Taino Village At the time of the European "discovery" of the "New World", the Bahamas, the Greater Antilles and the Leeward Islands were inhabited by the various tribes of "the good and noble people", the Taino. (The Windward Islands were populated by the "people of the long bow", the Caribs.) It has been estimated that there were once as many as six million Tainos living throughout the Caribbean. National Park Service archeologist, Ken Wild, and a team of volunteers are presently excavating the site of a Taino village at Cinnamon Bay. Their findings indicate that this village was in many ways typical of Taino communities in general. Most of the villagers lived in cone shaped dwellings called bohios. They were built around a central plaza. Artifacts and archeological evidence suggest that the village at Cinnamon Bay was probably arranged in this fashion. The bohios were built of woven palm leaves and wood from the royal palm tree. This wood was extremely long lasting and resisted rot and deterioration and could last almost one hundred years without treatment. An entire dwelling could be built from the trunk and leaves of one single tree. Several families lived in each structure. There were no interior walls and personal possessions were kept in hanging baskets. Spanish chroniclers noted that the inhabitants slept in "beds and furnishings like nets of cotton" which were suspended above the dirt floor. The Tainos called these beds hamaca from which the English word "hammock" was derived. The Spanish chronicler Father Las Casas described a typical Taino dwelling … "Their houses are built of wood and thatch in the form of a bell. They are high and roomy…Posts as thick as a man's leg or thigh were set round about to a depth of half a man's height. Above that they were joined by lashings of woody vines. Over such a frame they placed many other pieces of thin wood crosswise, also very well tied by vines. On the inside designs and symbols and patterns like paintings were fashioned by using wood and bark that had been dyed black along with other wood peeled so as to stay white, thus appearing as made of some other attractive painted material. Others they adorned with white reeds that are a kind of thin and delicate cane. Of these they made graceful figures and designs that gave the interior of the house the appearance of having been painted. On the outside the houses were covered with a fine and sweet smelling grass…" The chief of the village, called the cacique, lived within the central plaza. He or she resided in a rectangular-shaped building called a caney and, unlike other villagers, often slept on a wooden platform instead of in a hammock. To this day, small houses in the Puerto Rican countryside are referred to as bohíos. The central plaza was used for the community's ceremonial rituals, feasts and celebrations. Larger Taino villages had separate square-shaped locations set aside for their ceremonial dances, and rectangular-shaped ones for the traditional ball games. These areas ranged from simple cleared grounds to carefully constructed courts bordered by embankments of earth or large stones. Large monuments representing spiritual beings lined some of the more elaborate courts. Christopher Columbus gave this description of a Taino village: "They are constructed like pavilions, very large, and look like royal tents in a campsite without streets. One is here and another, there. Inside they are very well swept and clean, and the furnishings are arranged in good order. All are built of very beautiful palm branches." by Gerald Singer |