Bat (opía, the spirits of the dead)
The Taíno called the spirit of a dead person opía. Ramón Pané wrote in the 1490s that the dead hid by day, walked at night and could be known by having no navel. In Taíno art the bat, which flies by night, is the opía.
Meaning
Pané was told that the dead go to a place called Coaibai. By day they are shut in, and by night they go out to walk, eat a fruit called guabazza, and have feasts and go among the living. People told them apart by touching the belly, “because they say the dead have no navel”. A living person’s spirit was the goeiz; after death it was the opía, and the dead appeared only by night, so people were afraid to go out alone in the dark. The Kislak Collection at Miami Dade College, which holds a greenstone offering dish in the form of a bat, says the bat represents the opías, the spirits of the dead, to the Taíno: bats live in caves, which the Taíno regard as portals to the underworld, and fly at night, when spirits are active.
Origin and history
Pané wrote at Columbus’s command during the second voyage (1493–96). The fruit of the dead is uncertain. Pané’s guabazza is the size of a quince; the Kislak Collection calls it the guava; Bourne, editing Pané in 1906, preferred Peter Martyr’s spelling guannaba and noted that the scholar Bachiller y Morales took it for the guanábana (soursop).
The bat dish
The Kislak dish is the source of our drawing. The bat’s skinny arms and legs hold a shallow bowl, and its big ears, the collection says, are those of a fruit bat such as the Jamaican fruit bat, which loves guavas, the favourite food of the opías. The polished greenstone may have been used to grind cohoba seeds for the ritual in which the living spoke with the spirits.
Bats across the Caribbean
The bat is not only Taíno. The Met’s James Doyle notes that objects with bat- or birdlike figures, made all around the Caribbean, show how much flying creatures meant to the identities of leaders and ruling families. For the Taíno, the Kislak Collection adds, bats were also close to the shamans who mediated between the living and the dead, and through the cohoba ritual to the zemís.
Read next
- Next in Taíno symbolsDuho (ceremonial seat)A duho is a Taíno ceremonial seat of wood or stone, low to the ground and often carved with the head of a zemí at the front. Only caciques (chiefs) and ritual specialists sat on them.
- The same shape in Adinkra symbolsBese SakaBese Saka, a bunch of kola nuts, is the adinkra symbol of affluence, abundance and unity.
See also
Zemí (cemí), Taíno sun (Sol de Jayuya), Coquí (the frog), Atabey (the Woman of Caguana), Guabancex (the hurricane), Turtle.
Sources
- 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 XII–XIII and Bourne’s notes
- Offering Vessel in the Form of a Bat, Taíno (MOAD, Miami Dade College), Museum of Art and Design at Miami Dade College, Jay I. Kislak Collection, MDC PC 2020.3.33, Museum of Art and Design, Miami Dade College, object description
- 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
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from circles or curves and waves.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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