Archaic Age people DNA studies changed some of the traditional beliefs about pre-Columbian Indigenous history. According to
National Geographic, "studies confirm that a wave of pottery-making farmers—known as Ceramic Age people—set out in canoes from the northeastern coast of South America starting some 2,500 years ago and island-hopped across the Caribbean. They were not, however, the first colonizers. On many islands they encountered a foraging people who arrived some 6,000 or 7,000 years ago...The ceramicists, who are related to today's Arawak-speaking peoples, supplanted the earlier foraging inhabitants—presumably through disease or violence—as they settled new islands."
Taíno The Taíno, an
Arawak people, were the major population group throughout most of the Caribbean. Their culture was divided into three main groups, the Western Taíno, the Classic Taíno, and the Eastern Taíno, with other variations within the islands.
Classic Taíno The Classic Taíno lived in
Hispaniola and
Puerto Rico and later in eastern Cuba. They spoke a dialect called Classic Taíno. Compared to their neighbors, the Classic Taíno had substantially developed agricultural societies. Puerto Rico was divided into twenty
chiefdoms which were organized into one united kingdom or confederation, Borinquen. Hispaniola was divided into roughly 45 chiefdoms, which were organized into five kingdoms under the leadership of the chief of each area's premier chiefdom. Beginning around 1450, Classic Taíno from Hispaniola began migrating to eastern Cuba; they are conventionally known as the
Cuban Taíno. The Cuban Taíno gained power over some of Cuba's earlier Western Taíno inhabitants, the
Ciboney, but no regional or island-wide political structure had developed on the island at the time of
Spanish colonization of the Americas.
Eastern Taíno The Eastern Taíno inhabited the
Leeward Islands of the
Lesser Antilles, from the
Virgin Islands to
Montserrat. They had less sophisticated societies than the Classic Taíno.
Western Taíno The Western Taíno lived in
The Bahamas, central
Cuba, westernmost
Hispaniola, and
Jamaica. They spoke a dialect known as
Ciboney or Western Taíno. The Western Taíno of the Bahamas were known as the
Lucayans and spoke the
Lucayan language; they were wiped out by Spanish slave raids by 1520. Western Taíno living in Cuba were known as the
Ciboney. They had no chiefdoms or organized political structure beyond individual villages, but by the time of Spanish conquest many were under the control of the Cuban Taíno in eastern Cuba.
Igneri According to oral history, the
Igneri were the original
Arawak inhabitants of the
Windward Islands in the
Lesser Antilles before being conquered by the
Kalinago who are thought to have arrived from South America. Contemporary sources like to suggest that the Kalinago took Igneri women as their wives while killing the men, resulting in the two sexes speaking different languages. This is not proven, and there appears to be a confusion of the reality: despite the name, the
Kalinago language was
Arawakan, not
Cariban. Irving Rouse suggests that small numbers of Kalinago may have conquered the Igneri without displacing them, and could have gradually adopted their language while retaining the Kalinago identity, but there is no evidence to prove this. Though they were Arawaks, the Igneri language appears to be as distinct from the
Taíno language as it was from the
mainland Arawak language of South America.
Kalinago By the contact period, the Kalinago, also known as Island Caribs, inhabited the
Windward Islands of the
Lesser Antilles. "Caribbean" derives from the name "Carib", by which the Kalinago were formerly known. They self-identified with the
Kalina or mainland Carib people of South America. Contemporary accounts asserted that the Kalinago had conquered the Windward Islands from their previous inhabitants, the
Igneri. However, the
Kalinago language was Arawakan, not
Cariban. Irving Rouse suggests that small numbers of South American Caribs invaded the Windwards and conquered the Igneri without displacing them; they gradually adopted the local language while maintaining the Kalinago identity. The Kalinago continue to live in the
Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean. Noteworthy Kalinago descendants live on within the
Garifuna people, known as the
Black Caribs who descend from
St. Vincent in the
Lesser Antilles.
Guanahatabey A separate ethnic identity from far western Cuba. They were an
archaic hunter-gatherer people who
spoke a language distinct from Taíno, and appear to have predated the agricultural, Taíno-speaking
Ciboney.
Ciguayo A separate ethnic people that inhabited the
Peninsula of Samaná and part of the northern coast toward
Nagua in what today is the Dominican Republic, and, by most contemporary accounts, differed in language and customs from the classical or high Taíno who lived on the eastern part of the island of Hispaniola then known. According to Eustaquio Fernandez de Navarrete, they were "warriors and spirited people," ("gente animosa y guerrera"). The Cronista de Indias, Pedro Martir accused them of cannibalism: "when they descend from the mountains to wage war on their neighbors, they kill and eat some of them" ("trae[n] origen de los caníbales, pues cuando de las montañas bajan a lo llano para hacer guerra á sus vecinos, si matan á algunos se los comen"). Fray Ramón Pané, often dubbed as the first anthropologist of the Caribbean, distinguished the
Ciguayo language from the rest of those spoken on Hispaniola. Bartolomé de las Casas, who studied them and was one of the few who read Ramón Pané's original work in Spanish, provided most of the documentation about this group in his work
Historia de Las Indias. Linguists
Julian Granberry and Gary Vescelius believe that the Cigüayos emigrated from Central America. Wilson (1990) states that this was the kingdom
Cacicazgo of Cacique Guacangarí.
Macorix Another separate ethnic group that lived on the eastern side of the island of Hispaniola. Their region today is in the
Dominican Republic. According to las Casas,
their language was unintelligible for the Xaraguá, but may have been similar to the Ciguayo language.(Wilson, 1990) Recent studies show that the Macorix people coexisted with the Taínos on Hispaniola. The names San Francisco de Macorix and San Pedro de Macorix in the Dominican Republic are indirect references to the political divisions of the
cacicazgo. The Spaniards wrongly assumed that the names given to the different territories were a reference "to what they called a Cacicazgo:
Florida tribes The
Tequesta of the southeast coast of the
Florida peninsula were once considered to be related to the Taíno, but most anthropologists now doubt this. The Tequesta had been present in the area for at least 2,000 years at the time of first European contact, and are believed to have built the
Miami Stone Circle.
Carl O. Sauer called the
Florida Straits "one of the most strongly marked cultural boundaries in the New World", noting that the Straits were also a boundary between agricultural systems, with Florida Indians growing seed crops that originated in
Mexico, while the Lucayans of the Bahamas grew root crops that originated in South America. It is possible that a few Lucayas reached Florida shortly before the first European contacts in the area, but the northwestern Bahamas had remained uninhabited until approximately 1200, and the long established presence of the existing tribes in Florida would have likely prevented any pioneering settlements by people who had only just reached the neighboring islands. Analysis of ocean currents and weather patterns indicates that people traveling by canoe from the Bahamas to Florida were likely to land in northern Florida rather than closer to the Bahamas. A single 'Antillean axe head' found near
Gainesville, Florida may support some limited contacts. Due to the same ocean currents, direct travel in canoes from southern Florida to the Bahamas was unlikely.
Ciboney Contemporary knowledge of the Cuban Indigenous cultures which are often, but less precisely, lumped into a category called Taíno by some modern anthropologists, comes from early Spanish sources, oral traditions and considerable archeaological evidence. The Spanish found that most Cuban peoples were, for the most part, living peacefully in tidy towns and villages grouped into numerous principalities called
Cacicazgos with an almost feudal social structure (see
Bartolomé de las Casas). They were ruled by leaders called
Caciques. Cuba was divided into Guanahatabey, Ciboney (also Siboney), and Classical (High) Taíno. Some of western Cuba was Guanahatabey The archaeologist
L Antonio Curet has questioned whether the Ciboney people should be referred to as Taínos, writing that "Despite its widespread use in academic and popular publications, the use of the term Taíno has not gone without criticism or opposition" and that academics since the 1800s have been "criticizing its use and questioning its scientific basis and value and suggested using instead names such as
siboneyes,
haytianos,
jamaiquinos, and
borinqueños that were more related to actual terms used by the natives to refer to the islands." ==Ethnic/cultural derivatives==