Caribbean Amerindian Centrelink
(CAC)
Cultures and Lifeways
Please note: The materials on this
page, like on all other CAC pages, are limited to what is available on
the Internet. Moreover, the CAC does not necessarily vouch for the accuracy
of the information contained in the listed pages. Only those pages marked
with "*****" have been recommended
by at least one CAC editor as being of exceptional value. The main purpose
of this page is to list those kinds of materials that many visitors frequently
inquire about, i.e., "what were the religious beliefs of the Tainos?" or
"what foods did they eat?". Please consult materials listed on other pages
of the CAC in addition to these. Lastly, please note that history is problematic
in the listing that follows: a great many changes have occurred, and these
materials are not always properly sorted out according to place and time.
Therefore, do not take anything as an "essential trait" of any particular
group of people, for all time. Note that there is some "real world" overlap
between various categories (i.e., legends, myths, religion, material culture).
Sites are listed in no particular order.
I
General Pre-Colonial
I General Contemporary I Art I Food
I Myths I Music I Politics
I Pottery I Religion I Seafaring
I Weaving I
A. SITES WITH GENERAL
COVERAGE OF PRE-COLONIAL LIFEWAYS:
-
“The
Caribs,” a UCSB page located in the Internet Archive: Excerpt—“The
Lesser Antilles were settled in 1,000 AD by the Caribs, a far more warlike
people than the Arawaks. During their numerous battles against the dwindling
Arawak population, they massacred the men and kept as many of their women
as possible: which explains why the first Europeans to settle in Martinique
and Guadeloupe noticed that men and women there did not always speak the
same language. In Columbus' time the Caribs had progressed to the Virgin
Islands and were raiding Puerto Rico's coast. Caribis, the name that was
given to them by the Spanish, means cannibal. In spite of that peculiarity,
all reports agree that they were a rather appealing people. Of an over-average
height, well-proportioned, they dressed much like the Arawaks. They dyed
their body with a red dye called roucou. The Spaniards, believing that
this was their natural color started the legend of a red-skinned race….”—while
reaffirming some outmoded conceptions of the Caribs in relation to the
Arawaks, this page does provide notes on agriculture, hunting and fishing,
religious beliefs, language, house construction, and contemporary survival.
-
“The
Lucayans: The People Whom Columbus Discovered in the Bahamas,” by
George A. Aarons in Five Hundred Magazine (April 1990, Vol. 2, No.
1, pp. 6-7): Excerpt—“When Columbus, the great admiral and navigator,
arrived at San Salvador in the Bahamas on October 12, 1492, he found there
a group of people known to us as the Lucayans. It was at this juncture
that the 15th century inhabitants of the Bahamas entered written history.
But their history, as can today be pieced together through archaeological,
anthropological, ethnographical and historical research, actually predates
this momentous event by many centuries….”
-
Prehistory
of the Caribbean Culture Area, from the Internet Archive, originally by
the Southeast Archaeological Center of the National Parks Service:an
excellent and detailed archaeological chronology for Puerto Rico and the
Virgin Islands, from the Paleoindian Period (c. 9,500 BC) to the Ostionoid
Period (c. 1500 AD)—excerpts: “Paleoindian Period (ca. 9500 - 5000 B.C.),
The earliest recorded prehistoric site for the Caribbean cultural area
is the El Jobo site in Venezuela, which has been dated as roughly contemporaneous
with the Clovis period in North America. Gordon Willey (1971) assumes that
this culture is an offshoot of the North American Big Game Hunting (concentration
on the hunting of Pleistocene megafauna) tradition…. Mesoindian Period
(ca. 5000 B.C. - A.D. 1) The cultures of the Mesoindian period of the Caribbean
area were considered roughly equivalent to North American Archaic hunting
and gathering cultures. This period was believed to begin ca. 5000 B.C.
and ended for most of the Lesser and Greater Antilles about two thousand
years ago. A people referred to by the early Spanish as Ciboney, utilizing
a Mesoindian life style, continued to exist in extreme western Cuba until
historic times. This period was characterized as representative of a hunting
and gathering people, who increasingly became dependent on the littoral
zones of the islands for subsistence (Willey 1976)…. Casimiroid
Culture: The Casimiroid Culture has been proposed to have originated from
Lithic or Archaic period cultures from either the Yucatán or Central
America. It is presumed the people of this culture migrated by sea from
the mainland to western Cuba via a Mid-Caribbean chain of islands, which
is now submerged. They spread eastward through Hispaniola Island, where
the earliest known sites of this culture are dated at ca. 4000 B.C. Recent
investigations in a rock shelter on Mona Island have uncovered a Casimiroid-like
assemblage of lithic tools, with an appropriate radiocarbon date of ca.
2380 B.C. Only one Puerto Rican site, the Cerrillo site in the extreme
southwestern part of the island, exhibits Casimiroid-like lithic artifacts.
The implications are that the Casimiroid culture came into the western
end of the Greater Antilles and spread eastward only as far as extreme
western Puerto Rico…. Neoindian Period (ca. A.D. 1 - A.D. 1500), This period,
dating from ca. A.D. 1 to European contact, ca. A.D. 1500, was characterized
in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands by distinct cultural periods, which
were originally separated on the basis of different ceramic styles and
other cultural manifestations. The first group to immigrate into the Antilles
were the Saladoid (A.D. 0 - 600) who brought horticulture (cassava, yucca,
and maize) and pottery technology to the islands. It is generally accepted
that they originated in the lower Orinoco River Valley before spreading
throughout the Antilles pushing the Mesoindian groups to western Cuba (Willey
1976). *****
-
"Taíno: Ancient
Voyagers of the Caribbean", by Dicey Taylor, Ph.D, Guest Curator, El Museo
del Barrio: a paper outlining the archaeological history, pre-colonial
culture, religious beliefs, cosmology, food, and social structure of the
Tainos, ending with a consideration of the their cultural legacy-this relates
to the exhibition, by the same name, hosted by El Museo del Barrio.
*****
-
Arawaks:
Social
Organization, Housing, Technology, Art, Dress, Diet, Agriculture, Transport,
Defense, Religious Practices (René Bermúdez Negrón)
-
The Taino World: Spiritual
Life, Zemis, Ball game, Caciques (chiefs), Daily life (El Museo del Barrio)*****
-
Pre-Columbian
Hispaniola: "Taino-Arawak Indians" includes: Lifestyle of the Arawak/Taino,
Housing and Dress, Food and Agriculture, Transportation, Defense, Religion
and Myth, Specific Indian leaders at the time of Columbus (Bob Corbett
course material) *****
-
Subject--
Archeology, The Amerindians, from Suriname.Nu: “It
was not until 3000 BC before the first indians appeared on the coast of
the Guyanas. Those indians who arrived between 3000-2000 BC are often called
Meso-Indians. Those after 2000 BC are given the name of Neo-Indians. However
it is difficult to establish an exact determination of which term to use.
The more recent tribes are first the Arawak tribes as they arrived 3000
years ago. A second tribe were the Carai…”. From: Avonturen aan de Wilde
Kust, Albert Helman, VACO, Paramaribo, 1982. ISBN 9991400087. This book
has numerous photographs of Amerindian artifacts, bowl/pottery fragments.
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B. SITES WITH GENERAL COVERAGE OF CONTEMPORARY
LIFEWAYS:
-
Garifuna
of Belize: song, dance, seafaring, agriculture (Allan Burns, PhD, Chair,
Dept. of Anthropology, University of Florida at Gainesville)
-
Galibi
do Oiapoque (French Guyana): [site in Portuguese—information on their
name, location, demography, land tenure situation, history of migration,
festivals, material culture, subsistence, household organization and marriage,
rites of passage, this site also includes photographs and numerous factoids—by
Lux Vidal, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil, Instituto Socioambiental]
-
Astroaborigen—Carib Astronomy:
“La Fundación de Estudios Indígenas ofrece este sitio web
para divulgar la Astronomía en la Cultura, el Arte Rupestre,
la Mitología Aborigen de Venezuela y el Glosario, permitiendo ampliar
conocimientos sobre nuestras etnias. Este portal, está
basado en el libro La Astronomía de los Caribe en Venezuela, de
Domingo Sánchez Picconne…”—a comprehensive site on the Venezuelan’
Caribs astronomical knowledge, including an overview, general features,
natural phenomena, calendrical time, petroglyphs, and mythology.
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C. ART AND MATERIAL CULTURE:
-
Indigenous Art Products
from Suriname (1): “Real Surinamese Indigenous cotton hammocks, cloth,
jewelry, pottery, traditional musical instruments like the karawasi, maraka
or sambura…Order your Indigenous full dress…”
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D. FOOD AND AGRICULTURE:
-
The Barbecue (barbacoa),
From Frances Beith: "What is the origin of the word barbecue?": "We
have to go back to the West Indian island of Hispaniola in the seventeenth
century to begin the search for this word. The local Arawakan Indians had
a method of erecting a frame of wooden sticks over a fire in order to dry
meat. In their language, Taino, they called it a barbacoa, which Spanish
explorers borrowed…"
-
Cassava:
first entry from the Encyclopaedia Britannica
-
Cassava:
second entry from the Encyclopaedia Britannica
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E. LEGENDS AND MYTHOLOGY:
-
Taino Legends,
from CubaHeritage.com: Taino legends of the rainbow, night, love, stars,
the rivers and the sea, the bat, mosquitos, honey, seeds, tobacco and dangers.
-
An Inquiry
into the Animism and Folk-Lore of the Guiana Indians, by Walter E. Roth
from the Thirtieth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1908-1909,
pp. 103-386. Washington D.C., 1915 (courtesy of Scared Texts online
at www.sacred-texts.com). A complete plain text version, in a single file,
is also available here.
-
Legends
and Myths of the Aboriginal Indians of British Guiana, collected and edited
by the Rev. William Henry Brett, B.D. (courtesy of Scared Texts online
at www.sacred-texts.com). A complete plain text version, in a single file,
is also available here.
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F. MUSIC, SONG, DANCE:
-
“Honduras
- Garifuna Music, The tradition of the black Caribs”: “The Garifuna
live in Honduras, Belize and Nicaragua. They are the descendants of Black
slaves who were shipwrecked off the coast of St. Vincent island, Caribbean
Sea, in 1635. They mixed with the red Caribs Indians and became their sole
inheritors, by the language, the customs and the music. This CD presents
for the first time black Carib secular and ritual music recorded in its
traditional context.The Garifuna culture and music have been declared in
2001 by Unesco: ‘Masterpiece of the human oral and immaterial heritage’.”
-
Garifuna,
Dügü: The dügü ritual, also called “feasting the dead.”
This site describes the reasons and preparations for this fervent ceremony
and explains each aspect—“The culture of the Garifuna is a system of traditional
and typical West African cultural expression fused with Amerindian customs
and subsistence bases. This infrastructure of dance, drum and ancestor
worship through ritual is no clearer defined than through the elaborate
funeral rites associated with Garifuna culture. Our presentation was a
visual synopsis of the Dugu. Here we will outline in detail the rites of
death, the most important and sacred cultural expression of the Garifuna…”
-
Clarinet
Ensemble (Guyana, Upper Oyapock): “Like other Amazonian populations,
the Wayã Indians use ensembles of clarinets, called tule, for entertainment
at village gatherings. These instruments are composed of two separate elements,
a reed and a resonator. The reed, a long narrow tongue cut out of a segment
of cane, is inserted through the upper knot of a broader and longer stem
of bamboo that serves as the amplifier…”—music sample included
-
Subject-- Musical
Instruments, The Amerindians, from Suriname.Nu: “P.J. Benoit describes
how Amerindians use flutes at their 'wild' dance parties. These flutes
are made of reeds in which they have made holes. They blow on their flutes
to produce sound. Once in a while the music is accompanied by the sound
of a tambourine and a sharp sound of a kind of trumpet. This trumpet is
four to five feet long. At the end of the trumpet is an ox horn attached.
According to Benoit, the sound of the musical instruments, the shouting
and yelling blends well with the kind of dance that is performed by them”.
From: [1] Reis Door Suriname, P.J. Benoit with Chris Schriks and Dr. S.W.
De Groot, De Walburg Pers, Zutphen, 1980. ISBN: 906011.306.3 Reprinted
at SURALCO request. [2] Avonturen aan de Wilde Kust, Albert Helman, VACO,
Paramaribo, 1982. ISBN 9991400087
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G. POLITICAL ORGANIZATION:
-
Los
Padres de la Patria, by Luna De Plata: a page in Spanish on some
of the key caciques of Hispaniola, including Caonabo (Chiefdom of Maguana),
Guarionex (Chiefdom of Magua), Bohechio (Chiefdom of Jaragua), Cayacoa
(Chiefdom of Yguayagua), Guacanagarix (Chiefdom of Marien), and Anacaona
(of Jaragua). Excerpt on Anacaona: “….Según los cronistas, su nombre
significaba en lengua aborigen ‘Flor de Oro.’ A pesar de que en un principio
ella sintió gran admiración por los españoles, a quienes
consideró superiores, el continuo abuso que estos cometían
contra los indígenas, junto a la prohibición por parte de
Roldán del matrimonio entre Hernando de Guevara y su hija Higüemota,
convirtió en odio y antipatía esa admiración. A la
muerte de su hermano quedó gobernando el cacicazgo de Jaragua….”
-
Caciques of Puerto
Rico, from www.elboricua.com: A useful page that lists the principal
chiefdoms, or cacicazgos, of aboriginal Puerto Rico, indicating their general
locations. The site as a whole provides a wide range of cultural information.
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H. POTTERY:
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I. RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY:
-
COMING SOON: The Santa Rosa Festival and the Carib Community of Trinidad
(Max Forte)
-
La cérémonie
de l'Omaganon: [page in French—describing the Omaganon funerary rituals
among the Kalina/Galibi of French Guyana] “Chez les Kali'na, la cérémonie
de l'Omaganon s'inscrit dans un processus lié au décès
d'un membre de la famille et d'une manière plus large de la communauté.
Ce processus commence par la veillée funéraire et prend fin
à l'occasion de la cérémonie de l'Epekodonon dont
le principe est la levée de deuil. Ainsi, une famille touchée
par un décès observera une période de deuil appelée
Onemanon. Durant la période de l'Onemanon (port du deuil) la famille
doit impérativement respecter des interdits comme par exemple celui
de ne pas danser sur le son du Sambula (tambour) lors des cérémonies
traditionnelles…”
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J. SEAFARING:
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K. WEAVING:
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This page was last updated: Friday, 28 January, 2005.
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