jdlyall: Hm. I cannot spell indegenes.Legrace, when the Hayti studies association met in Port a few years ago I went on a visit to the library at St Martials. With Thor Burnham and others. Were you on that trip? I don't recall.
We looked at some original documents from the revolutionary period. One of them referred to the 'indigenous army' and further referred to 'tupac' something or other. So, Indian revolutionary precedents were well known and it seems that Indians were symbolically honored in many ways. Choosing a taino name for the homeland seems to follow this perfectly.
I like the 19th century spelling 'Hayti' cause I cannot write that french 'i' with umlaut which seems to produce the '(h)ayiti' pronunciation.
Legrace wrote:
Why Dessalines appropriated the indigenous name rather than inventing a new name will probably never be known, although there is speculation that his mother may have been a Taino. None of oldest maps I have been able to see uses any variation of the native name.