Guanahatabey

The Guanahatabey were the archaic hunter-gatherer people who held the western tip of Cuba when Europeans reached the Caribbean. They are regarded as late survivors of an island population living across the Antilles before the Taíno expanded.

They made no pottery, built no large chiefdoms, and relied on shellfish, foraging, fishing, hunting and small-scale horticulture rather than the cassava fields of their neighbours. Their language was clearly not Taíno: when Columbus sailed along their coast in April 1494, his Taíno interpreters could not understand them; only a few place names survive.

The Spanish recorded little else: the conquistador Velázquez first recorded their name in 1514, and Las Casas repeated Taíno tales of cave-dwelling fish-eaters. Swept into the conquest begun in 1511, the Guanahatabey vanished as a distinct people during the sixteenth century, taking the secrets of their language and origins with them.