Language of the Voiceless: Traces of Taino Language, Food, and Culture in the Americas From 1492 to the Present

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Hammock: The Spanish colonists learned about hammocks from the Taino
who slept in their suspended woven-bark beds 12 soaked in manioc yap and made
from cotton and henequén. Hamaka was also the Taino word for “fish net.”
However, it is a composite word of two terms, the prefix Ha (everything that
hangs) found again in words like Habana-Cuba (which means hanging basket)
and the word mako (woven, intertwined, complex, big, extensive). In the late 16th
century, the British Royal Navy fitted out the gun decks of their ships with
hammocks, which allowed sleeping sailors to sway with the motion of the ship
instead of being pitched out of stationary bunks 13 .
Hurricane: Was an Eastern Taino word (mostly from the island of
Borinquen or Puerto Rico and Quisqueya or eastern Hispaniola). Hurricane was a
combination of two different terms: 1) hurra (powerful, strenuous, the way the
gods should be praised; in some circles, it is believed to have been the origin of
the English expression: hurray! although no concrete evidence for that has been
found thus far), and; 2) can (eye, center, loud noise, destructive cry of the ocean,
ceremonial screaming, party) 14 . In other words, for the Taino, hurakán, was the
screaming of the ocean praising the angry gods for the Taino’s transgressions,
destroying and renovating the earth cyclically. The seasonality of the hurricanes
in the Caribbean was a central part of Taino cosmovision and religion.
12 Las Casas, A Short Account.
13
(Peake)
14 Ángel Rodríguez Álvarez, Mitología Taína o Eyerí. Ramón Pané y la Relación sobre las
Antigüedades de los indios: El primer tratado etnográfico hecho en América (San Juan, Puerto Rico:
Editorial Nuevo Mundo, 2012).