Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/398

382 It was an honest face [says Martyr], coarse but not gloomy, for it was enlivened by confidence and softened by compassion.

Their wants were few, and sea and land furnished them with the necessaries of life, without exacting any severe or continuous labor on their part; so, as is almost invariably the case with natives of the tropics, the Arrowauks were indolent and indisposed to hard work, though showing considerable energy in their amusements, as we are told that "it was their custom to dance from evening to dawn." Another of their favorite pastimes was the game of bato, said somewhat to have resembled cricket. The players were divided into two sides, which alternately changed places. The ball with which they played was made of India rubber from the native milk withy, and the elastic nature of the material was a surprise to the Spaniards, who heretofore had not seen India rubber. Both men and women took part in the game; the ball was not caught with the hand, but received on head, elbow, or foot, and repelled with great force and dexterity. Wrestling and running for prizes were also well-known amusements among these people.

The great defect of the Arrowauks was their extreme immorality. Some of their dances were exceedingly indecent and disgusting, and the more abandoned a woman was, the greater was the consideration in which she was held. The religions and beliefs of the Indians varied more or less with the different tribes and races among them, and no doubt the Arrowauks had a variety of sects and formulas in the different islands. In broad lines we gather that they believed in a supreme being called Jocahuma, who had a father and mother residing sometimes in the sun and sometimes in the moon. Divine honors were also paid to images of wood, stone, and cotton, called zemis, which represented usually distorted versions of the human face and sometimes reptiles. A consecrated hut or temple was set apart in every village for worsip of these zemis, but only the priests or Bohitos were permitted to enter these temples, and they acted as intercessors for the people, besides practicing the art of medicine and superintending the education of the children of caciques and men of high rank. When the will of the cacique had received the approval of the Bohito or priest, it was received by the people as the decree of Heaven.

The spirits of the good were believed to go to a pleasant valley called Cozaba. There, surrounded by leafy trees laden with delicious fruits, the islanders looked forward to rejoining the spirits of their ancestors, and in cool shade beside flowing rivulets to rejoice in the society of the friends they had loved in the islands of earth, in a land where there were no hurricanes, no drought, and no Caribs. Each tribe appears to have considered that this paradise was situated