Thus, the Arawaks (Taino Arawak), a peaceful people (said to be of the least aggressive people in the Americas) roamed the island for a couple thousand years before Columbus accidentally bumped into the island in 1494 on his second voyage to the new world. The name Jamaica is derived from the Arawak word “Xaymaca”, which means “land of wood and water.”
Columbus said of the Arawaks after being shipwrecked off the island of Hispaniola “On hearing the news the king wept, showing great sorrow at our disaster. Then he sent all the inhabitants of the village out to the ship in many large canoes….he himself, with his brothers and relatives, did everything they could both in the ship and on shore to arrange for our comfort….I assure your Highness that nowhere in Castille would one receive such kindness or anything like it.
The Arawak King had all our possessions brought together near his palace and kept there until some houses had been emptied to receive them. He appointed armed men to guard them, and made them watch over them right through the night. And he and everyone else in the land wept for our misfortune as if greatly concerned by it.
They were so affectionate and have so little greed and are in all ways so amenable that I assure your Highness that there is in my opinion no better people and no better land in all the world.
They love their neighbors as themselves and their way of speaking is the sweetest in the world, always gentle and smiling. Both men and women go naked as their mothers bore them; but your Highness must believe me when I say that their behavior to one another is very good and their king keeps marvelous state, yet with a certain kind of modesty that is a pleasure to behold, as is everything else here.”[i]
According to Columbus’s accounts, it sounds like the Arawaks had it all figured out. If they were still around, they’d be the envy of the world. Problem is, they’re not (damn Caribs!). Being unable to defend themselves against intruders effectively may have made such a paradise forever impossible.
In the Arawak culture, Chiefs had real authority and prestige, but little political power. Political power was seen as largely unimportant among the Arawaks. The society did not have a perpetual elite, nor group of people (including the Chief) who accumulated great relative wealth.
The society functioned peacefully and sustainably on its own, but was not organized in a manner that would withstand any kind of attack, like that of the Carib invasion. If the Chiefs’ heirs showed no promise for leadership, he/she was rejected in preference for a locally elected member of the common people. The Arawaks were socially and politically quite flexible.
The original crops harvested on the island were corn (though unimportant), potatoes, sweet cassava (manioc), peanuts, peppers, pumpkins, beans and arrowroots. They also ate coneys, agouti, lizards, spiders and various insects & reptiles. They fished with nets, hooks and spears’, though fishing was secondary to agriculture. Fishing was seen as a luxury to supplement the successful pursuit of agriculture. The food base was sufficient to feed the existing population.
When Columbus described them as “a people short of everything” it was only European colonial ignorance, reflecting differences of culture and material wealth. The Arawaks did not parish due to an inability to survive, but rather on weaknesses in the way of warfare.
Their conquerors were none other than the vicious Caribs who are the namesake of the Caribbean. They were considered by Columbus to be Cannibals…the similarity in the sound of Caribbean and cannibal is no coincidence. While on the surface the Caribs appeared similar to the Arawaks, they possessed a fundamental distinction. They were warriors!
As conquerors they did a great deal of moving around. Migration caused less uniformity in their customs and traditions. Their society was simpler than the Arawaks, who had developed a very sophisticated social structure and identity.
The Caribs eventually inherited much of the Arawak culture by absorbing Arawak women and children into their society through the acts of war (in my opinion, Canadians are wise to do the same, minus the acts of war bit and gender slant…). Many Caribs were as a result bilingual. By 1500, most of the Arawak’s had been destroyed or incorporated into the Carib nation.
Given their military successes and heavy doses of migration, the Caribs must have been experiencing great internal transformations. Because of this, they lacked firm identity or crystallization in social forms and customs.
The Caribs were undergoing significant internal change toward the end of the 1400’s. As such, it is little wonder they were a notch weaker by the time the Spaniards came.
[i] Knight, Franklin. The Caribbean: The Genesis of a Fragment Nationalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. page 13.
No comments:
Post a Comment