Taíno creation myths
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Taíno creation myths are symbolic narratives about the origins of life, the Earth, and the universe, intrinsically shaped from the nature of the tropical islands the Taíno inhabited. The Taíno people were the predominant Indigenous people of the Caribbean and were the ones who encountered the explorer Christopher Columbus and his men in 1492. They flourished across much of the Caribbean for nearly 1,000 years before the arrival of Europeans and were one of the region’s most developed cultures.[1]
The creation myths of the Taínos share similarities with other Native American cosmologies. The belief that in ancient mythical times, floods and civilizing heroes befell the world constitutes one of the most widespread concepts in Native American mythology, including in Indigenous Taíno myths.[2] Their creation myths are presented in terms of narratives where the events and the actors belong to a remote, primordial cosmos. A common feature of these myths is the expression of social laws that formulate proper and improper behavior; either characters behave in an opposite way from what is expected of an ordinary Taíno, or their behavior establishes proper Taínan behavior to be followed, and often a myth will exhibit an interplay of both kinds of behavior.[3]
Modern knowledge of Taíno creation myths comes from 16th century Spanish chroniclers investigating the Indigenous Caribbean culture. Columbus was very much interested in knowing about the religion of the Taínos; In his original letter to the Queen, he expressed the opinion that the Natives had no religion whatsoever, however this was an attempt to persuade Isabella that it would be easy to convert them to Christianity.[4] Nevertheless, he ordered the Hieronymite Friar Ramon Pane who accompanied him on his second voyage, to study the religion of the Natives of northern Hispaniola; the friar, later acquiring the native language, produced the volume titled as Legends and Beliefs of the Indians of the Antilles.[4] In this work, Ramon Pane recorded not only the Taínos’ religious beliefs but also some of their myths. Because these narratives have an artistic, literary quality, Pane’s work is also considered the beginning of literature in the Americas.[4] Unfortunately, the original Spanish manuscript has been lost, with only the Italian version including its many errors of transliteration surviving to the present day.[4]
Another significant primary source comes from Father Bartolome de Las Casas, who wrote many books about the Taíno, including Historia de las Indias; although it was never finished, it has proved a rich source with a great deal of information about the customs of the natives.[5] Las Casas came to the island in 1502, first as a colonizer using Taíno labor and treating them the same as other Spanish colonizers; however, soon he came to hate how badly these native people were mistreated, and decided to dedicate his life to improving their condition.[5] In his writings he described how many of the cultural practices that Europeans considered objectionable in the Taíno had also been common among the Europeans’ own ancestors; using examples from Greek and Roman mythology, he tried to demonstrate that the thinking of the Taíno were not so different from that of Europe’s early pagans.[5]
Although not all of Taíno myths have been preserved in the Spanish accounts, themes pertaining to their mythology are also symbolically encoded in their ritual material culture, objects such as sculptures, rattle gourds, and petroglyphs; it has been therefore possible for anthropologists to reconstruct some of the lost elements of these myths. For example, modern investigators have compared Pane's descriptions of Taíno art with archeological discoveries and the myths and vocabulary of other present-day Arawak groups. Thanks to these works, such as the research of José Juan Arrom, it has been possible to interpret the most important myths and Antillean divinities.
The Origin of the Sun and the Moon
The cave of Iguanaboina was the primordial den from which the Sun emerges to illuminate the earth and to which it returns to hide as the moon emerges.[6] In the book “An Account of the Antiquities of the Indians,” Arrom provides his account of Friar Ramon Pané’s discussion of Boinayel:
“They also say that the Sun and the Moon emerged from a cave called Iguanaboina, located in the country of a cacique [chief] named Mautiatihuel, and they hold it in great esteem and have it painted in their fashion, without any figures, with a lot of foliage and other such things. And in the said cave there were two zemis [cemis] made from stone, small ones, the size of half an arm, with their hands tied, and they seemed to be sweating. The Taíno valued those zemis very highly; and when it did not rain, they say that they would go in there to visit them, and it would rain at once. And one zemi they called Boinayel and the other Márohu”.[6]
