Page 512 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

fig. 2. Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes, fig. 3. Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes, fig. 4. Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes,
Loincloth. Drawing from Historia general y natural Tamo Ax. Drawing from Historia general y natural Firedrill. Drawing from Historia general y natural de
de las Indias, i: fol. 5V, manuscript. Huntington de las Indias, i: fol. TV, manuscript. Huntington las Indias, i: fol. 9r, manuscript. Huntington
Library, San Marino Library, San Marino Library, San Marino

more about Tamo lifeways. Until recently this left the South American mainland shortly The Tamos were expert potters, weavers, and
research was concentrated in the Tamo heart- before the time of Columbus and had conquered carvers of wood, stone, bone, and shell. They
land. Relatively little is known about conditions the southernmost Antilles. created a distinctive form of art, combining
among the outlying Tamos, who inhabited the There is reason to believe that both the Sala- motifs that their Saladoid ancestors had brought
Bahamian Archipelago, most of Cuba, Jamaica, doids and their Ostionoid descendants spoke from South America with aspects of the art that
and the northern part of the Lesser Antilles. languages belonging to the Arawakan family, the previous inhabitants of the Greater Antilles
Efforts are being made to correct this lack of which is still widely distributed through north- had developed from their Middle American
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information. 15 eastern South America. The Saladoids were background. The Tamos of the heartland wore
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According to Pane, the heartland Tamos the first inhabitants of the West Indies to live in breechcloths or aprons and were fond of feather
believed that they had emerged from a cave permanent villages, farm, make pottery, and ornaments. They could not cast metals, but
in a sacred mountain on Hispaniola and that worship the deities that the Tamos were later to they were able to inlay their carvings with gold
their neighbors had come from a smaller cave call zemis. The Ostionoids, developing all these leaf and shell plates. Their chiefs obtained pen-
nearby; there was evidently no tradition of a practices further, organized themselves into dants made from a copper and gold alloy
migration from another place. In fact, archaeo- chiefdoms and evolved into the Tamos around (guanm) through trade with South America.
logists have traced all the native West Indians A.D. 1200. Hispaniola and the rest of the Tamo heart-
back to the mainland. The first to arrive were When Columbus reached the Tamo heartland land were ruled by hierarchies of regional, dis-
the ancestors of the Guanahatabeys, consisting he found its inhabitants living in large per- trict, and village chiefs (caciques). They lived
of two different groups who migrated from manent villages, each composed of family alongside the village plazas, generally in rectan-
Middle America and South America into the houses grouped around a plaza. They practiced gular thatched houses (bohio), which contrasted
Greater and Lesser Antilles during the fourth an ad\ anced form of agriculture, growing two with the round houses (caney) of the ordinary
and second millennia B.C. respectively. The root crops, cassava and sweet potato, in large people. The caciques received visitors seated on
ancestors of the Tamos, known to archaeologists mounds known as conuco. They also cultivated carved wooden stools (duhos, cat. 411), while
as the Saladoid peoples, migrated from South corn or maize (the latter term in fact derives their attendants stood, crouched, or reclined in
America to the Lesser Antilles and Puerto Rico from the Tamo language), peanuts, pineapples, hammocks. Each village was also served by
during the first centuries B.C., replacing the cotton, tobacco, and other indigenous plants, priests and medicine men (behique) and was
earlier inhabitants, but did not continue using irrigation where necessary. Ironically, divided into two social classes (nitaino and
through Hispaniola to Cuba until around A.D. while Columbus searched vainly through the naboria), which the Spaniards equated with
600, by which time they had evolved into a Antilles for the precious spices and medicinal their own nobles and commoners.
people whom archaeologists call Ostionoids. plants of the East Indies, which of course were According to Pane, the Tainos worshiped dei-
The Ostionoids gradually pushed the earlier not present, these humbler vegetables and ties called zemis. Foremost among them was
inhabitants of Cuba back to the western end of plants, many of which the conquistadors took Yiicahu Bagua Maorocoti ("giver of cassava,"
the island. The origin of the Island-Caribs is back to Spain from Hispaniola, turned out to be "master of the sea", "conceived without male
uncertain. According to their traditions, they among the most important of the New World's intervention"). Arrom has connected this
were descended from Carib warriors who had agricultural gifts to the Old. 17 central deity with the distinctive three-pointed

THE AMERICAS 5!!