american-holocaust

BEFORE COLUMBUS 49further south on the planet than this. But those countless migrations didnot invariably follow a north-to-south pathway. At various times (again,we must recall, over the course of tens of thousands of years) some groupsdecided to branch off and head east or west, or double back to the north.There is linguistic evidence, for example, seeming to suggest that duringone historical epoch the Timucuan peoples of present-day Florida maygradually have migrated from the south (in Venezuela) across the islandCaribbean to their new North American homeland. That also is what apeople we have come to call the Arawak (they did not use the name themselves)decided to do a few thousand years ago, although, unlike the hypothesisregarding the Timucuans, they did not carry their travels as far asthe northern mainland. 89Arawak is the general, post-Columbian name given to various peopleswho made a long, slow series of migrations from the coast of Venezuelato Trinidad, then across open ocean perhaps first to Tobago, then Grenada,and on up th~ chain of islands that constitute the Antilles-St. Vincent,Barbados, St. Lucia, Martinique, Dominica, Guadeloupe, Montserrat,Antigua, Barbuda, St. Kitts, Anguilla, St. Croix, the Virgin Islands,Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, Jamaica, Cuba-then finally off to the Bahamas,leaving behind at each stop populations that grew and flourished and evolvedculturally in their own distinctive ways. To use a comparison once madeby Irving Rouse, the people of these islands who came to be known asArawaks are analogous to those, in another part of the world, who cameto be known as English: "The present inhabitants of southern Great Britaincall themselves 'English,' and recognize that their ethnic group, theEnglish people, is the product of a series of migrations from the continentof Europe into the British Isles, beginning_ with various prehistoric peoplesand continuing with the Celts, Angles, Saxons, Vikings, and Normans ofproto historic time." 90Similarly, Arawak (sometimes "Taino," but that is a misnomer, as itproperly applies only to a particular social and cultural group) is the namenow given to the melange of peoples who, over the course of many centuries,carried out those migrations across the Caribbean, probably terminatingwith the Saladoid people sometime around two thousand years ago.By the time of their encounter with Columbus and his crews, the islandshad come to be governed by chiefs or caciques (there were at least fiveparamount chiefdoms on Hispaniola alone, and others throughout the region)and the people lived in numerous densely populated villages bothinland and along all the coasts. The houses in most of these villages weresimilar to those described by the Spanish priest Bartolome de Las Casas:The inhabitants of this island . . . and elsewhere built their houses of woodand thatch in the form of a bell. These were very high and roomy so that ineach there might be ten or more households. . . . On the inside designs and