Taino canoe, image retrieved from http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/taino-life.htm.
The Taíno people built canoes from logs from the forests. Throughout the West Indies, groups traveled along the Caribbean shore to the other islands in canoes. Due to the area’s wind and current conditions, locals took advantage of north and south, and east and west currents. In the journal writings of Christopher Columbus, he noted the beautiful, large canoes of the indigenous people.
“They came to the ship in canoes, made of a single trunk of a tree, wrought in a wonderful manner considering the country; some of them large enough to contain forty or forty-five men, others of different sizes down to those fitted to hold but a single person. They rowed with an oar like a baker’s peel, and wonderfully swift. If they happen to upset, they all jump into the sea, and swim till they have righted their canoe and emptied it with the calabashes they carry with them.” – Christopher Columbus, Oct 14th, 1492
(Bauer, Lugo, & Robinson, 2014; Columbus, 1492; Rouse, 1992)
The Taino 