While perusing works relevant to the topic of the "Taino" again, we came across short pamphlets and writings on the "Taino" by a prominent doctor, Charles Arthaud. The brother-in-law of Moreau de Saint-Mery, Arthaud was also an important member of the Cercle des Philosophes in what is now Cap-Haitien. Some of his writings touched upon archaeological, historical and ethnological questions, such as the indigenes of Saint Domingue. This interest expressed by French and creole intellectuals in the island's indigenous past, just on the eve of the Haitian Revolution, fascinates us for several reasons. Arthaud also seemed to be interested in exploring the role of environment and natural history on human development, often falling back on the perhaps intellectually lazy notion that the environment in which the indigenous population lived was less challenging and therefore the autochthonous peoples did not have the motivation to further develop their society.
Amazingly, the Cercle in Okap apparently had a collection of Indian antiquities and an audience of readers and listeners who wanted to uncover more of the island's lost indigenous population. Second, Arthaud pushes back against Charlevoix's contradictions to focus on the "Taino" as a people like others of similar stages of development. Thus, they were not savage, indolent, or utterly lacking in industry, agriculture, and the arts. While it is indeed true they lacked iron and advanced metallurgy, Arthaud's Recherches sur la constitution des naturels du pays, sur leurs arts, leur industrie, et les moyens de leur subsistance provides numerous examples of 'Taino" technical and artistic achievement in canoe construction, the fabrication of cemis, the construction of duhos, political organization through caciques and a system of agriculture that provided adequate sustenance for the population. If they were so primitive, lazy, or backwards, why would they have a complex subsistence economy including agriculture, fishing, and hunting? And their religion, dismissed by Charlevoix and early Spanish sources, is seen to be something similar to other peoples in a similar "stage" of development. Another work by Arthaud on the "Taino" even goes so far as to argue that they possessed a cult of the phallus equivalent to the lingam of India or similar rites and ceremonies in ancient Egypt or Greece. Indeed, even the bohitis achieved some degree of knowledge with regards to herbs and plants useful for medicinal purposes.
Of course, our main interest with regard to Arthaud is the "why" behind this interest. Just a scholarly interest related to the general scientific mission of the Cercle and Enlightenment anthropology? Or was it a reflection of the growing identification with Creole-ness by Saint Dominguans by the second half of the 18th century? Was the criticism of Spain's genocide perhaps also, indirectly, related to criticism of France with regard to the autonomist leanings of some in Saint Domingue's white population? One wonders if Arthaud's interest in the relationship between the environment and populations may have motivated his interest in the indigenous population. According to a footnote in Recherches sur la constitution des naturels du pays, he planned to follow that publication with another on the creoles of the island and their constitution in relation to their environment. Although ostensibly related to Arthaud's medical interests, one wonders if his comparison of Creoles and Indian constitutions and their rapports was also partly motivated by a growing Creole self-identification with the land. And though there is no evidence that free blacks or "mulattoes" in the colony participated in or followed this discourse, perhaps it influenced the Creoles of color who may have also appropriated the island's indigenous past to vindicate their own autonomist and nationalist sentiments.
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