History - Puerto Rico - page 448

TAÍNO ROOTS
It's unfortunate that, similar to so many other indigenous peoples of the Americas, the best
record of Taíno culture is written by those who would annihilate it. Through the journals of
Ramón Pané, a Catalonian friar who was traveling with the second Columbus expedition,
we are given a vivid first-hand account of the Taíno lifestyle, customs and religious beliefs.
Although told with an unintentionally comic cultural and religious bias, it's precious inform-
ation and often more accurate than other similar histories in the Americas. In his 1505 Ac-
count of the Antiquities - or Customs - of the Indians, Pané gives a breathless account of
Puerto Rico's native residents, describing cities with wide, straight roads, elaborate religious
ritual and small communities of 'artfully made' homes behind walls of woven cane. Their
diet was derived from tropical fruit grown in orchards that grew oranges and citron that re-
minded Pané of the ones in Valencia or Barcelona. The beauty of the Taíno culture only ex-
ists as an echo today, but it made an indelible influence on contemporary Puerto Rico.
The Taínos: The Rise and Decline of the People Who Greeted Columbus, by Irving Rouse, offers a whole book's worth of inform-
ation on a topic that usually only gets a couple of paragraphs.
Taíno Life on Puerto Rico
We know now that the Taíno were an Arawakan Indian group who had societies that were
well established on Puerto Rico and the other Greater Antilles (Cuba, Hispaniola and Ja-
maica) when Columbus first turned up in the area in 1493. Arawaks first settled the island
around AD 700, following a migration north from the Orinoco River delta in present-day
Venezuela. By AD 1000 a distinctive Taíno culture had emerged based on agriculture, fish-
ing, hunting and the production of cassava bread.
Pané speaks in depth about the complex religious cosmology of the Taíno, a system that
had creation stories that often surprised Pané with their Christian parallels. They believed
in a single, eternal god who was omnipresent and invisible, and often also worshiped the
mother of this god, who was known by a number of names. Each home held a stone or wood
idol, usually about 3ft tall, called a cemí, which would receive their prayers. The practice of
making these statues translated seamlessly into Christianity. Today santos (carved figurines
representing saints), of the same height, are available from craftsmen across the island.
The native Taíno belief in the afterlife was quite different from the Christian dogma
though, and in it there are some basic elements which would survive in other hybrid religions
in the islands. Take for instance the Taíno belief in the walking dead, which bears a certain