Talk:Arawak

Columbus writes in his diary, "As soon as I arrived in the Indies, on the first Island which I found, I took some of the natives by force in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts."

I do not think anyone doubts the consequences of the conquest for the Arawak. I do have one objection to the way this article opens, however. I suspect that descendants of the Arawak today, and the Arawak of 600 years ago, would object to their being portrayed first and foremost as victims.

I suggest reorganizing this article not to change any content, but to make it more chronological. Start with where the Arawak lived at the time of contact, and then whatever we know about their culture. Only then describe the conquest, genocide, etc. Slrubenstein

Redirect

IS there any reason this in not a redirect to taino? Rich Farmbrough 01:15, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

No - Taino is a term specific to the more highly cultured groups in Puerto Rico and Hispaniola; the Bahamian and Cubans are often considered distinct, while some of the tribes in Trinidad were considered Arawak. Modern scholarship suggests that the distinction between Arawak and Carib may not be all that reasonable.

Even with regards to the Greater Antillean people, Taino is a somewhat uncertain term - it appears that the term meant "good people" and was used to distinguish them from the "bad" Caribs. But anyone who was hostile to the Spanish was "Carib". So Arawak has currency for the less developed societies in the Greater Antilles, and collectively for Lucayo, Taino and Lesser Antillean/Trinidadian people in the Caribbean. Of course it is also a widespread language family in South America Guettarda 15:14, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Arawak/Taino

In the introduction to Comparative Arawakan Histories (ed. Jonathan D. Hill and Fernando Santos-Granero, 2002, University of Illinois Press; ISBN 0-252-02758-2) they include the show the Taino of the Greater Antilles, the Karipuna of the Lesser Antilles, the Nepoya, Suppoya and Yao of Trinidad and the Lokono of the Guianas as Arawakan people, but the Kariña of the Orinoco valley and the Warao of the Orinoco delta as non-Arawaks (however, the Yao are later referred to as Carib-speaking). Taino is thus only a single entity among the many Arawak entities of the Caribbean Santos-Granero (in the same volume, Chapter titled The Arawkan Matrix: Ethos, Language and History in Native South America) states:

The Spanish recognized two large groups in the Caribbean region: a number of highly sophisticated hierarchical chiefdoms sharing many cultural traits, which occupied most of the Greater Antilles, the Bahamas, the Virgin Islands, and the northern portion of the Lesser Antilles (Leeward Islands), which generally but not always welcomed the Spanish peacefully; and a number of smaller and less complex groups, which occupied the southern portion of the Lesser Antilles (Windward Islands), who shunned contact with foreigners or firmly opposed their presence.

and then

The diverse peoples belonging to the first category - the Boriqua, Lucayas, and other islanders - came to be known collectively as the Taíno in 1836 (Whitehead 1995a, 92). In 1871 Daniel G. Britton deonstrated that theirs was an Arawakan language - similar to that of the Lokono or mainland Arawaks - and for this reason decided to call them Island Arawaks (Rouse 1992, 5).

Santos-Granero describes the "classic Taino" (of Puerto Rico, Hispaniola and eastern Cuba; the most sophisticated group) and the "western Taino" (of Jamaica, the Bahamas and Cuba) as being more peaceful and developed than the "eastern Taino" (of the Virgin Islands and the northern Lesser Antilles) who had to contend with Carib raids; the eastern Taino as reported to have taken slaves, war captives and have practised cannibalism, as did the Lokono.

They and other sources go on to discuss the different theories of origin of the "Island Caribs" - it seems that the old theory of Carib replacement has been largely supplanted by theories of reticulate origins, in which Carib-speaking immigrants from South America either conquered the islands and killed the men but kept the women as wives, or that they simply immigrated in and intermingled with the previous Arawak-speakers of the Lesser Antilles (sometimes referred to as Igneri, to distingish them from the Arawak-speakers of the Greater Antilles and South America). The "Island Caribs" (Kalinago) appear to have spoken an Arawakan language among the women and children, but that the men spoke a Carib language or pidgin. Neil Whitehead (same book, Chapter titled: Arawak Linguistic and Cultural Identity through Time: Contact, Colonialism and Creolization) states that Douglas Taylor (1946) "gives the orthgraphic form ni'tinao (formal friend [ws] or progenitor [ws/ms])" for Taino, while Raymond Breton (1665, 1666) "giv[es] the form ne'tegnon and nitino/neteno (husband's father, husband's mother, or daughter's husband [ws])" (ws = woman speaking, ms = man speaking). However, he states that guatiao is the older term - used by Columbus for the "tractable" natives; aruaca was first used for the Lokono - derived from the word aru, manioc flour, their primary item of trade. The word Taíno was coined by Constantine Rafinesque in 1836 in his book The American Nations; or, Outlines of Their General History, Ancient and Modern.

Additional info:

Shirley McGinnis (1997) in Ideographic Expression in the Precolumbian Caribbean (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Texas at Austin) stated that:

On the 23rd of December...Columbus discovered that the name nitayno meant important person.

also, during the second voyage, Dr. Chanca of Seville wrote (about people when they landed in Gaudeloupe):

When a boat came to land to speak with them, they said to them tayno, tayno, which means good.

Guettarda 21:14, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Yucca?

Is is safe to assume that yuca is meant, rather than yucca? — Pekinensis 20:25, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

yes. Guettarda 23:56, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)