cont.
Differences in Categorization
The documents that mention categories and quantities of people on early Hispaniola are often evasive and manipulative, and demographically inaccurate. They are inaccurate, that is, if judged by today's standards and today's terms. One of the most obvious "inaccuracies" in the demographic record is the missing categories in the censuses of Hispaniola from the first half of the sixteenth century. There are no categories for mixed-blood peoples! Censuses contain categories only for Spaniards, Indians and Africans, or for slaves (and/or commended Indians) as opposed to free people. Clearly, the early colonists had not yet come to terms, literally, with the genetic mixture in the Americas.

To further complicate matters, "race," as such, was not an important marker to the sixteenth-century colonists, to the census takers, nor to the crown or the church and their advisors back in Spain. It was not until the 1580s, for example in the history book written by Fray Juan González de Mendoza, that "mestizos" emerged as a separate category of people on Hispaniola.(17) In Cuba, too, categories of people did not include mestizos or mulattoes or other categories for mixed-blood peoples until the 1580s, "though there obviously must have been" mixed-blood criollos on the island long before then.(18)

Birthright, social status, and economic and political clout were the important categoric differentiators.(19) A clear example of status-based demographic counts is Governor Francisco Manuel de Lando's 1530 census of Puerto Rico. He did not list a category for counting any mixed-blood peoples, but neither did he count any Spaniards who only owned a single slave woman (of any ethnic background), nor did he count the single slave women, free Africans, minor children, nor any of the slaves owned by poor whites or transients.(20)


The “Invisible” Categories
Many of the children born in the Spanish New World colonies were politically and economically powerless; therefore, they were held in low esteem and are generally invisible in the historical documentation. A group of Spanish residents in Santo Domingo, for example, did not differentiate mestizos from Africans. In a letter of 1528 or 1529, they suggested to the crown that "negros or mestizos, with their women" be shipped to the island to repopulate the interior villages.(21) In a similar vein, Captain Francisco de Barrionuevo, who negotiated the peace treaty with the rebel Taíno cacique Enriquillo in 1534, observed that in the island's rural regions, "there are many mestizos, sons of Spaniards and indias, who generally are born on the small farms and depopulated towns." Then he made the seemingly paradoxical statement that, despite the large numbers of mestizos he had observed: "Outside of this city [Santo Domingo], you could say that everything is depopulated."(22) He meant, of course, that outside of Santo Domingo there were few powerful Spaniards in residence and that most of the mixed-blood criollos there lived more as Indians or as Africans than as Spaniards, thus they were politically and economically powerless. They were not worth counting. They were virtually invisible. (Barrionuevo's contemporaries would not have found his two statements paradoxical.)

At least Barrionuevo was able to penetrate into Enriquillo's mountain stronghold in Bahoruco. The peoples who had fled Spanish domination--Indians, Africans and mixed-blood criollos alike--were generally left out of the island's censuses because they could not be counted by the census takers, had they been deemed worthy of counting. Even the words "mestizo" and "mulato" appear but rarely in the early documents of discovery and settlement, which emphasizes how unimportant these categories were (and, generally, the people in them) to contemporary Spaniards.(23) In a letter from the crown to the Jeronymite friars on Hispaniola dated November 15, 1516, there is mention of "the mestiza daughter of Juan Tostado,"(24) and the 1530 will of Pedro de Vadillo identifies several of those to whom he made bequests as "indio" or "mestizo."(25) Most documents, however, for example the 1528 letter legitimizing the son of Francisco Tostado, simply describe such children as "the son he had with an india."(26) Or Spaniards of the era referred to such children as "natural ['native'] and raised on this island."(27) As for mulattoes, the only times the description is used in the documents of early Hispaniola appears to be in reference to slaves brought to the Indies from Spain, not to persons born in the Indies.(28)


Ethnic Fluidity
The very fact that they were not separately categorized, however, gave some of Hispaniola’s early residents an advantage—the advantage of ethnic fluidity. For example, some mixed-blood criollos were just as economically and politically powerful as Spaniards. Categorically, they were counted among the colony's Spaniards--even when they were what we would call “illegitimate” today. The difference between them and their powerless counterparts, generally, was their recognition and acceptance by their fathers, and the level of political and economic power their fathers had. This pattern, like many others, was imported from Spain. "Society was still sufficiently fluid even at the highest levels that integration of illegitimate children into the main line of the family was common," notes Ida Altman. "Especially if there were no legitimate heirs."(29)

Society was even more fluid in frontier colonies like Hispaniola than it was in Spain. Many children born of Indian mothers and Spanish fathers on Hispaniola were raised as "Spaniards," as integral family members, even as their fathers' legal heirs. And many other politically and economically active "Spaniards" on Hispaniola were of mixed Spanish and African parentage.(30) There were multiple reasons for this. Firstly, it was because so few European women emigrated to Hispaniola that the conquistadores turned to female partners among the Indians and, later, among the African slaves, which was made easier because of the Spaniards' widespread and long-standing acceptance of miscegenation. Many of these relationships, mind you, were forced upon the women, whose rape, scholars have noted, "is symbolic of the very conquest itself."(31) Other women entered into the relationships at the request of their caciques, in an attempt to build kin relations between the two peoples. Still others did so because these relationships offered not only personal advantages (albeit they also exposed the women to the possibility of more personal abuse and exploitation), but also offered potential for socio-economic mobility for their children.(32)

Not only mixed-blood children were counted as Spaniards. Many, but not all, of the non-European women who "married" Spaniards (whether or not the marriage was blessed by the Church), as long as they learned Spanish, were baptized, wore Spanish clothing and adopted other outwardly Spanish customs, were counted among the "Spanish" residents of Hispaniola.

Which category an individual was placed in on censuses or how one was described in documents often varied, depending upon who was taking the census or writing the document. And the category or description could change, depending upon the goal of the census taker or writer. Consider, for example, the law suit initiated in 1547 by Hernando Botello of Santo Domingo, who accused Francisco Alvarez of raping his daughter. The cover page of the law suit initially stated that his daughter was "La India Uamada." But this was crossed out and the words, "Ines Ursula, mestiza" were written above it.(33) Clearly, in Santo Domingo’s society of the 1540s, mestizo was a fluid category with more political and social clout than the category of Indian (34) -- but it is also clear that Uamada/Ines slipped back and forth between the two categories.

Even pure Indians, however, could have changed their categorical status in early colonial Hispaniola. They would have done so by becoming ladinoized--by adopting Spanish names (which most had done anyway within one generation of the initial encounter), language, Spanish-style clothing, manners and customs, and the Catholic religion.(35) Unfortunately, the ecclesiastical records that might allow scholars to trace any such ethnic "passing" for Hispaniola have disappeared.(36) The Indians there had sufficient motivation, however, to choose to slip into the category of Spaniard, or more likely mestizo, for by doing so they would have had more social and economic flexibility, and they would have avoided the requirement of paying tribute.(37) Perhaps that is what the two Taíno caciques García Hernández and Francisco de Torres had in mind in 1541 when they pleaded for liberty for themselves and their people. They certainly had learned how to use the Spanish judicial system well enough. They promised the crown that they would maintain a Spanish-style village in San Cristóbal de Manabao, with a church, if freed from the onerous duty of providing tribute services to the Spaniard, "doña Leonor." And their plea cited the Cédula of Madrid, November 5, 1540, which ordered the oidores of Santo Domingo to see that "all Spaniards having Indians whom they treated as naborías and as slaves, selling them and transporting them to others, etc., were to be freed, though they could live with their owners if they wanted to do so." García Hernández and Francisco de Torres won the suit,(38) but thereafter they disappear from the documentary record.

cont..
CULTURAL MAINTENANCE, CULTURAL EVOLUTION

Women as Cultural Mediators
Much of archaeologist Kathleen Deagan's work, which examines differences in material culture in the Caribbean and circum-Caribbean before and after European colonization, is based on her theory that the indigenous cultural attributes that survived are primarily those in the female domain. Clara Sue Kidwell agrees, calling Indian women "the first important mediators of meaning between the cultures of two worlds."(39) African women, too, were cultural mediators on Hispaniola.

Both Indian and African women slipped fluidly between and among cultures, particularly those women who married or maintained sexual relations with Spaniards. They had to adapt to styles of dress and speaking and other outwardly Spanish-appearing customs, but they grew and gathered the foods that had traditionally been grown and gathered by the Taínos on the island--adding protein from pigs and chickens and cattle, and cultigens such as garlic, cabbage, carrots and citrus fruits that were brought over from Europe and thrived, as well as African poultry such as guinea hens, and African vegetables such as okra. They cooked this amplified range of food choices for their families in traditional Taíno and African ways (albeit often modified to please the tastes of their "husbands" and/or masters), storing it in traditional (albeit modified) Taíno and African straw, ceramic and gourd containers.(40) They raised and gathered traditional herbs and non-edible plants, and used them in traditional ways for spices, tints and dyes, poisons, purgatives, unguents and other curatives. It is also evident that they passed on some of their language and traditional concepts of worship, art and architecture, as well as their ways of thinking about music, song and dance, kinship, reciprocity, child raising, and ownership--particularly land and resource ownership.(41)

In all of these areas on Hispaniola, a combination of historical, ethnohistorical and archeological evidence shows a high retention level, particularly in the countryside, of Indian traditions, complemented, reinforced and modified by African cultural traditions.(42) Sometimes, however, it is difficult to determine which is which, for there was extensive overlap. The anthropologist Maya Deren suggested that it is the areas of overlap, the areas where she found "cultural convergence" between peoples of Indian and African backgrounds, that have left the most powerful cultural imprints on the island.(43) This author agrees. It is a mistake, however, to concentrate too much time and energy on attempts to determine which cultural traits began where, as so many anthropologists and historians have attempted to do. What is important are the processes, for they demonstrate how remarkably resilient human ingenuity has been across time, how even the supposedly powerless are able to negotiate and jockey for some measure of control over their lives.

Women, then, played an incredibly important role as individuals in the processes of biological and cultural genesis on Hispaniola, even though they were categorized as powerless by Spanish males--doubly so when you consider that so many of them were females from peoples who had been conquered and/or enslaved. In the process, they gave birth to a dynamic new multiethnic people and culture on Hispaniola and across the Americas.(44) Indian and African women on Hispaniola also played important roles, notes Kidwell, due to the influence that they had "on their husbands or consorts and on the children of those liaisons."(45)


The Roles of the Mixed-Blood Criollos
The mixed-blood children on Hispaniola, like their mothers, were cultural mediators. Their roles, perhaps, were even more important than those played by their mothers, for these first American criollos could cross back and forth not only between or among ethnic categories, but back and forth across language and cultural boundaries. "Those who opened paths across those boundaries could acquaint, interpret, indoctrinate, express complaints, help manage or moderate conflict, and pass orders or instructions," writes Eugene Lyon. He adds that, "on a smaller scale but in an equally vital way, these persons functioned in much the same way as did diplomats between hostile or potentially hostile states in early modern Europe."(46) Barrionuevo, for example, might never have been able to negotiate peace with Enriquillo had it not been for the services of the mestizo translator he had with him, whose help he acknowledged in his report to the crown.(47)

The bulk of the population on Hispaniola was, no doubt, multiethnic criollos by the 1550s--the sons and daughters of Spaniards, Indians and Africans--even if they did not appear as such in the censuses and documents with demographic information. Criollos certainly comprised the "many mestizos" that Barrionuevo reported thriving in the rural regions of the island in 1533. No doubt, they were the bulk of the "more than twenty Spaniards and 150 Africans and Indians" Diego Caballero bragged about having on his ingenio in his petition of 1538. They were probably also the bulk of the uncounted thousands of "others," the unnamed "Spaniards," and the "Indians-with-a-question-mark" reported on the judicial census of 1530, on Alonso de Avila's ecclesiastical census of 1533, and on don Alonso de Fuenmayor's administrative census of 1545 (Table 1). And no doubt it was mostly those same mixed-blood criollos, not "500 households of Spaniards" and "even more Indians," that the British traveler Robert Tompson observed when he made a brief stop in Santo Domingo in 1555.(48)

Multiethnic criollos were the heirs to the mines and the great sugar estates of Hispaniola, and of the cattle ranches and tobacco plantations that took over the economy later. They were also the supervisors, the agricultural workers, technicians, blacksmiths, carters, cowboys, skinners, carpenters, shoemakers, domestics.... They were included among the runaways and the cimarrones that terrified the island's colonists because they lived outside Spanish control. They were included among the dealers in contraband that caused the crown to order the northern half of the island abandoned in 1605. They were among the buccaneers (49) and their "Indian" tracker companions that Alexandre Olivier Exquemelin reported inhabiting most of the island in the 1770s.(50) And they were unquestionably among the "certain creoles... who have hair like that of the Indians, which is to say, straight and very black, and who pretend to be descendants of the primitive natives of the island" that Méderic Louis Elie Moreau de Saint-Mery described during his visit to the eastern, Spanish side of Hispaniola in 1783. Moreau de Saint-Mery made the observation that "the great majority of the Spanish colonists are mestizos, who have still more of an African characteristic."(51)

Multiethnic criollos were not just to be found in Hispaniola's rural regions, of course. They were also residents in the "Spanish" towns of the island, even in the capital. In 1538, for example, it was reported that "more than 100 Spaniards and 600 negroes and Indians" lived in and around Buenaventura and Azua,(52) but many of them were most likely multiethnic criollos. "Racial" categories, after all, were social constructions that could and did change depending upon one's background and current circumstances -- then as now.

cont.
HISPANIOLA AS A SEASONING, PROVISIONING AND PROVING GROUND FOR SPAIN'S EXPANSION INTO THE AMERICAS

Seasoning of People on Hispaniola
There were also thousands of multiethnic criollos among the "Spanish" conquistadors and settlers who left Hispaniola to conquer and settle the other Caribbean islands and mainland regions. Being able to slip fluidly between and among cultures, they were better able to understand, negotiate with, manipulate and control the new peoples and new conditions they encountered than were their pure Spanish counterparts, especially those who came directly from Iberia.(53) When Juan Ponce de León left Hispaniola to settle the island of Puerto Rico in 1512, for example, he took his family members, friends and fellow soldiers with him, as did Miguel Díaz, who replaced him. Their family members, friends and fellow soldiers included ladinoized Africans, Indians and mixed-blood criollos.

The conquistadores and settlers who left Hispaniola for other New World colonies also took along some of their commended Indians, and slaves of Indian, African and mixed descent.(54) These peoples were already "seasoned." That is, they were at least somewhat accustomed not only to the climate, diseases and foods of the Americas, but to living with and working for Spaniards, thus they provided not only their labor, but served as models in the new regions. Another benefit of taking seasoned slaves was that the "weakest" among them had already died off. A letter to the Emperor from Governor Cerratos dated July 15, 1546, explained these benefits as he described how "negros bozales" were first brought to Hispaniola, where they were "instructed and then sold" as workers for the colonies of Tierra Firme.(55)

Hispaniola's oidores complained in 1528 that the above scenario happened repeatedly. In the settlement of Cuba, for example, they claimed that Diego Velázquez took along with him most of the populace of seven of the island's pueblos.(56) Seasoned peoples of all ethnic backgrounds from Hispaniola also settled New Spain, a region that included much of today's U.S. southwest. They went to Jamaica with Juan de Esquivel. They went on the expeditions of Diego de Nicuesa, Alonso de Ojeda and others to settle Tierra Firme. They went with Gil González and Diego López de Salzado to settle the Capes of Honduras and Higüeras. They went to Nicaragua, to Colombia, to San Miguel de Gualdape in today's South Carolina with Lucas Vásquez de Ayllón and Fray Antonio de Montesinos, and to the pearl island, Cubagua (today's Isla Margarita). And they went to Peru.(57)


Hispaniola as Provisioning Grounds
Hispaniola was not only a seasoning grounds for the people who settled and built the other New World colonies, it also was a provisioning grounds. Conquistadores leaving Hispaniola for new territories took cassabe with them. They were accustomed to eating it, and it did not go wormy or moldy as did bizcocho (ships' biscuits made from wheat). And they took horses and cattle, pigs and chickens that were initially imported to Hispaniola, but over time had adapted to the local conditions, hence survived better than animals carried directly from Spain--not to mention that they were much cheaper and easier to get because they were less distant. After new regions were conquered, Hispaniola also provided such things as fruit trees, vegetable seeds, and sugar cane stock for the new colonies.(58)


Hispaniola as a Proving Ground
Needless to say, the conquistadors and settlers of the new Spanish-American colonies also took with them their basic infrastructures: economic, governmental, judiciary, labor and tribute systems, including the systems of encomienda and slavery as they had evolved and been refined on Hispaniola. They took along their concepts of proper social hierarchy, too. Europeans were at the top of the list of the elites, of course. They took along their concept of proper socio-economic goals: get title to lots of land, Indians and slaves, and thus get rich, but do so using favors accrued through kinship and patron-client linkages, and other peoples' labor. Finally, they took along with them their values and concepts of proper cultural traditions, including dress and personal adornment, property and material possessions, the structure and use of time, religious worship, agriculture and foodways, architecture and use of space, art and artisanry, kin and non-kin relationships, reciprocity and social behavior, and work regimes.

The infrastructures, patterns, values and beliefs that the Spanish residents of Hispaniola took with them to the new colonies throughout the Caribbean, South America, Central America and North America had their origins in Europe, but they could not be implanted intact in the new lands. Although the Europeans were politically, socially and economically dominant, Indians and Africans outnumbered Europeans from the outset. And very quickly, mixed-blood peoples, too, outnumbered Europeans.

All of the imported European infrastructures, patterns, values and beliefs were tempered and modified--in some instances only slightly, in others much more noticeably--by the conquistadores' and colonists' experiences with other peoples, and vice versa. Hispaniola was a vast "proving ground" for the first-ever meeting and blending of Indians, Spaniards and Africans--and of their cultures.


HISPANIOLA, MOTHER OF THE OTHER ISLANDS
In a very real sense, then, Hispaniola was the birthplace of what would come to be called “Americans” and of “American” culture—a people and a culture that are tripartite: Indo-Afro-European. Although he did not live beyond the initial conquest of the Caribbean, Peter Martyr D'Anghiera's sobriquet for Hispaniola proved to be very accurate. He called Hispaniola "mother of the other islands."(59)

Yumnuk great article! I have heard and read similar information before and resist to completely believe it, just like I never believed that the Tainos were extinct.

"However, the story gets more complex! As I said, for a long time archeologists believed that all Native Americans were descended from people from Siberia who crossed over to Alaska about 11,500 years ago. They traveled on a land bridge under what is now the Bering Strait. These people were called the Clovis People after an archeological site near Clovis, NM. They first colonized the uninhabited lands of North America. Later they migrated to Central and South America."

A question for Baracutei,
if the above hypothesis is the case, why would the Mayan, Aztecs, Incas and other Pre-Columbian cultures who supposedly later migrated to Central and South America excelled at edifying colossal Architectural structures that became wonders of the world?
If the above hypothesis is the case, wouldn't make sense that all the scientific advances of the Incas like mummification, astronomical observation, and even city building happened in North America first for the first Native American established themselves in North America first? What do you think about this?

A question for Baracutei,
if the above hypothesis is the case, why would the Mayan, Aztecs, Incas and other Pre-Columbian cultures who supposedly later migrated to Central and South America excelled at edifying colossal Architectural structures that became wonders of the world?
If the above hypothesis is the case, wouldn't make sense that all the scientific advances of the Incas like mummification, astronomical observation, and even city building happened in North America first for the first Native American established themselves in North America first? What do you think about this?

That’s a good question. I think the most logical answer would have to be the regions and valleys where these civilizations arose. When groups of people begin subsisting primarily from farming, villages expand, populations explode. In North American you had groups such as the “Mound Builders” create huge structures and form complex societies as well. The lands of the Inca, Maya and Aztecs were very fertile. When corn was developed these people saw a rise in populations and went from simple villages to city-states. Also I think that natural resources in these regions allowed them creativities that are not easily obtained in other areas.
Thank you for the question!
Jorge

To reiterate Baracutei's point, agriculture is one of the single biggest steps in building complex societies. Many, but not all, of the North American Amerindians were hunters/gatherers, horticulturalists, or small scale agriculturalists. As opposed to the 3 big Amerindian societies of South America which practiced large scale agriculture and transforming their land. This of course leads to population boom and bigger settlements as as Baracutei already mentioned which allows for "wonder" building and generally impressive cities. But one must note that their are negatives to such a turn in societal life style changes.

Thank you Baracutei.

Yes, indeed. But it takes more of a complex mind and experience to build such cities with rudimentary tools.
My point being that, in my humble opinion the 3 big Amerindian societies flourished more than the North American ones in spite of the first ones to be the latest to inhabit the southern part of the Americas, and that is why I wonder about this theory.
We can see in Cuzco and Macchu Picchu the precision in which the indian masons cut the huge boulders to build the city walls and temples. The cuts are so precised, clean and the stone blocks immaculately put together that many wonder if they were done by human hands in such height and remote location.

I was sifting through this thread and found this post by Ciby. I saw a commercial for this and then went to the website about it. While this can be interesting and cheap relatively speaking, once I realized it will not tell you admixture I lost interest I guess. Does anyone know of or can provide a link to admixture testing?