Arawak

the islands.

You said there were Arawaks, Tainos, and many others.

There's

no such thing as a West Indian.

By and by he was baptized, receiving, instead of his heathen name, the Christian name of Cornelius.

Cornelius the Arawak was a man of great intelligence, and it was with the aid of this converted Indian and his family that Mr. Brett was able to carry through his first efforts at translation.

Still better things ensued, for five other sorcerers followed the example of Cornelius, gave up their maracas to Mr. Brett in token that they had renounced the practice of magic, and became faithful and useful members of the Christian church.

Evangelists arose among the Indians themselves.

In the Pomeroon district of Guiana, the center of Mr. Brett's labors, more than five thousand persons have been brought into the church through baptism.

As for the moral and spiritual effect of his patient and heroic exertions, we may cite the testimony of the Pomeroon civil magistrate, who at first did not encourage Christian work among the Indians.

A more disorderly people than the Arawaks, he wrote, could not be found in any part of Guiana.

Murders and violent cases of assault were of frequent occurrence.

And that was always reflected towards me and given right back to me.

You know what I'm saying? As a Puerto Rican man and a fair skin Puerto Rican man at that, you know what I'm saying? I'm not Afro, um, latino i don't even identify under any of these things like whether it be calling myself black whether calling myself white whether calling myself um anything beyond being puerto rican you know what i'm saying um even you know some puerto rican brothers that call themselves taino a lot of people are now coming into understanding that taino comes from it's a spanish word it's not even the actual indigenous name that that our people actually carried, you know what I'm saying? I believe the Tainos are originally from the Arawak tribe, you know what I'm saying? And the Spaniards named them the Taino Indian.

So a lot of these identities and things that we choose to call ourselves are questionable.

And I'm never going to identify myself as something that's negative.

So copper, gold, alloy figures from the Americas are now known as tumbagas.

And so these seven words scrawled in official state documentation.

led me to think more about Taino and Arawakan metalworking techniques and also just to look for more evidence of them in Elizabethan and Jacobean writing.

So I found a couple other examples as well and invited me to think a bit more about contrasting notions of value as they're understood by the different communities involved.

that Walter Raleigh kind of encounters during his travels as well.

Raleigh's account is full of rumors of gold, but it's also about establishing alliances with regional rulers, He writes about his discussions with Topia Wari, the ruler of Aramea.

Topia Wari's son is part of the exchange and comes to London with Raleigh.

There's mentions of Martine, the Arawakan.