Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
Loading... The Tainosby Irving Rouse
None Loading...
Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. no reviews | add a review
References to this work on external resources. Wikipedia in English (17)When Columbus arrived in the Americas, the first people he encountered were the Tainos, inhabitants of the islands of the northern Caribbean Sea. In this book a noted archeologist and anthropologist tells the story of the Tainos from their ancestral days on the South American continent to their rapid decline after contact with the Spanish explorers. Drawing on archeological and ethno-historical evidence, Irving Rouse sketches a picture of the Tainos as they existed during the time of Columbus, contrasting their customs with those of their neighbors. He then moves backward in time to the ancestors of the Tainos-two successive groups who settled the West Indies and who are known to archeologists as the Saladoid peoples and the Ostionoid peoples. By reconstructing the development of these groups and studying their interaction with other groups during the centuries before Columbus, Rouse shows precisely who the Tainos were. He vividly recounts Columbus's four voyages, the events of the European contact, and the early Spanish views of the Tainos, particularly their art and religion. The narration shows that the Tainos did not long survive the advent of Columbus. Weakened by forced labor, malnutrition, and diseases introduced by the foreigners, and dispersed by migration and intermarriage, they ceased to exist as a separate population group. As Rouse discusses the Tainos' contributions to the Spaniards-from Indian corn, tobacco, and rubber balls to art, artifacts, and new words-we realize that their effect on Western civilization, brief through their contact, was an important and lasting one. No library descriptions found. |
Current DiscussionsNone
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)972.902History and Geography North America Mexico, Central America, West Indies, Bermuda West Indies (Antilles) and Bermuda; Caribbean West Indies (Antilles) and Bermuda; CaribbeanLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |
I will start this review by saying that I did NOT read the entire book, so I cannot give it a fair rating. As the other reviews on GR mention, this work was at times incredibly dry.
Rouse goes into very detailed explanations about the peopling of the Caribbean, Pre-Columbus. This was the study of the Pre-Taino era in which natives that came from North, Central and South America came to populate the Greater and Lesser Antilles. As the years went on other groups came to supplant those already there, most likely by genocide and war. By the time Columbus came around, the Taino were the dominate group.
Different ethnic groups came to live around the islands. I thought this was interesting because I thought that the Caribbean was under one umbrella of Taino. This wasn't the case; different races with different cultures and languages populated the different islands. It was not one race.
I did read in full the last two chapters where Rouse details the Columbus' voyages and the after effects of European colonization. There is also a short bit at the end about the Columbian Exchange, but the book by Alfred W. Crosby will be read for further reading.
I recommend this for serious students only. Even though Rouse states in the beginning that this was written for both academic and the laymen crowd, I felt it was certainly leaning more towards the former. Maybe I will revisit this one in the future.