[Many thanks to Peter Jordens for bringing this item to our attention.] Sean Kingsley reports on ongoing discoveries related to the history of the Lucayans. He says, “Spanish colonizers enslaved the Lucayans, putting an end to their lineage by 1530.” Read full article at Smithsonian.
When the Reverend Theophilus Pugh heard about a mysterious wooden stool discovered in a cave in the Bahamas around 1820, he bought it on the spot “for a trifle.” Uncertain of the object’s history, he nevertheless recognized it as a significant find, describing the centuries-old seat as “either a piece of domestic furniture of the Indians or one of their gods.”
Over the next 150 years or so, collectors like Pugh stripped the region of its ancient past. “A large slice of the islands’ archaeological heritage was lost to building work, tourism and the mining of cave earth—valuable bat guano known as ‘black gold’—to fertilize fields,” says Joanna Ostapkowicz, an archaeologist at the University of Oxford and the author of Lucayan Legacies: Indigenous Lifeways in the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos Islands.
Archaeologists eventually transferred many of the artifacts linked to these Indigenous peoples, now known as the Lucayans, to cultural institutions like the American Museum of Natural History, the British Museum and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.
This comprehensive study aims to foreground the material culture of the Lucayans, making it more accessible and reinstating it as an important part of the region’s archaeological heritage.
Also called the Lukku-Cairi—a name that translates to “people of the islands”—the Lucayans were part of the broader Caribbean-based Taíno civilization. They settled in the area no later than 700 C.E. and adopted a largely maritime lifestyle. The Lucayans were the first Indigenous group encountered by Christopher Columbus when he arrived in the New World, as well as the first to disappear from the continent in the early 16th century.
Contemporary chroniclers described the Lucayans in racist, colonialist terms, scorning them as people of “primitive simplicity [who] went about as naked as their mothers bore them.” Columbus, who anchored off the island of Guanahani on October 12, 1492, wrote of their “unpleasantly broad foreheads” (the result of deliberate cranial modification) and olive-colored skin, which he suggested gave them the appearance of “sunburnt peasants.” He also noted that the Lucayans painted their bodies with red, black and white pigments.
Gold doesn’t occur naturally in the Bahamas, so Spain categorized the archipelago as islas inútiles, or “useless islands.” Today, archaeological analysis is redefining this characterization, revealing the rich culture of the now-vanished Lucayan people.
How the Lucayans lived
In Freeport, a city on Grand Bahama Island, white sands backed by turquoise waters stretch as far as the eye can see. Local restaurants serve up specialty fritters made from conch, a giant sea snail that’s local to the Bahamas. Humans have enjoyed this idyllic paradise for 1,300 years.
Ostapkowicz speculates that lush woodlands, rich soils, abundant marine resources and steady rainfall ideal for horticulture encouraged people to migrate from Hispaniola and Cuba to the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos in waves, starting around 700.
The Lucayans lived in villages made up of 12 to 15 houses called bohios. Families of up to 15 people slept on cotton hammocks in these round structures; fire pits kept pesky mosquitoes at bay.
Tending gardens filled with manioc, maize, sweet potato and chili peppers was a daily ritual for these Indigenous people. The Lucayans hunted large rodents known as hutias and trapped exotic birds. (Parrot feathers were highly valued as accessories in hair ornaments and headdresses.) Dogs walked alongside their owners at home and in huge forests of pine, cedar and ironwood, the “loveliest groups of trees that I have ever seen,” according to Columbus.
The Lucayans loved their dogs, which looked like large mastiffs or small terriers, research led by the late Jeffrey P. Blick shows. They even wore dog molars as pendants, suggesting the animals’ symbolic significance in Lucayan culture. One possible explanation for this tenderness is the belief that dogs were divine: After all, the four-legged spirit Opiyelguobirán was said to guard the dead in the afterlife.
If the Lucayans lived, slept and dreamed on land, then the ocean was their larder and inspiration. “You find bones from marine animals everywhere on land digs,” says Michael Pateman, a Lucayans expert and the director of the Bahamas Maritime Museum. “Archaeology shows that over 80 percent of the Lucayans’ meat came from marine fish. And the menu was long. On Grand Turk island, 32 species of fish were dug up in Coralie alone.”
Grunts, parrotfish, groupers, snappers and jacks were particularly popular seafood species. From the shallows, the Lucayans harvested fish by hand. Elsewhere, they used basket traps and weirs to catch sea urchins, spiny lobsters and blue crabs. In deeper waters, they fished with hooks, lines and spears topped with stingray spines. To catch turtles—prized for their meat and shells, which could be turned into cooking vessels and adornments—the Lucayans used spears that looked like wooden lances and nets.
“Working day in, day out in the sea, especially harvesting conch shells, made the Lucayans the Caribbean’s greatest free divers,” says Pateman. Protein-rich conch could be eaten raw, steamed, boiled or roasted. Dried and preserved, the snail’s meat stayed fresh for up to six months. The Lucayans recycled conch shells as trumpets, tools and insulation for cooking hearths. “Broken shells littering archaeological sites in the Bahamas are a virtual calling card of the Lucayan past,” Pateman adds. [. . .]
Spanish clergyman Bartolomé de las Casas believed the Lucayans were simple people who had a “confused knowledge” of God. But data from around 120 burials spanning the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos suggests the group engaged in religious rituals, some of which centered on water. In a world where dying young was the norm, says Pateman, “the Lucayans felt very vulnerable, so guidance from the ancestors and spirits was an essential reassurance.” [. . .]
What survives below is important because archaeology is the only witness left to make sense of a lost civilization. In 1509, Spanish slave raiders started kidnapping the people of the “useless islands” of the Lucayan Archipelago and putting them to work in Hispaniola’s gold mines. Later, the Spanish exploited the Lucayans’ skill at diving for conch shells by sending them to the lucrative pearl fisheries off the coast of Venezuela. [. . .]
Read full article at https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-archaeologists-are-unearthing-the-secrets-of-the-bahamas-first-inhabitants-180983548
[Shown above: An illustration of Lucayan divers spearfishing for parrotfish, turtles and conch Project SIBA / © Merald Clark; and a shell cut to extract conch meat National Museum of the American Indian.]
[Many thanks to Peter Jordens for bringing this item to our attention.] Sean Kingsley reports on ongoing discoveries related to the history of the Lucayans. He says, “Spanish colonizers enslaved the Lucayans, putting an end to their lineage by 1530.” Read full article at Smithsonian. When the Reverend Theophilus Pugh heard about a mysterious wooden stool discovered
