Areytos — the Taíno word a Spanish chronicler turned into a category for oral history, including Europe's

Oviedo describes the sung dances of the Isla Española as a deliberate technique of memory — genealogies and defeats kept "en lugar de libros de su acuerdo" — and then does something no later account repeats: he tells the reader not to call it savagery, quotes an Italian song and a Castilian one about Pavia as areytos of his own world, counts how many years each had already lasted, and concludes the Indians do well to keep theirs.