Taino Indian Way Of Life

Taíno people-
 Viviendas de los Tainos

Los taínos vivían en las metrópolis llamada yucayeques, que variaban en tamaño dependiendo de la localización, siendo las de Puerto Rico y La Española (República Dominicana y Haití) el más grande y los de las Bahamas es el más pequeño. En el centro de un pueblo típico había una plaza que era utilizada para diversas actividades sociales, tales como juegos, fiestas, ritos religiosos y ceremonias públicas. Estas plazas tenían muchas formas, incluyendo rectangular, ovalada, o estrecha y alargada. Se celebraban las hazañas de los antepasados, llamados areitos, se realizaron aquí. A menudo, la población en general vivía en grandes edificios circulares (bohíos), construida con postes de madera, paja tejida y hojas de palma. Estas casas que rodean la plaza central, y podian tener entre 10-15 familias.


El cacique y su familia vivían en edificios rectangulares (caney) de estructura similar, con pórticos de madera. los muebles taínos para el hogar incluían hamacas de algodón (Hamaca), esteras de palma, sillas de madera (dujo) con asientos de tela, plataformas y cunas para los niños.


 Religión de los Taínos

La religión taína centrada en la adoración de los Cemí o zemí. Los Cemíes son dioses, espíritus o los ancestros de los tainos. Los principales dioses taínos son Yúcahu y Atabey. Yúcahu, significa el espíritu de la yuca, era el dios de la yuca (el cultivo principal de los taínos) y del mar. Atabey, madre de Yúcahu, era la diosa de las aguas continentales y de la fertilidad.

Los dioses menores de los taínos estaban relacionadas con el cultivo de la yuca, el proceso de la vida, la creación y la muerte. Baibrama era un dios menor adorado por su ayuda en cultivo de la yuca y curar a la gente de su jugo venenoso. Boinayel y su hermano gemelo Márohu eran los dioses de la lluvia y el buen tiempo, respectivamente. Guabancex era la diosa de las tormentas (huracanes). Juracán se identificaba a menudo como el dios de las tormentas. Guabancex tenía dos ayudantes: Guatauba, un mensajero que crea los vientos huracanados, y Coatrisquie, quien creaba las inundaciones.

Maquetaurie Guayaba o Maketaori Guayaba era el dios de "Coaybay", la tierra de los muertos. Opiyelguabirán, un dios con forma de perro, velaba por los muertos. Deminán Caracaracol, era un héroe masculino del cual los taínos creían descender, era adorado como un cemí. Macocael fue un héroe adorado como un dios que no había podido proteger a las montaña de la que surgió el ser humano y fue castigado al ser convertido en piedra o un pájaro o un reptil en función de cómo se interpreta el mito de los tainos.

Cemí era también el nombre de las representaciones físicas de los dioses. Estas representaciones se produjeron en muchas formas y materiales, y se puede encontrar en una variedad de entornos. La mayoría de los cemíes fueron hechos de madera, piedra, hueso, concha, cerámica, y de algodón. Los Cemí petroglifos fueron tallados en las rocas de los arroyos, y en las estalagmitas de las cuevas. Los Cemi pictografícos fueron encontradas en objetos seculares como la cerámica, y en los tatuajes.

Yucahú, el dios de la yuca, se representa con un cemí de tres puntas en las tierras de cultivo para aumentar el rendimiento de la planta de yuca. Cemíes de madera y de piedra se han encontrado en las cuevas de isla La Española y Jamaica. Los Cemís a veces eran representados como sapos, tortugas, serpientes, y varios rostros abstractos y antropomorfos. Algunos de los cemíes tallados incluían una pequeña mesa o bandeja que se cree que era un recipiente para tabaco alucinógeno llamado cohoba preparado desde los granos de una especie de árbol Piptadenia.


Life-sized dioramas at the Taino museum at Samana, Dominican Republic – this one shows a Taino Indian firing an arrow using his legs instead of his arms to pull the bow.


Demninan Caracaracoel the Grandfather of all the Tainos

wooden statue of the Taino cemí (spirit) Opiyelguobirán , Guardian of the Dead, was collected from the Turks and Caicos in the early 1900s.

Hunting

For hunting birds and other animals, such as ischemia, guinea pig, hutias, iguanas, alligators, etc.  they used the bow and arrow, in the use of which the Indians were very clever, besides the lancets with propellants and many forms of traps. In the case of hutias and other rodents, they used to burn the pastures, rounding up the animals to hunt in a place or simply pick them up after the fire burned.

Fishing

Fishing was a common practice of the Tainos, the reason why  their villages were formed mainly by the sea and rivers and estuaries where mangroves were abundant. This activity, in addition to its diet, was done with bows and arrows, hooks made of bone or tortoise shell, and large networks of cotton dipped with stone weight.

Housing

Taino villages were called yucayeques and housing units were the huts and log cabins, made of wooden posts buried in the soil and cane reeds with roofs held down by palm leaves or straw, leaving a vent on top covered by a stand for the exhaust and smoke from the embers that always kept indoors. A single hut could accommodate several families, as was common among the married daughters of Tainos to live in the homes of their parents.

The "huts", also called eracras were circular and conical roofs, while the "Caney", name given to the house of chiefs, was occasionally rectangular and slightly more spacious, with gabled roof and a canopy front den, while facing the sugar mill or place where members gathered to celebrate many of its social and ceremonial activities of the tribe.

Taino Art

The art of the Taino, while conceptual and utilitarian reflected first of all, its magic-religious vision of the world. Their artwork is represented by a wide range of personal items and household, and in particular, for a rich ceremonial repertoire. The variety and quantity of these objects, painstakingly drawn (remember that they had no metal tools) in different materials obtainable in your environment or derived from their trade, are more reliable sample of his innate artistic inclination. Taino art achieves its most beautiful expressions in the middle plastic sculpture. In order to achieve his artistic goal, the Tainos used the hard stones like granite, diorite, basalt and other easier to carve than marble and serpentine. In many cases the color of the stone, the veins of the same and the polish that could give facilitated and enriched the artistic work.

They also made use of fine hardwoods as guayacán (Guaiacum officinale), mahogany (Swietenia mahagoni) and others. The bones of the manatee, the largest mammal in the West Indies, provided them with material for some of the most beautiful artifacts for ceremonial use and for carving figurines. Human bone, particularly the femur and skull also offered the opportunity to record anthropomorphic representations of magical-religious and ceremonial ornaments. Among the most prominent of Taino art are those for cemíes worship as idols carved in wood and stone and artifacts for the cohoba rituals, along with certain musical instruments such as maracas monóxilas (single piece of wood) .

The areíto

An important ritual for the Taino was the areito, which was a musical expression of song and dance, complete with recitations of facts and feats occurred in ancestral times. The areito is considered the ultimate sign within all cultural expressions of the Taíno. Usually they practiced in ceremonial places the Spanish called "pens" and was led by one main person.

The areito served to express tribal unity and educate young people and children in family traditions and society. They had very different meanings, so an areito could be loving, suffering, war, plaintive and of mystical and religious character. In other words, the rites areitos solemnized anniversaries, weddings, ascent of chiefs, crops and military victory.

Burial practices

With regard to death, there was no ritual unit, so the funeral ceremonies were carried in different forms. The only thing that unified the rituals and ceremonies of burial was the belief in an afterlife or unearthly world, so that the dead were buried with their belongings essential to further reconcile the personal life of material life.  If the person who died was a chieftain , his favorite wife would be buried alive with him, along with personal items of everyday use to ease the passage to the afterlife.

A permanent exhibition on Taino life is displayed at the Museo Del Hombre Dominicano, a national museum in Santo Domingo that holds artifacts, pottery and a scaled representation of taino life. Golden Treasures Real Estate and Vacation Rentals in Sosua is working on a project to create a Taino Museum for the North coast where tourists can learn and enjoy the ancient culture of Dominicans dating back hundreds of years.