Forgotten Facts

history Tainos or Lucayans - who were the original Bahamians?

I HAVE just enjoyed re-reading Tellis A Bethel Sr’s 2015 book The Lucayan Sea - Birthplace of the Modern Americas. What a story it tells!

The author puts forth a convincing case for naming the seas around the Bahama chain of islands (Turks and Caicos and Bahamas). Like the English Channel and the Irish Sea, we deserve our Lucayan Sea, and I thank the author for floating the idea but, today I will concentrate on his chapters 3 – “What’s in a Name?” and 4 – “Lucayan Ancestry”.

Bethel wrote that, “from the early 1500s, the Spanish referred to the islands of the Bahama chain as ‘Las Islas de los Lucayos’… this name was also used by the Dominican Friar Bartolomé de Las Casas, in his book ‘La Historia de las Indias’.” I grew up thinking that the original inhabitants of the Bahamas were the Lucayans, which I still do, but when my friend, John Doherty, named his Freeport-based air-taxi service Taino Air, it was explained that the Tainos were our first settlers. Similarly, name of the name of the man-made Kelly Island was changed to Arawak Cay, ‘after the original Bahamians’.

Somewhat confused or confusing, but so it is, and Bethel gives an understandable explanation: “The Tainos were ancestors of the Lucayans…Some scholars suggest that the word Lucayan originated from the Taino words Lukku Kairi (“people of the islands”), or the Arawakan words Lukkuno Kairi.”

Columbus’ first landfall was on a small island that the inhabitants called Guanahani, but the great explorer christened it San Salvador, by which name the island is still known. For some years, however, it was known as Watling’s

Island, but by whatever name, it was the birthplace of today’s

Americas. “The Lucayans were part of the Arawakan language family…descended from Tainos of Hispaniola and Cuba…the name Arawak was first used … in 1871.” The Arawak-speaking peoples of South America, near today’s Venezuela, paddled their dug-out canoes up the Caribbean islands and across to Cuba, by which time they were known as Tainos and their life and culture were significantly different from the tribes in South America. After centuries of separation from their ancestors, the

PAUL C ARANHA FORGOTTEN FACTS Tainos in the Bahama chain developed a distinct culture of their own and eventually became Lucayans. Long before this, however, it is probable that people from East Asia were the first humans to reach the Americas via Russia and Alaska, and over many centuries, trekked their way to all parts of the Americas. • For questions and comments, please send an e-mail to islandairman@gmail.com THIS map is the earliest definitive depiction of the Americas by a European. It was drawn by Juan de la Cosa, a cartographer who accompanied Christopher Columbus on his first voyage to what would soon be known as the “New World.”