Taino

The Taino were the Indigenous peoples of most of the West Indies, the first New World peoples met by non-Norse Europeans. Arawakan speakers, Island Arawaks, they farmed yuca bitter and sweet in conuco mounds from the Bahamas through Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola and Puerto Rico to Guadeloupe, living in ordered villages under cacique chiefs within a matrilineal order, playing ceremonial ball in batey plazas and honouring zemis, the spirits of rain, cassava and ancestors. At contact they shared Cuba with Guanajatabey neighbours and Hispaniola with Ciguayo and Macorix peoples, while fighting the newly arrived Caribs of the Windwards. Columbus seized, enslaved and taxed them; encomienda labour and smallpox unmade the villages within a generation. Yet the culture continued in descendants and in revival: cassava bread, cohoba rites, areito dances and the Arawak language live again in Caribbean revivalist communities. Matrilineal inheritance passed the cacique's seat through the sister's line in every village.