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Taíno symbols

The zemís, petroglyphs and ceremonial objects of the Taíno of the Caribbean, from the sun of Jayuya and the coquí to Atabey and the hurricane, and how the Taíno movement keeps them today.

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About taíno symbols

These pages are about the carvings, sacred figures and ceremonial objects of the Taíno, the Indigenous people of the Greater Antilles who met Christopher Columbus and the Spanish Empire in 1492. Most of what is known of their beliefs, as the Met’s James Doyle notes, comes from Spanish accounts of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, above all the friar Ramón Pané’s, and from archaeologists. Pané wrote of zemís (cemís), the spirits of gods and ancestors that lived in carved wood and stone; of Atabey, the mother with five names; of Guabancex, who raised the storm; of the turtle born from a brother’s back; of children who turned into frogs, kin to the coquí; and of the dead, the opías, who walk at night. The objects include the duho, the seat of a cacique, and the three-pointed stones, and in Puerto Rico the carvings in rock include the petroglyphs of Caguana and the Sol de Jayuya.

A people written off as extinct

For a long time the Taíno were the standard example of a people who had died out. In 1906 the historian Edward Bourne called Pané’s report the most authentic record of “the long since extinct Tainos”, and Ranald Woodaman of the Smithsonian Latino Center notes that most history books still treat them as the emblematic case of Indigenous extinction. The Smithsonian’s exhibition “Taíno: Native Heritage and Identity in the Caribbean”, at the National Museum of the American Indian in New York, described a Taíno movement that over the past forty years has grown in Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico and their diasporas in the United States, and that challenges the belief that Native peoples became extinct soon after European colonization. Genetics has added its own evidence. In 2018 Hannes Schroeder and colleagues sequenced an ancient genome from the Caribbean and found the Native component in some modern Caribbean genomes closely related to it, which suggests that Indigenous ancestry in the region has survived to the present day; Puerto Ricans, they note, carry between 10 and 15 per cent Native American ancestry. Woodaman adds that most Caribbean people with Native ancestry do not identify as Native, and he discourages using DNA tests to measure it: “That is not what identity is.”

The symbols today

“Taíno literally means ‘good people,’” says Roberto Múkaro Agüeibaná Borrero, president of the United Confederation of Taíno People. Taíno communities use these images in ceremony and in art, and La Mujer de Caguana, read by many as Atabey, now appears in work from contemporary art to tattoos. These pages give what Pané, the archaeologists and museums, and Taíno communities themselves record, and leave out the lists of symbol meanings that circulate without a source.

Sources

  1. We Are Still Here: The First Taíno Movement Exhibition (Carlos Rivera Santana), Carlos Rivera Santana, “We Are Still Here: The First Taíno Movement Exhibition”, Smithsonian Voices (Smithsonian Latino Center), 15 October 2019, Smithsonian Latino Center, article text
  2. Indigenous Arts of the Caribbean (James Doyle, the Met), James Doyle, “Indigenous Arts of the Caribbean”, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2021, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, essay text
  3. Ramón Pané, An Account of the Antiquities of the Indians, c. 1498 (Bourne’s translation, 1906), Edward Gaylord Bourne, “Columbus, Ramon Pane and the Beginnings of American Anthropology”, Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, 1906: Pané’s account translated from Ulloa’s Italian text of 1571, with Eden’s 1555 English of Peter Martyr, American Antiquarian Society (Internet Archive), Bourne’s introduction; chapters I, IV, XIII, XIX, XXIII
  4. Musing Relevance: A Taíno Exhibition Beyond Archaeology, Beyond Columbus (Ranald Woodaman), Ranald Woodaman, “Musing Relevance: A Taíno Exhibition Beyond Archaeology, Beyond Columbus”, Smithsonian Voices (Smithsonian Latino Center), 24 July 2018, Smithsonian Latino Center, article text
  5. Taíno: Native Heritage and Identity in the Caribbean (Smithsonian exhibition page), Smithsonian Institution, exhibition page, National Museum of the American Indian, George Gustav Heye Center, New York, 2018–19, National Museum of the American Indian (Smithsonian), exhibition text
  6. Origins and genetic legacies of the Caribbean Taino (Schroeder et al., PNAS 2018), Hannes Schroeder et al., “Origins and genetic legacies of the Caribbean Taino”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115, no. 10 (2018): 2341–2346, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (eScholarship copy), abstract and results
  7. This Culture, Once Believed Extinct, Is Flourishing (Alex Palmer, Smithsonian), Alex Palmer, “This Culture, Once Believed Extinct, Is Flourishing”, Smithsonian magazine, 2018, Smithsonian magazine, article text
  8. Chasing chupacabras? (Rebecca Toy, National Geographic), Rebecca Toy, “Chasing chupacabras? You may find something even more extraordinary here.”, National Geographic, 8 November 2022 (Puerto Rico’s Taína Route), National Geographic, article text
  9. La Mujer de Caguana, photograph and caption (American Indian magazine), American Indian magazine (NMAI), photograph by Christina M. González with caption, 2018, American Indian magazine (NMAI), photograph caption
  10. Abuelas, Ancestors and Atabey: The Spirit of Taíno Resurgence (Christina M. González), Christina M. González, “Abuelas, Ancestors and Atabey: The Spirit of Taíno Resurgence”, American Indian magazine (National Museum of the American Indian), 2018, American Indian magazine (NMAI), article text

Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research