XL] THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 417 



Islands to the Caribs of the Guianas, and similarly from the 

 Bahamas and the Greater Antilles to the Arawakan groups of 

 Venezuela and surrounding lands. The statement of Columbus 

 that the Lucayans were "of good size, with large eyes and broader 

 foreheads than he had ever seen in any other race of men " is 

 fully borne out by the character of some old skulls from the 

 Bahamas measured by Mr \V. K. Brooks, who unhesitatingly 

 declares that "they are the remains of the people who inhabited 

 the islands at the time of their discovery, and that these people 

 were a well-marked type of the North American Indian race 

 which was at that time distributed over the Bahama Islands, 

 Hayti, and the greater part of Cuba. As these islands are only a 

 few miles from the peninsula of Florida, this race must at some 

 time have inhabited at least the so.uth-eastern extremity of the 

 continent, and it is therefore extremely interesting to note that 

 the North American crania which exhibit the closest resemblance 

 to those from the Bahama Islands have been obtained from 

 Florida 1 ." This observer dwells on the solidity and massiveness 

 of the Lucayan skulls, which brings them into direct relation with 

 the races both of the Mississippi plains and of the Brazilian and 

 Venezuelan coast-lands. 



Equally close is the connection established between the 

 surviving Isthmian and Colombian peoples of the 



Chontals, 



Atrato and Magdalena basins. The Chontals of Chocos and 

 Nicaragua are scarcely to be distinguished from 

 some of the Santa Marta hillmen, while the Chocos and perhaps 

 the Cunas of Panama have been affiliated to the Chocos of the 

 Atrato and San Juan rivers. Attempts, which however can 

 hardly be regarded as successful, have even been made to estab- 

 lish linguistic relations between the Costa Rican Guatusos and 

 the Timotes of the Merida uplands of Venezuela, who are them- 

 selves a branch of the formerly wide-spread Muyscan family. 



But with these Muyscans we at once enter a new ethnical 

 and cultural domain, in which may be studied the resemblances 

 due to the common origin of all the American aborigines, and 

 the divergences due obviously to long isolation and independent 



1 Paper read before the National Academy of Sciences, America, 1890. 

 K. 27 



