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The Arawaks or Tainos –
The First People of the Caribbean
The Arawaks and the Caribs were the first people of the Caribbean. They
settled in these islands long before Christopher Columbus arrived in 1492.
The Arawaks or the Tainos, as some of them were called, were not
tall people; they were of medium height or short and generally slim.
Christopher Columbus in his journals described them as neither black nor
white. It is believed that they had an olive complexion. They also had long,
straight, coarse black hair. For the Arawaks, to be beautiful meant having
flattened foreheads, so they would place the head of their babies between
two boards and so flatten their foreheads and shape their skulls up to a
peak.
The Arawaks wore little or no clothes but they would paint their bodies
in different colours: black, white, red and other colours. Clay and fat were
mixed with bright coloured dyes and were used to paint different designs
all over their bodies. These dyes not only added colourful patterns to their
bodies but protected them from the insects and the rain. The Arawaks also
wore many ornaments in their ears, noses and around their necks – much
like the way people wear jewellery today. Some of their ornaments were
made from clay, shell and cotton and were woven into their hair. Others
were made from gold and so sometimes the Arawaks wore gold ornaments
in their noses. The Arawaks saw gold as nothing more than decoration and
were willing to trade it with Europeans. Perhaps they were bewildered when
they saw how frenzied Columbus and the other Europeans were when they
saw the gold.
The Arawaks’ diet was varied; they ate a lot of fruit, vegetables and fish.
They ate fish like snapper, grouper, grunt, jack, parrotfish and barracuda.
In Cuba, the Arawaks bred their own fish in ponds. They also ate the hutia,
a type of coney, the iguana, rabbit and other small animals. The Arawaks
hunted the coneys at night. Carrying their clubs and torches the men would
chase the coneys toward a corral. The Arawaks were also farmers. They grew
a number of crops such as cassava, sweet potatoes, pepper, groundnuts,
cotton and tobacco. Their main food was cassava.
Cassava had to be specially prepared because it was poisonous in its
natural state. To make it edible, the very smart Tainos would grate the root
CROSSING THE LINE.indd 102 1/22/20 8:32 PM
