Page:The Aruba Language and the Papiamento Jargon (1884) (IA BNADIGKOSTBARE0073).pdf/4

Gatschet.) 300 (July 18, guana, Venezuela and north-east of the entrance to the Gulf of Maracaïbo ; it belongs to the dominion of the Dutch in the West Indies, which extends over the following islands : Aruba (preferable to the orthography : Oruba), Curaçao, Bonaire or Buen Aire, and the two Aves or Bird islands. Curaçao is the largest island of the archipelago and consists of a barren rock almost devoid of vegetation ; the capital of the Dutch colony, Wilhelmstadt, is built upon its south-western shore. In former times the thrifty inhabitants accumulated wealth as the mediators of a lively smuggling trade between the Spanish and other colonies of the West Indies. Salt is now the staple produce of Curaçao with its 22,000 inhabitants ; as to its size, it is nearly three times larger than Aruba, which has 300 square kilometers and 5070 inhabitants.

The explorer Alphonse L. Pinart, from whom the linguistic material printed below was obtained, visited the Curaçao group in the summer of 1882. Although the natives of Aruba have since A. D. 1800 abandoned their paternal language for the Papiamento jargon, their exterior is still of a pure Indian type. The Aruban language was probably the same as that of Curaçao and related to the vernacular of the peninsula of Paraguana. From natives far advanced in age Pinart succeeded in obtaining a few terms of the Aruban language and of local nomenclature, also six sorcere's formulas, and from the Papiamento, as spoken at present, he secured a limited number of plant and animal names evidently pertaining to the extinct Indian dialect ; the number of these may be easily increased by future travelers.

An old Aruba Indian, recently deceased, witnessed at the former Indian encampment at Saboneta the inhumation of a native female in one of the large conical ollas, her body being doubled up within the vase and the head protruding through the orifice. A smaller urn was then placed upon the head, bottom up, and the whole covered with earth. Several Aruban grottoes and rock-shelters yielded inscriptions and pictographs to the explorer, who considers their style as related to the pictography of the Orinoco and Apure countries. Fragments of pottery, hatchets made of shells and stones, are profusedly scattered around the ancient encampments of the native Arubans.

The name of Curaçao island seems to be the Tupi word coaracy, curasse ???, in Guarani Quaraçi ; Aruba resembles the name of a shrub which is called in French Guyana ; arube. Nicolas Fort y Roldán, in his Cuba indigena (Madrid, 1881), p. 123, gives arabo as the name of a plant as heard once on the Great Antilles. For Curaçao compare : Navarrete, Collection de les Viages, III, pp. 230.

Nouns, verbs and sentences.

adamudu rain baru xantu uou to ask for something to eat danshikki danshebu sack, pouch