Native American Nations in the US Territories (Part XV)

Puerto Rico - Arawak Indians. Today, nearly all residents are Hispanic, expcet for a few that are a mix of Hispanic and indigenous peoples (much like the Metis).

Guam - Chamorro, Filipino, Caucasian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and mixes.

U.S. Virgin Islands - Originally peopled by the Carrib Indians now in Tobago and Trinidad..

American Samoa - Proto-polynesians, Samoans.

Northern Mariana Islands - Chamorro.

Midway Islands - No indigenous inhabitants.

Wake Island - None.

Johnston Atoll - None.

Baker, Howland, and Jarvis Islands - Unknown.

Kingman Reef - None.

Navassa Island - None. Became home to freedaslves after 1857, working to gather fertilzers until they revolted against inhumane workling conditions.

Palmyra Atoll - None.

Recorded by Lawrence J. Cunningham in 1992.

Puntan and his sister, Fu'uña, were born of space and had neither a father nor a mother. They existed before the sky and the earth. When it was Puntan's time to die, he instructed his sister to make a place for humans by using his chest and back to make the sun and the moon, and his eyebrows to make the rainbows.

Fu'uña followed the instructions of Puntan and then took the red earth of Guam and mixed it with water. Then she built a great rock called Laso de Fua. This rock divided into many smaller stones. These stones became the first people on earth.

In a volcano (Mt. Sasalaguan) there lived a god named Chaife. He governed the winds, the waves, and fire. He created souls in his blacksmith shop to be his slaves. One day he was busy pounding out another soul into shape. Since he was in a hurry, he put too much wood in his oven. All of a sudden the whole place exploded into a huge eruption. Ash and stones were thrown into the air, and rivers of liquid fire began to pour down the sides of Mt. Sasalaguan. Chaife was angry and he began a search for any souls who might have escaped. He wanted to kill the lost soul.

One of the souls fell to the earth at Fouha Bay on Guam and turned to stone. The rock was near the ocean, and the waves caressed the rock's feet. Over time, the sun shone on the rock, and the rain and wind weathered it and it became a man. The man was so pleased with the beauty of Guam that he took the red earth and mixed it with water. From this clay he made sculptures of humans. Using what he learned from Chaife, he made souls for the statues from the heat of the sun. He named these people the children of the earth.

Cuba's small Native Indigenous population preserve many of the old natural ways, particularly the use of medicinal plants and crop planting systems.

As mountain people, they are keepers of Cuba's oldest musical traditions.The mountain folk culture of Cuba is altogether open and engaging.

The Taino are a subgrouping within the Ararawak Indian Tribe, indigenous to northeastern South America. However, they have migrated northward to Florida and even as far north as to New Jersey,

The Taino people have inhabited all of the Greater Antilles, which includes

• Cuba,
• Jamaica,
• Haiti,
• the Dominican Republic, and
• Puerto Rico.

The Taino constructed there own ball parks to play a ceremonial tribal game that required a rubber ball (rubber came from trees) and was important, even central, to their religious life.

Stone structures around the ballparks looked a little like Stonehenge.

Today, the Tekesta Tribal Band of the Taino is located in Bimini, Florida.

• Native Americans Part I
• Native Americans Part II
• Native Americans Part III
• Native Americans Part IV
• Native Americans Part V
• Native Americans Part VI
• Native Americans Part VII
• Native Americans Part VIII
• Native Americans Part IX
• Native Americans Part X
• Native Americans Part XI
• Native Americans Part XII
• Native Americans Part XIII
• Native Americans Part XIV
• National Pow Wow of the United States
• Native Americans in Western Novels