"Peopling the Antilles"
 
by:  Samuel M. Wilson
 
in:  "Archaeology" (September/October 1990, pp. 52-57)
 
     "May Your Highness believe that in the whole world there
cannot be better or more gentle people.  Your Highnesses should
take much joy in that soon you will make them Christians and will
have instructed them in the good customs of your realms, for
neither better people nor land can there be:  and the quantity of
people and of land [is] so large that I do not know how to write
about it.  Because although I have spoken in superlative degree
of the people and the land of Juana, which they call Cuba, there
is as much difference between the people and the land of that
place and this as there is between day and night.  Nor do I
believe that any man who might have seen this would have done or
said less than what I have said and say.  For it is true that
things here are marvelous and so are the big towns of this island
of Hispaniola, for so I named it; and they call it Bohio.  And
all the people are of singularly friendly behavior."  From "The
Diario of Christopher Columbus's First Voyage to America,
1492-1493".
     In 1492, while attempting to find a westward route to Japan,
Christopher Columbus happened upon the islands of the Caribbean
archipelago.  Like the European explorers who followed him, he
was fascinated by the people he found there.  The Native Ameri-
cans of the Caribbean had a rich and complex culture, alien to
that of the Europeans, but in many ways, similar:  they lived in
well-organized towns, cultivated fields, fished and hunted,
played a ball game on beautifully constructed courts, performed
rituals in a yearly cycle, worshiped gods and obeyed caciques or
chiefs.  They called themselves the Taino, which means good and
noble people.
     As many as 70 villages were allied under the leadership of
single cacique, who sat at the pinnacle of a social and political
hierarchy of nobles, commoners, and slaves.  The cacique lived in
a distinctive house on the main plaza of his village and was
carried about on a litter.  He sat at the center of elaborate
feasts and distributed food and gifts to his people.  In special
ceremonies he conversed with the gods--to whom he was thought to
be related--on behalf of the common people.
     Along with his subjects, the cacique was concerned with the
other chiefdoms that surrounded him.  The chiefdoms of the
Caribbean interacted in a number of ways.  Groups of people often
traveled great distances, even from island to island, to play the
ball game.  They traded the creations of their artists--carved
wooden stools, beautiful ceramics, sculpted stone idols, and
textiles.  High status men and women of one chiefdom often chose
their spouses from the nobility of neighboring chiefdoms.
Chiefdoms also made war on one another, assembling hundreds or
thousands of men in armed confrontations.
     Who were these Caribbean people?  Where did they come from?
How did the chiefdoms of the Caribbean come to exist?  For the
past ten years, I have tried to answer these questions--through
archaeological surveys and excavations in the Lesser Antilles and
from the study of eyewitness accounts by the Europeans who
visited the islands in 1492 and thereafter.
     The story begins about 5000 B.C., or perhaps even earlier,
when people first moved into the Caribbean.  Because so much of
the earth's water was frozen in the continental glaciers during
the most recent Ice Age, sea levels were lower than they are
today.  In fact, the first Caribbean peoples may have come across
a chain of now submerged islands linking Central America with the
Greater Antilles, the island arc from Cuba to Puerto Rico.  These
earliest Caribbean people are called "aceramic" because they did
not make pottery.  They survived on fish and shellfish from
mangrove swamps and from the sea and on wild plants from the
islands' interiors.  The archaeological picture of this period is
still rather murky:  it is not clear whether other groups of
aceramic people came into the Caribbean from Central or South
America over the next few thousand years.
     About 2000 B.C., a new group of people from northeastern
South America moved into the Lesser Antilles, the archipelago
from Granada in the south to St. Martin in the north.  Like their
predecessors in the Greater Antilles, these people fished and
collected wild foods, and did not practice agriculture.  They
lived in small settlements, usually near the coast, and collected
the rich marine resources of the deep and shallow reefs.  There
is little question that they were capable mariners--their settle-
ments are scattered throughout the Lesser Antilles, and they
transported sizable quantities of stone tools and raw material
over large distances from island to island.  The site of
Hichman's Shell Heap on the small island of Nevis is a rather
late example of one of the settlements of these people, dating to
roughly 550 B.C.  With the help of the Nevis Conservation and
Historical Society, I excavated the area in 1987.  It is a small
site, about 100 feet by 40 feet.  Sea shells, land crab shells,
fish bones, and flint tools cover the surface.  The small size of
the site may indicate that people stayed there for only a short
period, cooking and eating fish and shellfish, but we are trying
to determine if erosion has diminished the site.  Elizabeth Wing
of the Florida State Museum at Gainesville has conducted a
preliminary analysis of the bones from the site and has found
abundant remains of reef fish such as the parrotfish, grouper,
and surgeonfish, as well as the remains of barracuda.  Porcupine
fish, needle fish, and moray eel are also present, along with sea
turtle.  The people at Hichman's Shell Heap also ate quantities
of shellfish such as conch, turkey wings, and whelks.  The
analysis of plant remains is incomplete, but it is likely that
the inhabitants of this site ate wild plant foods from inland.
They fashioned axes, knives, and ceremonial bowls from ground
stone, and used the flat, thick "flare" of the conch shell to
make adzes, chisels, and other tools.
     About 300 B.C. a much larger group of people moved into the
Lesser Antilles. They, too, came from South America, where for
several thousand years they had lived along the floodplain of the
Orinoco and the rivers of the coastal plain of modern-day Guyana.
In a few centuries or less they made the jump from Trinidad and
Tobago to Grenada, and moved quickly up the island chain to
Puerto Rico.
     These migrants brought South American plants with them and
adapted the ways in which they had grown crops and collected wild
plants and animals in lowland South America to the Caribbean
island environments.  Manioc root was their staple crop; they
baked it into cassava bread on thick clay griddles set on the
coals of a fire.  They also brought to the islands such mainland
animals as dogs, opossums, guinea pigs, and the agouti, a rabbit-
sized rodent.  They added local foods to their diet, like land
crabs, which are still West Indian delicacies.  They constructed
large houses or malocas, in which as many as 50 people might
live.  The population numbered 25-100 people.
     Their finely crafted and beautifully decorated pottery is
called Saladoid, named after the site of Saladero in the lower
Orinoco drainage in Venezuela.  Most distinctive are pots deco-
rated with brilliant white on red designs.  Other sites dating to
this period contain unpainted pottery, decorated with incised
patterns etched into vessel surfaces and filled with fine cross-
hatching.  Whether the two decorative styles represent chronolog-
ically separate migrations, parallel migrations by two distinct
ethnic groups, or simply two decorative styles within one migrat-
ing group is a matter of debate among archaeologists.
     After journeying along 800 miles of the Caribbean archipela-
go and colonizing islands en route, the Saladoid people stopped
at western Puerto Rico, and, according to current evidence,
established only a few settlements on the eastern tip of Hispan-
iola (today's Dominican Republic and Haiti).  Instead of pushing
on into Hispaniola, Jamaica, Cuba, and the Bahamas, they spent
the next 500 years or so consolidating their territory, estab-
lishing new settlements and improving their skills at making a
living from the fertile soils and rich reefs of their island
homes.
     It would appear from both archaeological and linguistic data
that the Saladoid people were the direct ancestors of the people
the European explorers met in the Greater Antilles.  Although the
Saladoid people were probably not organized in large chiefdoms
like the Taino, many aspects of their culture--especially their
artistic motifs and ceremonial objects--were employed by the
Taino up until the time of European contact.
     Between A.D. 500 and 700 a number of changes took place in
the Caribbean.  In addition to a shift in native eating habits
from land to sea animals, archaeologists have identified changes
in the way houses were constructed and villages laid out.  On
some islands many new villages were established, possibly re-
flecting population growth.  There were also changes in the way
ceramics were made and decorated:  potters stopped using the
white on red painting to decorate their pots, which were now
generally thicker and less finely made than the Saladoid ceram-
ics.  This later ceramic style is called Ostionoid, after the
site of Ostiones in Puerto Rico.
     At about this time another migratory push took place.
Ostionoid people began moving into the highlands of Puerto Rico
and into Hispaniola, Jamaica, Cuba, and eventually the Bahamas.
When they moved into areas never colonized by the Saladoid
people, the newcomers either conquered or assimilated the
aceramic hunters and gatherers who had been there for thousands
of years.  It is unclear whether this was a peaceful meeting, or
a bloody conquest of the sort the islands would experience when
the Europeans arrived.
     The culture of the descendents of the Saladoid people who
stayed in the Lesser Antilles did not remain static.  They stayed
in contact with both the Indians that moved into the Greater
Antilles and those of the South American mainland, and their
societies were enriched by the interactions in both directions.
When the Spaniards arrived, they called these Lesser Antillean
people "Caribs" (from the native word for the root crop manioc),
and viewed them as dangerous warriors who ate human flesh.
Spanish chroniclers drew such a sharp contrast between the Taino
or Arawaks of the Greater Antilles and the Caribs of the Lesser
Antilles that for a long time the two groups were viewed as quite
different, unrelated peoples.  Now, while acknowledging the
importance of continued South American contact in Island Carib
society, many archaeologists and historians are inclined to view
the Caribs and the Taino as two branches of cultural development
with shared Saladoid roots.
     Populations in the Greater Antilles grew rapidly, and new
villages were established both on the coasts of these islands and
on the river systems inland.  In the interior, colonization
required greater emphasis on freshwater fish and shellfish as
well as new farming techniques that enabled the growing of crops
in limited space.  By the time the Spaniards arrived, the Carib-
bean Indians were building up mounds of soil and fertilizing them
intensively so the land never had to lay fallow to regain its
fertility.
     Soon after moving into the Greater Antilles, the Ostionoid
people began to build ball courts and ball court complexes.
These courts were usually rectangular and often as large as 100
by 150 feet or larger.  The ground was leveled, and standing
slabs of stone or embankments of earth were built up around the
perimeter.  On this court, they played a game using a natural gum
rubber ball.  Bartolome de Las Casas, a Spanish priest who tried
to protect the Indians from destruction in the Caribbean and
later in Central America, described the game like this:
     "Twenty or thirty stood at either end of a long enclosure.
Those at one end would toss the ball to those at the opposite
extreme and it was then smitten by whoever was nearest:  with the
shoulder, if the ball flew high, which made the ball return like
lightning; and if it flew close to the ground, quickly putting
their right hand to the ground and leaning on it, they would
smite the ball with the point of a buttock which made the ball
return more slowly.  Those of the opposite side would likewise
send it back with their buttocks, until one or the other side
committed a fault according to the rules of the game.  It was a
joyous site to see when they played heated, especially when the
women played with one another, they not hitting the ball with
shoulder and buttock but with the knees, and I believe with their
closed fist."
     The remains of about 100 ball courts have been found so far
in the Greater Antilles.  Because they show that villages cooper-
ated in large-scale construction, and because the ball game seen
by the Spaniards was so closely linked with elite activities and
rituals, the ball courts represent some of the earliest archaeo-
logical evidence for the emergence of complex societies in the
Caribbean, societies which gave rise to the chiefdoms encountered
by Columbus.
     Many other kinds of archaeological evidence contribute to
our understanding of the development of the Caribbean chiefdoms.
The average size of villages increases, and there is more varia-
tion in the sizes of villages:  where Saladoid villages were all
roughly the same size (housing perhaps 25 to 100 people), the
later sites of the Greater Antilles range from one or two houses
to large villages of 2,000 to 3,000 inhabitants.
     The ways in which the Indians of the Greater Antilles buried
their dead also tells us about the development of the chiefdoms
of the Caribbean.  The elaborate burials of chiefs or other high-
ranking men and women point to the development of a system of
social ranking, and of a growing differentiation between elite
and common members of a society.  In some of the elite burials,
it appears that relatives or servants were killed and placed in
graves along with the deceased, to accompany them to the after-
life.
     The creation of ornate ceramic vessels and ritual objects
depicting spirits and gods carved in stone and wood provides
evidence of craft specialization.  In other words, not everyone
had to work in the fields; some could spend their time making
luxury goods.  The wide geographical distribution of some of
these goods tells us that the elites from many chiefdoms were
trading or exchanging gifts over large distances.  From the
accounts of European explorers, we know that some kinds of goods,
like elaborately carved stools, were reserved for the caciques or
chiefs.
     When Columbus and later European explorers arrived, they
discovered Taino society at its full florescence.  They saw the
ball game played, and observed the rituals that surrounded Taino
life.  They heard the areytos, or sacred songs of the chiefs, and
watched the dances performed in the plazas.  They rode in the
Taino's beautifully decorated ocean-going canoes that could carry
as many as 100 people.  The Spaniards were given gifts that among
the Taino could only be given to the highest-ranking caciques.
For that is what the Taino thought they were--elites from lands
they did not know about, or gods.
     In the decades that followed, the Spanish presided over the
demise of these Caribbean societies.  Disease took the most
lives--an isolated people, the islanders had no immunity to
European maladies.
     The presence of easily mined gold on Hispaniola created
further problems for the native population.  Tentatively at
first, and later methodically, the Spaniards imposed tribute
demands on the Taino chiefdoms--each Taino male had to deliver a
quantity of gold, food, cotton or other product to the Spaniards
every three months.  In addition, the Spaniards demanded laborers
to pan gold in the mountains.  Disease killed many of them, and
the disruption of the native economy starved many others.  On
Hispaniola, a population that had numbered about one million
people was virtually wiped out within 50 years, to be replaced by
African, European, South Asian, and East Asian peoples.  Only the
Taino's villages, ball courts, pottery, stone tools, food re-
mains, and burials are left as monuments to a brilliant and
flourishing society.
 
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