Poole - Contributing editor, Smithsonian If you have ever paddled a canoe, napped in a hammock, savored a barbecue ... dyed cotton and carved enigmatic images from wood, stone, shell and bone.

Canoe, hurricane, barbecue, hammock, tobacco, iguana, potato — and others — are words that originated in the Taino language and have been adopted in English. Some traditional Caribbean foods ...

The word “hammock” derives from a term in the Taíno language meaning fishnet. And that’s just what my first hammock looked like. It was a diamond weave of thin nylon army green cord.

This wooden seat known as a duho was sculpted by a Taino artisan. The Taino were one of the pre-European, native peoples of the Caribbean. It is carved in the shape of an ancestor spirit known as ...