From: New Advent. Catholic
Encyclopedia "Arawaks"
{Arawaks were} The first American aborigines met
by Columbus—not
to be confounded with the Aroacas or Arhouaques, linguistically allied
to the Chibohas
of Columbia—an Indian stock widely distributed over South
America. Tribes speaking dialects of the Arawak language are met
with in and
between Indians of other linguistic stocks, from the sources of
the Paraguay to the northwestern shores of Lake Maracaybo (Goajiros),
from
the eastern slopes of the Andes in Peru and Bolivia to the Atlantic
coast in Guyana. The Arawaks were met by Columbus in 1492, on the
Bahamas, and later on in Haiti, Cuba, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico.
In the fifteenth
century and possibly for several centuries previous, Indians of
Arawak stock occupied the Greater Antilles. It is not impossible
that up to
a certain time before Columbus they may have held all the West
Indian Islands. Then an intrusive Indian element, that of the Caribs,
gradually
encroached on the southern Antilles from the mainland of Venezuela
and drove the Arawaks northward. The latter showed a decided fear
of their aggressors, a feeling increased by the cannibalism of
the Caribs.
Generally speaking, the Arawaks are in a condition between savagery and agriculture, and the status varies according to the environment.
The Arawaks on the Bahamas were practically defenseless against
the Caribs. The aborigines of Cuba and Haiti, enjoying superior
material
advantages, stood on a somewhat higher plane. The inhabitants
of Jamaica and Puerto Rico, immediate neighbors of the Caribs,
were almost as
fierce as the latter, and probably as anthropophagous. Wedged
in (after the discovery of Columbus) between the Caribs on
the South and the
Europeans, the former relentless destroyers, the latter startling
innovators, the northern Arawaks were doomed. In the course
of half a century they
succumbed to the unwonted
labor imposed them, epidemics doing
their share towards extermination. Abuse has been heaped upon
Spain for this
inevitable result of first contact between races whose civilization
was different and whose ideas were so incompatible.
Colonization in its beginning on American soil had
to go through a series
of experiments,
and the Indians naturally were the victims. Then the experimenters (as is always the case in newly discovered lands) did not at
first belong to the most desirable class. Columbus himself
(a brilliant navigator
but a poor administrator) did much to contribute to the outcome
by measures well-intended but impractical, on account of
absolute lack
of acquaintance with the nature of American aborigines.
The {Roman Catholic} Church took
a deep interest in the fate of the Antillean Arawaks. The Hieronymites,
and later, the Dominicans defended their cause,
and propagated Christianity among them. They also carefully
studied their
customs and religious beliefs. Frey Roman Pane, a Hieronymite,
has left us a very remarkable report on the lore and ceremonials
of the
Indians of Haiti (published in Italian in 1571, in Spanish
in 1749, and in French in 1864); shorter descriptions, from
anonymous,
but
surely ecclesiastical, sources, are contained in the "Documentos
in editos de Indias". The report of Frey Roman Pane
antedates 1508, and it is the first purely ethnographic treatise
on American Indians.
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