Reaching conclusions to write our books, articles, and social media posts is really the result of acquiring multiple elements of judgment. You never rely on a single source for your information, you must always do cross-referencing and at the end…you will still end up with information that is not 100% accurate and reliable…nothing in life is! We depend on a few things to “infer” historical conclusions. Cross-referencing is one of the most important; this means that comparing information gathered from multiple sources, we can kind of and sort of say that something was this way or that way…kind of! Then there are the Spanish and other European chronicles which were exclusively, their side of the story, and quite often exagerate, contain European misconceptions and biases…and yes, included the fake news of the time. Having stated that, not all the historical documents of the time were fake news, the challenge is reading between the lines and trying to distinguish the real information from the not so real! Some of The Spanish Chronicles for example, were aimed at convincing Queen Isabel La Católica of Spain, that the conquest was going smooth thus, ensuring the continued financial support of the Queen and her group of investors for a venture that was first and foremost a commercial one.
Archeological research papers and journals provide more clues, but they also depend on the perspective, vision, experience and biases of those analyzing the data. Oral history also needs to be considered; these are the accounts passed down through generations of indigenous and enslaved descendants. Unfortunately, oral history also has a lot of elements of legend and storytelling, but they are the only indigenous side of the story that we have.
Finally, there’s something called “Analogy Inference”, this means that if native Arawak people in the northern South American region alive today, live and act in a certain way, then we can infer that it’s quite possible, the ancient natives of Puerto Rico, other Caribbean islands and those in Central and Northern South America, lived, looked and acted in a similar way…kind of and sort of. That’s because the lifestyle of these native people has also been influenced by modern humans and has changed accordingly.
Put all this research data and information together and you get a still fuzzy, but more accurate picture of the way it was. Our books, articles and posts also reflect our own perspective, convictions and admittedly, our own biases.