The Lucayans

Lucayan Of The Bahamas

Within the Lucayan family there was division of labor. The men generally hunted food from land and sea, made their tools and weapons and built the canoes. The women farmed, made cloth, baked the pottery and looked after the children.

Both men and women participated in house construction and the areitos (songs and dances), which added to the joy of life. Tobacco (cohiba) was smoked through a fork-shaped nose-pipe and alcoholic beverages were made from fermented cassava and other roots.

The Lucayans were pantheists who believed in a heaven (Coyaba) where all would go after death, and which they thought was located somewhere to the south. They had a series of gods, which they called Cemies, whose spirits they believed were embodied in the physical being of certain members of the animal kingdom familiar to them.

For this reason they decorated their ceramics and other objects made from bone, stone, wood, clay and shell with the features of these animals. The Lucayans desig-nated special sacred places for ceremonial and religious purposes.

These were sometimes a small hut placed outside of the settlement or caves in the vicinity of their villages, in which they would place sacred objects such as the carved wooden seats of the caciques (dujos) or where they would carve images (petroglyphs) on the wall of the caves.

Because one aspect of their religious beliefs revolved around ancestor worship, they would often place in their caneyes bones of their ancestors, as well as Cemies carved from bone, stone, wood or shell, modeled in clay or made from botanical fibers.

The Lucayans also had great respect for their dead, placing them in caves, sink-holes and sometimes also in blue holes filled with water. Physically, the Lucayan Tainos resembled their Taino rela-tives of the Greater Antilles.

On the average, they were shorter than the modern Bahamian population and said to be generally slim and well-built. In complexion, they were a light copper color and had dark straight hair, which generally was cut in a fringe at the front and left long in back.

The foreheads of all Lucayan babies were flattened soon after birth, as the Lucayans believed that this improved the appearance and increased intelligence. They were described as being pleasing of face and well-proportioned.