Spain's incredibly inhumane and oppressive policies of enslavement, slaughter and separation

of families, combined with starvation and overwork and so increased susceptibility tosmallpox,
resulted in Taino society's drastic decline within a few decades after contact.[8] Attacks by Carib
tribes and unrelenting harsh treatment by the Europeans accelerated the process. Although
Taino society was destroyed by European expansion, some of their bloodlines persist among
the new settlers, primarily Western and African peoples.

Frederick Albion Ober, after his trip in July 1898 of the West Indies, notes:

"... a barbarous fact. When the ancient Caribs came here from the south, they came as
conquerors, and killed every adult male Arawak who fell into their hands. But they
preserved the women and children,..."[9]
[edit]Survivors

While only the Carib remain among the original Antillean populations of Ciboney, Taino,
and Carib, the Arawak have survived on mainland South America. Several hundred
thousand reside in Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guyana, an example being
approximately 300,000 Wayuu Arawak living in Colombia, with 150,000 Wayuu in the
neighbouring area of Venezuela.

The majority of the populations of Aruba, Puerto Rico, and Dominican Republic, and part of
the Haitian population, are descended in part from the Arawaks — Taino in the case of the
Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico and to a much smaller degree the Ciboneys in the
case of Haiti. The Ciboneys represent an earlier pre-Arawakan group that was found
throughout the Caribbean. They were pushed out of the smaller islands of the Lesser
Antilles and to the far west of the island of Hispaniola by the Tainos. The remaining
Hispaniolan population was Arawakanized in speech.[citation needed] Taíno/Arawakan Language
is spoken in Jamaica, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, the Bahamas, Saint Lucia,
Grenada, and Dominica by a few people in the present.

Recent DNA studies[10] indicate that the majority of people in Puerto Rico are descended in

part from Taíno/Arawakan ancestors. This study, under the Taino genome project started
in 1999 through a grant from the National Science Foundation,
tested mitochondrial throughout the island, identifying a 62 percent of Puerto Ricans today
are of Amerindian descent.

In Cuba, however, the Guanajatabeys (the original name of the Ciboneys) continued

speaking their original tongue. Columbus' interpreter (who was a Taino) couldn't
understand them when Columbus landed in Cuba. The name "Ciboney" was given to these
people by the Tainos in Hispaniola. The Tainos used the remnant Ciboney populations for
slave labour. There are also Arawak survivor populations in Saint Lucia and a few other
areas of the Caribbean. There are a few full-blooded Arawaks in Cuba, the Dominican
Republic, Trinidad, Haiti , Jamaica, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas and Grenada. Also there are
a few isolated communities in the Amazonian Basin of Guyana, Brazil and Venezuela.[citation
needed]

[edit]See also