Taíno language in the context of "Lucayan people"

Vieques (/viˈeɪkəs/ ; Spanish pronunciation: [ˈbjekes], locally [ˈbjekeʔ]), officially the Isla de Vieques, is an island and municipality of Puerto Rico, comprising the Spanish Virgin Islands together with Culebra.   Located about 8 miles (13 km) east of the main island of Puerto Rico, it is about 20 miles (32 km) long and 4.5 miles (7 km) wide. Vieques is spread over 7 barrios and Isabela Segunda (or "Isabel the Second", sometimes written "Isabel II"), its historic and administrative center. Residents of the island are known as viequenses. The population of the island is 8,249 as of the 2020 Census.

The island's name is a Spanish spelling of a Taíno word said to mean "small island" or "small land". It also has the nickname Isla Nena, usually translated as "girl island" or "little girl island", alluding to its perception as Puerto Rico's little sister. The island was given this name by the Puerto Rican poet Luís Lloréns Torres. During the British colonial period, its name was Crab Island.

The chiefdoms of Hispaniola (cacicazgo in Spanish) were the primary political units employed by the Taíno inhabitants of Hispaniola (Taíno: Haití, Babeque, Bohío; Ciguayo: Quisqueya) in the early historical era. At the time of European contact in 1492, the island was divided into five chiefdoms or cacicazgos, each headed by a cacique or paramount chief. Below him were lesser caciques presiding over villages or districts and nitaínos, an elite class in Taíno society. Hispaniola was also home to the Ciguayo and Macorix native peoples at the time of the European's arrival.

The Taíno of Hispaniola were an Arawak people related to the inhabitants of the other islands in the Greater Antilles. At the time of European colonization, they were at war with a rival indigenous group, the Island Caribs. In 1508, there were about 60,000 Taínos in the island of Hispaniola; by 1531 infectious disease epidemics and exploitation had resulted in a dramatic decline in population.

A cacique, sometimes spelled as cazique (Latin American Spanish: [kaˈsike]; Portuguese: [kɐˈsikɨ, kaˈsiki]; feminine form: cacica), was a tribal chieftain of the Taíno people, who were the Indigenous inhabitants of the Bahamas, the Greater Antilles, and the northern Lesser Antilles at the time of European contact with those places. The term is a Spanish transliteration of the Taíno word kasike.

Cacique was initially translated as "king" or "prince" for the Spanish. In the colonial era, the conquistadors and the administrators who followed them used the word generically to refer to any leader of practically any indigenous group they encountered in the Western Hemisphere. In Hispanic and Lusophone countries, the term has also come to mean a political boss, similar to a caudillo, exercising power in a system of caciquism.

A hammock, from Spanish hamaca, borrowed from Taíno and Arawak hamaka, is a sling made of fabric, rope, or netting, suspended between two or more points, used for swinging, sleeping, or resting. It normally consists of one or more cloth panels, or a woven network of twine or thin rope stretched with ropes between two firm anchor points such as trees or posts. Hammocks were developed by native inhabitants of the Americas for sleeping, as well as the English. Later, they were used aboard ships by sailors to enable comfort and maximize available space, by explorers or soldiers travelling in wooded regions and eventually by parents in the early 1920s for containing babies just learning to crawl. Today they are popular around the world for relaxation; they are also used as a lightweight bed on camping trips. The hammock is often seen as a symbol of summer, leisure, relaxation and simple, easy living.

The Ciboney, or Siboney, were a Taíno people of Cuba, Jamaica, and the Tiburon Peninsula of Haiti. A Western Taíno group living in Cuba during the 15th and 16th centuries, they had a dialect and culture distinct from the Classic Taíno in the eastern part of the island, though much of the Ciboney territory was under the control of the eastern chiefs. Confusion in the historical sources led 20th-century scholars to apply the name "Ciboney" to the non-Taíno Guanahatabey of western Cuba and various archaic cultures around the Caribbean, but this is deprecated.

A caiman (/ˈkeɪmən/ (also spelled cayman) from Taíno kaiman) is an alligatorid belonging to the subfamily Caimaninae, one of two primary lineages within the Alligatoridae family, the other being alligators. Caimans are native to Central and South America and inhabit marshes, swamps, lakes, and mangrove rivers. They have scaly skin and live a fairly nocturnal existence. They are relatively small-sized crocodilians with an average maximum weight of 6 to 40 kg (13 to 88 lb) depending on species, with the exception of the black caiman (Melanosuchus niger), which can grow more than 4 m (13 ft) long and weigh more than 450 kg (990 lb). The black caiman is the largest caiman species in the world and is found in the slow-moving rivers and lakes that surround the Amazon basin. The smallest species is the Cuvier's dwarf caiman (Paleosuchus palpebrosus), which grows to 1.2 to 1.5 m (3.9 to 4.9 ft) long. There are six different species of caiman found throughout the watery jungle habitats of Central and Southern America. The average length for most of the other caiman species is about 2 to 2.5 m (6.6 to 8.2 ft) long.

Caimans are distinguished from alligators, their closest relatives, by a few defining features: a lack of a bony septum between the nostrils, ventral armor composed of overlapping bony scutes formed from two parts united by a suture, and longer and sharper teeth than alligators. Caimans also tend to be more agile and crocodile-like in their movements. The calcium rivets on caiman scales make their hides stiffer than those of alligators.