Hispaniola
The primary indigenous group on the island of Hispaniola was the Arawak/Taíno people. The Arawak tribe originated in the Orinoco Delta, spreading from Venezuela. They travelled to Hispaniola around 1200 CE. Each society on the island was a small independent kingdom with a lead known as a cacique. In 1492, which is considered the peak of the Taíno, there were five different kingdoms on the island, the Xaragua, Higuey (Caizcimu), Magua (Huhabo), Ciguayos (Cayabo or Maguana), and Marien (Bainoa). Many distinct Taíno languages also existed in this time period. There is still heated debate over the population of Taíno people on the island of Hispaniola in 1492, but estimates range upwards of 750,000.
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.