El Siboney

El Siboney. . , Before 1492, Cuba was populated by at least two distinct indigenous peoples: Taino and Siboney (some consider these populations to be Neo-Taino Nations). These two groups were prehistoric cultures in a time period during which humans created tools from stone, yet they were familiar with gold (Canoa) and copper alloy (Guanin) Copper Age. , The Taino agriculturalist and the Siboney were a self-sufficient society, although and production of wooden structures. Tainos and Siboney took part in similar customs and beliefs, one being the sacred ritual practiced using, often nasally inhaled, narcotized tobacco vapors and particulates called Cohoba, is known in English as smoking., Approximately 16 to 60,000 (Bartolome de las Casas estimated 200,000), natives belonging to the Taino and Siboney nations inhabited Cuba before colonization. The Native Cuban Indian population, including the Siboney and Taino, were forced into reservations during the Spanish subjugation of the island of Cuba., One famous reservation was known as Guanabacoa, today a suburb of Havana. Many indigenous Cuban Indians died due to the brutality of Spanish conquistadores and the diseases they brought with them, such as the measles and smallpox, which were previously unknown to Indians., Today Siboney is a town in Cuba east of the Santiago de Cuba. In 1898 Siboney and the nearby village of Daiquiri were locations where American forces came ashore in the Spanish-American War. It was also the location of a farm where Fidel Castro and his men gathered shortly before the attack on the Moncada barracks, which is widely regarded as the start of the Cuban Revolution.