Post #296220 by christiki295 on Sun, Apr 1, 2007 10:07 PM

Tiki and Carribean share a close historical similarity.
The post-contact history of the indigenous Carribean peoples, the Taiano, is very similar to the those of the Rapa Nui and, to a lesser exent, native Hawaiians, because they both include exploiatation, forced migatration to work on plantations and destruction by european disease.

The Taíno, who had colonized all of the Caribbean by A.D. 1200, suffered mightily in the wake of Columbus and his fellow colonists who conquered Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Jamaica, and other islands. Whole villages were wiped out by Old World diseases, warfare, and forced resettlement near mines and plantations. By the early sixteenth century, nearly all the Taíno of the Bahamas had been removed to provide labor for Spanish interests in Hispaniola, itself largely depopulated after contact. Within a few decades, all traces of Taíno life had vanished. What did survive has come down to us in the form of commonplace words like barbeque, canoe, hammock, and tobacco.

http://www.archaeology.org/0101/abstracts/museum.html