A chief or leader of an indigenous people, especially in the Caribbean, Mexico, or Central America.
From Spanish cacique, borrowed from Taíno (a Caribbean Arawakan language). Columbus and early Spanish colonizers encountered this indigenous leadership title and borrowed it into Spanish and later English.
Cacique is one of the most important English words borrowed from indigenous American languages, used for 500+ years in colonial and post-colonial administration—it shows how indigenous political systems were documented through their own terminology.
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