Remains of first tribe to encounter Columbus studied

The unwritten story of the native people who Christopher Columbus first met is now being recorded by IU researcher Charles Beeker and his team of graduate students. \nThough many people know about the Niña, Pinta and Santa Maria -- the three ships Columbus used in his famous voyage -- few have heard of the Taíno, the ancient tribe Columbus stumbled upon when he arrived in the Caribbean. \nBeeker, director of the IU Office of Underwater Science and Educational Resources, and his students will travel to the Dominican Republic in November to continue researching the Taíno's lost culture.\nLast summer Beeker and 10 of his students studied underwater caves near the Dominican Republic, which Beeker said might have been dwelling areas of the Taíno, pre-Columbian inhabitants of the Caribbean.\nThe Taíno were the first people the explorer met when he arrived in the New World, Beeker said, but "many people know (about) Christopher Columbus but not the Taíno." \nBeeker and his crew found artifacts depicting animal faces in these underwater caves, as well as drawings of animal faces on the cave walls. Beeker said he and his crew have found a total of 540 Taíno artifacts in many caves around the Caribbean. \nSecond-year graduate student Gina Zavala worked in the Dominican Republic and participated in the dives. She extracted a Taíno artifact, a bowl decorated with the carved face of an unknown animal that the researchers believe was used to hold water, from one of the underwater caves. The group named the artifact "Carlita."\nZavala said she believes finding out moreabout the Taíno people is important because there is so much about Christopher Columbus' discovery of America that is unknown. She said learning more about the first group of people to interact with Columbus could help fill in the gaps.\nResearching the Taíno also provides an opportunity to learn more about a group that has been overlooked by many history books, Zavala said. \n"History is written by the winners," she said. "Their stories are what we know. We're looking for the history that was unwritten." \nThe Taíno did not actually live in the caves, according to the Journal of Caribbean Archeology, in which Beeker's findings were published. Rather, the caves could have been used for ritual activities, as shown in findings of pictographs in the caves and Taíno burial remains. \nIn late May, Beeker's crew also found the remains of an extinct ground sloth in one of the underwater caves, which the Dominican Republic allowed the crew to bring back to IU. Zavala said the sloth is a part of the sloth family called Megalonychidae and finding it could help researchers determine whether the Taíno interacted with sloth or used it as a food source. Beeker said the sloth might have crawled into the cave before it was submerged.\nCurrently not much is known about that particular sloth. Beeker said approval of a grant is still pending for a carbon-14 test, which can determine when the sloth died. The sloth could be significant in finding out more about the pre-Columbian days of the Caribbean, as well as learning about the Taíno.\n"We're finding phenomenal resources," he said. "We have never found a sloth. ... This could help IU's understanding of the Caribbean." \nBeeker said he and others from IU started studying in the Dominican Republic in 1997, but the study expanded to the Caribbean in 1992. He said IU is the only university working in that region. \n"If you want to study the Dominican Republic, you come to IU," he said. \nBeeker will again head to the Caribbean for 10 days this November, as well as early this summer with a team of 10 to 12 students.