I like this author's style and emphasis...........he/she makes many a good point..........my Haitian friend told me that Haitian Creole is mainly West African with a good bit of French and the Indian language of that part of Hispaniola of the natives who lived there before they took the slaves from West Africa...................


The next three paragraphs were added in August 1999.
It is important to pause and think about what is claimed here. The claim is not that the entire population of CARIBBEAN (and possibly even Floridian) Taino/Arawaks were wiped out, but that population which was on the island of Hispaniola when Columbus arrived. Further, this is not to say that no drop of Taino/Arawak blood survived, or than not a single word of the language drifted in later Haitian Creole, perhaps even a zemi god influenced Voodoo here or there.
Rather, the claim is that the Taino/Arawak as a discernible people with a discernible culture simply disappeared ON THE ISLAND OF HISPANIOLA.
It is clear that the Taino/Arawak survived in others areas of the Caribbean, even in near-by Puerto Rico. The claim I am making is limited to those Taino/Arawaks who inhabited the island of Hispaniola when Columbus arrived in 1492