Guanches

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Guanches (also: Guanchis or Guanchos) were the first known inhabitants of the Canary Islands. This people, whose origin is uncertain, were still at a Stone Age level when the Europeans first arrived in the Middle Ages. Their culture as such has since disappeared, although some traces can still be found.

Historical background

The native term Guanchinet means "man of Tenerife" (from Guan = person and Chinet = Tenerife). It was corrupted, according to Juan Núñez de la Peña, by Spaniards into "Guanchos". Strictly speaking, the Guanches were the primitive inhabitants of Tenerife, where the population seems to have lived in relative isolation up to the time of the Spanish conquest, around the 14th century (though Genoans, Portuguese, and Castillians had occasionally landed there since the second half of the 8th century.

The name came to be applied to the indigenous populations of all the seven Canary islands. The Guanches, now extinct as a distinct people, appear, from the study of skulls and bones discovered, to exhibit similarities to Cro-Magnon populations of the Mesolithic era, and links to the Berbers, who have long inhabited northern Africa from Egypt to the Atlantic, have been suggested.

Pliny the Elder, deriving his knowledge from the accounts of Juba, king of Mauretania, states that when visited by the Carthaginians under Hanno the Navigator the archipelago was found by them to be uninhabited, but that they saw ruins of great buildings. This may suggest that the Guanches were not the first inhabitants, if this account is accurate. From the absence of any trace of Islam among the peoples found in the archipelago by the Spaniards, it would seem that this extreme westerly migration of Berbers took place between the time of which Pliny wrote and the conquest of northern Africa by the Arabs. Many of the Guanches fell in resisting the Spaniards, many were sold as slaves, and many conformed to the Roman Catholic faith and married Spaniards. This pattern of events would be repeated in the Spanish subjugation of the Arawaks only a century later.

What remains of their language, Guanche—a few expressions, vocabulary words and the proper names of ancient chieftains still borne by certain families—connect it with the Berber dialects. Petroglyphs have been found on several of the islands. In 1752, Domingo Vandewalle, a military governor of Las Palmas, attempted to investigate and identify them, and Aquilino Padron, a priest at Las Palmas, researched and catalogued inscriptions at El Julan, La Candía and La Caleta on El Hierro. In 1878 Dr. R. Verneau discovered in the ravines of Las Balos what were purported to be Libyan inscriptions. It has also been suggested that the rock inscriptions are Numidic, a script which was used in Libya during the Roman Empire. In two of the islands, (Tenerife and La Gomera), Guanche physical traits seem to have been retained with more purity than in the others. No inscriptions have been found in these two islands, and therefore it would seem that the true Guanches did not possess a system of writing. In the other islands, numerous Semitic traces are found, and in all of them are the rock-signs. From these facts, it would seem that the Numidians, travelling from the neighbourhood of Carthage and intermixing with the dominant Semitic race, landed in the Canary Islands, and that they wrote the inscriptions at Hierro and Grand Canary.

Political System

The political and social institutions of the Guanches varied. In some islands hereditary autocracy prevailed; in others the government was elective. In Tenerife all the land belonged to the chiefs who leased it to their subjects. In Grand Canary, suicide was regarded as honourable, and on a chief inheriting, one of his subjects willingly honoured the occasion by throwing himself over a precipice. In some islands, polyandry was practised; in others the natives were monogamous. But everywhere the women appear to have been respected, an insult offered any woman by an armed man being a capital offence.

The island of Tenerife was divided into nine small kingdoms (menceyatos), each ruled by a king or Mencey. The Mencey was the ultimate ruler of the kingdom, and at times, meetings where held between the various kings. When the Spanish invaded the Canary Islands, the southern kingdoms joined the Spanish invaders in the promise for the richer lands of the north, the Spanish would never reward them with their promise and betrayed them.

Clothes and Weapons

Almost all the Guanches used to wear garments of goat-skins, and others of vegetable fibres, which have been found in the tombs of Grand Canary. They had a taste for ornaments, necklaces of wood, bone and shells, worked in different designs. Beads of baked earth, cylindrical and of all shapes, with smooth or polished surfaces, mostly black and red in colour, were chiefly in use. They painted their bodies; the pintaderas, baked clay objects like seals in shape, have been explained by Dr Verneau as having been used solely for painting the body in various colours. They manufactured rough pottery, mostly without decorations, or ornamented by means of the finger-nail. The Guanches' weapons were those of the ancient races of south Europe. The polished battle-axe was more used in Grand Canary, while stone and obsidian, roughly cut, were commoner in Teneriffe. They had, besides, the lance, the club, sometimes studded with pebbles, and the javelin, and they seem to have known the shield.

They lived in natural or artificial caves in their mountains. In districts where cave-dwellings were impossible, they built small round houses and, according to the Spaniards, they even practised rude fortification.

Funerals

In La Palma the old people were at their own wish left to die alone. After bidding their family farewell they were carried to the sepulchral cave, nothing but a bowl of milk being left them. The Guanches embalmed their dead; many mummies have been found in an extreme state of desiccation, each weighing not more than 6 or 7 pounds. Two almost inaccessible caves in a vertical rock by the shore 3 miles from Santa Cruz (Tenerife) are said still to contain bones. The process of embalming seems to have varied. In Tenerife and Gran Canaria the corpse was simply wrapped up in goat and sheep skins, while in other islands a resinous substance was used to preserve the body, which was then placed in a cave difficult of access, or buried under a tumulus. The work of embalming was reserved for a special class, women for female corpses, men for male. Embalming seems not to have been universal, and bodies were often simply hidden in caves or buried.

Religion

Little is known of the religion of the Guanches. They appear to have been a distinctly religious race. There was a general belief in a supreme being, called Acoran, in Grand Canary, Achihuran in Teneriffe, Eraoranhan in Hierro, and Abora in La Palma. The women of Hierro worshipped a goddess called Moneiba. According to tradition the male and female gods lived in mountains whence they descended to hear the prayers of the people. In other islands the natives venerated the sun, moon, earth and stars. A belief in an evil spirit was general. The demon of Teneriffe was called Guayota and lived in the peak of Teide volcano, which was the hell called Echeyde.

In times of drought the Guanches drove their flocks to consecrated grounds, where the lambs were separated from their mothers in the belief that their plaintive bleatings would melt the heart of the Great Spirit. During the religious feasts all war and even personal quarrels were stayed.

Appearance

Early Spanish accounts seem to indicate at least three distinct populations, each inhabiting different islands, and that at least some of the islanders exhibited physical traits also seen in northern European populations. Early chroniclers described one group as tall, blonde and blue-eyed, another as being of medium height and dark complexion, and the third group was said to be of smaller stature. The Guanche population of Tenerife were, according to accounts from the 15th century, tall, tan-skinned, and powerfully built, with some having blond hair and blue eyes. The 11th Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica notes that the Guanches were blue- or grey-eyed and had blondish hair, and that they resembled a Cro-Magnon people.

These observations about the appearance of the Guanche peoples have led to considerable speculation about their origins. Some theories state that the Guanches inherited their fair traits from the Celts or some other group originating on the European continent; indeed, the Celts and Germanic tribes once enjoyed a much wider distribution across Western Europe, including the Iberian peninsula. A sizeable part of northern Africa was occupied by the East Germanic Vandals in the 5th and 6th centuries AD; it is not known if their reach extended to the Canaries, nor are there any apparent cultural similarities between these groups.

Fair traits observed at the time of conquest continue to appear at least partially in Canary Islanders. Similar fair traits can be found among the indigenous Berber populations in neighboring North Africa in the few cases where they have not interbred with the more recently arrived Arab majority. However, among native Canary Islanders, fair traits are more often than not attributed to the Spanish colonists that settled on the islands, whereas the more darker features of some islanders are attributed to their Guanche heritage. An example of these differences in traits can be seen between Canarian pop singers Braulio and Jose Velez. In any case, linguistic and genetic evidence seems to indicate that northern African peoples (most likely descendants of the Capsian culture) did make a significant contribution to the aboriginal population of the Canaries at some point following dessication of the Sahara. ^*^*^*^* ^* ^* ^*

The Conquest

The conquest of the islands began in 1402, with the expedition of Juan de Bethencourt and Gadifer de la Salle to the island of Lanzarote. Gadifer would conquer Lanzarote and Fuerteventura with ease since many of the aborigenes, faced with issues of starvation and poor agriculture, would surrender to Spanish Reign.

The other five islands fought back. El Hierro and the Bimbache population were the next to fall, then La Gomera, La Palma, Gran Canaria and 100 years later, Tenerife.

Tenerife was most successful against the Spanish invaders. In the First Battle of Acentejo, called La Matanza or "The Slaughter," poorly armed Guanches with only stones ambushed the Spanish in a valley and killed many.

One in five survived, including the leader of the expedition, Alonso Fernandez de Lugo. Lugo would return later to the island after many defeats and with the alliance of the southern part of the island. The northern Menceyatos or provinces would fall at the Second Battle of Acentejo with the defeat of Bencomo, Mencey of Taoro - what is now the Orotava Valley - in 1496.

Guanche people

External links

References

Alfred W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900, 1993
John Mercer, The Canary Islanders: Their History, Conquest & Survival, 1980

Ancient peoples

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Guanches".

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