Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
resemblance to famous tenants of Haitian Vodou. According to Taíno, the dead can return
from the afterlife, a place called Coaybay, and walk among the living. In Taíno belief the
dead walked through the villages and forests at night so they could eat tropical
guanábana
fruit. They also believed that women from Coaybay could have sexual communions with
living men. The only way to tell the living from the dead was to touch someone on the
belly, as they believed that the dead had no navel.
The small, round wooden huts of the Taíno people were called
bohios,
where they
smoked
cohibas
(cigars) and slept in
hamacas
(hammocks). They called their newly adop-
ted island Borinquen (Land of the Noble Lord) and made pottery, wove baskets and carved
wood. The native society was relatively democratic and organized around a system of
ca-
ciques
(Taíno chiefs) who oversaw a rank of medicine men, subchiefs and, below them,
workers.
For leisure, the Taíno built ceremonial ball parks where they played a soccer-like game
with a rubber ball between teams of 10 to 30 people. At Tibes near Ponce in the south, and
at Caguana near Utuadu in the north, archaeologists discovered impressive courts, marked
by rows of massive stone blocks. Drums, maracas and
güiros
provided the game's percuss-
ive accompaniment - instruments that resound in Puerto Rican traditional and popular mu-
sic today.
AGÜEYBANA
Agüeybana (meaning 'Big Sun') was the most powerful
cacique
(Taíno chief) in
Puerto Rico when Europeans first discovered the island. A trusting character who
was curious about the European travelers, Agüeybana's close relationship with Juan
Ponce de León was instrumental in Spanish colonization of the Caribbean. Told in a
prophecy about the coming of a 'clothed people,' Agüeybana warmly received the
Spanish explorer in 1508; some historical accounts, notably written by the Spanish,
claim that he believed the Europeans were deities. He exchanged names with León
and hosted a ceremony of friendship and led León and a delegation of his men on a
scouting expedition of the island, from which Puerto Rico's first maps were drawn.
He eventually even accompanied León on several other expeditions to nearby is-
lands, serving as a cultural liaison with other tribal leaders. But León struggled to
convince Agüeybana to assist him with his two main priorities: mining Puerto Rico
for gold and converting indigenous people to Christianity.
