Editing Arawak (section)

==History==
[[File:Arawak-Languages.png|thumb|Arawakan languages in South America. The northern Arawakan languages are colored in light blue, southern Arawakan languages in dark blue.]]
The Arawakan languages may have emerged in the [[Orinoco River]] valley in present-day Venezuela. They subsequently spread widely, becoming by far the most extensive language family in South America at the time of [[European colonization of the Americas|European contact]], with speakers located in various areas along the Orinoco and [[Amazon River|Amazonian]] rivers and their tributaries.<ref name=Hill14>{{cite book |last1= Hill |first1= Jonathan David|last2= Santos-Granero |first2= Fernando |year= 2002 |title= Comparative Arawakan Histories: Rethinking Language Family and Culture Area in Amazonia |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=qb4LoGZnf-8C&q=Lokono&pg=PA41 |publisher= University of Illinois Press|pages= 1–4|isbn= 0252073843 |access-date= 16 June 2014 }}</ref> The group that self-identified as the Arawak, also known as the [[Lokono]], settled the coastal areas of what is now [[Guyana]], [[Suriname]], [[Grenada]], [[The Bahamas|Bahamas]], [[Jamaica]]<ref>{{cite web |url=https://jis.gov.jm/information/jamaican-history/ |title=The History of Jamaica |publisher= Government of Jamaica}}</ref> and parts of the islands of [[Trinidad and Tobago]].<ref name=Rouse5/><ref>{{cite book |last= Olson |first= James Stewart |year= 1991 |title= The Indians of Central and South America: An Ethnohistorical Dictionary |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=175c4xOpLtYC&q=Locono|publisher= Greenwood |page= 29 |isbn= 0313263876 |access-date= 16 June 2014}}</ref>

[[Michael Heckenberger]], an anthropologist at the [[University of Florida]] who helped found the Central Amazon Project, and his team found elaborate pottery, ringed villages, raised fields, large mounds, and evidence for regional trade networks that are all indicators of a complex culture. There is also evidence that they modified the soil using various techniques such as adding charcoal to transform it into [[terra preta|black earth]], which even today is famed for its agricultural productivity.  Maize and sweet potatoes were their main crops, though they also grew cassava and yautia. The Arawaks fished using nets made of fibers, bones, hooks, and harpoons. According to Heckenberger, pottery and other cultural traits show these people belonged to the Arawakan language family, a group that included the Tainos, the first Native Americans Columbus encountered. It was the largest language group that ever existed in the pre-Columbian Americas.<ref>{{Cite journal |journal=Archaeology |volume=63 |issue=5 |date=September–October 2010 |pages=51–52, 54, 56 |last1=Tennesen |first1=M. |title=Uncovering the Arawacks |jstor=41780608}}</ref>

At some point, the Arawakan-speaking Taíno culture emerged in the Caribbean. Two major models have been presented to account for the arrival of Taíno ancestors in the islands; the "Circum-Caribbean" model suggests an origin in the [[Colombian Andes]] connected to the [[Arhuaco people]], while the Amazonian model supports an origin in the Amazon basin, where the Arawakan languages developed.<ref>{{cite book |last= Rouse |first= Irving |year= 1992 |title= The Tainos |url= https://archive.org/details/tainosrisedeclin00rous |url-access= registration |quote= Island Carib. |publisher= Yale University Press |pages= [https://archive.org/details/tainosrisedeclin00rous/page/30 30]–48 |isbn= 0300051816 |access-date= 16 June 2014}}</ref> The Taíno were among the first American people to encounter Europeans. [[Christopher Columbus]] visited multiple islands and chiefdoms on his [[Voyages of Christopher Columbus|first voyage]] in 1492, which was followed by the establishment of [[La Navidad]]<ref name=":0">{{cite web|url=http://gsp.yale.edu/case-studies/colonial-genocides-project/hispaniola|title=Hispaniola &#124; Genocide Studies Program|website=gsp.yale.edu|language=en|access-date=2017-01-19}}</ref> that same year on the northeast coast of [[Hispaniola]], the first [[Spanish Empire|Spanish]] settlement in the Americas. Relationships between the Spaniards and the Taíno would ultimately sour. Some of the lower-level chiefs of the Taíno appeared to have assigned a supernatural origin to the explorers. When Columbus returned to La Navidad on his second voyage, he found the settlement burned down and the 39 men he had left there killed.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Destruction of the Taino|last=Keegan|first=William F.|year=1992|pages=51–56}}</ref>

With the establishment of a second settlement, La Isabella, and the discovery of gold deposits on the island, the Spanish settler population on Hispaniola started to grow substantially, while disease and conflict with the Spanish began to kill tens of thousands of Taíno every year. By 1504, the Spanish had overthrown the last of the Taíno cacique chiefdoms on Hispaniola, and firmly established the supreme authority of the Spanish colonists over the now-subjugated Taíno. Over the next decade, the Spanish colonists presided over a genocide of the remaining Taíno on Hispaniola, who suffered enslavement, massacres, or exposure to diseases.<ref name=":0" /> The population of Hispaniola at the point of first European contact is estimated at between several hundred thousand to over a million people,<ref name=":0" /> but by 1514, it had dropped to a mere 35,000.<ref name=":0" /> By 1509, the Spanish had successfully conquered Puerto Rico and subjugated the approximately 30,000 Taíno inhabitants. By 1530, there were 1,148 Taíno left alive in Puerto Rico.<ref name=":1">{{cite web|url=http://gsp.yale.edu/case-studies/colonial-genocides-project/puerto-rico|title=Puerto Rico &#124; Genocide Studies Program|website=gsp.yale.edu|language=en|access-date=2017-01-19}}</ref>

Taíno influence has survived even until today, though, as can be seen in the religions, languages, and music of Caribbean cultures.<ref>{{cite web|title=Exploring the Early Americas|website=[[Library of Congress]] |date=12 December 2007 |url=https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/exploring-the-early-americas/columbus-and-the-taino.html}}</ref> The Lokono and other South American groups resisted colonization for a longer period, and the Spanish remained unable to subdue them throughout the 16th century. In the early 17th century, they allied with the Spanish against the neighbouring [[Kalina people|Kalina]] (Caribs), who allied with the English and Dutch.<ref>{{cite book |last1= Hill |first1= Jonathan David|last2= Santos-Granero |first2= Fernando |year= 2002 |title= Comparative Arawakan Histories: Rethinking Language Family and Culture Area in Amazonia |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=qb4LoGZnf-8C&q=Lokono&pg=PA41 |publisher= University of Illinois Press|pages= 39–42 |isbn= 0252073843 |access-date= 16 June 2014 }}</ref> The Lokono benefited from trade with European powers into the early 19th century, but suffered thereafter from economic and social changes in their region, including the end of the plantation economy. Their population declined until the 20th century, when it began to increase again.<ref>{{cite book |last= Olson |first= James Stewart |year= 1991 |title= The Indians of Central and South America: An Ethnohistorical Dictionary |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=175c4xOpLtYC&q=Locono|publisher= Greenwood |pages= 30, 211 |isbn= 0313263876 |access-date= 16 June 2014}}</ref>

Most of the Arawak of the Antilles died out or intermarried after the Spanish conquest. In South America, Arawakan-speaking groups are widespread, from southwest Brazil to the Guianas in the north, representing a wide range of cultures. They are found mostly in the tropical forest areas north of the Amazon. As with all Amazonian native peoples, contact with European settlement has led to culture change and depopulation among these groups.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Lagasse|first1=P.|title=Arawak|url=http://ss360.libraries.psu.edu.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/cgi-bin/ssredirpg?D=7F9&U=http%3A%2F%2Falias.libraries.psu.edu%2Feresources%2Fproxy%2Flogin%3Furl%3Dhttps%3A%2F%2Fsearch.credoreference.com%2Fcontent%2Fentry%2Fcolumency%2Farawak%2F0%3FinstitutionId%3D725}}</ref>