CEMI BOINAYEL
God of Rain. Large tears emerging from their eyes as a sign of water that will govern the field to fertilize the cultivation of cassava.
ARAWAK TAÍNO
TAÍNO SYMBOLS
POTIZA
Container used by the Aborigines of Quisqueyana to store water and fermenting the wine produced with the juice of Guáyiga. They were bought by women to men as a declaration of love.
ITIVA TAHUVAVA
Goddess Mother Earth. Mother of twins representing the four cardinal points or "the four winds."
BEHIQUE
"Witch Doctor", Shaman. It represents the wisest character in the Taíno tribe, knowing all the plants and medicinal substances responsible for curing diseases, director of the rite of cohoba. If left to a dying patient, the relatives of the dead killed clobbered.
Taíno History
The Taíno civilization indigenous to the Greater Antilles-Caribbean Sea (Hispaniola) flourished in the islands including Cuba, Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), Jamaica and Puerto Rico before and during the time when Christopher Columbus landed on the beaches of the New World in 1492. On December 6th, 1492 Christopher Columbus landed at Mole St. Nicholas in Haiti’s north. Thus began a totally new phase of life on the island of Hispaniola. Most people are aware that Christopher Columbus landed at San Salvador on October 12th, 1492, thus discovering the New World for Spain. Less known is that his second land fall was at Mole St. Nicholas, Haiti on December 1492, or that the first settlement in the New World was La Navidad, on Haiti’s north coast. This settlement, which housed sailors from the Santa Maria which sank off Haiti’s coast, was founded on December 24th, 1492.
DAILY LIFE
LIFESTYLE OF ARAWAK / TAÍNO. The Arawak/Taíno society was basically a very gentle culture. It was characterized by happiness, friendliness and a highly organized hierarchical, paternal society, and a lack of guile. Each society was a small kingdom and the leader was called a cacique. The cacique’s function was to keep the welfare of the village by assigning daily work and making sure everyone got an equal share.
DEFENSE. The Arawak/Taíno themselves were quite peaceful people, but they did have to defend themselves from the Caribs who were cannibals. The Caribs of this area were centered at what is today Puerto Rico, but some did live in northeast Hispaniola, an area that today is the Dominican Republic. The Caribs were war-like cannibals. They often raided the more peaceful Arawak/Taíno , killing off the men, stealing and holding the women for breeding, and fattening the children to eat.
TRANSPORTATION. The Arawak/Taíno had no large animals like horses, oxen or mules to ride or use for work. But they did have river and sea transportation. They used dugout canoes which were cut from a single tree trunk and used with paddles. They could take 70-80 people in a single canoe and even used them for long travels on the sea. These dugouts allowed fishing the few lakes of Hispaniola as well as fishing out a bit off the coast.
FOOD AND AGRICULTURE. The Arawak/Taíno diet, like ours, centered around meat or fish as the primary source of protein. There never were many wild animals to hunt on Hispaniola, but there were some small mammals which were hunted and enjoyed. They also ate snakes, various rodents, bats, worms, birds, in general any living things they could find with the exception of humans. They were able to hunt ducks and turtles in the lakes and sea.