Arawak Peoples - First European Encounter

First European Encounter

It is now believed that the first tribe encountered by Christopher Columbus, when he arrived on the island he called Santa María de la Concepción (known as Mamana by the Lucayan Indians and now called Rum Cay off the Bahamas), were Lucayan-Arawak Indians. Columbus noted in his log:

Saturday, 13 October 1492: ...They brought us sticks of the cotton thread and parrots and other little things which it would be tedious to list, and exchanged everything for whatever we offered them. I kept my eyes open and tried to find out if there was any gold, and I saw that some of them had a little piece hanging from a hole in their nose. I gathered from their signs that if one goes south, or around the south side of the island, there is a king with great jars full of it, enormous amounts. I tried to persuade them to go there, But I saw that the idea was not to their liking... Sunday, 14 October 1492: ...These people have little knowledge of fighting, as Your Majesties will see from the seven I have had captured to take away with us so as to teach them our language and return them, unless Your Majesties' orders are that they all be taken to Spain or held captive on the island itself, for with fifty men one could keep the whole population in subjection and make them do whatever one wanted.

On 17 February 1627, Captain Henry Powell of the ship "Olive Blossom" (who became first English Governor of the Isle of Barbados) landed to settle the island. Sometime after he brought about thirty Arawak from Guiana to work.

By 1739 Diarium von Pilgerhut and his German (Moravian) Pilgrim brothers arrived in Fort Nassau on the Berbice River and once there decided to teach their ways by example. In accounts by the pilgrim Heinrich Beutel, we learn a little about the villagers he encountered:

Used to heat of the rain forest, Arawak families lived without clothes. Arawak men had never done gardening or work around home. They only hunted fish, and let the women do the rest. Even women expecting babies, or with little ones in their care, worked in cassava patches while men sat in hammocks under the shade. When asked if they wanted to get married did not seem in a hurry. The Indians kept themselves cleaner than the Europeans. Believing that sweat weakens the body, they bathed frequently throughout the day. In their houses—thatched shelters without walls—they sat on clean sand, and they treated one another very politely. Young people called their parents and others of that age “honoured ones.” Older people called all young men “handsome ones” and it took them a while to learn the European titles for women, girls and children, and how to use them. Even though the Arawaks did not have an exact word for humility, they well knew the attitude. One should not look another person in the face while speaking “like a dog,” they believed. Rather, one should rise so that others might sit and count it a privilege to give. Arawak hospitality always involved eating and drinking together and even drank of fermented cassava, held frequent love feasts, and fought at their festivals.

The villagers showed interest in teaching and no sooner had two learned how to read then they began to hold classes for the rest and also began helping the pilgrims translate scriptures and songs from Chad. The Arawaks, however, had no concept of right and wrong in the European sense, and only dimly comprehended concepts such as worship and faith, but they knew what disobedience meant. They lived according to rigid ethics of their own, something the Europeans realised they could learn from the Arawaks. Soon the pilgrim's hut, with its hour-a-day meetings (and monthly all-day meetings) attracted up to one hundred and fifty villagers. During the cassava harvest, or at great fish poisonings along the river, they sang German and Arawak songs. Rarely, during these evening meetings, the believers noticed new faces among the crowd—not Arawaks, but painted Caribs and Waraus, clutching tall spears. By 1748 the first Arawak European-style wedding was celebrated at Pilgerhut.

Before 1881, when Charles Daniel Dance wrote his Chapters From a Guianese Log-book, he noticed,

The children all spoke a Dutch patois besides the Arawak Indian tongue; and with a Dutch teacher to instruct them, it is not difficult to conceive the manner in which they read their English lessons.