Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
A few small raids on new Spanish settlements in the south went in favor of the Taíno, but
as soon as León learned of the incidents, he unleashed his technologically advanced sol-
diers on the Taíno warriors. The battle that quelled the uprising was shocking in its brutal-
ity. An estimated 11,000 Taíno were killed in military campaigns by a Spanish force num-
bering only 100.
Testimonies vary as to how many Taíno inhabited Borinquen at the time of the Spanish
invasion, though most anthropologists place the number between 20,000 and 60,000. In
1515 - after nearly a decade of maltreatment, a failed rebellion, disease and virtual slavery
- only 4000 remained. Thirty years later a Spanish bishop put the number at 60. Some
historians claim that a small group of Taíno escaped the 16th-century genocide and hid
in Puerto Rico's central mountains where they survived until the early 19th century, but
there's no proof of this claim.
While Taíno blood may have all but disappeared in modern Puerto Rico, native traditions
live on. Puerto Rican Spanish is dotted with native words like yucca (a root vegetable),
iguana,
manatí
(manatee - a sea mammal)
,
maracas and
Ceiba
(Puerto Rico's national
tree); and some terms have even found their way into modern English: think
huracan
for
hurricane and
hamaca
for hammock.
The Taíno, the island's first people, seem to be simultaneously ubiquitous and wholly
absent in contemporary Puerto Rico.
JUAN PONCE DE LEÓN
Soldier, sailor, governor, dreamer and politician, the life story of Juan Ponce de León
reads like a
Who's Who
of late-15th- and early-16th-century maritime exploration.
Aside from founding the Spanish colony of Puerto Rico in 1508, this daring, yet of-
ten short-sighted, Spanish adventurer partook in Columbus' second trans-Atlantic
voyage, charted large tracts of the Bahamas, discovered the existence of the Gulf
Stream, and was the first recorded European to set foot in what is now known as
Florida.
Born in Valladolid, Spain, in 1460, de León served his military apprenticeship
fighting against the Moors during the Christian reconquest of Granada in 1492. The
following year he arrived in the New World on Columbus' second expedition and
settled on the island of Hispaniola, where he was proclaimed deputy governor of the
province of Higüey after ruthlessly suppressing a native revolt. Following Columbus'
death in 1506, the Spanish crown asked de León to lead the colonization of Borin-
quen, an island first explored by Columbus in 1493.
