What Became of the Taíno?
The Indians who greeted Columbus were long believed to have died out. But a journalist's search for their descendants turned up surprising results
- By Robert M. Poole
- Photographs by Maggie Steber
- Smithsonian magazine, October 2011, Subscribe
(Page 5 of 6)
Like Kukuya, thousands of Puerto Ricans have been discovering their inner Taíno in recent years. In the 2010 census, for example, 19,839 Puerto Ricans checked the identity box marked “American Indian or Alaskan Native,” an increase of almost 49 percent over the 2000 count, when 13,336 checked it. Neither canvass provided a Taíno option.The native population represents less than 1 percent of Puerto Rico’s 3.7 million people, but indigenous leaders consider the latest head count a milestone—further proof that some Indians live on long after they were thought to be annihilated.
“What I’m really excited about is that there’s a lot of youth coming into this and challenging the status quo,” said Roberto Mukaro Borrero, president of the United Confederation of Taíno People. Borrero, a New Yorker of Puerto Rican parentage, has tried to soothe fears about a Taíno land grab based on Indian identity.
“I want to make it clear that we’re not here to take back Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic,” he said. “Or to establish a casino. If you just look at the statements we’ve made over the last ten years, there’s not one mention of casinos, kicking anybody out of the country or being divisive in any way. We just want a seat at the table.”
Still, some scholars remain skeptical. “You have to be aware of people running around saying they’re Taíno, because they are after a federal subsidy,” said Bernardo Vega, a former director of the Museum of the Dominican Man and the Dominican Republic’s former ambassador to the United States. Yvonne M. Narganes Storde, an archaeologist at the University of Puerto Rico agreed. She gives the activists credit for preserving important sites on the island, but she sounded wary of their emphasis on establishing a separate Taíno identity. “All the cultures are blended here,” she said. “I probably have Taíno genes. We all do. We have incorporated all these cultures—African, Spanish and Indian. We have to live with it.”
A few pockets of Taíno culture remain in eastern Cuba, an area shaped by rugged mountains and years of isolation. “Anybody who talks about the extinction of the Taíno has not really looked at the record,” said Alejandro Hartmann Matos, the city historian of Baracoa, Cuba’s oldest city, and an authority on the island’s earliest inhabitants. Hartmann, a Cuban of German ancestry, had invited me to meet Indian descendants from the island’s Oriente region, as well as to mark the 500th anniversary of Baracoa, founded in 1511. Joining us was José Barreiro, assistant director of research at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. With Hartmann, Barreiro has been tracking descendants of the Indians since 1989. Based on their research, the pair estimate that at least 5,000 Indians survive in Cuba, while hundreds of thousands likely have indigenous roots.
Late one night, after a day of quincentennial celebrations with live music, dancing, poetry recitations and occasional tots of rum, Barreiro and I sat bleary-eyed around a kitchen table as the indefatigable Hartmann raced through a list of historical references to Indians of the Oriente, beginning in 1492, when Columbus sailed into Baracoa harbor, planted a wooden cross on the shore and praised the place for its “good water, good land, good surroundings, and much wood.”
“Indians have appeared in the record ever since,” said Hartmann. Indigenous people established the city of Jiguaní in 1701 and formed the all-native Hatuey Regiment in the Cuban war against Spain in 1895. José Martí, founding father of Cuba’s independence movement, frequently mentioned Indians in his war diary. Mark Harrington, an American archaeologist conducting fieldwork in 1915 and 1919, found natives still hanging on in eastern Cuba. He was followed—in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s—by anthropologists who scoured the region recording the skeletal structure, blood type and other physical attributes of Cuban villagers with indigenous ancestry. “So if you look to the past,” said Hartmann, “you see this long record of Indians living here. Anyone who says otherwise is speaking from ignorance.”
And today?
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Comments (50)
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Please do not disregard the Tainos/Arawaks of Jamaica. My 2xgreat grandmother was full-blood Indigenous Arawak, and always acknowledged as such.They were called the "Tree People". I know they love to say we all died out, but considering the English were unable to go up to the hills&mountains without difficulty and threat of raids, I think its erroneous to believe that no one survived. Also I am a mixture of Arawak/Taino, Maroon, and European ancestry. A lot of the tribes ran off to the mountains to escape the slavers and as the African slaves ran off, they integrated with together and intermarried. My Maroon families vocabulary (patois) has both African and Taino words. Many Jamaicans are also aware of their indigenous heritage and honour it. I would also like to see investigation into medical anomalies or differences in reaction to pain medication/threshold, susceptibility to back problems, and food intolerance, that anecdotaly I have noticed in my research of my heritage. But my , and others physical features cannot be disputed as evidence and proof that "some Taino/Arawak" survived.
Posted by lisa on February 10,2013 | 12:18 AM
Yes the DNA of Taino does survive in many puerto ricans but Taino as a tribe or culture is definitely extinct but many do have some small degree of taino Dna as they also have african in much greater degrees so they are more african than indian for sure vastly overwhelmingly due to disease and extinction but it is interesting to know how long the taino lasted after columbus came but anyone claiming to be an actual half or pure Taino is not possible on such a small island no matter how remote at best we can say fractionally small Dna remains and with most puerto ricans moving out to new york or florida it will diminsh even more.
Posted by Johnson smith on February 9,2013 | 12:32 AM
PS....There is NOTHING WRONG with being called an Indian.....that is so ignorant of you Mariangeles!!!
Posted by Rosa Gonzalez on February 7,2013 | 03:29 AM
The Domenicans do not have anything to do with Taino indians!! They have their history with the Haitans!!
Posted by Rosa Gonzalez on February 7,2013 | 03:26 AM
I like to present my project to the Smithsonian curators in charge of the indigenous people department or exhibitions. I have been working on a Taino series for that last year in oils. Almost a few months away from completion, I wanted to receive contact info of parties involved to present the project.visit the site: www.tainospiritgallery.com Thank you, Meri
Posted by Meri Ramos on January 29,2013 | 06:21 PM
While looking at the photos accompanying the article, I was wondering why the legs of the figures were oddly big. An explanation might be that if the shamans kept themselves in a constant state of near-starvation, they would suffer from edema of the lower limbs. Having just finished reading about the siege of Leningrad (St. Petersburg), I had been made aware of the terrible signs of severe starvation.
Posted by Jennifer Hardacre on January 29,2013 | 02:23 PM
The History of the Arawak/Taino Indians in the Bahamas is not know by many. Arriving in the Islands of the Bahamas in approximately 500 AD, the Arawaks developed a System of Commerce,Travel, and Trade that can rival these Modern Times. Fleeing from the Wrath of the fierce Caribs, these Peaceful Indians were expert Canoeists and traveled with great speed as they maneuvered among the rocky shoals around the Bahamian Islands. I am an Historian of the Early Bahamas. (500 AD - 19TH Century)
Posted by Vera Chase on January 7,2013 | 08:30 PM
Tau (hello) I have been working on a book that I started 20 years ago and hope to finish before my passing, simply because there is so much information that I have attained through my own research of my true identity that the deaper I go into my research the more I find; finding it hard to to just make a close statement. I truely am loving it though. love
Posted by Anna Maria Cruz Ruiz on November 29,2012 | 02:38 PM
Well, I believe my family is Taino from Aguadilla, PR. They grew up there, but moved to NY; then, various places in the states. The characteristics tells the story.
Posted by Robert Montoya on October 25,2012 | 01:11 AM
My GreatGrandmother was fullblooded Lakota and I dont even know her name but I was told she spoke no english I like reading about the Taino culture. I am from Pennslyvania
Posted by Heather on October 8,2012 | 03:57 PM
My great-great grandmother was from "Las Indieras, Maricao, Puerto Rico. She was captured by a "criollo" with the help of two dogs. She was a native Taino girl.
Posted by Carlos Santiago on September 1,2012 | 03:14 PM
Thanks for your insight and reporting with photographs. I assisted in the Boriken Peace and Dignity run and we all had a pleasurable experience with Maggie (SI photographer) and all the folks roadside who applauded the resurgence of Taino blood line affirmation. Dakar Taino!
Posted by Roger Guayakan Hernandez on August 20,2012 | 10:01 PM
Im 1 300 and direct inheritor of my grandparents and GREAT grandparents cave and land in Puerto Rico. And yes. We are Tainos. Most of us marry within the taino descendence. So we live throughout the United States. It does not change our BLOOD LINE, or DNA. Remeber BLOOD is always thicker then water. La sangre llama. ;)
Posted by Sylvia Velez Rivera Toledo Roman on July 21,2012 | 06:15 PM
I was so glad to find and read this article to find, to my surprise and delight, that there are still Tainos in my native Cuba. Growing up there, we were always told in school that our aborigenes (there were another 2 tribes in Cuba in addition to the Tainos) had been exterminated by the Spaniards. As a child, I heard rumors of just one family escaping to the mountains where they had managed to survive but I am so glad to hear that it was many more. As a descendant of Spaniards and natives of the Canary Islands, I have a great deal of respect for our aborigines and their way of life. They truly were the greatest cultures ever and their way of life is to be envied - and perhaps to be imitated - in today's tumultuous times.
Posted by Lola Flores on May 28,2012 | 05:55 PM
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