Yamaye

Celebrating Jamaica's 50th year of independence

2012-01-10T16:41:00.000-08:00

This article was written to celebrate Jamaica's 50th Independence Anniversary in 2012. Without the contributions of the island's indigenous Yamaye Taíno, there would be no "Jamaica", a Taíno word derived from their Arawakan language.
(Sculptures and installation by Michael Auld)

Taíno of Jamaica: A debt owed © Michael Auld

Noble People

Although the Taíno were not Jamaica’s first inhabitants, we must honor their contributions to Jamaican culture. Writers often disagree on the name for the island’s earliest residents. Since there are differences of opinion on the name of Jamaica’s first or [1] "Archaic” people, let’s call the earliest humans who inhabited Jamaica (possibly over 6,000 years ago) the pre-Taíno. These first and later waves of humans to enter the Caribbean seemed to have originated in the mainland Americas (Belize - Central America; Venezuela - South America; Florida - North America). The earliest group may have traveled from a mainland to the island of Jamaica via cays or keys. These small islands were more abundant when the sea level was lowered by captured seawater in the Earth’s then larger, frozen poles. From a European point of view, these “discoverers” were hunter gatherers who may have also practiced agriculture before the Arawakan-speaking, seafaring, agriculturalist Taíno arrived.

Who were the Taíno? What did they contribute to contemporary Jamaican culture? Are they extinct, as many writers often believe? Researchers are trying to answer these questions, yet many don’t agree on popularly held notions of the identity of Jamaica’s early people. Unfortunately, until Jamaica became independent in 1962, the island’s colonial education system taught us painfully little about our indigenous origins and its people, then mistakenly called Arawak. As an artist whose works rely heavily on the application of indigenous Caribbean aesthetics via the portrayal of three and two-dimensional works of art, my continuing research has led me to the following conclusions:

[The [2] Taíno] lacked an overall name in Columbus’s time. Its members referred to themselves by the name of the localities in which they lived: those living in what is now Puerto Rico called themselves Boriquen, their name for the island, and those in the Bahamian Archipelago called themselves [3]Lucayo (small islands).—The Tainos, Irving Rouse, 1992, 5

Yamaye [was] the possible Taíno name for the island [of Jamaica], based on Columbus’s journal. (D.J.R. Walker). Traditionally Jamaicans have been taught that Xaymaca was the Taíno name given to the island meaning “land abounding with springs” from which “Jamaica”— land of wood and water — was derived. — The Earliest Inhabitants: The Dynamics of Jamaican Taíno, Edited by Lesley-Gail Atkinson, 2006, 1

For the Taíno, it all started with Yaya the “Extreme Vital Principle, great creator of existence, ancestral agriculturalist and innominate spirit.” Not unlike our “Big Bang” theory or the various beliefs in Ancient Egyptian or later Judeo-Christian concepts, the Taíno also had the idea of an unfathomable Yaya, the originator of the Creation. Their stories were also explanations for natural occurrences caused by entities often visually embodied in spiritual sculptures called cemis, in petroglyphs and drawings. Cemis are similar to Christian or “pagan” iconography of saints or deities. The explanation for the creation of the first real humans, the Taíno, occurred in one of [4] twin womb-like caves of Cacibajagua and Amayauna. Iguanaboina, the source of life through agriculture, was visually represented as an [5] iguana lizard (sun) and boina, the black snake (raincloud).--See images below of both my metal and Plexiglass sculpture, as well as my wooden construction of the bohio (roundhouse) in which Anacaona sits on her mixed-media dujo--

(Top-L.) Jamaican rock iguana, erroneously thought to be extinct. (Top- R) Sculpture of “Iguanaboina”. The Iguana (the yellow sun) and the Boina, the black raincloud snake. (Bottom) Sculptural installation: “Anacaona” (Golden Flower). 15-16^th century cacique (ruler) of over 100 sub-caciques of Ayti (Haiti/Hispaniola) in her bohio (roundhouse) with carvings of iguana and boina centrally supported by the sacred ceiba (cottonwood) three. The gigantic ceiba features prominently in Taino and Jamaican lore (to some folk in Jamaica, duppys/spirits are also associated with ceiba/silk cotton trees). Like the Taino, some Jamaican fishermen still build dugout canoes from this tree.

The Taíno were born from a union between one of four “twin” sons, Deminán Caracaracol the scaly one, and a caguama (Turtle Mother) through fertilization of [6] guanguayo discharged onto Deminán’s back by Bayamanaco, the irate Spirit of the Fire, also the fabricator of casabe (cassava bread) from the poisonous yuca tuber. This story of Deminán and Bayamanaco relate how tropical Amerindians came to learn to use the power of the sun and fire in cooking on a burén (a circular clay grill) to transform the poisonous yuca (bitter cassava) tuber into an edible bread they called casabe.

Some of the fruits and vegetables that Jamaicans enjoy and agriculturally profit from were brought to the island by these sets of ancestors. They either brought Mainland plants [7] (yuca, batata, maisi) or utilized endemic flora and fauna that abounded in Jamaica and which these ancients taught us how to exploit. Some of these products that we casually consider to be real Jamaican are cassava and bammy, corn (ground into meal for making turn-cornmeal, dumplings, pone, dukonoo, pudding, etc), pumpkin, chocho, beans, peppers (or ají as the Taíno called capsicum), sweet potato, yampie, [8] callaloo and Indian kale (for Taíno “pepperpot”), hog plumb, pawpaw (papaya), pineapple, sweetsop, soursop, custard apple, stinking toe (locust), guinep, guava, naseberry, starapple, [9] calabash for abortions/containers; woods like mahogany, mahoe, lignumvitae, and much more. The uses of many curative Jamaican bush medicines from endemic herbs are Taíno in origin. When Jamaicans have aphrodisiac Irish moss, medicinal strong back, sersee tea, cold bush, soursop leaf tea, sarsaparilla, chainey root, etc., for health reasons, they are using Taíno remedies. Jamaica’s Coat of Arms honors the Taíno people as the root of our diverse population of today.

Jamaica’s proud Taíno Coat of Arms.

Some of many Taíno retentions

When you bite into a piece of Jamaican [10] jerk meat, you are experiencing a Taíno gift that spans millennia. Unknowingly, your taste buds may shout a Jamaican style, “Bowy, dis food cris’!” What you have truly experienced is a gastronomic equivalent of our motto “Out of Many, One People”. You are literally eating a part of the antique history of Yamaye in an ancient and diverse pre-Columbian hemisphere, much later invariably called the “Indies”, the “Antilles”, the “New World” or the “Americas”. The primeval method of grilling that you experience through “jerk” is a Taíno based gift that they called barbecoa. In Jamaica, a barbecoa became “barbecue” a concrete platform on which cacao (chocolate) and coffee beans are sun dried. The Jamaican style of jerk was the Taíno method of spicing agouti/Indian “coney” (“rabbit”) or sacred iguana with Scotch Bonnet pepper and pimento/allspice. This method of preparing and preserving meat was later borrowed by the [11] Maroons who became masters of jerk pork. It predates the Caribbean’s Pristine Era when nomadic Asiatic humans breached the virginal shoreline past the first trees that the later arriving seafaring Taíno called mangle, the word from which we got mangrove. Taíno watercrafts that arrived onto our shores slithered through a translucent, fish-laden blue-green bagua (sea). It was ruled by, Yúcahu Bagua Máorocote, the life-sustaining deity of the yuca ( [12] cassava) and the sea. He was without grandfathers, being the son of the [13] virgin mother Attaberia, goddess of fresh water and of childbirth.

The Myth of Extinction: Does DNA lie?

My training in portraiture and the intimate involvement in the Native American community in the USA for almost 50 years, lead me to the following conclusions. Examine the photographs below. The first two that were taken soon after 1865, exhibit, in my opinion, three distinct facial phenotypes in Jamaica. They are African, European and Amerindian bone structures present among the Maroons and the English officer. The subjects in the more recent photographs (A) & (B), also show evidence of Amerindian admixture.

Facial bone structures don’t lie (A): A photograph of Jamaican/Welsh BBC television personality and athlete [14] Colin Ray Jackson CBE, has 7% Jamaican Taíno DNA. The photograph (B) below is of a Jamaican woman, also with Taino bone structure.

(B) Shirley Genus from Treasure Beach (or *Savanna-la-Mar), 1993 by antiquarian Steve Solomon. She identified herself as an “Arawak”. It would be interesting to discover if she also had "shovel teeth", an Amerindian dental trait.

[* The word Savanna is from a Taíno word "sabana" -- a flat land/plain.]

In 1992, I received an investigative grant on indigenous retentions in the cultures of four Caribbean islands of Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Antigua and Dominica, whose people at that time, like the Jamaican iguana, were supposed to be extinct. I began at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. That year’s Annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival theme was “Maroons of the Americas.” Maroon societies from Jamaica and Surinam, as well as descendants from Florida’s Seminoles who had fled to Mexico, assembled on the Mall to demonstrate their cultural retentions. Jamaica was represented by Accompong and Mooretown Maroons who demonstrated cooking jerk pork on a wooden grill called a [15] caban; cordage used for strong rope woven Taíno-style from the inner bark of the Trumpet tree (Cecropia peltata) and [16] hammock-making from the bark-cord. Its hollow branches were traditionally used to make flutes similar to the “trumpets” that Columbus recorded seeing the Taíno use in Bahía de la Vaca (“Cow Bay”) after his Second [17]1494 Voyage. Jamaicans learned how to make medicine for both a cold and sore throat from the leaf of the Trumpet tree. In the tradition of other indigenous Americans, the Taíno forest was used as a pharmacy in which one could find chew stick for cleaning the teeth and thirst-quenching [18] water wiss vine. This survivalist practice was also found among Amazonian Amerindians. The birds that we admire, the foodstuff we eat and our “bush medicine” from endemic plants, originated with the indigenous people who had used them locally for millennia. It is highly unlikely that new 1494 arrivals to Jamaica were instinctively capable of identifying the curative qualities of endemic herbal plants. We are what we eat, so the acquired knowledge of asthma bush, cold bush, bellyache bush and fever bush is part of a cornucopia of natural medicines that have made us more Yamaye than we may suspect. Without the Taíno, we could not celebrate 50 years of independence. This spirit of freedom, first exhibited by the cimarrones Taíno, was passed along to the welcomed runaways who acquired the title “hero” held by Nanny and Cudjoe. Yet, Jamaica has no sculptural monuments to the Taíno. It’s about time we correct this omission of our “First Jamaicans” from our national monuments.

FOOTNOTES

[1] The names Igneri, Ciboney, Guanahacabibe (de Las Casas) were invariably used to denote an early people who occupied the islands within the Circum Caribbean.

[2] “Meaning 'good' or 'noble', because several of its members spoke that word to Columbus to indicate that they were not Island-Caribs (Alegria 1981)” — Rouse 1992, 5.
[3] Cayo, a small island, is the root word for cay or key.
[4] The Taíno believed in a balancing system of twin entities. As a Maya elder put it, “We live in a world of polarity — day and night, man and woman, positive and negative. Light and darkness need each other. They are a balance."

[5] The Jamaican rock iguana with serrated back and sunned itself for acquiring body heat. It provided the Taíno a visual image for the sun. Liguanea from (La)-iguana is an area in St. Andrew, Jamaica.

[6] A “spittle” from inhaling the hallucinogenic, trance-producing cohoba dust was blown as snot on to the back of the intruding Deminán. It turned into a swelling from which Turtle Mother was born, not unlike Eve being created from Adam’s rib. Turtle Mother mated with the four brothers who fathered humankind. The Taíno told an arriving Spanish chronicler that an earlier cacique (ruler/chief) had seen the destruction of their civilization in a cohoba trance. They had then mistakenly believed that the destroyers were the Carib.

[7] Yuca became “cassava”, (sweet) batata is the origin of “potato”, and maisi is the source word for maize that translated into Old English “corn”, or the word for wheat. This is the origin of “Indian wheat/corn.”
[8] Callaloo from the indigenous amaranth family. Jamaicans religiously eat callaloo as a vegetable.

[9] Maraca is a Taíno implement from the womb-like higuera “calabash” with fertilizing seeds in a white membrane. Dried, it represents the duality of a food container and musical instrument used in both the areito (dance) and in sacred ceremonies by a bohuti (shaman).

[10] Jerk (North American “jerky”), is from a Maya word for drying and preserving meat over a fire.

[11] The best jerk pork still comes from Boston Bay on the eastern tip of Jamaica. The meat is barbecued on a green pimento branch rack over a pimento wood fire. Maroons clandestinely traded jerk/barbecue meat to passing ships belonging to England’s enemies.
[12] Cassava comes from cazabi, the Taíno large, flat, tropical mold-resistant tortilla-style bread made by grating the peeled root and squeezing out the cyanide based juice (used as a meat tenderizing casareep). It is then sun dried into a flour, sprinkled onto a burén, cooked to drive out any remaining cyanide, and placed on a thatch roof to sun-dry. The bread is sometimes stored for months without spoilage. According to the DICTIONARY OF JAMAICAN ENGLISH, Jamaicans call a thicker version of this pan bread, “bammy”, which is baked in a heavy iron mold. It may be the same as mbeiyú the Amerindian Tupi word for a flat manioc/yuca style cake. In the 1908 Maroon Medicine, a grill[ed] bammy with jerk pork was taken as provisions for a journey.

[13] Similar in concept to Jesus the Christ’s virgin birth from Mary and the seed of God/Yahweh.

[14] DNA tests for the BBC’s “Who do you think you are?” series revealed that “The Taíno mixed with [enslaved Africans] who had escaped from the Spanish and made their own ‘Maroon’ communities, so it's possible that Colin's remote ancestors were Maroons - or cimarrones (from the Spanish cima, or summit).” http://www.whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/episode/colin-jackson.

[15] Mooretown Maroon informants used the word caban for the Taíno barbecoa grill made in the traditional indigenous American style platform for the meat supported by four “Y” shape legs driven into the ground over a fire. The grill made of green twigs could be lowered closer to the fire by circular strings that hung down from the 2 ½’ tall “Y”-shaped legs. Caban is Spanish for “cabin’, similar to barbecue that can also mean a platform.

[16] From the Taíno hamaca, a tropical American bed. One of the first Taíno space-saving technologies borrowed by Europeans for their ships. The English then made hammocks from canvas that seamen took with them on shore.

[17] Columbus met unfriendly Taíno in war canoas (Taíno canoe) on the North Coast on May 15, 1494 and later sailed around to its south coast where “There were many Indian villages near the Bay and where Columbus says he found the most intelligent and civilized aborigines of all he met in the Antilles. By means of an interpreter, he had the most interesting conversation with the cacique of a large village on a mountain slope, who together with his family and chief followers [nitaino], paid the Admiral a visit.” –The Story of Jamaica, Clinton V. Black, 26. Columbus’s description of the Taíno retinue, its regalia that included a feathered “Coat of Arms” is indicative of the traditional high level of Taíno governmental development. Jamaica, like that other large Caribbean islands, was divided into cacigazos or districts governed by caciques and a stratified collection of sub-cacique advisers, the Nitaino, or “Nobles” as the Spanish called them.

[18] Sir Hans Slone, 1707, “This vine growing on dry Hills in the Woods where no Water is to meet with, its trunk if cut into two or three Yard long, Pieces, and held by either End to the Mouth, there issues out of it so plentifully, a limpid, innocent and refreshing Water or Sap as gives new life to the droughthy Traveller.” JAMAICA TALK: Three Hundred Years of the English Language in Jamaica, R. B. Le Page, 374

Are "Indians" Indians?

2010-11-30T15:29:00.000-08:00

Top left: “Indian on an Indian;” Silkscreen print of Pamunkey George Major Cook (a Virginia Powhatan tribe chief) advertising the popular early 1900s Indian Motorcycle. Silkscreen print by Rose Powhatan & Michael Auld
Top Center: Two Indian girls cooking rice in Jamaica. New immigrants from Northern India who came to Jamaica in the late 1800s as indentured workers after the emancipation of enslaved Africans.
Bottom Left: Evidence of pre-Columbian contact between India and the Americas? Disputed temple sculpture in Somnathpur, [India]. “We find two male and 63 female attendants to the deities holding the ‘maize ears.’", CARL JOHANNESSEN ON ANCIENT INDIAN MAIZE, (p. 170)
Bottom Center: Etching of Columbus landing on Kiskeia/Haiti Bohio (later to become Hispaniola)
Right: One of a variety of painted version of Lord Rama

Indian

Indio n, Spanish. "Indio" means Indian, as in Native American. The more politically correct word in Spanish is indígena, but indio is also used, just like Indian in English.
Hindú /hindoo/ n, via Urdu to mid 17^th century Persian (pronounced in-doo in Spanish) Indian from the country of India.
Dravidian n, Possibly the first people who became “Indian”. According to a view put forward by geneticist Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza in the book The History and Geography of Human Genes, the Dravidians were preceded in the subcontinent [of India] by an Austro-Asiatic people, and were followed by Indo-European-speaking migrants sometime later.
Indian n, from Sanskrit sinduh, via Old Persian Hindu “Indus” [River]: 1. A native of the subcontinent of India. 2. Applied to the native inhabitants of the Americas from at least 1553, on the notion that America was the eastern end of Asia.
“India”n More accurately Bharat, Bharata, Bhārat, or Bhārata may be a transliteration of either Bharata (Sanskrit: भरत, lit. "to be maintained") or Bhārata भारत, lit. "descended from Bharata") and may refer to: “Originating from Bharata, brother of the god Lord Rama.”

Given the above explanation of the name “India”, the people from that subcontinent do not necessarily refer to themselves by the Persian word “Indian” from “people of the Indus River”. They use their own religiously associated Sanaskrit word, “Bhaarat” to refer to themselves.

Many of the popularly held notions about the Americas began in the Caribbean with the Columbian Encounter of 1492. The most basic retention after meeting the Taíno in the Bahamas was that they were Indians in an extension of Asia. To Columbus, they were, in color, like the Afro-European mixed people of the Canary Islands, a Spanish possession off the West Coast of Africa. The English, coined the use of “Red Indians”, a designation that differentiated this ethnic group from the “other” Indians of India.

According to the British who colonized most of the Caribbean islands until 1962, people born on Caribbean islands and South America (British Guyana) were called West Indians.
In the Caribbean and Guyana an East Indian is a person whose family originated in India. Does this make them an East Indian West Indian? Incidentally, some people from India are opposed to the term “East Indian”.
Some Indians from the subcontinent (true Indians), do not think that American Indians should use the name “Indian”.
To confuse matters worse, Native Americans often are misidentified as an Indian (from the country of India) by non-Indians and people from India and other South East Asian countries. “Columbus made the same mistake,” is often the reply by some Native Americans to the query, “What part of India are you from?”
Pakistanis (pak= pure and stan= land) were Indians until they were partitioned from India, “which went into effect on Aug. 15, 1947”.

Growing up in the Caribbean, most people love to watch World Cup cricket played between, among others, India, Pakistan and the West Indies. Who then is the real Indian? In this hemisphere, this dilemma of cultural misidentification began with Columbus. The term became entrenched with the 16^th century Spanish who created “a Juzgado de Indias or judicial zone [of the Indians/Indies] that was established in the [Canary] islands in 1566” to control trade with the Americas. We tend to blame Columbus for this dilemma, yet come to think if it maybe he did run into “the eastern end of Asia” in 1492.

Asia Extended

Asia [from the Greek name for] “the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.6% of the Earth's total surface area (or 29.9% of its land area) and with approximately 4 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population.” Wikipedia

Mix up the world’s population and every 3^rd human you meet would be Chinese. Every 5^th person would be from India. The rest of the continent includes millions more of other Asians in East Asia and the Pacific.

Added to these Asians, approximately 47,834,251,490 indigenous people who are genetically “Asiatic”, live in 16 countries in South and Central America. There are roughly 3,672,790 in the USA and Canada. These overall numbers do not include the indigenous Caribbean populations or the extremely large meztizo and other African, European and Asiatic populations with indigenous American genes in this hemisphere. Even Europe (and possibly other areas) had its mixing of indigenous Americans soon after Columbus brought some Taíno back to Spain. Some meztizos in the Americas obviously relocated to their father’s homelands in Europe and Africa (For example, Jamaican Maroons to Sierra Leone and African Americans to Liberia).

Is the vast Western Hemisphere of the Americas also a part of Asia? Some folks think so. However, not according to some writers. Yet, indigenous Americans, they contend, are believed to have come “from Asia over a land bridge that connected both Asia proper and the Americas.” Indigenous Americans, at the time of Columbus, were genetically, philosophically and religiously “Asiatic”. Columbus was on his way to Asia when he collided into the Caribbean homeland of these Asiatic peoples, the Taíno and Island Carib. To him, they appeared to be Indios. Sailing down from the Guanahani in the Bahamas, he arrived in Cuba. There he sent out an overland expedition to find the home of the Great Kahn of China. Until his dying day, maybe he was rightfully convinced that he had encountered, explored and temporarily governed Indians (Indios) from the outer reaches of Asia’s subcontinent.

Who are the real Indians?

“East Indian” is not seen as a positive term by some people indigenous to the subcontinent of India. A close family friend, who is from India, lamented that the word “Indian” should only apply to their people, is a frequent refrain heard among “true Indians”. “Native Americans are not Indians”. Some Indians, like members of the Goins family (from Goans) originated from Goa, India and married into Virginia’s Native American families as early as the 1700s.

The 1492 misnaming of peoples in an entire hemisphere is very confusing. They can be called “American Indian”, “Native American” “Amerindian”, or “Indigenous Americans”. Even the word “America” may be troubling since it was coined from an Italian named Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian man who never set foot in the Americas. The indigenous people of the Americas had as many names for themselves and their territories as they had languages. The people whom Columbus met in 1492, called themselves “Taíno”, which appropriately meant the “Good” or “Noble” people, a self-identifying concept that eluded both the Spanish and Columbus. The Island Caribs, another indigenous Caribbean group, were appropriately called the “Strong Men” by the Taíno.

Although Columbus was responsible for the first Caribbean misnomer, the other being Caribbean people as “cannibals”, he was highly overrated as a “discoverer”. Many have now come to believe that, for indigenous peoples of the Americas, Columbus’ “discovery” of a “New World” was dismissive. The Spanish now distinguish between the indigenous people of India and the Americas in the following way. Indu (in-doo) = the real Indian. Indio (in-di-oh) = Indigenous Americans. Today, when we call over the telephone for technical help with our computer, we often get a real Indian on the other end of the line. Maybe we are talking to people who are more “local” than we think. Remembering the invention of gunpowder, trigonometry, etc., etc., what makes it equally interesting is that both they and the Chinese are well on their way to dominating the known world…AGAIN!

NOTE: The Names They Call Us

Some tribal names that Indigenous Americans traditionally call themselves and what their rivals called then are:

Taíno (the Caribbean's "Good"or "Noble People"), called "Arawak" (a South American people) by the British.
Diné means "the People". Called Navajo, from Spanish "Apache de Navajo". Navajo is originally a Tewa (or Tano) word from the Diné neighbors. The Tewa are a linguistic group of Pueblo American Indians who speak the Tewa language and share the Pueblo culture..
The Dakota, Lakota and Nakota were called Sioux ("snake") by their enemies.
The Karifuna, called "Carib" (meaning "Strong Men") by the Taino, and Caribales/Canibales by Columbus.
Mexica (me-she-ka) are the so-called "Aztec" ("people from Aztlan" ) named after Hernando Cortez and the Spanish in 1519. The Spanish allied themselves with Mexica subjects to defeated the Mexica's "Aztec Triple Alliance" empire, which has also become known as the "Aztec Empire" that included the Acolhuas of Texcoco and the Tepanecs of Tlacopan).

THE MESOAMERICAN BALLGAME: History’s First Team Sport

2010-10-22T10:23:00.000-07:00

Left
Above: (a) Taíno ball players as seen in the Caribbean (Hispaniola) and reported by the Venetian Ambassador to Spain at the Spanish court, Seville in 1493.
(b) Taíno stone belt worn by a player that counterbalanced the body during play. Carved belts like this found in Puerto Rico weighed between 15 to 57 pounds. Conquest of Eden by Michael Paiewonsky

Below: (a) Ancient Maya ballcourt ruin at Uxmal, near Merida, Mexico, 2008 (Photo by Michael Auld). Note the ballcourt ring protruding from wall above woman to the left.
(b) Ceramic effigy of Maya ballplayer.
(c) Ballcourt ring.
(d) Ballcourt illustration from an Aztec codex. The ballcourt rings in the middle of this illustration may represent the fateful movement of the sun across the sky centered between skulls at the four corners of the sacred cardinal directions. Two players representing their teams prepare to lob the ball into play.

History’s First Team Sport

Imagine that you are part of an ancient civilization of warriors. One fateful morning you calmly stand and prepare to pray to the four cardinal directions. You light the brazier and waft sacred smoke over your body. You then strap on protective gear over your elbows, knees and hip. You are preparing to join your unit in a battle against evil forces and this may be your last day in this existence. Your death will be swift and today will indeed be a good day to die. The ceremony in which you are about to engage with teammates will spill blood to seed the earth. You will fight to gain the honor of being the people’s emissary to a god. If you are fortunate, in admiration your family will bury you with a ceramic effigy or a stone sphere representing the vulcanized blood of the hule tree. For your rebirth, your family will lovingly place the glimmering feathered body of a hummingbird on your grave. These hopes pass through your mind as you enter the stone walled ball court. Its sides are teeming with shouting admirers, some of whom are gambling on your fate.

This ceremonial game began with the invention of rubber and by the Mesoamerica’s mother civilization, the Olmec. Some Amazonian peoples used the “blood” of the rubber tree to remove unwanted body hair. Mesoamericans used rubber to make toys, bungee straps, wrappings for cushioning tool handles and for waterproofing shoes and capes.

Because of its antiquity, the Mesoamerican rubber ball game is considered to be “History’s first team sport”. When the Italian adventurer Christopher Columbus and the Spanish first arrived in the Americas in the 15 th century, the Caribbean’s indigenous Taíno people played an Amerindian rubber ball game called batu. According to the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places Itinerary, “The first written description of the game, played with two teams and a rubber ball, appeared after Columbus' first voyage.” Unable to believe their eyes, the arriving Spanish thought that the miraculous bouncing of the rubber ball was a result of witchcraft. The Taínos played a non-fatal version of the ball game on a clay court called a batey. Many Taíno villages had a batey that was also a center for social gatherings.

In Puerto Rico, a major archeological site in Caguana, Utuado has over 30 ball courts (bateys) built in 1270 AD, estimated to be over 700 years old ( http://www.nps.gov/history/nR/travel/prvi/pr25.htm ). The most impressive playing enclosure is a large clay court that resembles a soccer field bordered in one side by paved stones. At one side of the field are flat upright stone slabs with incised images of Ataberia, the virgin mother of the Supreme Being, Yucahú Bagua Marocotti. Some stone slabs bordering the field weigh over one ton. Women’s teams sometimes played the Caribbean version of the game, unlike its Mesoamerican ancestor. In Mesoamerica, the ball courts were often “I” shaped fields bordered on the east and west sides by sloping stone walls. Some walls had stone rings set in the side through which a player bounced the solid nine-pound ball off his hip, elbow or shoulder. In both versions of the game, the players could not use their hand hands although in one version of the game ballplayers struck the ball with a bat.
Today in the Americas, fans of soccer and basketball have redirected their fervor for this indigenous American rubber ball game to more modern versions of the sport.

Early in the history of the Americas, this organized team sport, like maize, had travelled from Mesoamerica to Arizona and into the Caribbean. In some cultures, the ballgame represented the movement of the sun across the sky and the ominous outcome of this astrological phenomenon. In other places it was a source of communal gatherings where betting was the norm. Supposedly, sometimes either the winner or the loser’s head was decapitated as an honorable sacrificial offering “sending him directly to heaven”. The following are wall copy from a ball court in Uxmal, Merida (in Mexico’s Yucatan state) at the Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. For one of the “Unforgettable Places to See Before You Die”, a visit to this impressive museum is necessary for anyone interested in learning the history of our hemisphere, the Americas.

Wall Copy from the Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City
(1) The ballgame is one of the defining characteristics of Mesoamerica. First found on the Central Highland Plateau [of Mexico], dates back to before 1200 BC when social and religious organization in these cultures reached complex levels. From time to time, the ballgame formed part of a cult, given finding of objects related to ballplayer’s attires. These included small yokes that symbolically represented the protectors used on hands and knees, and stone balls, symbolizing the original rubber ones. These balls were used in funerary and visual contexts. The stone balls, approximately three to four inches in diameter, were a little larger than a softball.
(2) The ballgame developed as a characteristic of Mesoamerica cultures; importance can be appreciated by the presence of buildings devoted to the execution of this ceremony.
The Ball Game Among the Mexicans
(1) All the people of ancient Mesoamerica practiced the ballgame, a ritual sport that determined the dangers faced by the sun on its daily journey across the heavens, thus predicting its fate.
(2) For the Mexicans the sacred ballgame was ullamaliztli (from “rubbery” used to make the ball). Characteristics of the ballgame were:
• Precise bounce which surprised the Europeans.
• The court was called tlaxico in Nahuat (a patio in the shape of an “I” or double “T”.
• On either side—slopes;
• Walls rings called “tlaxtemalcatl”, one to the south and one to the north. Balls go through them when struck with hip or forearm.
• Ends of court were west and east.
When a play was made that went against the movement of the sun, a decapitation was carried out. The blood vitalized the earth and the sun. Secular betting was one feature of the game.
The Ball
•Made from a tree named “hule”- the material is also called the same name of the tree. Hule came from the area near the Gulf of Mexico.
•The tree sap became rubber through a vulcanized process using diverse plants.
•The solid, heavy ball was the size of volleyball.
•The wall ring through which the ball had to pass was approximately one foot across.

Today
Amerindians from the Mexican state of Sinaloa play a version of the game, called hulama.

The Conquest

2010-02-03T06:55:00.000-08:00

(1) Taíno maraca,

Dominican Republic

(2)

Powhatan dancers with rattles, John White, Virginia, 1585

conquest /kón kwèst/ n. (Vulgar Latin) 1. taking control of a place or people by force of arms. –Encarta World English Dictionary

conquistador /kon keésta dawr/ n. (Mid-19^th C via Spanish) 1. a Spanish conqueror or adventurer, especially one of those who conquered Mexico, Peru, and Central America in the 16^th century –ibid.

Writers often make statements about the conquest of the Americas by foreign powers as if the episode in the history of this hemisphere was a deed in finality. They make the occurrence seem as if everything Native came to an abrupt end after dates like Columbus’ 1492 Taíno Caribbean encounter, Cortez’s 1519 entry into the Aztec capital and Pizsrro’s 1532 Inca Empire capture.

The word conquest implies many things. It is especially used in the Americas to mean the total takeover of many indigenous American societies and peoples. Does conquest mean that all cultural and genetic traces of the conquered are obliterated? Do conquered people ever totally submit to the oppressor’s will? How long does a conquest last? The Spanish who themselves had been conquered by Moors from Africa who had ruled over most of their peninsula for nearly 800 years, became the major oppressive force in the Americas for almost 400 years. In psychological terms, in the Americas, the Moorish “abused Spanish” became “abusers” of the indigenous Americans. By January of 1492, the Christian Spanish had just thrown off the yoke of the Islamic Moorish empire via the Reconquista (reconquest) when they began their own wars of terror against the populations in the Americas. Columbus had initiated the move in the Caribbean in October of the same year. Ironically, Spanish control over the Americas also ended at their starting point in the Caribbean’s Cuba and Puerto Rico at the hands of the Americans in the1898 Spanish-American War. Spain’s domination in the Americas had ended where it had begun.

“Whether it is the Normans in England, the Chinese in Tibet, the Germans in Poland, the Indonesians in West Papua [New Guinea], the British and Americans in North America, the claiming of other people’s land and supplanting of one people by another has shaped the history of societies from the ancient past to the present day.”— Conquest: How Societies Overwhelm Others by David Day

Since the Romans conquered Britain, are the English still Romans? The English threw off the Roman yoke and re-established their cultural continuum, albeit retaining many Roman influences. A notable example was the desire to do the same and to travel the world in attempts to overwhelm other societies. The “abused” became the “abuser”. What became “Britain” may have been biological amalgamation, yet the indigenous people of those small isles retained their Anglo identity, culturally and genetically. Although we would not dare to challenge an Englishman about his heritage, contemporary writers dismiss a similar notion of Indigenous American identity. Are the Caribbean, South, Central and North American populations Spanish or British?

It is often parroted that “the Taíno disappeared soon after” the conquistadors followed Columbus into the Caribbean after 1492. The same notion is commonly ascribed to other indigenous American civilizations. These societies, like the Aztec and others have been psychologically relegated to the “disappeared”. Yet how complete is this notion of total evaporation?

After Conquest, then what?

The series of events after a conquest have differed around the world. In the Americas, conquest was followed by colonialism, then independence from the European powers. However, according to David Day, the move to supplant the Native populations continued under the newly freed governments. “From the [Indian’s] perspective, the nature of the American colonists had not changed. Europeans came to North America to establish themselves on territory owned by Indians and they continued, after independence, to pursue that aim clear across the continent.” This approach to obliteration of Native culture and replacing it with a foreign one continues at present in this hemisphere. Today, there is a struggle by indigenous Americans to maintain and renew their heritages, in spite of an educational system that has worked to promote “dead” Indians over living descendants. Throughout the Americas the resurgence of Native pride is one weapon against an apathetic educational system.

Indigenous Music Traditions Never Ended: Take the Maracas

maracas /mə ráaka/ (Tupi) n. a percussion instrument usually shaken in pairs as an accompaniment to Latin American music and consisting of a hollow rattle filled with small pebbles or beans–Encarta World English Dictionary.

Many cultural practices that we observe among the peoples of the Americas are part of an ancient indigenous continuum that is often misidentified. For example, in the article : New Notes about Taíno Music and its Influence on Contemporary Dominican Life by Lynn Guitar, the author suggests that the Dominicans on that Caribbean island half of Hispaniola shared with Haiti, “have a passion for music and dance since the Colonial Era when you could dance in the churches streets and public plazas”. Many of these Dominicans are the descendants of the indigenous peoples of Haiti Bohio (meaning “high ground home”) or Quisqueya (meaning “mother of the earth”) that was the center of the Caribbean’s Taíno civilization. They were the first to be conquered by the Spanish arriving in the Americas.

“Music played a highly significant role in both the daily and ritual lives of the Taíno, as we call the indigenous peoples of Hispaniola and the other islands of the Greater Antilles, although there were actually several different groups of indigenous peoples living here when Christopher Columbus arrived and dramatically changed not only their names, but the course of their history. The Taíno used music to help make mundane work more bearable, to help them remember and recount their history, to celebrate special occasions, and to communicate with their spiritual guides, their cemíes, to gain their help in healing, for protection against destructive natural forces such as hurricanes and earthquakes, to ensure rain when needed, good harvests, hunts, and fishing expeditions, and other necessities of life. In fact, music and song were so important, that one of the most valuable gifts one Taíno could give another was a song.

Maracas are rattles, most frequently today made out of small hollowed-out gourds (higüeros) with stick handles attached, but sometimes carved out of wood. The main difference between original Taíno maracas and modern ones is that the original ones, at least those used by the behique [shaman] for religious rituals, appear to have had one large ball of wood inside—in fact, the maraca was carved out of one piece of wood, handle and all, with the ball of wood that produces the clicking sound carved out of the inner core of that one piece of wood, through open slits that allow the sound to come out.Today’s maracas have no slits; they are left enclosed, with many small stones or seeds sealed inside the empty gourd before the handle is attached. The maracas used by Taíno musicians may have been more like the modern ones, and they appear to have used two at a time, like most modern percussionists. The behique used only one maraca, not two, and he played not by shaking it, but by hitting it against his other hand.” -- Lynn Guitar

Recognizing and Appreciating Indigenous Cultural Retentions

Using music as an example, recognizing and understanding Native American Cultural retentions had been difficult for the conquerors. For example, Lyn Guitar stated that “Like the music of most Asian cultures, Amerindian music is also typically pentatonic, meaning based on five notes, instead of the typical 8-note base of most European music.‘What [really] makes the Native American scales sound so alien [to European ears] is that the pitches of the five notes are seemingly chosen at random.’ The pitch patterns appear to have varied from tribe to tribe, village to village, family to family, even from person to person, so they were no doubt understood by the Amerindians as a means of kinship or geographic identification, just as indigenous peoples used specific designs for ceramics, textiles, and other decorated objects as identifiers of artists, families, and nations from particular regions.”

It is not surprising that even in today’s societies in the Americas we find it difficult to recognize and appreciate the very strong cultural retentions that derived from our indigenous American heritage. We in the Americas may be more “indigenous” than we think. The key to this realization is through continued education about those things that we have retained from our Native sisters and brothers.

New Notes about Taíno Music and its Influence on Contemporary Dominican Life (http://www.centrelink.org/GuitarTainoMusicEN.html)

Cannibals in the Caribbean?

2009-08-29T13:35:00.000-07:00

Images: (Top) Early Print of a Carib Family.

(Middle) Maligned heritage: 1992 photograph by Michael Auld of an Island-Carib girl from the Carib Reserve in the Eastern Caribbean Island of Dominica. Both Walt Disney Pictures and Columbus defamed her people. The Carib Reserve is the only Indigenous American reservation in the Caribbean. Jamaica has two historic African (Maroon) “reservations”.

(Bottom Left) Imaginary cannibalism: Early European illustration of an imaginary scene of Carib “cannibalism”. (Bottom Right) Real cannibalism: Pot polished and beveled human bones. Human bones from Mancos Canyon, Utah showing evidence of actual cannibalistic cooking.

Cannibalism

cannibal, /kánnib’l/ n. From Mid 16^th century Spanish canibales. 1. Somebody who eats human flesh, whether for food or as part of a religious ritual. 2. An animal that eats the flesh of other animals of the same specie.

Cannibalism is historically one of the most feared and reviled human practice. Yet the glorification of one of the forms of cannibalism, human blood drinking, is now a popular HBO Television series called “True Blood”. Cannibalism is deeply embedded in our psyche. For example, Christians perform a form of ritual cannibalism by drinking wine or grape juice that symbolizes the “blood of Christ” and eating bread that represents his body. Cannibalism occurred in all areas of the planet and is still an isolated phenomenon within some contemporary “Developed World” societies. In many of these countries there are no laws against cannibalism. It is as ancient as the Neanderthal and as recent as America’s Jeffery Daumer and Germany’s 41-year-old computer technician Armin Meiwes.

The gruesome European illustration above shows brown skinned “natives” dismembering white victims while their women cook body parts in pots and on a spit. Three heads are placed on spikes in the custom of a 16^th century European practice. This early propaganda illustration depicted the unfounded Euro-centric fear that was pervasive in Europe after Columbus arrived in the Caribbean in 1492. Although he had not seen cannibalism during his many years in the Caribbean, he instigated a myth that served the goal of Spanish expansionism in the Americas. His exploits enriched Spain and ultimately Western Europe. Unfortunately the contemporary descendants of the Island-Carib on the Eastern Caribbean Island of Dominica still continue to suffer humiliation from Columbus’ 500-year-old lie. In 1992 an aid to the Carib Council on Dominica’s Carib Reserve related to me her continued plight. She spoke of how she had to defend herself against an African-Dominican assertion that her ancestors were cannibals. The elected chief then also related how non-Carib Dominicans would cross the road so as not to walk on the same side as a Carib. His preferred name for his people was Karifuna. Today they are also called Kalinago.

Disney added to this dilemma when it made the most recent sequel of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest by portraying Dominica’s Island-Caribs as cannibals. Prior to filming, despite protests from Native American groups, Disney continued with its project. The sequel was a commercial success. These misleading movie images may be forever burned into the minds of future generations. The National Garifuna Council of Dominica criticized the movie for “portraying the Carib people as cannibals”. How did this Caribbean myth begin?

Dr. Basil A. Reid a Jamaican anthropologist who teaches at the University of the West Indies in Agustine, Trinidad and Tobago has published evidence that refutes the notion of Caribbean cannibalism. In his 2009 book Myths and Realities of Caribbean History he attributed this myth to Christopher Columbus. According to a November 4 [1492] quote in Columbus’ diary, “He [Columbus] understood also that, far from there [the Bahamas?], there were one eyed men, and others, with snouts of dogs, who ate men, and as soon as one was taken they cut his throat and drink his blood.” Today it may not be difficult to accept that 15^th century Europeans who thought that the world was flat also believed in fairies, mermaids and gigantic sea serpents. Dr. Reid suggested that the source of Columbus’ “New World” propaganda is contained in the following.

Cannibals: Natives who refused to submit to the Spanish were called cannibals. They were characterized as idolaters and consumers of human flesh who could not be converted into Christianity and were therefore suitable for enslaving.

Caribes: The Spanish understood Caribes [pronounced ka-rib-hes] to be real people when in fact they were creatures who existed only in Taíno mythology.

Caniba: Columbus sought an audience with the Grand Khan of Cathay (China). Caniba is the name Columbus gave to denote the Grand Khan’s subjects.

Greek mythology also had Cyclops and cannibals. It should be remembered that until his death Columbus insisted that he had indeed arrived, explored, ruled over and lived among these Chinese or Indian Asians in the Caribbean Islands. When he first arrived in Cubanacan (Taíno word for Cuba) he sent out an inland exploratory party to find the Grand Kahn’s kingdom. Ironically, Cuban-a-kan did sound like “Kahn”.

“At the same time that Europeans were condemning various native peoples as cannibals, however, they were practicing a form of cannibalism themselves. Use of medicines made from blood and other human body parts was widespread in Europe through the 17th century. Europeans of the period consumed fresh blood as a cure for epilepsy and substances from various body parts to treat a variety of diseases, including arthritis, reproductive difficulties, sciatica, warts and skin blemishes. A primary source for this material was the bodies of executed criminals. Pieces of mummified human flesh imported from Egypt were considered a general panacea and were widely prescribed by the physicians of the day”, Brief history of cannibal controversies”, http://exploration.vanderbilt.edu/news/news_cannibalism_pt2.htm

Were the people of Cuba and Haiti cannibals?

If my child wanted to get a precise meaning of the word “cannibal”, the explanations below would probably engender lifelong misconceptions. In various dictionaries the origin of the English word cannibal is noted as follows:

[Mid-16^thC. From Canibales, a variant (used by the explorer Columbus) of Caribes, the name of the cannibalistic people of Cuba and Haiti (see Carib).], Encarta World English Dictionary
[Spanish Canibal “Carib”, of American Indian origin], Webster’s New Encyclopedic Dictionary
[1545-55, cannibal, variant of caríbal, equivalent to canib-, carib- (Arawak) + -al –QAL; from their belief that the Caribs of the West Indies ate human flesh]. Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language

In 1492, the indigenous people of Cuba and Haiti belonged to the extensive Taíno civilization, rivals of the Eastern Caribbean’s Island-Carib. The more diplomatic Taíno cacicazgos (chiefdoms) were not the warrior society of the Island-Carib.

Recommended reading: Myths and Realities of Caribbean History, by Basil A. Reid, the University of Alabama Press, 2009.(The book can be obtained at: Amazon.com)

Chapters in this publication refute the following myths:

1. Caribbean History Started with the Arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492

2. The Arawaks and Caribs Were the Two Major Groups in the Precolonial Caribbean

3. Columbus Met Arawaks in the Northern Caribbean

4. The Natives Encountered by Christopher Columbus in the Northern Caribbean Migrated from South America

5. The Arawak Were the First Potters and Farmers to Have Settled in the Caribbean

6. The Ciboneys Lived in Western Cuba at the Time of the Spanish Conquest

7. The Island-Caribs were Cannibals

8. All Amerindians Migrating from South America to the Caribbean Island-Hopped from Continent to the Lesser and Greater Antilles

9. The Spanish Introduced Syphilis into the Caribbean and the New World

10. Christopher Columbus Wrote His Diario (Diary) That We Use Today

11. The Spanish Colonists Brought “Civilization” to Native Societies in the Caribbean

Click for a page on Dominica's "Carib" the Kalinago: http://www.avirtualdominica.com/caribs.htm

Click for a page an interview with a Carib chief of Dominica: http://powhatanmuseum.com/Carib.html

CIVILIZATION

2009-04-17T15:32:00.000-07:00

Left: (a) George Armstrong Custer (December 5, 1839–June 25, 1876). Known as an American Civil War hero, cavalry commander, and Indian Fighter. His father was a blacksmith who anglicized the German family name Küster, an occupational name for a church sexton or churchwarden, to Custer. He was the last in his class as a cadet at West Point yet he became a Civil War hero. Known as "Yellow Hair" and "Son of the Morning Star" to his Native American enemies.

(b) Lakota holy man Tȟatȟaŋka Iyotȟaŋka or Ta-Tanka I-Yotank aswe known to us as Sitting Bull. He led the Battle of Greasy Grass Creek or the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

(c) 1848 painting of orator Tecumtha or Tekamthi or Tecumseh"Shooting Star” ( Shawnee) March 9, 1768-October 5, 1813).

(d) 1835 lithograph from a painting of Red Jacket or Sagoyewatha (Seneca)1750-January 20, 1830. Orator and war chief of the Wolf clan.

(e) Painting of the Native American Battle of Greasy Grass Creek known as the Battle of the Little Bighorn or Custer's Last Stand. Fighting for their homeland, Lakota and Northern Cheyenne warriors defeated Custer’s 700-man 7^th Cavalry Regiment column. In the battle, the warriors annihilated five companies and killed Custer along with his two brothers, a nephew and brother-in-law.

civilization n. from the Latin civis, a citizen or townsman governed by the law of his city. 1. places where people live, rather than uninhabitable areas. 2. a society that is marked by complex social and political organization, and material, scientific, and artistic progress.

Indian fighter n. 1. someone who fought against Native Americans and who believed that Indians should be punished, put on reservations, and forced to stay there. 2. arrogant military men who fought against Native Americans with the intent to subdue or eliminate the enemy.

arrogance .n. 1. a strong feeling of proud self-importance that is expressed by treating other people with contempt or disregard.

Civilization

One day I visited the Virginia Room at the Fairfax County Regional Library. My wife and I had attended a first meeting for the kick off for a special library organization. While she was speaking to a library official, I perused a display where I came across a printed collection of newspaper articles from 1870 to 1875. An 1874 article under the heading “THE INDIAN NOT CIVILIZABLE”, from “My life on the Plains”, written by General Custer in the February Galaxy, caught my eye. This 19^th century belief may have lingered into the 21^st century of the present era. Custer, who met his timely end at the Battle of the Little Big Horn at 35 years old, on June 26, 1876 at the hands of his reviled objects (Lakota or Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors), wrote this opinion.

Custer’s Belief

“The white race might fall into a barbarous state, and afterwards, subjected to the influence of civilization, be reclaimed and prosper. Not so the Indian, He cannot be himself and be civilized; he fades away and dies.”

“To those who advocate the application of the laws of civilization to the Indian, it might be profitable study to investigate the effect [that] such application produces upon the strength of the tribe as expressed in numbers. Looking at him as the fearless hunter, the matchless horseman and warrior of the Plains, where Nature placed him, and contrasting with the reservation Indian, who is supposed to be reveling in the delightful comforts and luxuries of an en1ightened condition, but who in reality groveling in beggary, bereft of any qualities which is in his wild state tended to render him noble, and heir to a combination of vices partly his own, partly bequeathed to him from the paleface, one is forced even against desire, to conclude that there is unending antagonism between the Indian nature and that with which his well-meaning white brother would endow him. Nature intended him for a savage state; every instinct, every impulse of his soul inclines him to it. The white race might fall into a barbarous state, and afterwards, subjected to the influence of civilization, be reclaimed and prosper. Not so the Indian, He cannot be himself and be civilized; he fades away and dies.

Cultivation such as the white man would give him deprives him of his identity. Education, strange as it may appear, seems to weaken rather than strengthen his intellect. Where do we find any specimens of educated Indian eloquence comparing with that of such native, untutored orators as Tecumseh, Osceola, Red Jacket, and Logan; or, to select from those of more recent fame, Red Cloud of the Sioux, or Sa-tan-ta of the Kiowas?”

What are the benchmarks of a civilized society? In Custer’s mind, was the level of oratory of some Native leaders even a tiny indication of a civilized people? Apparently not. For him the “civilized white man” was the only one able to temporarily sink into the barbarism of a Civil War and afterwards, the attempted annihilation of an indigenous people, and rise again to gain his unblemished position among the civilized societies of the world.

Tecumseh’s speech

“You have the liberty to return to your own country ... you wish to prevent the Indians from doing as we wish them, to unite and let them consider their lands as common property of the whole ... You never see an Indian endeavor to make the white people do this ... Sell a country! Why not sell the air, the great sea, as well as the earth? Did not the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his children? How can we have confidence in the white people? ” --Tecumseh to Governor William Harrison (he later became the ninth president of the United States and died in office), 1810, The Portable North American Indian Reader.

Red Jacket’s speech on the Religion of White men and the Red

“Brother, listen to what we say. There was a time when our forefathers owned this great island. Their seats extended from the rising to the setting sun. The Great Spirit had made it for the use of Indians. He had created the buffalo, the deer, and other animals for food. He had made the bear and the beaver. Their skins served us for clothing. He had scattered them over the country and taught us how to take them. He had caused the earth to produce corn for bread. All this He had done for His red children because He loved them. If we had some disputes about our hunting-ground they were generally settled without the shedding of much blood. But an evil day came upon us. Your forefathers crossed the great water and landed on this island. Their numbers were small. They found friends and not enemies. They told us they had fled from their own country for fear of wicked men and had come here to enjoy their religion. They asked for a small seat. We took pity on them, granted their request, and they sat down among us. We gave them corn and meat; they gave us poison [alcohol] in return.

Brother, you say there is but one way to worship and serve the Great Spirit. If there is but one religion, why do you white people differ so much about it? Why not all agreed, as you can all read the Book? Brother, we do not understand these things. We are told that your religion was given to your forefathers and has been handed down from father to son. We also have a religion which was given to our forefathers and has been handed down to us, their children. We worship in that way. It teaches us to be thankful for all the favors we receive, to love each other, and to be united. We never quarrel about religion.” --Excerpt from Red Jacket’s 1805 speech on the Religion of the White Man and the Red

The epitome of arrogance or differences in values?

Today some Native American T-shirts display the saying, “Custer died for his sins.” Or, “Custer was Siouxed.” Custer, however, typified the arrogance of his time, a malady first encountered in Christopher Columbus’ writings.

Columbus’ 1492 first impression of the Taíno

“It seemed to me that they were a people very deficient in everything. They all go naked as their mother bore them, and the women also… They did not bear arms or know them, for I showed them swords and they took them by the blade and cut themselves through ignorance. They have no iron.”--Caribbean island of Guanahaní, October 1, 1492. --The Journal of Christopher Columbus, p.23.

Columbus judged the Taíno by their nudity since he based their practical treatment of tropical heat in a sexual context. I wonder how he would view the bikini on the same Bahamian beach today. The Taíno wove high quality cotton that married women wore as a skirt they called a nagua. They used jade and obsidian blades imported from the Maya workshops in Central America for cutting implements. Archeologists have found one of these Maya trade household items as far down the chain of islands as Antigua in the Eastern Caribbean. Obsidian knives were sharper than steel swords yet one of the benchmarks for Western Civilization was the development of steel from iron. The Taíno’s Mesoamerican neighbors, the Maya, had a network of long distance trading from the Pacific to the Caribbean. They used obsidian blades (a volcanic glass) as trade items that were even sharper than steel scalpels. Obsidian blades were also used to carry out cranial surgery or trephinin, a successful indigenous Mesoamerican and Andean practice unknown to Columbus’s medical contemporaries. “An abstract from the Western Journal of Medicine, March !982, stated, “The prismatic glass blade is infinitely sharper than a honed steel edge, and these blades can be produced in a wide variety of shapes and sizes.” (Contemporary Surgery, Bruce A. Buck, MD, Twin Falls, Idaho). According to the article, “the finest of these prismatic blades were produced in Mesoamerica about 2,500 years ago.” For example, in research done in 1982 by Dr. Don Crabtree, the possible uses of [obsidian] blades in modern surgery and animal experiments had shown the tensile strength of obsidian produced wounds to be equal to or greater than that of wounds produced by steel scalpels after 14 days of healing. Native Americans also mined, manufactured and exported obsidian implements from Casa Diablo in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California as early as 6500 to 1500 B.C. In cardiac surgery, obsidian blades produce narrower scars and less tissue damage.

Columbus’ 1492 second impression of the Taíno

[The houses of Cuba] “were made in the manner of tents, very large, and they looked like tents in a camp, with no regular streets , but one here and another there. Inside, they were well swept and clean, and their furnishings very well arranged; all were made of very beautiful palm branches. They found many images like women and many heads like masks, very well worked. [I do] not know if they had them for their beauty or whether they worshiped them.”-- The Journal of Christopher Columbus, p.47.

The first houses that some Spanish conquistadors felt lucky to buy in the Caribbean were bohios (a roundhouse) made by the Taíno since the caney (a square chief’s house) was not commonly available on the housing market. Water resistant and thatched like many English houses at the time, they constructed the walls with timber (like insect repellant mahogany and other tropical hardwoods) and decorated the interiors with painted or woven decorations of varying designs. As the Japanese also knew, wood was better suited for earthquake zones than the brick and mortar structures that the Spanish later imported from their motherland. According to an abstract on architecture by Banu Çelebioğlu& Sevgül Limoncu , Department of Architecture, Yıldız Technical University, Turkey, “Timber structures are the most earthquake resistant among other traditional forms.”

A change in the times

Europeans who came to the Americas had set their benchmarks of evaluating “civilization” after they themselves had become heirs to the civilizing accomplishments of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece and Rome. They also had built on borrowed ideas from Arabia (algebra first written about by Muhammad ibn Muas al-Khwarizmi who used his al-jabr to help him in scientific work in geography and astronomy, etc.), China (invented gunpowder, printing, etc.) and India (invented zero, the numerals 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9). By Custer’s time most Americans also knew nothing about the great civilizations of the Americas, so opinions were characteristically flawed. In spite of Columbus’ erroneous first impression of the “Indios”, and Custer’s last stand on the “Indian’s” inability to become civilized, we have made-enlightened strides in the knowledge of indigenous American civilizations.

Yet in the Americas, most of our current populations remain as ill informed as Custer and Columbus about indigenous American civilizations and their accomplishments. For example, both men did not know of the early Maya mathematician’s (of Central America) own independent invention of zero; the advanced civilizations of Mesoamerica and the Andes; the Olmec of Mexico’s invented uses of latex rubber, or the early Mexican horticultural “engineering” of corn from a small wild grass. In President Obama’s recent speech to Congress, he expressed the importance of our educational system. Although we in the United States have made great strides in the inclusion of knowledge about Native American cultures in the school curriculum, we need to become more aware of their impact on both our and world cultures. As an educator, I have often been shocked at the abysmal lack of knowledge about the ancient history of our hemisphere. We know more about Europe, Asia, and Africa than we do about the Americas, the hemisphere in which most of us were born and in which we will probably die. Without knowledge of a people’s history we cannot award them their deserved respect.

Barack Obama was the first presidential candidate who repeatedly included Native Americans in his speeches. In the spirit of his emphasis on education in his first speech to Congress, we can go one-step further. “Change”, our educational system to include instruction indigenous American contributions to other world civilizations, as an integral part of the school curriculum. National Native American Heritage Month (November) should be treated equally as is Black History Month (February) where even the television stations use their “bully pulpit” to enlighten us. If we do not give credit where it is due, our children will continue the Custer fallacy of having a one sided view of their inherited history in the Americas.

Red Jacket’s 1804 speech in its entirety: http://www.bartleby.com/268/8/3.html#txt1

Maya Trade & Economy http://www.authenticmaya.com/maya_trade_and_economy.htm

Ancient and modern uses of obsidian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsidian

Akhenaten? Obama?

2009-01-30T07:27:00.000-08:00

(Click on image to enlarge)

Amenhotep IV – better known as Akhenaten was one of the most historically profound pharaohs to rule Egypt. He led Egypt in a direction that would tag him “The Heretic Pharaoh.” He brought forth new ideas mainly in religion and art that would leave a lasting impression on the world. Unlike most pharaohs, Akhenaten presented himself in a way that would lead to controversy and would shock the world of his contemporaries.

Similarities?

My wife, Rose, mentioned to me how similar in visual imagery and symbolism Barack Obama was to an Egyptian pharaoh. She said, “Amenhotep”, at the same time that I said, “Akhenaten.” We were both on the same page, a phenomenon that often occurs after 42 years of marriage. Amenhotep, the ancient Egyptian pharaoh who reigned about 3,500 years ago, was an agent of CHANGE. “He made some major, but rather short-lived changes to various aspects of ancient Egyptian culture, the most notable one[s] being his religious [governmental, and artistic] revolution.” Upon his ascent to the Egyptian throne, he changed his name from Amenhotep (meaning Amun is Satisfied) to Ahkenaten (meaning Effective Spirit of Aten). “Akhenaten ruled in the eighteenth dynasty, which seemed to be an age of revolution in ancient Egypt. Only a few reigns before his had been the reign of Hatshepsut, the most famous (but not the only) female pharaoh.”

Akhenaten represents many things to diverse people--to some he personifies a fanatical lunatic, to others, he comes across as a strange, eccentric young man whose behavior was strongly influenced by his mother. Was he a Christ-like visionary and a mentor of Moses? Did he simply happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time and have nothing to do with the dramatic reformations that went on during his reign? “Many early historians, determined to link Akhenaten's religion somehow to the Jewish religion, said that he was inspired by Joseph or Moses (Redford, p. 4, 1984). This is a possibility, considering that Joseph, at least, was around in roughly the same time period as Akhenaten. However, after close examination of Akhenaten's religion, this hypothesis seems unlikely. Akhenaten's religion did center on one god, but his major emphasis was on the Aten's [the Sun] visibility, tangibility, and undeniable realness. Akhenaten placed no emphasis, therefore, on faith.

According to John Tuthill, a professor at the University of Guam, Akhenaten's reasons for his religious reform were political. By the time of Akhenaten's reign, the god Amon had risen to such a high status that the priests of Amon had become even more wealthy and powerful than the pharaohs.”-- by Megaera Lorenz.

Another similarity to Akhenaten is Obama’s open demonstration of his love for children. In the above stone relief, (a), Akhenaten, in a un-pharaoh-like depiction, is shown with Nefertiti and two of their daughters, as loving parents. He broke the conventions of Egyptian art by showing himself in intimate family scenes with his wife and children, and portraying himself and the rest of the royal family in a much more human and naturalistic manner than any of his predecessors had. Obama also demonstrates convincing affection for his children. No doubt, we could find more similarities between the two charismatic world leaders, such as Middle Eastern/Arab phenomena, etc. As Obama’s administration unfolds, let us hope that this “reincarnation” is not a history-repeating drama. After Akhenaten died, the opposition (the powerful priests of Amon) changed the Egyptian religion from the worship of Aten to that of Amon and the many local gods. They abandoned his newly built city of Amana, and tried to erase all evidence of Akhenaten from Egyptian history.

Influences of Amerindian Art

2009-01-25T14:10:00.000-08:00

Images: [a] “Rainy Night Downtown”. Painting by Georgia Mills Jessup (Pamunkey) (in the permanent Contemporary Collection of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C).
[b] “Chickahominy Heritage Keepers”[cousins Lenora and Troy Adkins]. Painting by Rose Powhatan (Pamunkey/Tauxenent).
[c] “Kingpin” by David Mills (Pamunkey). NBC’s crime drama miniseries of a powerful Mexican drug-trafficking family.
[d] “Pigmentary Glaucoma”. Watercolor and airbrush medical illustration by Marsha Jessup (Pamunkey).
[e] “Flower Power”. Photo by Bernie Boston (Tauxenent). Pulitzer nominated iconic 1967 anti-war protest photograph.
[f] Maya Chacmool (Mexico) sculpture and Henry Moore’s “Reclining Figure”. [g]. Jackson Pollock’s 1943 painting, “She Wolf”. [h] “Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture, an echo of Weatern Indian cliff structures. It is obvious that set designers from movies such as “Time Machine” also drew their architectural inspiration from the Anasazi cliff dwellings. (Google anasazi cliff dwellings )

primitive n, 1. first at or relating to the first stages or form of something. An often misused and misunderstood word that may or may not denote inferiority. 2. used in art to denote a concept of purity untainted by the corruptions of modern society. Also artistically untrained created by an artist with no formal training, especially using a simple style. 3. art created by an early medieval European artist or folk artist.
primitivism n, 1. the belief that less technologically dependent cultures and ways of living are inherently better than more technologically dependent ones. 2. a 1930s and 1940s style of art preferred by some Modernist artists, who were disillusioned with the impersonal uses of technology, as a more pure form of human expression in the visual arts.

Influences of Amerindian Art

Writers have often applied the two words above from the dictionary to the indigenous peoples of the Americas, Asia, Africa and Polynesia and some modern artists influenced by these cultures. The dictionary describes art as “the creation of beautiful or thought provoking works, e.g., in painting, music, or writing [etc.].” Quite often historians have stated that many non-Western societies did not have a name for art, yet Mesoamericans did. In art history contexts, anthropologists, art historians and other writers applied the words “primitive”, “naive”, “Native”, and “tribal” to artistic expressions by some African, Asian, Polynesian, and Native American art forms. In the book Native Moderns: American Indian Painting, 1940-1960 author Bill Anthes stated that even well meaning writers like Jewish American 1940s New York art critic and painter Barnett Newman used the word “Primitivism” to describe Native American-influenced art. Newman promoted the conscious incorporation of Native American artistic aesthetics in creating the new form of visual expression, America’s Modern art movement.

In the 1940s some American artists, especially those with recent European immigrant roots broke with Europe, especially Paris, as their main inspiration for creating avant-garde art. Earlier, in the 1800s, French artist Paul Gauguin had gone to Tahiti for his artistic inspiration where he reveled in the “purity” of Polynesian culture and broke from European realism. In the early 1900s, Pablo Picasso and other Europeans looked towards Africa as a model for their artwork. Native American art and architecture influenced both American (mainly centered in New York) and European artists. This New York centered art movement became the basis for Abstract Expressionism. However, this cross-cultural influence was not a one-way street. Upon their arrival in the Caribbean and later in “Terra Firma” as they called the American mainland, the Spanish employed indigenous artists to create works for their expanding empire. The Spanish émigrés used ornately decorated stone pillars known as the “Seville carvings” for buildings in their Jamaican capital Santiago de La Vega, now Spanish Town in the parish of St. Catherine. Historians believe that the indigenous Taíno stone carvers made the elaborately decorated architectural columns for the conquistadors. In Terra Firma, the Spanish also used the talents of indigenous artists and artisans for the construction of religious and governmental buildings.

Later, in North America “between 1940 and 1960, many Native American artists made bold departures from what was the traditional style of [American] Indian painting.” Some of the better-known 20th century pioneering modernist Native American painters were José Lente and Jimmy Byrnes (Pueblo), Patrick DesJarlait and George Morrison (Ojibwa), Dick West (Cheyenne) father of Rick West, past director of the National Museum of the American Indian, and Oscar Howe (Dakota). “Many anthropologists, archaeologists, and art historians are also now studying modern Latin Native American cultures for vestigial manifestations of or similarities to pre-Columbian civilization.” (Encarta Encyclopedia online article on Pre-Columbian Art and Architecture).

Toltécayotl

What did pre-Columbian people of the western hemisphere think about the discipline that some cultures in the eastern hemisphere called art? The book Esthetic Recognition of Ancient American Art by George Kubler includes the 1500s investigative work with the Aztec/Mexica (Nahua) people of Mexico conducted by Franciscan missionary Bernadino de Sahagún. In Sahagún interviews, he asked these indigenous American informants their opinions “on the historic origins of sculpture; on the ancient estimation of artists; and the kind of recognized artists.” These Nahua-speakers considered the older Toltec civilization in the Valley of Mexico at Tula, flourishing before A.D 1300, as the originators of toltécayotl, or “artistry”. They called practitioners of these revered art forms of sculpture, painting, pottery, and metalwork toltécatl. The informants said that toltécatl had a “marked individual identity, a striving for excellence and as being of moral worth”. For example, “teaching the clay to lie” was one of the metaphors that these Mesoamerican civilizations applied to ceramics or pottery.

Judging by the beauty of Native American regalia on today’s powwow circuit and the variety of artworks at Indian Market in Santa Fe, New Mexico, art has always been and continues to be an integral part of American Indian life and practice. The following proves my point. I am a visual artist who married into a family of Native American artists. In my wife’s indigenous American family, more than 29 of them are artists who have both worked and have gained recognition in the various fields of creative expression. For starters, my wife’s mother is a noted painter, ceramist, and sculptor whose painting is in the permanent collection of the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. Some of her siblings were artists and accomplished musicians. My wife is a painter, sculptor, designer, actor, and storyteller. One of her sisters is a noted medical illustrator/administrator. Her two brothers are musicians; one was the lead guitarist for Mandrill, the internationally famous funk band formed in Brooklyn, New York in 1968 by brothers who were born in Panama and who grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Her second brother is a singer/composer and bass guitar player. Her other two sisters received degrees in drama and music. A cousin with a surname (like my mother-in-law’s) from Virginia’s Pamunkey people was a Washington Post writer turned Hollywood screen writer/producer of film and television. A maternal cousin’s first degree was in art therapy and is now a PhD professor/writer/photographer. A late paternal Tauxenent cousin, a newspaper photographer detailed to the White House by the Washington Times and Los Angeles Times, was a noted Pulitzer nominee for a famous Vietnam-era demonstration photo. Another maternal cousin is a noted retired photographer/editor for the Washington Post. Other cousins, nephews and nieces continue to be involved in the performing and visual arts during their lifetimes. From the second generation, our middle son is a lawyer for New York City’s Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts (VLA). Our youngest son, who has also finished law school, has acted in films, shares a passion for screenwriting with his older brother.

Indigenous America aesthetics and Modern American Art of the 20th century

Whether we know it or not indigenous American art has deeply influenced all of our lives. The conscious influence of Amerindian visual aesthetics, beginning in the Caribbean, has been a driving force in my own works. I have come to learn that these indigenous American influences began early in the post-Columbian history of this hemisphere. Art historians have amply documented the similar profound indigenous American aesthetic influences on abstract art movements. In the book American Indian Contributions to the World: 15,000 Years of Inventions and Innovations, Emory Dean Keoke and Kay Marie Porterfield stated on page 1 under (ca.1930-present) North American, Mesoamerican, South American Andean cultures:

“Abstract art consists of works that are not subject to the limits imposed by representation. The emphasis in abstract art is on form rather than subject matter. Some abstract designs have no recognizable subject matter. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, pre-Columbian and post-Columbian abstract art that is indigenous to the Americas served as inspiration for the modern American abstract art movement. This reversed the stance of early ethnographers who had termed American Indian art as primitive, often because the works were executed on buildings, pottery vessels, clothing, and textiles, rather than on canvas or in marble as was done in the European tradition.”

English artist Henry Moore’s abstract statues, one of which graces the entrance to the East Wing of the National Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C., is a Modernist reinterpretation of Mesoamerica’s indigenous sculpture. Similarly, ancient buildings from America’s southwest influenced noted architect Frank Lloyd Wright whose work in turn inspired other architects. The permeating influence of indigenous American art and aesthetics continues around the world today.

Some types of visual arts

Fine Arts: Painting, printmaking, and the plastic arts of ceramics and sculpture.
Applied Arts: Architecture, fashion design/illustration, industrial design (furniture automotive, airplanes, appliances, instruments etc.), commercial art (graphic design, illustration, and computer graphics), animation, cartooning, fashion design/illustration (divided into other specialties such as shoe designs, etc.), medical/biological illustration and prosthetic design, etc.
Crafts: pottery, woodworking, paper-mâché, gilding, metalwork, bead/feather work, leatherwork, etc.

For examples of works by select persons in this blog, click on to the following website pages:

Georgia Mills Jessup and Rose Powhatan-- http://www.powhatanmuseum.com/People/Profiles.html
Michael Auld-- http://www.powhatanmuseum.com/Taino_Gallery.html and http://www.anansistories.com/About_the_artist.html
Dick West-- http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/W/WEO15.html
Patrick DesJarlait-- http://www.kstrom.net/isk/art/art_minn.html
George Morrison --. http://www.askart.com/AskART/artists/search/Search_Repeat.aspx?searchtype=IMAGES&artist=100988
Oscar Howe -- http://oscarhowe.org/

Colibri/Hummingbird

2008-12-29T23:20:00.000-08:00

© 2008 Michael Auld
Image: (1) Huitzilopochtli, the Mexica’s hummingbird-warrior and sun-god. (2) Jamaica’s national bird, the Streamtailed or “doctorbird”. (3) Cuba’s bumblebee-sized hummingbird superimposed on an image of the biggest hummer, the swif-sized South American Patagonia gigas. (4) Jamaican Taíno sculpture of what appears to be a hummingbird man. (5) A Victorian woman wearing a hat with stuffed hummingbirds attached to it. (6) Gigantic image of a hummingbird from the famous Nazca of the Pampa region of Peru, South America. This etching is one of 300 large linear earthwork designs created between 200 BC and 600 AD. The images were made by scraping away the top layer of iron-oxide coated surface pebbles to reveal the lighter color underneath in order to create drawings that are only recognizable from the sky. (Nazca Lines and Culture, http://www.crystalinks.com/nazca.html).
(7) Hummingbird Magic for attracting the opposite sex. Like Polvo de Chuparrosa or "powdered hummingbird " this is an image of a premixed cologne or perfume, one of the items along with votive candles and amulets, sold in Mexico and South America.

Colibrí /ko-lee-bré/ n. 1. Taíno name for a small brightly colored bird of the Caribbean, North, Central, and South America that can beat its wings rapidly, making a zum-zum or humming sound. 2. the Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Dutch (kolibrie) words for hummingbird originating from the Taíno language. Family: Trochilidae 3. also Zum Zum, (from Cuban Taíno) apparently from the sound made by the bird’s wings while in flight.
4. Called the hummingbird in English

Hummingbird /húming bird/ n 1. an English word which is derived from the humming sound made by the bird’s rapidly beating wings. 2.the tiny hovering bird called colibrí by the Taíno.
3. a small jewel colored bird found only in the Americas related to swifts and having narrow fast beating wings, a long slender bill, and extended tubular tongue for drinking nectar. 4.also called a “hummer” by some American bird lovers.

The Western Hemisphere

Through out the western hemisphere indigenous Americans have almost as many local names as they have myths about the tiny revered hummingbird. For example, in the Nahuatl language of Mexico its name means “rays of the sun” or “tresses of the day star”, while in some South American local dialects it is a “house cleaner”, “flower sucker” or “flower kisser”. Believed to be reincarnated warriors, or emissaries to deities, they are identified with a supreme god of the sun and war. They are also worn as earrings by chiefs, sought after for their jeweled pelts by Aztec royalty, shamen and Victorians, used as love potions (“Polvo de Chuparosa”), and the major character of many indigenous American mythologies. These are only a few of the descriptive qualities of the world’s smallest bird. This indigenous native of the Americas was called (1)colibri and zum zum by the Taíno and hummingbird by English speakers. The name colibri is still used in Spanish since they were the first non-natives in the Americas to see a bird to which they also gave mythical qualities.

The Eastern Hemisphere

Soon after their arrival in the America’s Caribbean the Spanish reported back to Europe about a fantastic bird in the “New World” that never landed and who made its nest in the sky. The Spanish, upon their return from the Caribbean told Queen Isabella of Spain, Columbus’ benefactor, that the hummingbird was a cross between a bird and an insect. It was in the 15th century that Castillians (Spanish) in the Caribbean saw the hummingbird for the first time. They were fascinated with its diminutive size and brilliant, iridescent colors. The birds were (2)"compared to precious stones and gems which have given rise to such names as ‘topaz’, ‘sapphire’ and ‘ruby’." Specimens were taken to Europe as part of the curious objects from the “New World”. This unusual bird captivated both scientists and the public. Stuffed hummingbirds were in great demand throughout the Victorian era. In 1888, four hundred thousand hummingbird skins were sold as clothes decoration and for jewelry in London alone. Ironically, this was one of the ways that the variety within the hummingbird specie was scientifically counted. During this era having encased specimens to adorn one’s home was the rage. The exportation of millions of hummingbird skins from the Americas has dramatically slowed but contemporary habitat destruction has endangered the species. Live specimens are difficult to keep and some that were hardier in captivity have been exported to aviaries outside of the Americas

The Habitats of Select Species

Hummingbirds are the second largest family of birds in the Western hemisphere. They are found throughout the Americas from Tierra del Fuego in the south to the Arctic Circle in the north and Barbados in the easternmost Caribbean. There are 338 species. Eighteen of these are found in North America while16 live in the Caribbean. They are most numerous in Columbia and Ecuador where 130 species exist. Most of North America’s hummingbirds travel up the west coast (some journey 2,000 miles). The Ruby-throated (Archilochus colubris) winters in the Caribbean and Central America and in the spring migrates to eastern North America (from Labrador to eastern Mexico and westward to central South Dakota) where it breeds. During the Fall the Ruby-throated return south in swarms. Since hummingbirds often return to the same branch or nest, they are being acutely affected by loss of habitat. Organizations like Nature Conservacy (nature.org) “must think globally [to] protect areas throughout the world to come together to form a large mosaic of protective lands and waters.” They “have created strategies to help all along the migration routes.” Some hummers like Cuba’s bumblebee-sized hummingbird and Jamaica’s national bird, the Streamtailed or “doctor bird”, are endemic to only those islands. Cuba’s hummer is the smallest member of the of class of Aves in the world while, although Jamaica’s doctorbird can measure up to ten inches from its beak to its two tail feathers. The swift-sized Patagonia gigas of South America is the biggest.

Mystical Warriors

Known as “feathered jewels” the hummingbird has had a mystical reputation since ancient times in the Americas. The light reflective qualities of its tiny feathers turns to dark hues in the shadow and become brilliant faceted colors in the sunlight. The Taíno associated the colebri with the glitter of their highly prized 14k gold called guanin. The reflective sheen of the hummingbird’s feathers was like the bright copper-yellow guanin used to render the eyes of some sculptures. Metallic brilliance was associated with a spiritual gate between two worlds. The reflective sheen provided a crossable bridge into the (3)cohoba world of the (4)cemis . To the Taíno the hummingbird was seen as an important crescent shaped symbol and was associated with similar forms such as the quarter moon and the rainbow. An image of this geometric shape was also achieved when the male of some specie fly in a perfect arc during its mating ritual.

(5)"Aruacs (Taíno) regarded the Humming-bird as the incarnation oftheir dead warriors, and the name God-bird also applied to it, and the supernatural awe attached to it suggests that the Indian belief has been taken up by the [Jamaican] blacks in a modified form, and that ‘doctor-bird’ is ‘medicine man bird’."

The Jamaican national bird is the specie Trochilus polytmus which is the unique Streamtailed hummingbird called a doctorbird. One Jamaican folk song warns (6)"Doctor bud a cunny bud, a hard bud fi dead”. A similar belief by the Mexica (Me-shee-ka) (Aztecs) was that (7)Huitzilopochtli (Whits-ill-low-poach-lee), the warrior sun-god, was associated with the hummingbird. They believed that four years after dying in battle, or as a sacrifice, the spirit of the warriors left the brilliant retinue of the sun god to forever live in the bodies of hummingbirds. Therefore, hummingbirds were placed on the graves of their warriors.

This association with warriors reflects the ferocious spirit of the hummingbird who will attack an intruding hawk or a human. The added solitary habit of this territorial bird is also identified with Huitzilopochtli, the Mexica sun god. The first part of this Mexica god’s name Huetzilin means hummingbird and he is sometimes depicted as this bird. The second half of his name means “from the deep south” or the spirit world. In his nahuat (spiritual) disguise he also appears as an eagle. He is the sun, a relentless warrior-god who each morning rises in the east to subdue those siblings (his sister the moon and his brothers the stars) who had plotted his death while he was still in his mother’s womb. He was born fully grown and vanquishes them each day. Among the Maya there is also a god who is in the form of a hummingbird.

Reincarnation

To conserve the high energy used for darting and flying the hummingbird is the only bird that can become torpid. This habit of going into a deep sleep of suspended animation when resting at night and its reinvigoration by the morning sun’s rays is associated with attributes of “reincarnation”, a belief shared by the Mexica. The use of its beak to penetrate flowers is associated with powers of healing and love. Amulets were made from body parts of the hummingbird and worn in medicine bags (that are still used as love potions in some areas of Central America). The Arawaks of Venezuela, who are related to the Taíno, believed that their ancestors obtained their first tobacco seeds from Trinidad through the ploy of a hummingbird. There are hummingbird tales from the Taíno, Apache, Aztec, Maya, Mohave, Chayma, Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, Cherokee, Cochti and many more peoples of the Americas.” A traditional myth of the Cherokee tells of a pretty woman who was wooed by the Hummingbird and a Crane. She preferred the hummingbird because he was so handsome, but the Crane was very persistent, forcing her to challenge the suitors to a race around the world”. The Crane won since he did not have to stop to rest at night. She disregarded the result of the race and chose the Hummingbird. (Hummingbirds, A Wildlife Handbook by Kim Long)

There are many books and Web sites on the Internet with stories and information on hummingbirds.

Click on to the link to see a satellite view of the Nazca hummingbird image as compared to the Empire State Building. http://agutie.homestead.com/FiLEs/incas/nazca_hummingbird_1.htm

Footnotes:
1. The word colibri was also adopted in other non-American languages.
2. The Birds of Jamaica, Frank Bernal O.D., p. 64
3. A powdered snuff-like hallucionogen used by the Taino shaman and cacique (chief) to transport them to a separate spiritual reality.
4. Religious Taino objects made in various liknesses of spiritual beings and made from materials such as stone, wood, cotton, shell, bone, etc.
5. A 19th century spelling of Arawak, the term used in the English-speaking Caribbean to refer to the Taino. From 1847, Geosse, p. 89, Dictionary of Jamican English, Cassidy and Le Page, p. 152
6. "Doctor bird is a cunning bird, a hard bird to die."
7. Huitzilopochtli (from Nahuat huitzin, "hummingbird", and opochili," left" or "south"

SUPER FRUIT

2008-11-23T17:11:00.000-08:00

IMAGES: (1) Guava fruits and branch. (2) & (3) Stone sculptures of Maquetaurie Guayaba from the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. (4) Shell amulet of Opiyelguobirán. From the Dominican Republic. (5) Jar of guava jelly. (6) Packet of guava paste or cheese. (7) A bat-like vomiting stick made from manatee bone and used prior to the sacred cohoba trance ceremony.

SUPER FRUIT

Guava (gwa-va) n, English via Spanish from Taíno. 1. from the Taíno word guayaba. 2. from the name of the Lord of the Dead, Maquetaurie Guayaba (Ma-kay-taw-ree Gwa-ya-baa); “Associated with sweetness and delight; symbol of the guayaba berry; bat symbols” (Cave of the Jagua, Antonio M. Stevens-Arroyo). 3. opposite of Yucahuguamá, god of the yuca, of life and the sea 4. any of numerous tropical and subtropical American trees or shrubs belonging to the genus Psidium, of the myrtle family bearing round to pear-shaped green or yellowish to deep red, oval fruit. 5. the fruit used for the making of jam, jelly, Cuban guava paste or Jamaican guava “cheese”, etc. 6. source of Bob Marley’s song “Guava Jelly”, made popular by Johnny Nash.

The Taíno, from whom we got the name guava via Guayaba and from whose culture the fruit first entered [1]Eastern Hemisphere cuisine, related this “super fruit” to the God of the Afterlife. Since 1492, the fruit, originating in South America wild and later domesticated, has spread around the tropical and subtropical world.

I grew up eating a variety of fresh guavas from the tree, watched my mother make guava jelly and as a schoolchild, bought cellophane-wrapped guava cheese candy from vendors who hawked their goods outside buses at Cross Roads in Kingston, Jamaica. I have even planted guava seeds and reared the trees as exotic plants in these Northern climes. One can find packaged guava items in the international section of Shoppers Food and other supermarkets. Some Latin American stores sell large fresh guavas and there are fruit bearing specimens next to the Capitol in Washington, D.C.’s Botanical Garden. Two of my favorite desserts are cream cheese in stewed guava shells and a cream cheese slice with a guava paste wedge on a toothpick, served to guests as a hors d’ouvre. I first tasted these complementary flavors in a Cuban restaurant in Washington, D.C. Now the food establishment has deemed guava as a super fruit. What did the Caribbean’s Taíno people think of this berry that Spanish explorers and Portuguese traders inadvertently introduced to the wider world?

Taíno Dualities: Death and Sweet Life

The international names for this Tropical American tree and fruit are guayaba, guava, goiba, govier, gouyave, goyavier, djamboe, djambu, dipajaya jambu, perla bayawas, bayawis, petokal, and tokal. The fruit of the guava tree was associated with sublime delight as well as with the lord of the spiritual island-underworld. This association by the Taíno makes it one of their most highly esteemed fruits. The value placed on the guava fruit reveals the Taíno attitude towards life and death. They believe in dualities in the universe, that opposites always existed together. Maquetaurie Guayaba, the Lord of the island of Coabay and of Sweetness and Delight, is the Taíno lord of the dead. It is from his name that the English word "guava" was derived.

On some Jamaican mornings, one can find bitten guava fruits on the ground dropped by bats from the previous night. To the Taíno, bats roaming the nights were the spirits of the dead called opias or hupias. Some opias came out of the woods at night to feed on the sweet guava fruit. Therefore, the Taíno left out guava pulp for these recently dead spirits. During the day, in caves, opias would take the form of sleeping bats. Another feature of the Taíno spiritual world was the barkless spirit-dog Opiyelguobirán, (oh-pee-el-gwo-be-rán) the Watchdog of the House of the Dead. One of the twin deities associated with Guayaba and the island of Coaybay. His name is a composite of opie, "spirit of those absent". Opiyelguobirán belonged to one of the two types of dogs that the Taíno had; a specie that could not bark (similar to the basenji a barkless breed of hunting dog that originated in central Africa). The living could not hear the bark that Opiyelguobirán used to guide spirits back to their dwelling place before daybreak. According to the Taíno, “at night he runs through the forest to guide the recently deceased on their journey to Coaybay, the Island of the Dead. His bark would drive spirits back to their underworld dwelling before daybreak when the sun would turn them into wandering ghosts.”

Guava (A better fruit than the orange)

Why is the guava a better fruit than the orange? “One cup of guava has nearly five times as much skin-healing vitamin C (it's a key ingredient in collagen production) as a medium orange (377 mg versus 83 mg)--that's more than five times your daily need. Women who eat a lot of vitamin C-packed foods have fewer wrinkles than women who don't eat many, according to a recent study that tracked the diets of more than 4,000 American women ages 40 to 74. You'll also get...bacteria-busting power. Guava can protect against food borne pathogens such as Listeria and Staph, according to research by microbiologists in Bangladesh. Also, a cooperative study by the USDA and Thai scientists found that guava has as much antioxidant activity as some well-known superfoods like blueberries and broccoli (though every plant contains a different mix of the healthful compounds). Shop for guava using your nose. A ripe guava has a flowery fragrance, gives a bit to the touch, and has a thin, pale green to light yellowish rind. Serve by adding to fruit cobbler recipes (the tiny seeds are edible) or simmer chunks in water as you would to make applesauce. Guava also makes a super smoothie: Blend 1/2 banana, 1/2 ripe guava, a handful of strawberries, 1/2 cup soy milk, and a few ice cubes.”-- Health & Cooking, October, 2008

For beautiful skin

According to Skin MD Natural for a natural skin care treatment, “mash a guava fruit and stir it well with an equal mixture of oatmeal and lemon juice. Apply this paste on the face for about 20 minutes and wash it off with warm water to see a better glow on the face.”

The advertized Carnaval Rejuevanation Rub is a “Guava Extract 98% Natural Unique creamy paste formulated to transform into a light lotion while rinsing Indulgent ingredients of Brazil Nut oil, Passionfruit oil & Cocoa Butter to nourish and pamper the skin. Leaves your skin remarkably soft and supple without an oily mess.”

The guava tree is a native Tropical American plant. The Spanish and Portuguese took the fruit to countries in Africa, to India, Australia, Taiwan and the southern United States. A member of the extensive myrtle family, it shares a relationship to the clove, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice and eucalyptus. The Taíno grew the guava tree and the Inca widely cultivated it. The tree reaches a height of 30 feet tall and has spreading branches that grow close to the ground. It sometimes has a scaly bark and smooth branches are khaki-brown to a greenish-brown in color. Its oblong leaves are 3 to 7 inches in length with prominent veins. The fragrant white flower appear singly or in bunches and can be self-pollinating but achieve a higher yield of fruit when cross-pollinated. The 150 species of guava bear sweet smelling fruits that vary in shape, size, color and taste. The fruit has a thin edible skin that can be yellow to red, white, black, or green with many or a few seeds. The flesh can be surprisingly sweet to highly acid and may vary in colors of white, yellow or salmon. It has a distinctive aroma that can be from mild and pleasant to penetrating.

Today the guava tree still grows in a semi-wild state or is cultivated for its fruit. It is one of the most widely used fruits in many tropical and sub-tropical countries. Eaten as a fresh fruit it is also stewed with sugar or used to make nectars, mixed with other juices, made into sorbets, ice cream, pies, and cakes or into a guava cheese or paste. York Castle Tropical Ice Cream, (http://www.yorkcastleicecream.com/) a Jamaican store in Silver Spring, Maryland, sells an ice cream mixed with chunks of stewed guava “shells”. The fruits are difficult to store and are best eaten straight from the tree. They are sold in markets near where they are grown, or transported to some Caribbean or Latin American stores near areas where populations from those countries have settled. Nutritionally guavas contain a high degree of vitamin C and potassium. They also contain niacin, vitamin A, with some phosphorus and calcium.

In Cuba, Haiti Trinidad, Mexico, Ghana, Malaya, and the Philippines the guava is valued for its astringent and laxative properties. Although it is not sure how effective the remedies are, according to one report, some folk practitioners in these and other countries utilized parts of the guava medicinally. Uses are as an astringent, bactericide, for the bowels, bronchitis, cachexia, catarrh, cholera, chorea, colic, cough, convulsion, deafness, diarrhea, dysentery, epilepsy, hysteria, fattening, fever, gingivitis, hemorrhoids, itch, jaundice, nausea, nephritis, repertory ailment, rheumatism, scabies, sores, sore throat, spasm, a tonic; for toothache, ulcer, vermifuge, vulnerary and wounds.

Click on to the link and press the play icon to listen to American singer Johnny Nash backed up by Bob Marley’s band and who popularized Marley’s “Guava Jelly” in 1967. http://www.last.fm/music/Johnny+Nash/_/Guava+Jelly

[1] Eastern Hemisphere n, 1. Africa, Asia, and Europe. 2. continents and islands on the opposite side of the globe from the continents and islands of the

Americas

. 3. opposite to the Western Hemisphere from which at least 60% of the food eaten in the world originated.

CELEBRATE COLUMBUS DAY?

2008-10-25T20:46:00.000-07:00

IMAGES (1) Top: The Spanish and other Europeans in the Americas learned the technology of panning for gold from the Taínos of Hispañola. [Drawing by Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdéz of Taínos in the Caribbean’s Queskeya or Haiti Bohio (Hispañola) mining and panning gold in a river. From Historia general y natural de las indias, 1539-1548]. The Spanish brought the indigenous Caribbean technology to North America where independent prospectors still use it to find gold nuggets. (2) Bottom left: European royalty quickly enhanced their wealth with Caribbean-derived riches. [A painting of Queen Mary, by Flemish artist Hans Eworth.] In the painting, the monarch is wearing a giant pearl - known as La Peregrina - which was bought by actor Richard Burton for actress Elizabeth Taylor, 400 years later. It is one of the world’s largest and most perfectly shaped pearls, named La Peregrina (‘The Wanderer’), since an enslaved Native American pearl diver found it outside of its shell. As a reward, he was given his freedom.
Father Bartolomé de las Casas, the “Defender of the Indians” railed against the cruelty and resulting devastation of Lucayan Taíno population due to the use of many conch divers exploited as enslaved pearl divers off the deeper, cooler coastal waters off Venezuela’s Margarita Island. As “the people who welcomed Columbus”, he described that they had now “looked like deformed dogs suffering from the bends and covered with sores that would not heal.” He recommended the use of enslaved Spanish-speaking Africans in Spain (called Ladinos) as a means of saving the remnants of surviving Amerindian populations. This resulted in the second round of European slavery in the Americas¬ the African slave trade. The first Spanish sailors to arrive off the Caribbean coast of Venezuela encountered an ancient trade in pearls. At its height, the Caribbean pearl trade dominated the traditional market in the Middle East. Although Margarita Island still sells Caribbean pearls, overfishing of oysters and Japanese development of cultured pearls contributed to the end of this dominance.

(3) Bottom center: A contemporary beneficiary of indigenous American enslavement. [A photo of actress Elizabeth Taylor wearing La Perigina]. In 1969, Richard Burton bought it as a present for her in New York. She once temporarily lost the pearl that she later found in her dog’s mouth.

(4) Right: Digitally enhanced sculpture with a mask-like face of the Taíno epic hero Guahayona in his canoe, by Michael Auld.

Should we celebrate Columbus or Thanksgiving Day?

“What will it avail you to take that by force you may quickly have by love, or to destroy them that provide you food [?]” Powhatan’s speech to Captain John Smith, Virginia 1609

holiday, n. from Old English hâligdœg “holy day” (1): HOLY DAY (2): a day of freedom from work; especially: a day of celebration or commemoration fixed by law (3): a period of relaxation. Webster’s New Encyclopedic Dictionary

What does Columbus Day mean to Native Americans?

“Arguably America’s most controversial holiday, ‘Columbus Day’ was created 100 years ago in Colorado and later became a National holiday.” Indigenous Peoples Across the Americas Say No to Columbus, Voice of the Taíno People Online, 10/11/08

The Columbus holy day is now over. Most Americans are now looking forward to another controversial celebration to Native Americans, Thanksgiving Day. Are these holy days times for rejoicing by everyone? The answer depends on with whom you identify. Since both of the above holy days are peculiar to North America, we should examine alternative points of view.

Anti-Columbus Day Rally

DENVER -- With signs reading "Don't Celebrate Genocide," "Don't Celebrate Racism," and "The Americas' First Terrorist," the preview to the annual Columbus Day parade seemed to have the same passion that lead to conflicts in previous years.
But 2008 was the year without arrests.--The Denver News, October 12, 2008

“Almost everything that you and I learned in grade school and high school about Columbus is BS, bad sociology. I think that today needs to be renamed to ‘Native American Day,” Sociologist James Loewen said. “Columbus not only raped American Indian women, but killed their youth, women and elderly,” he said. He spent two years at the Smithsonian Institute examining 12 leading high school American history textbooks before writing his book. The award-winning lecturer and author speaks about 50 times a year about misconceptions in American history. He spoke at the second annual Anti-Columbus Day Rally in the courtyard between Anspach Hall and Pearce Hall Monday, Central Michigan University. --Linsey Wuepper - Central Michigan Life, October 16, 2002

On October 13, both The United States and Canada publicly celebrated a very holy day. In the USA, this holiday for bargains and sales was rightly a day for commercialism. In Canada, October 13th was Thanksgiving Day. Not all indigenous Americans think of these governmental set-aside times as holy days. On the contrary, to indigenous Americans these are dates for mourning the gigantic and unnecessary loss of life, homeland, culture, language, and wealth. “Since 1970, a growing group of Native Americans and their supporters have gathered on Thanksgiving Day in Plymouth, Mass., at the top of Cole's Hill, overlooking Plymouth Rock, for the ‘National Day of Mourning’ protest.” On Columbus Day, the Sons of Italy have parades in honor of their “heroic” homeboy. For example, last year in Long Island, New York “The 2007 Sons of Italy Columbus Day Parade, held in conjunction with the Town of Huntington’s Annual Long Island Fall Festival in the town of Huntington on Sunday October 7th 2007 at 1 p.m. was the largest of its kind in the Northeast.”—Sons of Italy Long Island’s Constantino Brumindi Lodge. “The Columbus Day Parade has been a tradition in New York since 1929 and takes place every year on the first Monday of October. The parade celebrates the friendship between Italy and the USA, as well as the mutual respect and cooperation between the two countries.” One person’s saint is another person’s demon.

Columbus’s motives live on

What were the goals of Christopher Columbus? Who benefitted most from his 1492 voyage to the sun-fun and white sandy beaches of the Bahamas? From his writings, utmost in his mind on that fateful October 11th day were royal titles, land and financial enrichment from lucrative spice trade, gold and the enslavement of indigenous American populations.

“And I was attentive and laboured to know if they had gold, and I saw that some of them wore a small piece hanging from a hole which they have in their nose, and from signs I was able to understand that, going to the south or going around the island to the south, there was a king who had large vessels of it and possessed much gold.” Saturday, October 12, 1492

“However, when your Highnesses so command, they [the Taíno] can be carried off to Castile [Spain] or held captive in the island itself, since with fifty [Spanish] men they would be all kept in subjection and forced to do whatever may be wished.” Saturday, October 12, 1492. The Journal of Christopher Columbus, Translated by Cecil Jane

True to Columbus’ words, the Spanish did control American territories with small numbers of exceptionally armed men with war dogs and had their way with Native men, women, girls, and boys. After eying the youthfulness, well-proportioned (his words) physical beauty of the Bahamas’s Lucayan Taíno of Guanahani (Iguana Island), Columbus turned to a local epic Caribbean myth that included an island of women (Matinino) and one of solid 14k gold (Guanin). This myth fed the strongest urges in men, the insatiable drives for sex and riches. The Spanish had already believed in a myth of an island of women since the earlier travels of Marco Polo. He told of a similar Female Island in the Indian Ocean. Columbus used the Taíno’s Matinino to support the proof that he had indeed arrived in India. The Taíno myth was about their epic hero and first shaman, Guahayona (Gwa-ha-yo-nah = “Our Pride”) and his travels from the cave of “Cacibajagua [on the island of Haiti Bohio/ Queskeya or Hispaniola] in which all mankind hitherto had lived.”

Women and Gold!

“Guahayona departed with all the women and went in search of other lands, and he arrived in Matinino [meaning, “Without Fathers”], where he immediately left the women and went to another region, called Guanin [meaning, “14k Gold”).” Chapter IV, An Account of the Antiquities of the Indians, by Fray Ramón Pané (from the long-lost original manuscript and via Columbus’s son Ferdinand who included it in the biography he wrote in defense of his then disgraced father). Pané gathered this intelligence from the Taíno cacique (chief) Guarionex’s (Gwa-ree-own-nay) territory between spring 1495 and the end of 1496.

The above tale recorded by Father Pané on Hispañola “by order of the illustrious Lord Admiral and Viceroy and Governor of the Islands and Mainland of the Indies” (i.e. Christopher Columbus) unwittingly led to the ravenous search for gold and the wanton destruction of thousands of indigenous communities in the Americas. After 500 years, these communities are still suffering from selfish European profit and continued misbehavior in the Americas.

Amazon n 1. Mythological Warriors in Greek mythology, members of a group of women warriors who lived in Scythia or elsewhere in the northern limits of the world. 2. River a river in South America. 3 the world’s second longest river (About 4,000 mi/6,400 km). Named by the Spanish after “one of Gonzalo Pizarro's [whose brother had just conquered the Inca empire] lieutenants, Francisco de Orellana, during his 1541 expedition, east of Quito into the South American interior in search of El Dorado and the Country of the Cinnamon [who] was ordered to explore the Coca River and return when the river ended. He finally arrived to the Amazon River, and so named it because they were attacked by fierce female warriors like the mythological Amazons.” Amazon River, Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia.

California, n the U.S. state thought by some to be named after Queen Califia a legendary *black Amazon warrior queen, associated with the mythical Island of La California. 1 from the most popular 16th century Spanish novel Las sergas de Esplandián (The Adventures of Esplandián), written around 1510 by the Spanish writer Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo. 2 believed to have been derived from the Taíno epic myth of Guahayona that combined his travels to Matinino and Guanin. Like Guahayona, Esplandián traveled to an isle of women and gold in the Indies. After conquering the Mexica (Aztec) in 1619, Hernán Cortés saw the California Mountains from Baja California and believed it to be the fabled steep-sided “La California”.

“Know that on the right hand of the Indies there is an island called California very close to the side of the **Terrestrial Paradise; and it is peopled by black women, without any man among them, for they live in the manner of Amazons. They were of strong and hardy bodies of ancient courage, and great force. Their island was the strongest in the world, with its steep cliffs and rock shores. Their arms were of gold, and so was the harness of the wild beasts they tamed to ride, for in the whole island there was no metal but gold.”

* “black” does not necessarily mean African. As with the Chinese and Indians in England today, the color was used to designate anyone not “white”. ** The idyllic Caribbean.

El Dorado, n (Spanish for "the golden one") 1. is a legend that began with the story of a South American tribal chief who covered himself with gold dust and would dive into a lake of pure mountain water. The legend began in the 1530s, in the Andes of present-day Colombia, where conquistador Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada first found the gold rich Muisca, a nation in the modern day Cundinamarca and Boyacá highlands of Colombia, in 1537. According to contemporary Spanish beliefs based on the Guahayona tale, when one found Amazons gold was not far behind. Ironically, both in California and South America Europeans did find gold after seeing the abode of “Amazons”.
Following Taíno myth, the Spanish not only found and appropriated millions of dollars worth of gold but also silver, pearls, emeralds, diamonds, exotic woods, and spices, medicinal, and agricultural products that enriched Europeans beyond their widest dreams. One can say that in the US the California Gold Rush was the tangible result of the Taíno’s epic Guahayona myth. The inequitable difference between First, Second and Third World economies today is directly linked to unparalleled and continued looting of indigenous American traditional territories. Tangible proof of this is that thousands of Native Americans are still confined to reservations and must carry apartheid-like identity cards. As some indigenous people say, “When the Europeans came, they had the Bible and we had the land. Now we have the Bible and they have the land.”

Should indigenous Americans celebrate their demise?

Although Powhatan, “Pueblo, Cherokee, Creek and many other indigenous American societies organized thanksgiving harvest festivals with ceremonial dances and other celebrations centuries before the arrival of the first Europeans in the Americas”, their reason for giving thanks to the Supreme Being did not include the underlying reality of the unbridled destruction of a people through ethnic cleansing. Celebrating Columbus and Thanksgiving Days…I don’t think so!