Contents
List of Illustrations	000
Preface	000
Acknowledgments	000
Introduction	000
1. The Spanish Translation (2003)	000
2. Starry, Starry Night (2005)	000
3. Sharks and Rays (2003)	000
4. First Documented Shark Attack in the Americas, circa AD 1000 (2003)	000
5. The Age of Reptiles (2003)	000
6. Catch of the Day (2007)	000
7. Birdland (2006) (cowritten by Dr. David Steadman) 	000
8. Gone Fishin' (2004)	000
9. In the Beginning, God Created Fish (2004)	000
10. Herbs, Fish, and Other Scum and Vermin (2003)	000
11. The Chip-Chip Gatherers (2007)	000
12. Eats, Shoots, and Leaves (2004)	000
13. Eat Roots and Leave (2004)	000
14. If You Like Pina Coladas . . . (2005)	000
15. Boat Trips (2006)	000
16. Partying, Taino Style (2007)	000
17. Caves (2006)	000
18. Birds of a Feather (2005)	000
19. Cannibals! (2006)	000
20. Obeah and Zombies: The African Connection (2005)	000
21. The Stranger King (2007)	000
22. Anatomy of a Colony: A Taino Outpost in the Turks & Caicos Islands (1997)
	000
23. Columbus, Hero or Heel? (1991)	000
24. One Small Step for a Man (1991)	000
25. A World on the Wax	000
Introduction to the Appendices: Words (Between the Lines of Age)	000
Appendix 1: Taino Names for Fishes	000
Appendix 2: Taino Names for Animals	000
Appendix 3: Other Taino Words	000
Bibliography	000
Index	000
Illustrations
1. Feral donkeys on Grand Turk near North Wells	000
2. Map of the insular Caribbean showing culture areas	000
3. Columbus claiming possession of his first landfall in the Bahamas 
(Guanahani)	000
4. MC-6 site map showing plazas surrounded by midden concentrations and 
structural remains	000
5. Alignments at MC-6 between the east-west stone alignments, the central 
stone, and the structural foundations surrounding the plaza as they relate to 
the rising and setting of the summer solstice sun and various stars	000
6. Drawing of the constellation Orion with lines added to depict the "one-
legged man"	000
7. Burial number 17, a twenty-nine-year-old male who was fatally attacked by 
a tiger shark more than one thousand years ago	000
8. Close-up view of tiger shark tooth marks on lateral and posterior surface 
of humeral shaft	000
9. Extreme close-up of the shark tooth damage	000
10. Picnic area at Guantanamo Naval Base reminding people not to feed the 
iguanas	000
11. Rock iguana bones from GT-3 on Grand Turk	000
12. The Taino word baracutey described the fish we today call barracuda	000
13. The barracuda is a dangerous predator that has numerous razor-sharp 
pointed teeth	000
14. Drilled barracuda tooth pendant from Site AR-39 (Rio Tanama Site 2) in 
Puerto Rico	000
15. Bones found in excavations of Indian cave, Middle Caicos, from both 
living and extinct species of birds	000
16. Flamingo tongue shell with two rough perforations, possibly used as a 
fishing lure or line sinker, from Site Ceiba 11, Puerto Rico	000
17. Perforated clam and oyster shells (possible net or line sinkers), from 
Site Ceiba 11, Puerto Rico	000
18. Notched stone net sinkers (potala) from the site of Ile a rat, Haiti
	000
19. Shell scrapers made from two species of clams, from Site Ceiba 11, Puerto 
Rico	000
20. Bill Keegan removing a conch from its shell in the manner of the Tainos
	000
21. Shell bead necklace reconstructed from conch and jewel box shell disk 
beads excavated from the Governor's Beach site, Grand Turk	000
22. Manioc roots	000
23. Ceramic griddle fragments from Site AR-39 (Rio Tanama Site 2) in Puerto 
Rico	000
24. Map showing the shallow banks north of Hispaniola	000
25. Canoe paddle from the Coralie site, Grand Turk	000
26. Photo of ship etchings in doorframe of Turks & Caicos Loyalist Plantation
	000
27. Taino table used for inhaling cohoba carved in the form of a bird, from 
Jamaica	000
28. Trumpet made from Atlantic Triton's trumpet shell excavated from the 
Governor's Beach site, Grand Turk	000
29. Painted Taino image (pictograph) in cave in Parque del Este, Dominican 
Republic	000
30. Petroglyphs recorded in 1912 by Theodoor de Booy near Jacksonville, East 
Caicos	000
31. Petroglyphs recorded in 1912 by Theodoor de Booy on Rum Cay, Bahamas
	000
32. Owl image on modeled pottery adorno from Jamaica	000
33. Line drawing of a perforated and incised belt ornament made from a human 
skull	000
34. Wooden statue of Opiyelguobiran, the dog god who carried spirits to the 
world of the dead	000
35. Close-up of porcupine fish	000
36. Pottery effigy vessel in the shape of a porcupine fish from the 
Governor's Beach site, Grand Turk	000
37. Archaeological excavations at the Coralie site in 1996, Grand Turk	000
38. Stone-and-conch-shell-lined hearth on which an overturned sea turtle 
carapace was used to cook a meal, Coralie site, Grand Turk	000
39. Pigeon sitting on the head of the statue of Columbus in Parque Colon, 
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic	000
40. Sunset behind the Pitons, St. Lucia	000
Plates
1. Saladoid pot stand from Grenada
2. Reconstructed Taino houses (bohio) on San Salvador, Bahamas
3. Cleared area of stone-lined courtyard at the middle of the site of MC-6 on 
Middle Caicos
4. Southern stingray over a reef in the Turks & Caicos Islands
5. Worked shark teeth from the site of MC-6 on Middle Caicos
6. Large rock iguana on Guantanamo Naval Base
7. Stoplight parrotfish jawbone
8. Stoplight parrotfish
9. Broken ceramic sherds from the site of Ile a rat, Haiti
10. Land crabs (juey), Delectable Bay, Acklins Islands, Bahamas
11. Chitons and nerites living on rocky intertidal shores in the Turks & 
Caicos Islands
12. Whole breadfruits roasting in roadside firepit, Boston Bay, Jamaica
13. Bougainvillea and Casaurina: Grand Turk's imported landscape
14. Handcrafted dinghy 
15. Handmade raft from Haiti
Plates follow page 000
Preface
The gray beard (Bill, not Betsy) is telling. Combined, the two of us have 
spent forty-five years conducting archaeological research in the Caribbean. 
Bill started in 1978, and Betsy in 1992. Over the years we have directed 
research projects in Trinidad, Grenada, St. Lucia, Puerto Rico, the Dominican 
Republic, Haiti, Cuba, Jamaica, Grand Cayman, the Turks & Caicos Islands, and 
throughout the Bahamas. We have also had the good fortune to visit many of 
the other islands in the Caribbean.
	Our experiences have been remarkable. We've walked hundreds of miles of 
Caribbean coastline, dodged drug smugglers, camped on beaches miles from 
humanity, seen the night sky in the total absence of other light, scuba dived 
in pristine waters, searched for glass fishing floats on beaches that no one 
ever visits, and enjoyed the wonders of nature that surrounded us. Most of 
all, wherever we went, we were welcomed by the friendly people who today live 
in these islands. It is an understatement to say that we were welcomed with 
open arms; it is more accurate to say that they adopted us!
	The main reason we made these trips was to study the lifeways of the 
peoples who lived in the Caribbean before the arrival of Christopher 
Columbus. Sadly, harsh treatment and European diseases extinguished their 
culture, a culture we today call Taino (also known as Arawak). In an effort 
to repay our debt to the past and the present we began writing a series of 
short essays called "Talking Taino." The bottom line for each essay was 
showing the relationship between the Tainos of the past and the present 
natural history of the islands. Our goal has been to bring the past to life 
and to highlight commonalities between past and present. We did so by 
emphasizing Taino words and beliefs about the natural world.
	Most of the essays have a Taino word list and English translation. The 
most comprehensive discussion of Caribbean languages was published by Julian 
Granberry and Gary Vescelius (2004). It should be noted that Taino was not a 
written language, and thus there are a variety of spellings for the same word 
(e.g., zemi and cemi, Xaragua and Jaragua). The main issue is finding the 
letters that appropriately express particular pronunciations. In this regard, 
Granberry and Vescelius do an excellent job of capturing the proper 
pronunciation of Taino words. Nevertheless, we have chosen some spellings 
included in Spanish publications that we feel better capture the Taino 
language.
	We encourage anyone who is interested in talking Taino to consult the 
phonetic spellings provided in the book by Granberry and Vescelius, because 
the Spanish spellings for these words often yield pronunciations that would 
be spelled differently in English. For example, gua is pronounced wa; and the 
consonant c can have a hard or soft pronunciation (thus, conuco is pronounced 
konuko, while cemi is pronounced seme). Speaking the language requires 
specific knowledge of translation and pronunciation.
	We initially wanted to call this collection "Buffalo Sojourn." The 
first meaning was a play on words that we hoped reggae fans would recognize 
immediately ("Buffalo Soldier"). A key line from Bob Marley's song is, "If 
you know your history, then you will know where you're coming from." Our 
intent in writing these essays was to provide a more detailed introduction to 
the natural history of the islands.
	There was also a more personal connection. We began work on several 
archaeological research projects in the Turks & Caicos Islands in 1989, and 
were invited to Jamaica by Mr. Tony Clarke in 1998. One of our first 
(nonarchaeological) discoveries was that many of the feral donkeys that we 
had seen wandering the streets of Grand Turk had been airlifted to Jamaica, 
and were now thriving in the lush pastures of Tony's Paradise Park dairy 
farm. Tony was looking for an archaeologist to investigate the site on his 
property, and heard of us during the process of arranging the transfer of 
donkeys. We have worked for donkeys in the past, but this is the first time 
one got us a job! Several years later we encountered many new residents. 
Fidel Castro presented the prime minister of Jamaica with twelve water 
buffalos as a special gift in recognition of their many years of cooperation. 
This was a very practical gift, and it shows that heads of state are not 
always motivated by pomp and circumstance. But no water buffalo would want to 
live on the streets of Kingston, so they were distributed to several farms in 
the country, and four of them were sent to Paradise Park. The hope was that 
they would eat the water hyacinth that was clogging the Dean's Valley River, 
but they actually preferred pasture grass. We always thought that grass was 
grass, but these farms actually plant special pasture grasses for their dairy 
cows. The donkeys and water buffalos are thrilled! We spent five field 
seasons at Paradise Park working near our donkey friends from Grand Turk and 
the water buffalos from Cuba.
	Very different worlds were thrust together into a common history five 
hundred years ago. We hope you will appreciate with us the wonders of the 
Caribbean world, the peoples who lived there in the past, and those who live 
there today. They are, whether you know it or not, an integral part of who 
you are.
Acknowledgments
There are far too many people to thank for their assistance on our 
various projects. First and foremost we met a strong and dedicated ally. 
Kathy Borsuk, managing editor of the International Magazine of the Turks & 
Caicos Islands, called Times of the Islands, embraced our concept. Most of 
the chapters in this book originally were published there. Kathy has created 
a phenomenal publication that reaches well beyond the Turks & Caicos Islands. 
We encourage everyone to subscribe, or at the very least, visit the 
magazine's web page: <www.timespub.tc.>
	Most of these essays benefited greatly from discussions with our 
colleagues at the Florida Museum of Natural History. In particular, Dr. David 
Steadman (curator of Ornithology) coauthored one of the papers ("Birdland"). 
We appreciate his permission and willingness to include that essay in this 
collection and thank him for his permission to reproduce several of his 
photographs. We also appreciate the support of Dr. Douglas S. Jones, director 
of the Florida Museum of Natural History, for his support and permission to 
publish the shark attack essay that originally was published on the museum's 
web pages. Finally, VISTA magazine solicited articles on Columbus for their 
Sunday newspaper supplement. We appreciate their permission to include two of 
those here. We thank Dr. Peter Siegel for providing photos from the 
excavations at Maisabel, Puerto Rico, and we greatly appreciate the beautiful 
fish photographs provided by Barbara Shively and the artifact photographs 
provided by Corbett McP. Torrence.
	We are especially fortunate that The University of Alabama Press found 
our work of sufficient interest to collect these writings in a book. It has 
been a pleasure to work with the staff at the press.
Talking Taino
Introduction
They are known today as Lucayan Tainos: an anglicized version of the 
Spanish "Lucayos," which derives from the Arawakan words Lukkunu Kairi 
("island men"). The Lucayans share a common ancestry with the Taino societies 
of Puerto Rico, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and Jamaica (the Greater 
Antilles), who they separated from around AD 600 when they began to colonize 
the Turks & Caicos and the Bahamas (hereafter called the Lucayan Islands). By 
1492, they had settled all of the larger Lucayan Islands. In addition, they 
continued to exchange goods with other Tainos living in the Greater 
Antilles.
	To date, most of what has been written about the Tainos has drawn upon 
the written record left by the Spanish. However, because the chronicles were 
written to serve political objectives, be they for or against the native 
peoples, and because the chroniclers themselves were limited in their 
abilities to understand a nonwestern culture, these documents are rife with 
errors and misinformation. The uncritical use of the historical record has 
hampered efforts to understand native West Indian societies. For although we 
continue to speak of Tainos as a single unified group, there were regional 
differences in language and culture, if not also in race. One needs look only 
to the Soviet Union or the former Yugoslavia to be reminded of the fragility 
of national identities. This introduction draws on the last two decades of 
anthropological scholarship to present a brief chronicle of the development 
and extinction of Lucayan Taino culture.
<b>Origins</b>
The origins of the Lucayan Tainos are traced to the banks of the Orinoco 
River in Venezuela. As early as 2100 BC villages of horticulturalists who 
used pottery vessels to cook their food had been established along the Middle 
Orinoco. During the ensuing two millennia their population increased in 
numbers, and they expanded down river and outward along the Orinoco's 
tributaries to the coasts of Venezuela, the Guianas, and Trinidad. Their 
movements are easily traced because the pottery they manufactured is so 
distinctive. Called Saladoid after the archaeological site of Saladero, 
Venezuela, their vessels were decorated with white-on-red painted, modeled 
and incised, and crosshatched decorations (see plate 1).
	Saladoid peoples expanded through the Antilles at a rapid pace. Because 
their earliest settlements, which date before 400 BC, are in the Leeward 
Islands, the Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico, the inescapable conclusion is 
that most of the Lesser Antilles were leapfrogged in a direct jump from 
Venezuela/Trinidad to Puerto Rico and its neighbors. Moreover, the 
conditions, which stimulated the initial migration into the Antilles, 
continued to fuel dispersal from South America bringing a variety of related 
ethnic groups into the Antilles over the next millennium.
	Saladoid peoples lived in small villages and practiced swidden 
agriculture in which a variety of different crops were cultivated in small 
gardens, a practice very similar to present-day "casual cultivation." Due to 
the limited fertility of the soil gardens, they were cultivated for only a 
few years before new gardens had to be cleared. Frequent movement of village 
sites is evident from the absence of deeply stratified sites. A number of the 
early sites are located inland on watercourses adjacent to prime agricultural 
land, but most Saladoid sites are in coastal settings. In both settings, 
horticulture was the primary source of food. At the inland sites land crab 
remains are the main component, while at coastal villages the shells of 
marine mollusks and bones of fishes were the most common food remains in the 
trash middens.
	For some reason the Saladoid advance stalled after they had colonized 
eastern Hispaniola. Irving Rouse (1992) has suggested that a large and well-
established population of hunter-gatherers barred their forward progress, and 
that the Saladoid population needed time to grow and refine their adaptation 
to island life before the frontier was breached. Some of the resident 
foragers may have been assimilated before further expansion took place.
	The next phase of cultural development is announced by a marked change 
in material culture. Elaborate pottery decorations disappear, especially in 
frontier locations where most of the pottery was undecorated except for 
occational red slip or simple modeling. These simplified designs have been 
classified as the Ostionoid series, named for the archaeological site of 
Ostiones in western Puerto Rico. By AD 600 the "Ostionoid peoples" had 
resumed the advance of their Saladoid ancestors and had begun to expand along 
both coasts of Hispaniola. Expansion along the southern coast led to the 
colonization of Jamaica, while movement through the northern valleys led to 
the colonization of eastern Cuba, the Bahamas, and the Turks & Caicos.
	Given the modern barren landscape of the Lucayan Islands it is often 
asked why anyone would leave the fertile valleys of the Greater Antilles to 
settle this island chain. The answer is that although the Lucayan Islands are 
today covered by low scrub vegetation and there is a noticeable lack of fresh 
water, these conditions did not prevail five hundred years ago. In fact, the 
Lucayan Islands would have been quite attractive to small groups of 
horticulturalists who farmed the loamy soils and relied on the sea for fish 
and transport.
<b>Diet</b>
Spanish records indicate that the Lucayan Tainos cultivated as many as 
fifty different plants, including varieties of sweet and bitter manioc, sweet 
potatoes, cocoyams, beans, gourds, chili peppers, corn, cotton, tobacco, 
bixa, genip, groundnuts, guava, and papaya. The carbonized remains of corn, 
chili peppers, palm fruits, unidentified tubers (probably manioc and sweet 
potato), and gourds are among the plant remains identified in West Indian 
sites. At least half of the Lucayan Taino diet came from plant foods. Manioc 
(cassava) was the staple, followed by sweet potato. Corn was cultivated but 
apparently was of secondary importance.
	Manioc tubers require special processing because they contain poisonous 
hydrocyanic acid. Sweet manioc has such small quantities of the poison it can 
be prepared like sweet potato--peeled and boiled. Bitter manioc, however, 
requires a more elaborate procedure which involves peeling, grinding or 
mashing, and squeezing the mash in a basket tube to remove the poisonous 
juices (see chapter 13). After the juice is removed the paste is dried and 
sieved for use as flour. Water is added to the flour to make the pancake-like 
cassava bread, which is cooked on a flat clay griddle. Fragments of these 
griddles and large ceramic bowls, both of which were made from red loam and 
crushed, burned conch shell, are common in Lucayan Island archaeological 
sites.
	The poisonous manioc juice is not discarded. It is boiled to release 
the poison and then used as the liquid base for "pepper pot" stew. Adding 
chili peppers, other vegetables, meat and fish to the simmering manioc juice 
makes pepper pot. This slow simmering stew allowed food that would otherwise 
spoil to be preserved and available for meals throughout the day. Today in 
South America, pepper pot is still eaten with cassava bread.
	The other half of the diet came from creatures of the land and the sea. 
The few land animals that were available (iguana, crabs, and a cat-size 
rodent called hutia) were highly prized, but were only available in limited 
quantities. The major source of animal protein came from the coastal marine 
environment. Marine turtles and monk seals were available seasonally, but the 
main foods were the fishes and mollusks who feed in the grass flat/patch reef 
habitats between the barrier coral reef and the beach: parrotfish, grouper, 
snapper, bonefish, queen conch, urchins, nerites, chitons, and clams. Fish 
were captured with nets, basket traps, spears, bow and arrow, and weirs. The 
latter involved building check-dams across the mouths of tidal creeks, which 
allowed fishes to enter at high tide but prevented their escape when the tide 
changed. Meat and fish were grilled with leftovers added to the pepper pot.
	When you consider the number of ways Lucayan Tainos could satisfy their 
hunger, the islands are noteworthy for the abundance of options. It is 
difficult to imagine that anyone ever went hungry, a conclusion confirmed by 
the preliminary examination of human skeletal remains, which indicate that 
the Lucayan Islanders enjoyed remarkably good health and nutrition. They 
certainly did not suffer from the nutritional and diet-related disorders that 
plagued other horticulturalists in the West Indies and elsewhere.
<b>Society and Village Life</b>
The Tainos lived in large multifamily houses. In Hispaniola there were 
two kinds of houses: the rectangular caney and the round-to-oval bohio, which 
had a high-pitched, conical thatched roof (see plate 2). Although a probable 
exaggeration, the early sixteenth-century Spanish chronicler Bartolome de las 
Casas reported that some houses were occupied by 40 to 60 heads of household 
(roughly 250 men, women, and children). Households were formed around a group 
of related females. Grandmother, mother, sisters, and daughters lived 
together and cooperated in farming, childrearing, food preparation, and craft 
production. Men, by virtue of their absence from communities during periods 
of long-distance trade and/or warfare, were peripheral to the household. The 
importance of females as the foundation of society was expressed by tracing 
descent through the female line to a mythical female ancestress. This 
"matrilineal" social organization is common throughout the world.
	The household's belongings were stored on the floors and in the rafters 
of the houses. Cotton hammocks for sleeping were strung between the central 
supports and eaves. Excavations of a house floor at a site in the Turks & 
Caicos Islands revealed ash deposits, which may have come from small, smoky 
fires used to control insect pests and to warm the house at night. Cooking 
was probably done in sheds outside the main house.
	Most villages in the Lucayan Islands were composed of houses aligned 
atop a sand dune with the ocean in front and a marshy area behind. Quite 
likely, these marshy areas provided ready access to fresh water before the 
islands were deforested. In addition, many sites are located just offshore on 
small cays.
	Lucayan Taino sites often occur in pairs, which reflects either 
cooperation between socially allied communities or sequential settlements in 
the same location. The former possibility is more likely because it is the 
men who most often were the leaders, even in matrilineages, and especially 
with regard to external relations. In a matrilineal society, your mother's 
brother, and not your father, is the most important male in your life because 
he heads your family's lineage. However, if men are needed by their 
matrilineage, yet are expected to live in their wife's village, then social 
relations will be unstable. These competing demands can be balanced by 
establishing villages in close proximity, thus reducing the distances that 
men must travel to participate in their lineage affairs.
	In the Greater Antilles a slightly different type of community plan 
predominates. Here the houses are arranged around central plazas. The plazas 
were used for public displays, ritual dances, recording astronomical events, 
and for the Taino version of the ball game. The chief's house, typically 
located at one end of the plaza, stored the village idols and spirit 
representations called cemis.
<b>Religion</b>
The Taino pantheon of cemis was divided by the dichotomies of gender and 
cultural/noncultural. There were principal male and female spirits of 
fruitfulness: Yocahu, the giver of manioc, and Attabeira, the mother goddess. 
They both were attended by twin spirits. Maquetaurie Guayaba, Lord of the 
Dead, and Guabancex, Mistress of the Hurricane, ruled the anticultural world. 
They too were attended by sets of twins. Cemis played an active role in the 
affairs of humans, and they served to distinguish between that which was 
human, cultural, and pleasing and that which was nonhuman, anticultural, and 
foul. But as exemplified by the twins, the Tainos recognized that the spirits 
of the world could simultaneously have positive and negative characteristics. 
For example, rains are good when they arrive at the right time and in the 
right quantity, but can also devastate agricultural lands when the timing is 
wrong or too much rain falls. The Taino viewed their world in a delicate 
balance, and they attended to their spirits in order to maintain this 
balance.
<b>Political Organization</b>
By the time Europeans arrived, Taino society had two main divisions. The 
rulers of the community were of a noble class (called niTainos), which 
included chiefs, shamans, and other elites who held positions of authority. 
Chiefs (called caciques) ruled at several levels, from the paramount caciques 
that ruled large regions, to district leaders who were allied to a paramount, 
to headmen and clanlords who ruled at the village level. With noble birth 
being the main prerequisite of this rank, it should be noted that women could 
also be chiefs. Between caciques of all levels, alliances were formed through 
marriages.
	Supporting the rulers were large numbers of commoners. Blood and 
marriage (kinship) were the threads that bound commoners to caciques. There 
was also a level below the commoner class, which the Spanish described as a 
class of servants called naborias. Naborias were once thought to be slaves, 
but a careful reading of the early Spanish chronicles indicates that they 
served through a sense of obligation and were not chattel.
	Caciques organized villages into regional polities who competed with 
one another for a variety of resources. There is increasing evidence that, 
contrary to the "peaceful Arawak" stereotype, the Taino chiefdoms made war on 
one another prior to the arrival of the Spanish.
	Caciques also organized long-distance trade. Travel between islands was 
accomplished in canoes dug out of a single log. The largest of which could 
carry approximately ninety passengers. Traders sought both domestic trade 
items (salt, dried fish, and conch) and exotic materials from other chiefdoms 
and from neighboring islands. The red jewel box shell (Chama sarda) disk 
beads that were manufactured throughout the Lucayan Islands are an example of 
an exotic good. These beads were woven into belts that served to record 
alliances between chiefdoms. These and other exotic materials served to 
reinforce the authority of the caciques to whom access to these goods was 
restricted. By one account, Taino caciques held authority of life or death 
over their subjects.
<b>Warfare</b>
When Columbus set foot on the island he called San Salvador, young men 
carrying spears who were there to defend their village met him. Other 
encounters between the Spanish and the Tainos also point to the importance of 
warfare in Taino society. For instance, when Columbus embarked on the 
conquest of central Hispaniola in 1494 he was challenged by an army of up to 
fifteen thousand warriors (although this may have been an exaggeration). 
Moreover, shortly after the Spanish arrested Caonabo, the cacique of the 
central Hispaniola region of Maguana, Bartholomew Columbus was passing along 
the Neiba River, which formed the boundary between the regions of Xaragua and 
Maguana. Here he encountered an army from Xaragua that was probably in the 
area to co-opt villages that had previously been allied with the deposed 
Chief Caonabo. Taino social organization also points to the presence of an 
organized and well-armed militia.
<b>Genocide</b>
Within a generation of the arrival of the Spanish, the native peoples of 
the Lucayan Islands were extinct. In 1513, Juan Ponce de Leon sailed through 
the Lucayan Islands on his way to Florida. He reported that he encountered 
only one inhabitant, an old native man still living in the Turks & Caicos 
Islands. Other expeditions followed, including two in 1520, which failed to 
encounter any native peoples in these islands.
	The fate of the Lucayan Tainos can be traced to the mines on Hispaniola 
and to the pearl beds of Cubagua Island off the coast of Venezuela. By 1509, 
the Spanish governor of Santo Domingo had convinced King Ferdinand that there 
was a critical shortage of labor on Hispaniola. In response the king ordered 
that all peoples from the neighboring islands be relocated to Hispaniola. A 
slaving consortium was soon formed in Concepcion de la Vega, although 
documents in the archives in Seville suggest that the practice of enslaving 
Lucayans had begun much earlier. The contact period chronicler Peter Martyr 
reported that forty thousand Lucayans were brought to Hispaniola. The total 
population of the islands was probably twice that number when children, old 
people, and others who died are included. A total population of forty to 
eighty thousand Lucayans is consistent with archaeological deposits in these 
islands.
	When Columbus landed at Guanahani in 1492 he was met by people whose 
simple dress and material technology belied their social and political 
complexity. Theirs was a vibrant culture in the process of filling up the 
northern and western Lucayan Islands at the same time they were competing 
among themselves for political and economic control of the central islands. 
Moreover, had the Spanish never arrived, the Lucayan Tainos might soon have 
been subject to demands from the Classic Tainos on Hispaniola who were 
already establishing bases or outposts in the Turks & Caicos and Great Inagua 
by the middle of the thirteenth century. Instead, the Lucayan Tainos are 
remembered as the first native peoples to challenge Columbus and the first to 
be extinguished.