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Tells the story of the Taino people from their ancestral days in South America through their migration to the northern Caribbean islands where they were the first natives to interact with Columbus, to their rapid and immediate decline under the European gifts of forced labor, malnutrition, disease, and dispersal. Includes a glossary without pronunciation. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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Library Journal Review

Although Columbus's diaries contain almost all firsthand information about the Tainos, who became extinct as a result of European colonization, the author has managed to piece together a robust chronicle of their past. Sifting through reports on Caribbean archaeological sites and plumbing studies of language and biology for historical clues, he traces the Tainos back to the initial colonization of the West Indies 5000 years ago. Developing a subject introduced in a chapter of Rouse's Migrations in Prehistory (Yale, 1986), this masterpiece of the cultural/historical approach in archaeology caps 35 years of research. Rouse (archaeology, Yale) fully justifies his reputation as a committed teacher with this informative and accessible volume. Highly recommended for a general audience and anyone interested in the quincentenary. For more books on the Columbus quincentenary, see ``Rediscovering Columbus,'' LJ 8/91, p. 120-22.--Ed.-- William S. Dancey, Ohio State Univ., Columbus (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

CHOICE Review

This Columbian quincentenary volume treats the Taino people of the northern Caribbean and their ancestors. The town-dwelling Taino chiefdoms first received Columbus and were the first victims of Spain's expansion into the New World. Rouse sketches the prehistory of the area from around 4,000 BCE when the first groups of nonagricultural Casimirioid Indians spread to the Antilles from Central America. Around 2,000 BCE a second migration from northern South America, the Ortoiroids, edged north as far as Puerto Rico, establishing a frontier with the older Casimirioid population. About that same time the Saladoid peoples were developing along the middle Orinoco in modern Venezuela. In the early Christian era they began to move up to the islands of the Lesser Antilles, mixing with and replacing the Ortoiroids. As their descendants spread into the Greater Antilles, they became known as Ostionoids, historically ancestors to the various Taino groups. Another repeopling of the Caribbean began in 1492 with Columbus's first voyage and, within a half century, brought Europeans and Africans in great numbers to the Antilles. Rouse, who has worked in the Caribbean for more than 50 years, can fairly be considered the doyen of Caribbean archaeology. Excellent study, illustrated with many fine maps, charts, line drawings; useful glossary; adequate index. All levels of readers. C. L. Riley; emeritus, Southern Illinois UniversityDSCarbondale