Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/391

Rh with the present owners of the island, and who are believed to be descendants of the native Indians. It would be interesting if some communication with these people could be established, but meantime it is as likely they may be Maroons as Indians, for all concerning them is too vague and uncertain to allow at present of their being regarded as representatives of the aborigines.

In Dominica, St. Vincent, and Trinidad a few of the primitive inhabitants still remain. They are Caribs, who were a fierce and warlike race, the bitter enemies and persecutors of the comparatively mild and inoffensive Arrowauks. Both tribes still exist in Guiana, and apparently have forgotten their old differences. It is probable that the Arrowauks were the earliest arrivals in the islands, but when their migration from the mainland took place there are not sufficient data for saying: all we know is that it must have been long ages before the arrival of the Europeans. In Hispaniola (now the negro republics of Haiti and Santo Domingo) the absence of any legend of a distant origin would allow of the native Indians having had a legitimate claim to being an autochthonous race, or at any rate points to the great length of time that must have passed since their canoes had carried them across the breezy Caribbean Sea, from the cradle of their race far away in the dense and mysterious forests of South America. The Indians of Hispaniola, like many others of their brethren, handed down their histories and traditions in songs which were chanted before the people on festivals and other great occasions, and which were often accompanied by dances. On great occasions they danced to the sound of a drum made out of the trunk of a tree and played by a cacique. In these songs or hymns the tradition was recorded that the first men came out of two caverns in the island. The sun was irritated at the advent of mankind, so changed the guardians of the caves into stones, and metamorphosed the men who had escaped from the caves into trees, frogs, and different animals. In spite, however, of these efforts on the part of the great luminary, the world became peopled. Another tradition declared that the sun and moon themselves had come out of a cavern in Haiti.

The traditions of the Lucayans, on the contrary, all pointed to the Lucayans having come to those islands from a land to the south, so probably their residence in the Bahamas had not been for so long a period as to blot out all recollection of the large islands where their race had struck such firm root on its migration from the mainland. That the Arrowauk occupation of the islands had been of long duration, a mass of evidence appears to show. In Cuba artificially flattened skulls have been discovered imbedded in lime rock in caves near Cape Maisi. With them were found fragments of pottery, an