Hateful Words of David Yeagley a Camanche wanna be . Let’s Blame the Taino By David Yeagley Why blame Columbus for the last 514 years of history in the Western Hemisphere? Blame the Taino Indians. They’re the people who received him so graciously. If there’s to be any objection to what’s happened since that fateful day of October 12, 1492 on the island of Lucayos, the fault lies with those native people, not with the handful of foreign, civilian adventurers who came ashore. So who are the Tainos? Why did Columbus describe them as “very friendly to us,” and that “they could be much more easily converted to our holy faith by gentle means than by force.” Why were they “very much delighted” with trinkets of small value, and why did they immediately want to trade for more?” Why were they so trusting? Of course, they were fairly fascinated with the white, bearded foreigners, and their odd, clothing. After all, the Taino wore nothing. The Taino had no disposition of fear or mistrust. The name Taino (tah-ee-no) was, in the language of the natives, their word for good, or noble. Europeans ever after referred to them as the Taino. Apparently the Taino consciously eschewed violence and war. Apparently that’s why they migrated north from their Arawak relatives of Venezuela. Perhaps they were driven away. Perhaps this is why they gave the impression to Columbus that the other Arawak Indians of the islands, the Caribs, were horrid, violent cannibals. When Columbus encountered Carib Indians on Dominica, however, on November 3, 1493, during the second voyage, he wrote only from Taino impressions, not from experience. “These islands are inhabited by Canabilli, a wild, unconquered race which feeds on human flesh…They wage unceasing wars against gentle and timid Indians to supply flesh…They ravage, despoil, and terrorize the Indians ruthlessly.” From our vantage point today, it looks pretty much like the Tainos were early liberals, at least ideologically. They preached peace, and demonized anyone who even appeared to be an aggressor. Author Kirkpatrick Sale (a liberal himself) nevertheless emphasizes the point that Columbus encountered no actual evidence of such violent character on the part of the Carib Indians. In The Conquest of Paradise (Knopf, 1991), Kirkpatrick says that though the Carib were famous, with an entire sea later named after them (the Caribbean), at the time Columbus wrote, he had only the Taino impression to go on, and the general European disposition of hysteria toward ‘uncivilized,’ heathen natives. Of course, the Carib Indians of today present themselves as kind and gentle, having received Columbus with open arms, only to be enslaved to the point of extinction. So, was Christopher Columbus the only warrior in western hemisphere? All the natives were angels? Columbus can be glad he never met the Comanche! He’d have never made it back to Europe. In fact, Columbus never met any American Indians. Arawak peoples are all South American. Maybe some were gentle and peaceful, consciously denouncing war and not practicing violence. Perhaps we would expect those kinds to be off isolated on islands, or in remote, scarcely inhabitable environments like cliffs or jungles. But Columbus got his distinct impressions from somewhere. The Taino certainly weren’t warriors. Columbus thought the Carib were. At least he wrote that he thought they were. For one reason or another, the Taino were averse to the Carib. The Taino told Columbus that the Carib were fairly recent arrivals in the area, apparently within that same century. Somehow, the Carib came to dominate the whole region, (thus, the sea was named after them). This isn’t exactly accomplished by gentleness. The name Taino apparently became associated with any of the “good” or kind, or non-combative tribes of the islands, and the name Carib was associated with the warriors, the aggressors. That is the picture we’re painted by the historians. The Taino were the liberals, the non-warriors, the good guys, and the Carib were the conservatives, the aggressors, the bad guys. So, the good guys let Columbus in. The peace-loving liberal Taino Indians opened the door to the tragedy of the next five centuries. The ‘good guys’ allowed disaster. I can accept that as the story. Indeed. So let’s not blame Columbus for being an aggressor (non-militant though he was), but let’s blame the Taino for not being willing to fight for their land, for their own people, for the hemisphere. Five hundred years of evil, eh? That’s what happens when you’re not willing to fight, when you’re not willing to defend what’s yours. That’s what happens when you idolize peace like a lily-livered liberal.
Posted on: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 01:52:19 +0000
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