Hispaniola
The Arawak/Taíno people travelled often and used hollowed canoes with paddles when on the water for fishing or for migration purposes, and upwards of 100 people could fit into a single canoe. The Taíno came in contact with the Caribs, another indigenous tribe, often. The caribs lived mostly in modern day Puerto Rico and northeast Hispaniola and were known to be hostile towards other tribes. The Arawak/Taíno people had to defend themselves using bow and arrows with poisoned tips and some war clubs. When Columbus landed on Hispaniola, many Taíno leaders wanted protection from the Caribs.
Hispaniola
The island was called by various names by its native people, the Taíno Amerindians. No known Taíno texts exist, hence, historical evidence for those names comes to us through three European historians: the Italian Pietro Martyr d‘Anghiera, and the Spaniards Bartolomé de las Casas and Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo. Fernández de Oviedo and de las Casas both recorded that the island was called Quizqueia (supposedly "Mother of all Lands") by the Taíno. D'Anghiera added another name, Haiti ("Mountainous Land"), but later research shows that the word does not seem to derive from the original Arawak Taíno language. (Quisqueya is today mostly used in the Dominican Republic.) Although the Taínos' use of Quizqueia is verified, and the name was used by all three historians, evidence suggests that it probably was the Taíno name of the whole island, and for a region (now known as Los Haitises) in the northeastern section of the present-day Dominican Republic.