Tainos

The Tainos were the indigenous people of Hispaniola, the first Spanish colony in the New World. They were wiped out with the arrival of the Spanish.

The Tainos were Stone Age farmers. They had no iron and no goats, pigs, cattle or sheep.

They grew root crops, including cassava, and maize and some other seed crops.

The Tainos lived in villages, each of which contained 1000 people or more. The ruler of each village was called a "cacique".

It is estimated that there were 7 to 8 million Tainos, but 50 years after the Spanish arrived, there were none left.

The Spanish enslaved the Tainos, disrupting their household units, which consisted of 100 or more people living together. Diseases brought from the Old World, such as smallpox, influenza and cholera, contributed to the decimation of the population.