Page:Essays ethnological and linguistic.djvu/130

118 in the Bahamas none except the most timid race of Indians were found, and it was on the islands of the south where the Caribs actually were settled, and it was the southern shores of Cuba and Hispaniola which they infested. On these grounds, Bryan Edwards dissents very justly from this hypothesis; and observing that the Caribs seemed to him to be an entirely distinct race from the other Indians, widely differing from them in physical appearance and manners, he framed an opinion that they were in reality of African descent, and that their ancestors had come across the Atlantic. Before referring to Bryan Edwards, I had come to the same conclusion, from what had come under my observation of this people. Their general appearance and features, notwithstanding their straight shining hair, gave me the idea more of the African than the American Indian; and the fact of their having come from Africa was not, even according to Rochefort's account, inconsistent with their traditions, as these merely stated that they had come by sea from a far country, without distinctly shewing whether it was from the east or the west. But in his very candid account of their condition, notwithstanding it militates against his own hypothesis, Rochefort mentions one very curious fact, which seems to me to negative completely the supposition of their having come from South America. Having stated the circumstance of the Caribs in the islands having two distinct languages, one for males and another for females, he tells us that the Caribs on the mainland of South America had only one language both for males and females, and that this was the same language as that spoken by the females on the islands. It seems clear from this that they could not have come from South America, because, if they had, how could they have lost their language and adopted another? On the other hand, if some of their nation, on coming to those regions, had settled on the continent, being fewer in number to the original inhabitants, they might very easily, in the course of time between Columbus and Rochefort, have forgotten it, and adopted that of the women, which the people on the islands had not done, on account of their different position, and their proportionate numbers to the women. Bryan Edwards observes, that even to the end of the last century an insensibility or contemptuous disregard to the females was a feature peculiar to the Caribs; and he notices, among other African customs among them, that they disfigured their cheeks with deep incisions and hideous scars, different from the other American Indians in their neighbourhood; that they had a habit of chewing what they called betele, as