure among the Taínos and other naguas, by the way, were more loincloths Indian peoples, who appear to have than skirts, for they did not hide the known that it improved the gene pool. In women’s buttocks and were not meant to particular, visiting dignitaries were given hide their pubic areas, either. Like today’s female companions, which demonstrates Western women wear wedding bands, that the Taínos held the Spanish the naguas indicated that the women who newcomers in high esteem—at first. The wore them were married, and the nobler a Spaniards, of course, were not familiar woman was, the longer was the nagua with the norms of Taíno society. They that she wore.) appear to have assumed, because they Like the concept of nakedness, the were given a number of women to enjoy chroniclers’ reports that the Taínos did sexually, that there were no sexual not cover their shameful parts was prohibitions at all among their hosts. The ethnocentric and specific to European Spaniards did not know that the women society, for “parts” such as breasts, wearing naguas were married, or that buttocks, and pubic regions are not married women were strictly off limits to universally shameful. What was shameful anyone except their husbands. to the Taínos? The chroniclers didn’t say Furthermore, the Spaniards appear to because they didn’t know, but modern- have made the assumption that the day anthropologists have noted that Taínos did not value gold, for they traded women from distantly related indigenous it for “valueless” objects—valueless to the tribes of the Amazon and Orinoco river Spaniards, that is, but exotic, therefore valleys find it shameful to be seen in very valuable, to the Taínos.2 The public without their arm and leg bands, Spaniards also did not know that the most and the men, who pull their foreskins unforgivable offense among the Taínos forward and tie the sheaths closed with was theft. Not content with trading, the Spaniards began taking whatever gold Dr. Lynne Guitar - Documenting the Myth of Taíno Extinction -____________________________ 2 objects they encountered. Doubtlessly, the uncivilized behavior of the Spaniards, the Spaniards unknowingly committed a group of Taínos led by the paramount many other social blunders during their cacique Caonabó fixed the problem by stay among the Taínos. Exasperated by getting rid of the pests. Figure 3 This statue of Caonabó in chains guards the entrance to the third-floor exhibits at the Museum of Dominican Man. Columbus condemned Caonabó Spaniards, were replaced by Spanish for his actions against the 39 Spaniards. structures and were overseen by Spanish The cacique died aboard ship, bound for males after 1492. But the domestic a royal trial in Spain. Little did he or the sphere, the female sphere, remained other Taínos know that, like the rats that overwhelmingly Taíno—or rather Taína, came to the Americas on the Spanish the feminine version of the word. ships, there would soon be thousands of I don’t have time to go into the Spaniards in the region, and Spanish highly controversial and virtually laws and mores would soon displace unprovable demographics of the those of the Taíno, at least in the public conquest era, but suffice it to say that, sphere. compared to the number of Taínos on the My colleague, the American island (in the millions), very few archaeologist Kathleen Deagan, Spaniards came, and those who did were developed a theory about public and overwhelmingly male.3 Most of them took domestic spheres which all of my work Taína sexual partners. Without doubt, has proven to be true. Everything in the many Taínas were unwilling sexual public sphere—the chain of public partners, but many others married leadership and administration, concepts Spaniards and formed inter-ethnic of land ownership and land use, law and families. Not only was marriage to Taínas justice, official religious beliefs and allowed by the Spanish Crown, it was practices, monetary values—all of those encouraged. The Spaniards’ wives were areas that had been in the male Taíno baptized and took Spanish names; they sphere before the arrival of the adopted Spanish dress styles; attended © 2002, Lynne Guitar KACIKE: The Journal of Caribbean Amerindian History and Anthropology http://www.kacike.org Dr.