Arawak << AH rah wahk >> were the first Native American people that Christopher Columbus met in the Americas in 1492. The Arawak lived on the Caribbean Islands. Arawak who lived in a broad region of the northern Caribbean, including much of what is now Cuba and the islands of the Bahamas, Hispaniola, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico, are also called Taíno. Other groups speaking Arawakan languages lived in the Amazon River Basin and other parts of South America.
Some Arawak villages may have had as many as 3,000 people. The villages were organized into larger units and ruled by chiefs called caciques << kah SEE kehs >>. Villages competed with one another in a ceremonial game played with a rubber ball on courts lined with standing slabs of stone. The Arawak grew such crops as corn, yams, cotton, and cassava, a root crop. Their diet included fish, shellfish, and the meat of iguanas, sea turtles, and a Caribbean rodent called the hutia.
Many Arawak died from diseases brought to the Americas by European explorers. Spanish colonists forced the Arawak to mine gold or perform other physical labor. This forced labor further reduced the Arawak population and destroyed their traditional way of life. By the mid-1500’s, nearly all the Arawak of the Caribbean had died.
See also Taíno.
