Zemí (cemí)
Zemí (or cemí) is the Taíno word for the spiritual force of a god or an ancestor, and for the carved figures of wood, stone or cotton it lived in. Groups in the Taíno movement today speak of cemís as ancestral guardians.
Meaning
In the Met’s words, zemí is “not an object or image but an immaterial, spiritual, and vital force pertaining to deities and ancestors”, a word related to a quality akin to sweetness. Caribbean peoples, writes James Doyle of the Met, understood gods and ancestors to live in trees, stones and other parts of the landscape, and Taíno artists carved the tree or stone into the body the spirit asked for. Columbus wrote of “images carved in relief which are called cemis”, and the Smithsonian’s exhibition on the Taíno showed cemís of stone, wood and cotton. Today Concilio Taíno, a community in Puerto Rico, speaks of cemís as primordial, ancestral guardians. The word is stressed on its last syllable, cemí, as Edward Bourne noted in his 1906 edition of Pané, following Las Casas.
Origin and history
Friar Ramón Pané, commissioned by Columbus during his second voyage (1493–96) to record the islanders’ beliefs, describes how a cemí came to be made. A man on a journey sees a tree moving its roots and, frightened, goes to the physician, who comes to the tree, takes cohoba and asks it what it wants. The tree tells him the shape in which it wants to be made; he carves it, builds it a house and gives it property. Doyle tells the same sequence from the Met’s objects: the leader felt a connection with a tree or stone, a ritual specialist revealed the zemí’s identity in a cohoba trance, artists carved it, and the leaders became the caretakers of these figures, which became powerful agents in their communities.
How to recognise a zemí
The best known are the crouching cohoba stands. The Met’s wooden stand, one of the most important surviving Taíno sculptures in Doyle’s view, is a zemí that crouches, bares its teeth and has tears streaming from its eyes. Maya Jiménez, writing for Smarthistory, reads such figures as people who have fasted for days before snuffing cohoba: the bowl on the head held the powder, and the staring eyes are those of the person in trance. She identifies the weeping wooden figure as Boinayel, the Rain Giver. Pané heard of two small stone cemís in a cave, their hands tied, that looked as if they sweated; when it did not rain, people visited them and rain came. One of them was called Boinaiel.
Cemís in the Taíno movement today
Concilio Taíno, Christina M. González reports in American Indian magazine, is reviving a Taíno spirituality “through the guidance of channeled ancient abuelas and cemis”. Carlos Rivera Santana, writing for the Smithsonian Latino Center, puts it more strongly: the images of past leaders in petroglyphs and cemíes “are them”. The three-pointed stones, the heads on duhos and Guabancex are all zemís.
Read next
- Next in Taíno symbolsAtabey (the Woman of Caguana)Atabey is the mother of the Taíno supreme being in the account Ramón Pané wrote in the 1490s, a mother with five names. Many Taíno today see her in La Mujer de Caguana, a frog-legged woman carved on a stone at the Caguana ceremonial park in Puerto Rico.
- The same shape in Buddhist symbolsMandalaA mandala is a sacred diagram of the universe in Hindu and Buddhist tantra, usually a circle enclosing a square palace with a gate in each side and a deity at its centre. Tibetan Buddhists paint it, build it in metal and lay it out in coloured sand for initiation and meditation.
See also
Three-pointed stone (trigonolito), Duho (ceremonial seat), Bat (opía, the spirits of the dead), Taíno sun (Sol de Jayuya), Coquí (the frog), Guabancex (the hurricane).
Sources
- 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
- Three-cornered stone, Taíno (the Met, 1997.35.2), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection record 317826 (1997.35.2), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, object description
- 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; Columbus’s account; Pané chapters XI and XIX; Bourne’s note on the word
- Taíno zemís and duhos (Maya Jiménez, Smarthistory), Dr. Maya Jiménez, “Taíno zemís and duhos”, Smarthistory, 4 January 2021, Smarthistory, essay text
- 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
- 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
- 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
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from circles or squares and rectangles.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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