Turtle
In a Taíno story Ramón Pané recorded in the 1490s, a live female turtle came out of a swelling on the back of Caracaracol, one of four brothers born together, and the brothers built their house and cared for her. Turtles are carved on Taíno seats and stones.
Meaning
Pané tells of four sons born at one birth to a woman named Itiba Tahuuaua, who died bearing them; the first drawn out was Caracaracol, “which means scabby”, the one Bourne’s text calls Dimiuan Caracaracol. Later Caracaracol was struck on the shoulder with a guanguaio, and it swelled until he was near death. His brothers could not cut it, so they opened it with a stone axe, “and there came out a live turtle, a female; and so they built their cabin and cared for the turtle.” Pané adds that he heard nothing more of it. The National Park Service’s nomination for Caguana, citing the scholar Antonio Stevens-Arroyo, calls this the creation myth of the Female Turtle Goddess.
Origin and history
Pané wrote at Columbus’s command during the second voyage (1493–96), and the story survives only in his account. Fewkes reprinted it in 1907 beside a carved wooden turtle, and said stone turtles were known in one or two West Indian collections.
The turtle and the chief’s house
The NPS nomination, again following Stevens-Arroyo, notes that the oval caney, the house of a cacique where the zemí stones were kept, has the shape of a turtle shell, which recalls the turtle myth. The remains of an oval caney lie at Caguana.
Turtles in Taíno carving
Turtles appear on seats. One stone duho Fewkes describes has a turtle-shaped head on its lower edge, and Otis Mason, whom he quotes, saw three projections at its lower end carved as the head and forefeet of a turtle. In Jayuya, the municipality reports, some people take the Sol de Jayuya for a turtle rather than a sun.
Read next
- Next in Taíno symbolsBat (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.
- The same shape in Adinkra symbolsBese SakaBese Saka, a bunch of kola nuts, is the adinkra symbol of affluence, abundance and unity.
See also
Taíno sun (Sol de Jayuya), Duho (ceremonial seat), Coquí (the frog), Zemí (cemí), Atabey (the Woman of Caguana), Guabancex (the hurricane).
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 IX–XI
- 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. 196–197 and 205
- Caguana Site, National Register of Historic Places registration form (NPS), National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places registration form, Caguana Site, Utuado (reference 92001671; National Historic Landmark 1993), National Park Service, section 8, p. 24
- El Sol de Jayuya (Municipio de Jayuya), Municipio de Jayuya, Turismo, Lugares de interés: “El Sol de Jayuya”, Municipio de Jayuya (Gobierno de Puerto Rico), page 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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