That has always been the case specially after the French kickstarted their own slave trade over there in the early 1700's. Both countries' starting population post independence is also a reflection of this: Haiti began its independent existence with 300,000 souls, while DR did so with only 125,000 (in fact, from 1795 to the 1950's, PR even had more population than the DR, which was only changed with the pro-natalist policies of the Trujillo regime and the continued emigration of Ricans to the mainland).
Those were Dominican families that had moved to both PR and Cuba during the Haitian control.
Many families in the DR have direct links to both places, and most instances these at those islands trace their ancestry back to the Colonos in the DR.
I have family trees both in Cuba and PR that trace back to the 1800’s.
The Taínos didn’t become extinct in DR. They mixed into the Colonos and this was because it was very normal for their culture to have sex with anybody they liked, without worries based on tribal issues or relationships. Colonos found this better than having to legally marry in order to have a partner in the island and therefore pay more taxes due to household increases.
There were Taínos, mestizos and castizos. The pure blood Taino and the pure blood Spaniard.
The offspring of these two, became a Mestizo.
The offspring of a Mestizo and Spaniard was a Castizo. A Castizo with a Spaniard went back to full Spaniard.
The Taínos never mixed really much, if at all, with blacks due to the slavery factor of the race color. Their tribal culture was the main reason for this, not racism.
Most Dominican families with ancestry to the colonos, have Taino DNA in them.
One of the easiest ways to spot which is mixed with black or with Taino stronger than the other, it’s a traditional way: Sun tanning!
Europeans will turn red like 🍎 apples under constant sunlight.
The light skinned Dominicans that fall into this category received very few Taino DNA traits from their mothers.
My sisters 4 of them fall into this category. Out of three of my both parent’s bros, only one also doesn’t tan at all.
Some of us, received more Taino DNA than the others and do fully tan under the sunlight.
Darker skinned Dominicans also fall into this category. The more African DNA, the less the odds of tanning, if at all.
You can verify this using DNA results after you check with the tanning results. Has yet to fail for those of us with deep roots in the DR.
We placed bets on this after some arguments as to why this happened in the family and later tested with ancestry DNA swabs.
The results were outstanding! We didn’t know this could happen, even between brothers of the same parents!
A good 15 to 18 percent of Dominicans have Amerindian markers in our mitochondrial DNA. This is average, with some having higher rates and others lower.
I bronze nicely under sunlight!
Something else worth noting is the Taínos didn’t have much inbreeding compared to other amerindians. This was a culture effect from their practice of mixing with others from other tribes and freedom of coupling. They welcomed relations with Spaniards as such.