Tainos in the DR?

[Chip00]

Here are a couple of pictures of people here in the DR with Taino traits cortesy of Jorge and the photographer Irka Mateo. The latter women is from San Jose de Ocoa.

[Mirador]

Here are two pictures, side by side. The first is an aboriginal girl from the state of Amazonas, in Venezuela. The other is a girl I helped raise from early childhood to her early teens, born in San Cristobal, Dominican Republic.

[Porfio_Rubirosa]

When my stepdaughter (nicknamed, of course, just like my wife when she was a child, "La China") first went to the US to visit, the immigration officer - Japanese-American (a dead ringer for Jack Soo from the old Barney Miller show) - questioned her papers. He said that she didn't look Dominican. I felt like saying that he didn't look American. Probably served me well in refraining.

I asked from what country did he think she was from. He said the Philipines! I pointed out that not all Dominicans are mulato, but to no avail. They sent her for questioning, where she was asked things like whether or not she spoke Spanish and whether she had family in the Dominican Republic.

On a business trip to Guam, every time I showed family pictures to clients they would ask whether my family was Chomoro!

Yes, there's some funky DNA in the DR.

[Chip00]

Originally Posted by Porfio_Rubirosa

When my stepdaughter (nicknamed, of course, just like my wife when she was a child, "La China") first went to the US to visit, the immigration officer - Japanese-American (a dead ringer for Jack Soo from the old Barney Miller show) - questioned her papers. He said that she didn't look Dominican. I felt like saying that he didn't look American. Probably served me well in refraining.

I asked from what country did he think she was from. He said the Philipines! I pointed out that not all Dominicans are mulato, but to no avail. They sent her for questioning, where she was asked things like whether or not she spoke Spanish and whether she had family in the Dominican Republic.

On a business trip to Guam, every time I showed family pictures to clients they would ask whether my family was Chomoro!

Yes, there's some funky DNA in the DR.

According to Lynn Guitar, the Tainos of the DR looked very oriental by all accounts - much like some tribes do in Brazil. So therefore this shouldn't be such a surprise and one can see the influence in many faces in the DR today.

[Baracutay]

Hey Chip!
Sorry I did not get a chance yesterday to send you the old maps of DR. Will do that today, hopefully.
Regarding the "look" that the Tainos had in the past: Most accounts of phenotypical look the classic Taino had are not at conclusive. In different accounts the chronicalers mentioned that they were either lighter, darker, shorter, taller. Some had very wide noses, some had aquiline features, etc etc.
Considering that the Classic Taino were multi ethnic, very much like modern Domincans, I would imagine that they had a series of phenotypical ranges. In my family there is aseries of Native phenotypes. I have cousins that look straight up Asian, while others have more of a North American Indian look. AND then of course there are some people in my family that just look black. Making us Indians with a very sweet twist!
I have many more pictures Chip. Shall we post some more? If so can you show me how to do that again via email?

Porfirio: I hear you about your step-daughter being questioned. I was questioned by a man at the Dominican consulate who "suggested" I may not be Dominican but rather Peruvian or Hondurian. My grandmother was questioned constantly at teh airport because she had a very "Mexican" look.
Jorge Baracutay

[Chip00]

Originally Posted by Baracutay

Hey Chip!
Sorry I did not get a chance yesterday to send you the old maps of DR. Will do that today, hopefully.
Regarding the "look" that the Tainos had in the past: Most accounts of phenotypical look the classic Taino had are not at conclusive. In different accounts the chronicalers mentioned that they were either lighter, darker, shorter, taller. Some had very wide noses, some had aquiline features, etc etc.
Considering that the Classic Taino were multi ethnic, very much like modern Domincans, I would imagine that they had a series of phenotypical ranges. In my family there is aseries of Native phenotypes. I have cousins that look straight up Asian, while others have more of a North American Indian look. AND then of course there are some people in my family that just look black. Making us Indians with a very sweet twist!
I have many more pictures Chip. Shall we post some more? If so can you show me how to do that again via email?

Porfirio: I hear you about your step-daughter being questioned. I was questioned by a man at the Dominican consulate who "suggested" I may not be Dominican but rather Peruvian or Hondurian. My grandmother was questioned constantly at teh airport because she had a very "Mexican" look.
Jorge Baracutay

Call me and I'll walk you through it. Also, he is the map you sent me earlier.

For all - attached are a couple of maps of early Hispaniala. The first was by Andres Morales in 1516. The second is an uncopyrighted map from Wikipedia. If you look closely, you will find only a certain amount of Taino places names. Compare these to subsequent maps from later time periods and you will see that Taino names “suddenly” start to appear, long after the “extinction” of the people.

It should be noted that there were many untouched areas in the numerous mountainous areas of the island where the Indians lived relatively unmolested.

This compares with the situatiuon of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians who hid in the mountains in western North Carolina until they were recognized in 1848. It should be noted too that the undevolped mountainous areas in western North Carolina are of similar size and terrain of the mountainous regions in Hispaniola. Unlike the Tainos, the Cherokees hadn't lost their language nor their culture for the most part.

This should help to dispel the myth that all the Tainos were decimated in such a short period of time and more than likely lived for centuries in some areas before being integrated into the Domincan population.

[bilijou]

Originally Posted by Porfirio

When my stepdaughter (nicknamed, of course, just like my wife when she was a child, "La China") first went to the US to visit, the immigration officer - Japanese-American (a dead ringer for Jack Soo from the old Barney Miller show) - questioned her papers. He said that she didn't look Dominican. I felt like saying that he didn't look American. Probably served me well in refraining.

I asked from what country did he think she was from. He said the Philipines! I pointed out that not all Dominicans are mulato, but to no avail. They sent her for questioning, where she was asked things like whether or not she spoke Spanish and whether she had family in the Dominican Republic.

On a business trip to Guam, every time I showed family pictures to clients they would ask whether my family was Chomoro!

Yes, there's some funky DNA in the DR.

Interesting... several of my family members have also been called "filipinos" before.

My grandfather was Chinese and, incredibly enough, raised in DR so many of them (my brother particularly) have the chinky eyes and high cheekbones. We do indeed have some funky DNA.

[Chip00]

I just recentlt had lunch with Dr. Lynn Guitar and it was very informative. She explain to me that more than likely a majority of the population of Dominicans have significant amount of Taino blood.

This is partly based on some Mitichondrial testing here and in PR. The thing to remember about testing is that it can only trace the matriarchial lineage - it cannot in anyway tell of the contibution from the partriarchal side. For example, a person can have say an african mother and full blooded father and the Mitichondrial DNA test would show NO Amer. Indian DNA.

This is why it would be ideal to have this test done on a significant popultion in the DR. The problem is that the "full scan" DNA test are very expensive, nonetheless there is hope that in the near future funding will be found to have this done.

Also, Lynn gives classes to schoolchildren and other groups throughout the DR and I was wondering if anybody in the DR family had interest attending? Just let me know - thanks

[Baracutay]

Hey Chip I am happy that you met Lynne Guitar. She truly is an amazing woman, no nonsense and very much into details.
You are correct about the DNA. Another example is if an individual has a Indian father and say an African mother, then his mtDNA would be African allthough his Nuclear dna (this test checks the autosomal which is responsible for features, etc) would show that he is actually 50/50. Another example is that mtdna is only passed down from mother to daughter and sons, but only the daughters can pass on the mtdna. So in effect if my sister and I both have Native American mtdna, my sisters children will inherit it but my children will not. However both my sisters children and my own will each have a significant amount of of Native American Nuclear DNA.
According to historians 40 percent of the recognized wives of the Spanish during the first 50 years after contact were Taino. This does not take into account the countless"concubines" that most encomenderos had and who were also giving birth to many children. Another dynamic is the fact that African slaves who escaped obviously needed Native help in order to survive in such unfamiliar country. These would later marry into maroon Indian communities bringing yet another twist to the mix.
As mentioned in an earlier post, there is a big dna sequencing study taking place this summer in the DR. It will be interesting to see just how many people are of Native extraction. This study will focus on many remote villages and mountain communities of the island.
All the best.

[Mirador]

I bumped into this today, while surfing the net. it could be an addition to our discussion regarding the racial composition of our Taino ancestors from a morphological study of cranial features. The entire article can be found in the December 2005 issue of the PNAS.

Here's the abstract,

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

Cranial morphology of early Americans from Lagoa Santa, Brazil: Implications for the settlement of the New World

"Comparative morphological studies of the earliest human skeletons of the New World have shown that, whereas late prehistoric, recent, and present Native Americans tend to exhibit a cranial morphology similar to late and modern Northern Asians (short and wide neurocrania; high, orthognatic and broad faces; and relatively high and narrow orbits and noses), the earliest South Americans tend to be more similar to present Australians, Melanesians, and Sub-Saharan Africans (narrow and long neurocrania; prognatic, low faces; and relatively low and broad orbits and noses). However, most of the previous studies of early American human remains were based on small cranial samples. Herein we compare the largest sample of early American skulls ever studied (81 skulls of the Lagoa Santa region) with worldwide data sets representing global morphological variation in humans, through three different multivariate analyses. The results obtained from all multivariate analyses confirm a close morphological affinity between SouthAmerican Paleoindians and extant Australo-Melanesians groups, supporting the hypothesis that two distinct biological populations could have colonized the New World in the Pleistocene/Holocene transition."