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

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European languages such as English and French are of Taino origin 4 . How did they
cross the continent if they were already gone? In the words of historian Matthew Restall
“there were many invisible warriors, many native peoples alongside the Spaniards” 5 .
What if many of these “native peoples” described by Restall and mentioned across the
many records of the conquest were the extinct Taino? What if their language and
implied physical presence could establish that the Taino played a bigger role in the
conquest of the continent than previously thought?
My hypothesis is that research will find that the Taino did not disappear as
commonly believed and that their descendants were among the armies accompanying
the Spanish during the conquest of the rest of the continent, thus leaving a linguistic and
socio-cultural legacy in all the countries of the Americas today.
To test my hypothesis, I will use the Bernal Diaz del Castillo’s True History of the
Conquest of New Spain as central text for analysis. I will then use the primary sources of
the chronicles of the conquest prior to this event to identify Taino culture, social
structure, food, and language. These sources will be cited as they become relevant to the
analysis of the word in question. Then, I will create a comprehensive outline of words,
expressions, names, places, foods, and traditions mentioned in those accounts in order
to find any resemblance or relation across the different countries of the Americas.
After that, these words identified as Taino will be cross referenced against the
Spanish Academy of Language official dictionary and reference database to establish
continuance of usage. By collecting all the evidence found in the primary sources of the
4
(Granberry and S.)
5
Matthew Restall, Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2003), 51.