Duho (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.
Meaning
Maya Jiménez, writing for Smarthistory, describes duhos as seats of stone or wood that marked prestige and power, since only caciques or ritual specialists used them. Most were low seats on four legs, some flat, some with a high back, and the head carved at the front showed a god or an ancestor. The Met calls them portable thrones used by powerful men and women, their swooping shape copying a fibre hammock, and their carved heads and limbs the sculptor’s vision of the zemí identities that lived in the wood. The Smithsonian’s exhibition on the Taíno and their descendants showed wooden seats made for a political leader beside cemís.
Origin and history
Jesse Walter Fewkes, in 1907, sorted the duhos of Puerto Rico into two types: flat, backless stools on short, stumpy legs, and seats with a curved back rounded to fit the body, commonly with a carved head at the lower end. One stone duho he describes has a low curved back like a hammock and a turtle-shaped head. Wooden duhos survive at all, Jiménez writes, largely because the Taíno stored them in caves, away from damp and fire and the invading Spaniards. The Met’s two Lucayan duhos were placed in caves in the Bahamas by their caretakers or their descendants.
The seat in ritual
Duhos were used in cohoba rituals, and they were placed in tombs beside the buried cacique. The British Museum’s duho, dated 1292–1399, has gold sheets set into the eyes, mouth, earspools and joints of the figure.
Animal seats
The head is often an animal. Fewkes’s turtle-headed stone duho is one; see the turtle for the story behind it.
Read next
- Next in Taíno symbolsThree-pointed stone (trigonolito)Three-pointed stones (trigonolitos) are Taíno zemí carvings shaped like a low mountain, with a point at each end and one on top. Ramón Pané wrote in the 1490s that the Taíno believed stones with three points made the yuca (cassava) grow.
- The same shape in HeraldryCoat of armsWhat people call a coat of arms is properly an achievement: a shield of arms with a helmet, mantling, a wreath and a crest above it, and sometimes supporters, a motto and a compartment. The shield is the essential part; the rest are accessories.
See also
Zemí (cemí), Turtle, Taíno sun (Sol de Jayuya), Coquí (the frog), Atabey (the Woman of Caguana), Guabancex (the hurricane).
Sources
- Duho (Ceremonial Seat), Taíno (Lucayan) (the Met), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection record 818524 (lent by the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, object description
- Taíno zemís and duhos (Maya Jiménez, Smarthistory), Dr. Maya Jiménez, “Taíno zemís and duhos”, Smarthistory, 4 January 2021, Smarthistory, essay text
- Jesse Walter Fewkes, The Aborigines of Porto Rico and Neighboring Islands (1907), Twenty-fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1903–04, Washington, 1907, Bureau of American Ethnology, pp. 204–205
- 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
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from curves and waves.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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