Ciguayos

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Cabo Samaná: where Columbus encountered the Ciguayos

The Ciguayos (Spanish: Ciguayos) were a group of indigenous people who inhabited the Samaná Peninsula and its adjoining regions in the present-day Dominican Republic. Since the moment of contact early Spanish writers perceived them as a threat and portrayed them flaunting long hair and brandishing bows with poisoned arrows. Though speculation has surrounded their origins, studies on linguistics claim to have found connections to Central America.[1] Their archery tradition, however, is linked to the Kalinago, or Island Caribs.[2] Their legacy has spawned folktales, and since the 19th century, their memory has been at the center of the Dominican indigenist movement.[3]

Origins[]

They were considered a separate ethnic people that inhabited the Peninsula of Samaná and part of the northern coast toward Nagua in what today is the Dominican Republic, and, by most contemporary accounts, differed in language and customs from the classical Taíno who lived on the eastern part of the island of Hispaniola then known. The ciguayos were physically distinguished from the Taínos because they were taller, they painted their bodies with black dye and allowed their hair to grow, which they adorned with feathers, to the entire length, according to Bartolomé de las Casas. Also in the expression of the countenance the ciguayos were more severe than the taínos. Their bows were larger and their arrows had poison at the tip. They spoke another language that was not the common one of most of the island. At the end of the 15th century the ciguayos occupied the Macorís de Arriba, mountain ranges of the today Cordillera Septentrional that were then called Ciguay, their ruler was .

According to Eustaquio Fernandez de Navarrete, they were “warriors and spirited people,” (“gente animosa y guerrera”).[4] Fray Ramón Pané, often dubbed as the first anthropologist of the Caribbean, distinguished the Cigüayos’ language from the rest of those spoken on Hispaniola.[5] Bartolomé de las Casas, who studied them and was one of the few who read Ramón Pané’s original work in Spanish, provided most of the documentation about this group.[6] Linguists Granberry and Gary Vescelius believe that the Cigüayos emigrated from Meso-America.[7] Wilson (1990) states that circa 1500 this was the kingdom Cacicazgo of Cacique Guacangarí. The Cronista de Indias, Pedro Martir accused them of cannibalism: “when they descend from the mountains to wage war on their neighbors, they kill and eat some of them” (“trae[n] origen de los caníbales, pues cuando de las montañas bajan a lo llano para hacer guerra á sus vecinos, si matan á algunos se los comen”).[8]

References[]

  1. ^ Granberry, Julia (1991). ""Was Ciguayo a West Indian Hokan Language?"". International Journal of American Linguistics. 57 (4): 514–19. doi:10.1086/ijal.57.4.3519737.
  2. ^ Salas, Julio César (1921). Los Indios caribes : estudio sobre el origen del mito de la antropofagia. Madrid: Talleres Gráficos Lux. p. 55.
  3. ^ Garía Bidó, Rafael (2010). Voces de bohío Vocabulario de la cultura taína. Santo Domingo, DR: Archivo General de la Nación. p. 7. ISBN 978-9945-020-95-3.
  4. ^ Eustaquio Fernandez de Navarrete (1850). "Noticias de D. Bartolomé Colón, Hermano del Almirante," in Colección de Documentos Inéditos Para La Historia de España, V. 16. Madrid: Vidua de Calero. p. 516.
  5. ^ Pané, Ramón (2008). Ángel Rodríguez Álvarez (ed.). Mitologia Taina o Eyeri. Ramón Pané y la Relacion sobre las Antigueades de los Indios: Primer tratado etnográfico hecho en América. San Juan, Puerto Rico: Editorial Nuevo Mundo. pp. 324–5. ISBN 978-0977494057.
  6. ^ de las Casas, Bartolomé (1877). José Vigil (ed.). Historia de las Indias, V. 2. Mexico City: Ireneo Paz. pp. 426–30.
  7. ^ Granberry, Julian and Gary Vescelius (2004). Languages of the Pre-Columbian Antilles. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press. pp. 7–49, 131. ISBN 978-0817314163.
  8. ^ Martire d’Anghiera, Pietro (1892). Joaquin Asencio Torres (ed.). Fuentes históricas sobre Colón y América. Libros rarísimos que sacó del olvido, traduciéndolos y dándolos á luz en 1892. Madrid: San Francisco de Sales. p. 253.
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