For the Taíno, the living and the dead were constantly interacting. Taíno beliefs centred around the figure of the zemí, the ancestral spirit, which could belong either to an individual family, or collectively to the entire community. Communing with these spirits through the veil of the netherworld was the primary religious activity of the Taíno, and most ordinarily consisted of the cohoba ritual. Mediated by a priest (bohíque), certain (exclusively male) members of the community would ritually prepare and then snort cohoba, a powerful hallucinogenic snuff made from pulverising the dried seeds (and sometimes also bark) of the cojóbana tree (Anandenanthera peregrina). The resulting psychotropic trip would last days, during which participants would not eat or drink. As a result, they ended up emaciated and skeletal, which was believed to assimilate them to their ancestors. The bizarre experiences of the participants would then be interpreted by the priest-shamans (bohíques) in order to reveal the message from the other world. This connection with the ancestors was felt in other ways, too. Most important was the physical connection with the bones of the deceased. While burial of the deceased was not unheard of, it was also common for the bones of the ancestors to be kept. The long bones were hung from the ceiling of the family hut, inside a gourd (higuera), These bones were considered to contain the hu, an essence of the spirit associated with activity. Another element of the soul, the guis, was considered to be active in the head and face, and for this reason, skulls were also kept, sometimes under the floor of the house, and sometimes stacked in the local round temple-hut (bohío).

Over time, however, it became clear to the Taíno that the humid atmosphere of the Caribbean was poorly suited to the preservation of human bone, which can become fragile and spongy. Instead, replacement skulls and heads of stone were fashioned, as a more durable counterpart. Alternatively, there were some ancestors whose skulls were simply not available at all. These richly decorated substitute heads are named ‘Macorix’ heads, after the site of San Pedro de Macorís in the Dominican Republic, where a large number were found. These heads sometimes represented individual ancestors, but more often were images of the great common ancestors, who patronised certain areas of Taíno life. There was Bamibrama, for example, whose function was to punish those who failed to adequately prepare the yucca on which the Taíno subsisted. Or Atabey, the common mother of all the Taíno. Dedicated at certain sacred sites, such as caves or the freshwater springs, it was presumably hoped that these zemí would intervene in their area of competence, and bring good fortune to those who respected them appropriately.

This ‘Macorix’ head follows the usual pattern: a great skull-like face, with huge empty orbits, a gaping lipless mouth with teeth bared, and a semi-fleshy nose, which calls to mind the ambiguity between life and death. Seen as portals between worlds, the eyes of zemí sculptures were deliberately oversized, and would often have been covered with a thin sheet of gold or other reflective material in order to evoke the transience of their interdimensionality. It is possible, given the quality of the carving and the clear effort expended, that this example may once have had such an inlay. All over the forehead, cheeks, chin, and snub nose, are swirling geometric patterns, which evoke the tattoos worn by the Taíno in life. The origin and meaning of these tattoos are mysterious, but it has been theorised by one avid collector of Taíno artefacts that they may represent the eddies and currents of the sea, with which the Taíno would have been intimately familiar, and this seems to the present author to be a very reasonable explanation. Alternatively, others have suggested that their maze-like nature may indicate something of the confused mentality of the cohoba ritual. The reverse of this head, often left rough on ‘Macorix’ heads, is also resplendent with these same tattoo patterns. But the most exceptional feature of this ‘Macorix’ head is the ‘Bird-Man’ who sits crouching across the forehead, in the opposite orientation to the main composition. His ovoid wings, which form the cranium of the head, terminate in human arms, with the hands brough up either side of the avian head. The purpose of the ‘Bird-Man’, who was first known from a wooden figure brought to London in AD 1799, is unknown. It is likely that he was some kind of cross-over between the ancestral spirits (zemí) and the bush spirits (opía) who each governed aspects of Taíno life. Birds themselves were considered messengers between realms, able as they are to traverse between the sky and the ground (and in the case of wading birds and waterfowl, the water too), and so were presumed to similarly be able to traverse between the spirit and the living worlds.