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When Spanish authorities that had
settled down on the island of La Hispaniola noticed the extinction
of Indians, they were taking historic responsibility for the depredation
of the Taino culture that, in spite of all that, has lived out in
the Dominican Republic, a country where it’s encouraged and
revered.
By 1560, historic documents mentioned a dwindling number of Amerindian
populations that Spaniards found in that particular territory. Diseases,
forced labor, famine and rebellions were some of the causes declared
at the time. However, it’s widely accepted that the juicy
slave trade was behind the massacre of the native aboriginals.
The vanishing of these human groups in this part of the Caribbean
was also taking away a social system marked by a language, a mythological
system, and way of feeding and living that have been subjected to
studies by a number of researchers from different parts of the world.
Dominican Frank Moya Pons and Cuba’s Jose Rivero de la Calle
and Antonio Nuñez Jiménez, among others, conducted
a steady array of anthropological, geographical and paleontological
studies that have helped ferret out what happened before and after
the Spanish conquest.
Recent research studies label these Caribbean human populations
as migrants from the Orinoco Valley and trace back their roots to
some 1,500 years before Christopher Columbus’s arrival. These
first dwellers left written testimonies that lay bare what their
characteristics and lifestyles were actually like.
Other historic data in favor of Taino heritage were dug out in the
province of Azua –a location that celebrated the 500th anniversary
of its foundation last year- where the reports of Spanish researchers
invited to take part in the theoretical meetings provided highly
valuable documents that shed light on the communities that interacted
with Europeans who had settled down there.
Most scholars who have delved into the Caribbean roots assert that
the impact of the European colonization during the 15th century
was devastating for Tainos. Eventually, the process brought on dramatic
shakeups in their way of life.
Nonetheless, from north to south and from east to west, the Arawacks
also left their prints and influence in each and every corner of
the Dominican Republic.
Pictography and Petroglyphs
Numerous studies bear out the artistic sensitivity of these inhabitants,
and so is reflected in the cave paintings that have been found in
some 54 caverns across the nation. These primitive drawings on the
cave walls, stripped of all philosophical interpretations, mirrored
reality as harsh as it could get.
The Cave of the Wonders is riddled with 472 pictographic works and
19 petroglyphs. These paintings are dominated by primitive bas-relief
made of red clay and featuring black hues.
Many of these paintings were closely linked to funerary ceremonies.
The paintings of owls and bats, two animals that had a special place
in Taino mythology, prove this assertion right.
Some of these paintings also reveal contacts with Spaniards. However,
the high value of the Taino pictography lies, scholars say, in the
creation of highly achieved sculptural pieces.
Granite, diorite, basalt and other rocks were used on a regular
basis by these aboriginals who found them easier to carve than the
much harder marble and flint. In many cases, the color of these
stones, the streaks they had and a little bit of glazing used to
do the trick from an artistic standpoint.
They also used wood from the tropical forest, like guaiacum, mahogany
and other pieces made of manatee bones –the largest mammal
of the Caribbean wildlife currently sheltered as a protected species.
Amber was equally used on a daily basis and it was mostly reserved
for funerary ceremonies for caciques or tribe chiefs.
Human bones –especially thighbones and skulls- also served
as pictorial backdrops for anthropomorphic representations in which
a magic and religious nature was the name of the game.
But despite that historic legacy, there’s one contribution
to the Dominican society that can’t be ruled out: the codes
they shared and used in their paintings, things that can now be
found in a multitude of names for places, rivers and prairies, monikers
like Bonao, Cotui, Cutupu, Dajabon, Damajagua, Guajaca, Guayubin,
Inoa, Jacagua, Licey, Magua, Maguana, Mao, Nagua y Samana.
Other Taino names were Haina, Maimon, Ozama, Sosua, Tireo and Yaque.
A similar assortment pops out of wildlife names, with bibijagua
(pismire), comejen (termite), carey (sea turtle), hicotea (tortoise),
guaraguao (eagle) and haiba (crab). People’s names were no
strangers to this trend either. Caonabo, Hatuey, Banahi and Guarionex,
only to name but a few, are outstanding monikers of today.
As part of cuisine traditions, people in this country hang on to
the habit of eating casaba, the main course of the Dominican contemporary
diet.
One of the highest gods was Yucahuguama Mariocati. Its name reveals
the importance of yucca for these people.
Taino Mythology and Religion
The Tainos brought their knowledge, their gods and their mythology
that eventually evolved on the Caribbean islands. As a result of
that evolution, the Cohiba Ritual took shape as the core the entire
economic, religious, political and social life of these primitive
dwellers revolved around.
Tobacco was nothing but a wild plant from Yucatan, yet it was the
Cuban Tainos the ones that first grew it and turned it into what
it is known today. According to Taino mythology, the cohoba plant,
Cohiba or tobacco, was sent to the Earth by Bayamanaco, the God
of Fire, bearer of the casabe –the Tainos’ bread- and
of a secret ritual: saliva-cohiba-semen. These three substances
were the foundations of the entire human life, of all its features,
and they brought benefits for men: fire, bread or casabe, tobacco
and the saliva-cohiba-semen rite.
Nonetheless, it was impossible to stage the Cohiba Ritual without
the presence of goddess Atabey, the deity that had put men at the
mercy of mysteries, wisdom and the valuable legacy that Bayamanaco,
the furious God of Fire, had brought to the face of the earth.
Atabey taught them to till the land, to fish and hunt, to use Areitos
as a vehicle of oral communication and as a way of passing valuable
information from one generation to the next. She also taught them
how to make casabe or cassava bread, and to observe the Cohiba Ritual
to hook up with the gods.
Tobacco was not known in Africa before Columbus’s arrival
in America. In the 17th century, the Portuguese took tobacco to
the Black Continent when they traveled there to ship slaves back
to their colonies. But the encounter of Africans and Cuba’s
Indians gave tobacco a sacred position that’s widely used
today by such religions as Santeria, Mayombe or Palo Monte, Abakua
and the so-called Crossed Spirits.
The Cohoba Ritual
In the chronicles of Christopher Columbus’s first voyage –recorded
in history as the “discovery of America”- the Great
Admiral refers that upon arriving in Cuba, his ship was welcomed
by canoes steered by men and women who held small bunches of quasi-golden
leaves that, given their shape, resembled “muskets lit up
on one end” that natives pressed between their lips, delightfully
inhaling the aromatic smoke off that exotic plant, totally unknown
for the crew at that time.
Those peaceful and innocent people were offering Cohoba to the colonizers
as a token of friendship. That’s how the solanaceous plant
known today as tobacco used to be called. Tainos gave that name
to the two-pronged hollow cannula carved in wood through which,
and unlike the leaves rolled in the shape of a musket, they used
to inhale Cohoba up into their nostrils, just like people sniff
ground tobacco or snuff nowadays.
The Cohoba Ritual was one of the most important ceremonies among
Cuban aboriginals. During that magnificent event, the chief of the
tribe –also acting as higher priest- used to inhale the smoke
of the Cohoba to communicate with the gods in a bid to work out
conflicts, make decisions and heal the ill.
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