Macorix

The Macorix were one of the non-Taíno peoples of Hispaniola when Columbus reached the island in 1492, sharing it with the Taíno and the Ciguayo.

Their name was a Taíno exonym meaning unfriendly people, and Spanish writers counted their tongue as one of the island's three distinct languages, divided into Upper Macoris on the north-central and south-eastern coasts and Lower Macoris in the north-west.

They seem to have been semi-sedentary fishermen and foragers whose presence predated the agricultural Taíno chiefdoms that came to dominate most of the island. Already in decline when the Spanish arrived, the Macorix language was moribund at the conquest and extinct by the end of the sixteenth century, as the people were absorbed into the encomienda system.