At the time of European contact in the late 15th century, they were the principal inhabitants of most of what is now Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Haiti, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, and the northern Lesser Antilles.

[6] Some anthropologists and historians have argued that the Taíno were no longer extant centuries ago,[7][8][9] or that they gradually merged into a common identity with African and Hispanic cultures.

However, contemporary scholars (such as Irving Rouse and Basil Reid) concluded that the Taíno developed a distinct language and culture from the Arawak of South America.

According to National Geographic, "studies confirm that a wave of pottery-making farmers—known as Ceramic Age people—set out in canoes from the north-eastern coast of South America starting some 2,500 years ago and island-hopped across the Caribbean.

Caciques enjoyed the privilege of wearing golden pendants called guanín, living in square bohíos, instead of the round ones of ordinary villagers, and sitting on wooden stools to be above the guests they received.

Ramón Pané, a Catholic friar who traveled with Columbus on his second voyage and was tasked with learning the Indigenous people's language and customs, wrote in the 16th century that caciques tended to have two or three spouses and the principal ones had as many as 10, 15, or 20.

Taíno home furnishings included cotton hammocks (hamaca), sleeping and sitting mats made of palms, wooden chairs (dujo or duho) with woven seats and platforms, and cradles for children.

[51] Advisors who assisted in operational matters such as assigning and supervising communal work, planting and harvesting crops, and keeping peace among the village's inhabitants, were selected from among the nitaínos.

[citation needed] The Taínos of Kiskeya (Hispaniola) called her son, "Yúcahu|Yucahú Bagua Maorocotí", which meant "White Yuca, great and powerful as the sea and the mountains".

[citation needed] Some zemís were accompanied by small tables or trays, which are believed to be a receptacle for hallucinogenic snuff called cohoba, prepared from the beans of a species of Piptadenia tree.

[68]At this time, the neighbors of the Taíno were the Guanahatabeys in the western tip of Cuba, the Island-Caribs in the Lesser Antilles from Guadeloupe to Grenada, and the Calusa and Ais nations of Florida.

According to Kirkpatrick Sale, each adult over 14 years of age was expected to deliver a hawks bell full of gold every three months, or when this was lacking, twenty-five pounds of spun cotton.

In 1511, Antonio de Montesinos, a Dominican missionary in Hispaniola, became the first European to publicly denounce the abduction and enslavement of the Indigenous peoples of the island and the Encomienda system.

[90] Under the pretense of searching for gold and other materials,[91] many Spaniards took advantage of the regions now under the control of the anaborios and Spanish encomenderos to exploit the native population by seizing their land and wealth.

Historian David Stannard characterizes the encomienda as a genocidal system that "had driven many millions of native peoples in Central and South America to early and agonizing deaths.

Scholars believe that epidemic disease (smallpox, influenza, measles, and typhus) was an overwhelming cause of the population decline of the Indigenous people,[101] and also attributed a "large number of Taíno deaths...to the continuing bondage systems" that existed.

He concludes that, even though the Spanish were aware of deadly diseases such as smallpox, there is no mention of them in the New World until 1519, meaning perhaps they did not spread as fast as initially believed, and that, unlike Europeans, the Indigenous populations were subjected to enslavement, exploitation, and forced labor in gold and silver mines on an enormous scale.

[116] According to Antonio Curet, this part of the modern Taíno argument is frequently ignored by sceptical scholars, even though, as he believes, creolization itself "does not disprove the claims of indigenous survival".

[118] Taíno-derived customs and identities can be found especially among marginalised rural populations on the Caribbean islands such of Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Puerto Rico.

[119][120][121] In isolated parts of eastern Cuba (including areas near El Caney,[122] Yateras and Baracoa), there are Indigenous communities who have maintained their Taíno identities and cultural practices into the 21st century.

[119][123][109] Reports of Indigenous communities surviving in the east of Cuba date at least as far back as the 19th century, from sources as varied as anthropologists, missionaries, military officials and tourists.

[124] Abolitionist and British consul to Cuba David Turnbull, who visited the island in the 1830s, said the inhabitants of Guanabacoa, El Caney and Jiguaní had Indigenous heritage, and recorded Spanish stories of Taíno who had migrated to "the Yucatan and the Floridas".

In the 1880s, author Maturin M. Ballou, a sceptic of Taíno survival, said there were reports of an Arawak-Taíno village living near the copper mines "northwest of Santiago de Cuba",[122] and Nicolas Fort y Roldan described encountering the "almost extinct race lucaya", and their settlements in El Caney and Yateras.

[125] In the early 20th century, scientist B. E. Fernow reported "twenty-eight families" of mixed Indigenous people still living in isolated settlements in the foothills of the Sierra Maestro mountains,[125] and archaeologist Stewart Culin noted the presence of "full-blooded" Indians near Yateras and Baracoa.

In 1908 and 1909, explorer Sir Harry Johnston shared reports of "pure-blood" Taínos and recounted seeing mestizos who were "almost as pure breeds" in eastern Cuba, some of whom lived on former "reservations".

He also suggests that, although the oral histories are "compelling", to address controversies over modern Cuban Taíno identities, this heritage could be "corroborated and reinforced by fieldwork conducted, to begin with, in documentary records contained in Cuba’s former 'Indian towns' and parishes, among other repositories in the country".

[140] A consistent explanation given by modern Taíno/Boricuas for their survival is that their families lived, at least for a time, close to the mountainous interior of the island, which they call Las Indieras ("the place of the Indians").

[143] As of 2006, there were a couple of dozen activist Taíno descendant organizations from Florida to Puerto Rico and California to New York with growing memberships numbering in the thousands.

[144][145] Historian Ranald Woodaman describes the modern Taíno movement as "a declaration of Native survival through mestizaje (genetic and cultural mixing over time), reclamation and revival".

[108] Scholar Gabriel Haslip-Viera suggests that the Taíno revival movements which emerged among marginalised Puerto Rican communities, especially from the 1980s and 1990s, are a response to US racism and Reaganism, which produced hostile political and socioeconomic conditions in the Caribbean.