Remember Your Keys
                             ------------------
                 (This article appeared in the July 90 issue
               of the Broward County Sierra Club Newsletter.)

     So reads a sign for northbound motorists along US Route 1 in the Florida
Keys.  These words have a dual meaning that kept me thinking of them.  Perhaps
there is yet another meaning.

     The word "key" meaning island (like the Spanish cayo) comes from the
Arawak language.  The Lucayan Arawaks were the first inhabitants of the
Bahamas, calling themselves lukku-kairi for "men of the islands".  They
probably descended from people who left the shores of South America and
gradually migrated over 1500 miles up the Antilles to the Bahamas.

     The Lucayo were the first Native Americans to meet the European explorer
Cristoforo Columbo on October 12, 1492 after he made landfall on the Day 33 of
his first voyage across the Atlantic Ocean.  Columbus landed on what was then
called Guanahani (meaning iguana -- he later renamed the island San
Salvador).

     The Arawak had a gentle language and gentle manner.  Naked but for paint,
the Lucayo were small people with dark eyes and coarse straight hair.  They
ate fish, clams, conch, and cultivated foods, possibly manioc, sweet potato,
and maize.  They made incised clay pottery, dugout canoes, and slender paddles
of cedar.  Honest, friendly, and hospitable, they thought the Spaniards had
come from Heaven.

     The linguist Peter Martyr said, "[They] lived simply and innocently
without enforcement of laws, without quarrelling, judges and libels, content
only to satisfy nature." Columbus wrote, "no-one would believe it who has not
seen it; of anything that they possess, if it be asked of them, they never say
no; on the contrary they invite you to share it and show as much love as if
their hearts went with it."

     The Lucayans may have come to the Bahamas fleeing more agressive peoples
(the Carib were man-eaters).  Certainly their only warring was defensive.
Their foreheads were artificially flattened from infancy (by tying a board to
the head) to harden them against enemy blows.

     Columbus was less impressed with the Lucayan's primitive gifts of cotton,
fishing spears, and healing leaves (possibly tobacco), than he was with their
nosepieces made of gold.  As was all of America, the Lucayo were ignorant of
iron:  when Columbus showed them his sword, the young men cut their hands on
the business end.  Columbus stayed only two days before leaving Guanahani, off
in search of gold, and the Great Khan of Cathay (China).

     Columbus never returned to the Bahamas in his three subsequent
trans-Atlantic voyages.  The Spanish returned many times however.  Lucayans
were transported, by deception and by force, to the larger island of Espaņola
to work the gold mines and sugar cane plantations.  Later the discovery of
pearls, and of the Lucayan's swimming abilities, increased the slave's value
40-fold.  Some villages reported to have gold were pillaged, the inhabitants
slaughtered for sport.  The Dominican friar Bartolome de Las Casas recorded
that many slaves were tortured or killed.  In his anguish over the decimation
of the Lucayo, Las Casas claims to have suggested to the king of Spain that
Africans should be introduced to the West Indies (later, he bitterly regretted
his words).

     There were about 40,000 Lucayo living in the Bahamas in 1492.  Within 40
years, they were all gone.  Those that eluded capture, or survived slavery,
died of European diseases.

     The Lucayo left very little to remember them by:  shards of palmetto-ware
pottery, heaps of discarded shells, a few ornaments.  One perfectly preserved
canoe paddle was found in a cave on Mores Island, Abaco.  We don't know how
long the Lucayo had lived in the Bahamas before the Europeans came.  By some
estimates it was only 200 years; other evidence indicates almost 1000.

     Oddly, the European history is also full of confusion.  Ruth Wolper has
compiled evidence that Columbus was a Byzantine prince, and more Greek than
Italian.  In 1986, National Geographic published their conclusion that
Columbus landed first, not at what is now known as San Salvador, but at Samana
Cay, 70 miles to the southeast.  And of course, we are still calling Native
Americans Indians.

     Martyr described the Arawak language as sweet, sonorous, "most pleasing
to the ear."  And here we do have a lasting memory:  the words barbecue, canoe,
cannibal, hammock, hurricane, potato, and tobacco are all of Arawakan origin.

-- Bob Stein

Sources:  Sandra Riley, "Homeward Bound",
          Michael Craton, "A History of the Bahamas"