Émile Nau born, historian who claimed the Taíno as ancestors

Émile Nau was born in Port-au-Prince on 26 February 1812. He belonged to the School of 1836, the literary circle his brother Ignace founded, and co-edited its journals Le Républicain and L’Union. His major work, Histoire des caciques d’Haïti, went back to the Taíno chiefs Spain destroyed and named them as ancestors of the Haitian nation. That was a political act. It said the country did not begin in 1804 and did not begin in Europe. Nau served as prefect of Port-au-Prince under Jean-Pierre Boyer and died on 27 February 1860, a day after his forty-eighth birthday.