Lifeways

The West Indies have a tropical climate, warm all year with abundant rain. The Arawak were farmers, as well as hunter-gatherers. Their most important crops were cassava, corn, potatoes, sweet potatoes, beans, peanuts, peppers, cotton, and tobacco. The cassava plant was grown for its roots, which were ground into a pulp to make a kind of bread (nowadays cassava is used to make tapioca pudding). The juice from grinding the roots was used as the stock for soup. The Arawak also collected edible wild plants to supplement their diet.

The Arawak hunted a variety of animals and birds. The main source of meat was the small furry mammal called the hutia. Hunters used clubs as well as spears, bows and arrows, and blowguns. Using torches and trained dogs, they also drove hutias into corrals. In addition to dogs, the Arawak kept parrots as pets.

The Arawak fished from dugout canoes, using spears, nets, and hooks and lines. They had an ingenious method of catching the large sea turtles. Remoras, a kind of fish with sticky patches on their heads, would swim under turtles and attach their heads to them; using a line attached to the remoras, Arawak fishermen would then pull the giant turtles to the surface.

Each Arawak village had a chief usually referred to as a cacique, from the Arakan term kasequa, a supreme ruler who made decisions in times of both peace and war. The position was hereditary. The next in line to the cacique was his oldest sister’s oldest son. A class of nobility, made up of the chief’s relatives, served as his counselors. Women rulers were called cacicas.

The Arawak needed little clothing in the mild Caribbean climate. Men and children usually went naked. Women wore aprons made from grass, leaves, or cotton. Both men and women wore necklaces, bracelets, earrings, and nose pendants, made from shell, bone, stone, or clay. They also twisted cotton into jewelry. Chiefs and nobles wore ornaments of gold and copper, hammered and beautifully shaped. At ceremonies Arawak men wore wooden or shell masks with feathers in their hair. They also painted their bodies, typically red or white. They believed that there is an immortal being in the sky, Yocahu, born of a mother named Atabex. The spirits known as zemis served as the messengers of these deities.

Arawak gold frog pendant

The chiefs lived in rectangular houses with slanted roofs forming a peak. The houses of the common people had circular walls with cone-shaped roofs. Both types of houses were made from the stems of palm trees and cane plants. Palm leaves were sometimes used as thatch for roofs. The Arawak slept in hammocks made from twisted cotton.

In general, the Arawak were a peaceful people. They took up arms to defend themselves only when necessary, as when attacked by the Carib Indians. (The Carib, in fact, advancing northward from the South American mainland, had driven the Arawak off most of the islands of the Lesser Antilles in the years before Columbus’s arrival.)

Many Indians of the region had seaworthy dugouts of varying shapes and sizes, some of which could hold 100 people, leading to extensive trade contacts between the Caribbean Indians and the South and Central American Indians. The Arawak also traded with North American peoples of the Florida coast, such as the TIMUCUA and CALUSA.

With the exchange of food, crafts, and raw materials, other cultural traits were passed. That probably explains why, for instance, many of the people living in or around the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, such as the Arawak, AZTEC, and NATCHEZ, shared rigidly structured societies with supreme rulers and distinct social classes, unlike the more democratic societies of other Indians to the north.