Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that answer the question.
Query: Were there indigenous peoples in Hispaniola?
The Taíno were an indigenous people of the Caribbean. At the time of European contact in the late fifteenth century, they were the principal inhabitants of most of Cuba, Hispaniola (the Dominican Republic and Haiti), Jamaica, Puerto Rico, The Bahamas and the northern Lesser Antilles. The Taíno were the first New World peoples to be encountered by Christopher Columbus during his 1492 voyage. They spoke the Taíno language, an Arawakan language.[1]
Following the settlement of Hispaniola, Europeans began searching elsewhere to begin new settlements, since there was little apparent wealth and the numbers of indigenous were declining. Those from the less prosperous Hispaniola were eager to search for new success in a new settlement. From there Juan Ponce de León conquered Puerto Rico (1508) and Diego Velázquez took Cuba.
It is estimated that during the initial Spanish conquest of the Americas up to eight million indigenous people died marking the first large-scale act of genocide of the modern era. Acts of brutality in the Caribbean and the systematic annihilation occurring on the prompted Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas to write "Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias" ("A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies") in 1552. Las Casas wrote that the indigenous population on the Spanish colony of Hispaniola had been reduced from 400,000 to 200 in a few decades. His writings were among those that gave rise to "Leyenda Negra" (Black Legend) to describe Spanish cruelty in the Indies. Noble David Cook, writing about the Black Legend and the conquest of the Americas wrote, "There were too few Spaniards to have killed the millions who were reported to have died in the first century after Old and New World contact" and instead suggests the near total decimation of the indigenous population of Hispaniola as mostly having been caused by diseases like smallpox.
In general slavery was illegal in Spain or Spanish territories, the main exception being Muslims taken during the Reconquista. The enthusiasm of Columbus for the slave trade was rejected by Isabella and Ferdinand, the Spanish monarchs; a degree issued in 1500 by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella specifically forbade enslavement of natives; however, there were three exceptions which were freely used by colonial Spanish authorities to evade the prohibition: cannibals (Caribs, one target population, practiced ceremonial cannibalism); those taken in "just wars"; and slaves purchased from other indigenous people. The need for slave labor first arose in the placer gold deposits of Cibao on Hispaniola. After the natives of Hispaniola were worked to death using the encomienda system the other islands of the Caribbean were scoured for slaves. A shortage of labor resulting from a smallpox epidemic in 1518 resulted in an intensified search. By 1521 the islands of the northern Caribbean, such as the Bahamas inhabited by the peaceful Taíno people, were for the most part depopulated. The pearl fisheries on the coast of Venezuela was another activity which had a high attrition rate.
The Taíno of Hispaniola were an Arawak people related to the inhabitants of the other islands in the Greater Antilles. At the time of European contact, they were suffering attacks from a rival indigenous group, the Island Caribs. In 1508, there were about 60,000 Taínos in the island of Hispaniola; by 1531 infectious disease epidemics and exploitation had resulted in a dramatic decline in population. An estimated 600.
Smallpox was a common disease in Eurasia in the 15th century, and was spread by explorers and invaders. After Columbus landed on the island of Hispaniola during his second voyage in 1493, local people started to die of a virulent infection. Before the smallpox epidemic started, more than one million indigenous people had lived on the island; afterward, only ten thousand had survived.
The first inhabitants of the islands were Arawakan-speaking Taíno people, who crossed over from Hispaniola sometime from AD 500 to 800. Together with Taino who migrated from Cuba to the southern Bahamas around the same time, these people developed as the Lucayan. Around 1200, the Turks and Caicos Islands were resettled by Classical Taínos from Hispaniola.
It was written for Charles I of Spain. Las Casas appeals to the King's pathos throughout his account by describing Charles I as a lover, cultivator and as a man of justice. One of the stated purposes for writing the account is his fear of Spain coming under divine punishment and his concern for the souls of the Native peoples. The account is one of the first attempts by a Spanish writer of the colonial era to depict examples of unfair treatment that indigenous people endured in the early stages of the Spanish conquest of the Greater Antilles, particularly the island of Hispaniola. Las Casas takes a strong anti-colonial stance, on account of the extreme violence inflicted on the indigenous occupants of the islands by the Spaniards. He describes the extensive torture, murder, and mutilation of the Natives, referring to them as "innocent Sheep" who were "assaulted" by the Spanish colonizers. De las Casas noticed that no matter where he visited, the Spanish were committing the same crimes. On the island of Hispaniola, the Spanish were herding people into a straw building and setting fire to it, burning the occupants alive. In addition, “they sent the Males to the Mines to dig and bring away the Gold, which is an intollerable labor; but the Women they made use of to Manure and Till the ground, which is a toil most irksome even to Men of the strongest and most robust constitutions, allowing them no other food but Herbage, and such kind of unsubstantial nutriment, so that the Nursing Womens Milk was exsiccated and so dryed up, that the young Infants lately brought forth, all perished.” On Puerto Rico and Jamaica, he saw the Spanish, “with the same purpose and design they proposed to themselves in the Isle of Hispaniola, perpetrating innumerable Robberies and Villanies as before.” and that “These two Isles containing six hundred thousand at least, though at this day there are scarce two hundred men to be found in either of them.” De las Casas also notes that what the Spanish were doing drove many natives to commit suicide. On Cuba, “By the ferocity of one Spanish Tyrant (whom I knew) above Two Hundred Indians hang'd themselves of their own accord; and a multitude of People perished by this kind of Death” and “Six Thousand Children and upward were murder'd, because they had lost their Parents who labour'd in the Mines.”
Han settlers initially implemented policies that favoured plains indigenous peoples. This was because Han officials feared a revolt against Chinese immigrants, and also because plains indigenous peoples were tax-paying citizens and could be used as military sources. Furthermore, the Chinese government initially viewed their expansion as a disruption to the indigenous people status quo, hence they introduced policies to favour plains indigenous peoples. However, plains indigenous peoples were increasingly not able to compete economically and ethnically with the growing Chinese population that flooded to Taiwan. Han policies in favour of plains indigenous peoples began to disappear. Han settlers started to disintegrate many of the plains indigenous peoples from their original villages. It is within these “political and economic frameworks” that the plains indigenous peoples gradually became sinicized.
María de Toledo or María Álvarez de Toledo (1490 - 11 May 1549) was a Spanish noble and Vicereine and regent of the Spanish Colony of Santo Domingo on Hispaniola, present day Dominican Republic. She was the most powerful and highest-ranking noble in America in the 16th century and a defender of the liberties of the indigenous people in the Hispaniola.
Great revenues were drawn from Hispaniola so the advent of losing manpower didn't benefit the Spanish crown. At best, the reinforcement of vanguards sent by the Council of the Indies to explore the Caribana country and gather information on alliances or hostilities was the main goal of the local viceroys and their adelantados. Although mass killings and atrocities were not a significant factor in native depopulation, no mainstream scholar dismisses the sometimes humiliating circumstances now believed to be precipitated by civil disorder as well as Spanish cruelty.The populations of many Native American peoples were reduced by the common practice of intermarrying with Europeans. Although many Indian cultures that once thrived are extinct today, their descendants exist today in some of the bloodlines of the current inhabitants of the Americas.
An Arawak/Taíno home consisted of a circular building with woven straw and palm leaves as covering.[15] Most individuals slept in fashioned hammocks, but grass beds were also used.[13] The cacique lived in a different structure with larger rectangular walls and a porch.[15] The Taíno village also had a flat court used for ball games and festivals.[15] Religiously, the Arawak/Taíno people were polytheists, and their gods were called zemí.[15] Religious worship and dancing were common, and medicine men or priests also consulted the zemí for advise in public ceremonies.[15] For food, the Arawak/Taíno relied on meat and fish as a primary source for protein;[14] some small mammals on the island were hunted such as rats, but ducks, turtles, snakes, and bats as a common food source.[15] The Taíno also relied on agriculture as a primary food source.[14] The indigenous people of Hispaniola raised crops in a conuco, which is a large mound packed with leaves and fixed crops to prevent erosion.[15] Some common agricultural goods were cassava, maize, squash, beans, peppers, peanuts, cotton, and tobacco, which was used as an aspect of social life and religious ceremonies. [15]
The term zambo was not formally used in Spanish writing until the seventeenth century, and often competed with other terms, including "mulato". African slaves began mixing with indigenous people from the beginning of their importation into Hispaniola in the early sixteenth century. Some of this mixture took place in the mines and plantations of Hispaniola, the other Spanish Caribbean islands following the introduction of sugar production in the 1520s, and also when Africans fled from these estates to unconquered indigenous regions.
The Arawak/Taíno people travelled often and used hollowed canoes with paddles when on the water for fishing or for migration purposes,[15] and upwards of 100 people could fit into a single canoe.[13] The Taíno came in contact with the Caribs, another indigenous tribe, often.[15] The caribs lived mostly in modern day Puerto Rico and northeast Hispaniola and were known to be hostile towards other tribes.[15] The Arawak/Taíno people had to defend themselves using bow and arrows with poisoned tips and some war clubs.[15] When Columbus landed on Hispaniola, many Taíno leaders wanted protection from the Caribs.[15]
Since the late 20th century, historians have criticized Columbus for initiating colonization and for abuse of natives. Among reasons for this criticism is the poor treatment of the native Taíno people of Hispaniola, whose population declined rapidly after contact with the Spanish. Columbus required the natives to pay tribute in gold and cotton. Modern estimates for the pre-Columbian population of Hispaniola are around 250,000–300,000. According to the historian Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes, by 1548, 56 years after Columbus landed, and 42 years after he died, fewer than 500 Taíno were living on the island. The indigenous population declined rapidly, due primarily to the first pandemic of European endemic diseases, which struck Hispaniola after 1519. The natives had no acquired immunity to these new diseases and suffered high fatalities. There is also documentation that they were overworked. 
The Classic Taíno lived in eastern Cuba, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico. They spoke a dialect called Classic Taíno. Compared to their neighbors, the Classic Taíno had substantially developed agricultural societies. Puerto Rico was divided into twenty chiefdoms which were organized into one united kingdom or confederation, Borinquen. Hispaniola was divided into roughly 45 chiefdoms, which were organized into five kingdoms under the leadership of the chief of each area's premier chiefdom. Beginning around 1450, Classic Taíno from Hispaniola began migrating to eastern Cuba; they are conventionally known as the Cuban Taíno. The Cuban Taíno gained power over some of Cuba's earlier Western Taíno inhabitants, the Ciboney, but no regional or island-wide political structure had developed on the island at the time of Spanish colonization of the Americas.
This culture is thought to have originated at the lower Orinoco River near the modern settlements of Saladero and Barrancas in Venezuela. Seafaring people from the lowland region of the Orinoco River migrated into and established settlements in the Lesser Antilles, Puerto Rico, and Hispaniola. They displaced the pre-ceramic Ortoiroid culture. As a horticultural people, they initially occupied wetter and more fertile islands that could best support agriculture. These Indigenous peoples of the Americas were an Arawak-speaking culture. 
What is known of the inhabitants of Florida after 1566 was recorded by European explorers and settlers. Juan Ponce de León is credited as the first European to have contact with Florida's indigenous people in 1513. Ponce de León met with hostility from tribes that may have been the Ais and the Tequesta before rounding Cape Sable to meet the Calusa, the largest and most powerful tribe in South Florida. Ponce de León found at least one of the Calusa fluent in Spanish. The explorer assumed the Spanish-speaker was from Hispaniola, but anthropologists have suggested that communication and trade between Calusa and native people in Cuba and the Florida Keys was common, or that Ponce de León was not the first Spaniard to make contact with the native people of Florida. During his second visit to South Florida, Ponce de León was killed by the Calusa, and the tribe gained a reputation for violence, causing future explorers to avoid them. In the more than 200 years the Calusa had relations with the Spanish, they were able to resist their attempts to missionize them.
Rafinesque also made contributions to Mesoamerican studies. The latter were based on linguistic data which he extracted from printed sources, mostly those of travelers. He designated as "Taino", the ancient language of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. Others later also used the term to identify the ethnicity of indigenous Caribbean peoples.
A direct translation of the word "Taíno" signified "men of the good".[8] Additionally, the name was used by the indigenous people of Hispaniola to indicate that they were "relatives".[9] The Taíno people, or Taíno culture, has been classified by some authorities as belonging to the Arawak, as their language was considered to belong to the Arawak language family, the languages of which were present throughout the Caribbean, and much of Central and South America. The early ethnohistorian Daniel Garrison Brinton called the Taíno people the "Island Arawak".[10] Nevertheless, contemporary scholars have recognized that the Taíno had developed a distinct language and culture.
The trapiche's arrival to the Caribbean coincided with three crucial events in the early history of the Americas. They were the dramatic decline of the indigenous population, the arrival of the first enslaved Africans to the Americas and the sudden drop in the production of gold. While large numbers of colonists sought to escape the ensuing desolation and migrated to settle and desolate in turn other territories, those who stayed on Hispaniola turned to the sugar industry hustled at first by a mixture of enslaved indigenous people and Africans (ladinos and bozales). In a few more years, as the indigenous population retrieved, enslaved Blacks made up the bulk if not all of the coerced workers. With the promise of personal wealth implied in the system of slavery and with the advice of Canarian experts colonists began establishing some types of engenhos as early as 1514. According to Cronistas de Indias (Chroniclers of the Indies), Bartolomé de las Casas and Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, it was Gonzales de Veloso (also, Gonzalez Veloso and Gonzalo de Vellosa) who built in what today is San Cristobal the first two-roller trapiche pulled by horses on Hispaniola. From there, it turned up on the Island of San Juan Bautista (Puerto Rico) and later in Cuba.
Antonio de Montesinos, a Dominican friar on the island of Hispaniola, was the first member of the clergy to publicly denounce all forms of enslavement and oppression of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Theologians such as Francisco de Vitoria and Bartolomé de las Casas drew up theological and philosophical bases for the defense of the human rights of the colonized native populations, thus creating the basis of international law, regulating the relationships between nations. Important contemporary ecclesiastical documents taking a strong stance on enslaving or despoiling the indigenous peoples of the Americas was the ecclesiastical letter Pastorale officium and the superseding encyclical Sublimis Deus.
Ten years after Columbus's discovery, the administration of Hispaniola was given to Nicolás de Ovando of the Order of Alcántara, founded during the "Reconquista". As in the Iberian Peninsula, the inhabitants of Hispaniola were given new landmasters, while religious orders handled the local administration. Progressively the "encomienda" system, which granted tribute (access to indigenous labor and taxation) to European settlers, was set in place.
Another separate ethnic group that lived on the eastern side of the island of Hispaniola. Their region today is in the Dominican Republic. According to las Casas, their language was unintelligible for the Taínos, but may have been similar to the Ciguayo (Wilson, 1990). 
Following the arrival of Europeans, La Hispaniola's indigenous population suffered greatly to near extinction, in possibly the worst case of depopulation in the Americas. A commonly accepted hypothesis attributes the high mortality of this colony in part to European diseases to which the natives had no immunity. A small number of Taínos were able to survive and set up villages elsewhere. Spanish interest in Hispaniola began to wane in the 1520s, as more lucrative gold and silver deposits were found in Mexico and South America. Thereafter, the population of Spanish Hispaniola grew at a slow pace.