CANOES, CASSAVA, THE ARAWAKS

According to the University of Barcelona professor of philology and member of the Spanish Real Academia de la Lengua, Carmen Riera, “canoa” was the first word from the indigenous languages of the Americas to be used in a text written in Spanish. On the 26th of October, 1492, fourteen days after encountering the Arawaks in the island of Guanahani -later on named San Salvador by the colonizer- in what are today the Bahamas, Christopher Columbus used the word "canoa" for the first time in his Diarios, and on February 14, 1493 he used it again in a letter addressed to Queen Isabella of Castille, to describe how the Arawaks travel throughout the sea from island to island, “las que los naturales navegan todas aquellas islas que son innumerables, y tratan sus mercaderías.”. Not only new Arawak words would become part of the Spanish language, but new foods entered into the diet, being cassava roots one of them. With their narrow and angular “canoas” the Arawaks moved north from their original lands in the northern region of South America, bringing with them the “casabe” bread, still eaten in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and in some parts of Central and South America. (to be continued)