FEWKES: PREHISTORIC CULTURAL CENTERS 441 



guage. The Arawak inhabited Porto Rico, Hayti, Cuba, Ja- 

 maica, and the Bahamas. 



The customs of the aborigines who left the great sheelheaps 

 found throughout the West Indies were apparently not very- 

 different from those of the natives of prehistoric Florida, or north- 

 ern South America. These people, essentially fishermen, lived 

 on fishes, mollusks, or crabs, eking out their dietary with turtles, 

 birds, and other game captured along the shores; fruits and 

 roots were also probably collected and eaten, but their main food 

 came from cultivated crops of yuca planted in the neighborhood 

 of their settlements. The nature of their food supply confined 

 them to the seashore or to banks of rivers where village sites 

 occur in numbers. It is probable that the shellheap people 

 of the West Indies were likewise cave dwellers and resorted 

 at times to rock shelters for shelter or protection. We know 

 from excavations .in caverns that they buried their dead in 

 "these caves which later came to have a religious or ceremonial 

 significance. 



We may suppose that a life devoted to fishing would make 

 men good sailors, and it is probable that the prehistoric Antil- 

 leans manufactured seaworthy canoes, hollowing out logs of 

 wood with the live ember and the stone axe. It is also evident 

 from objects found in the floors of caves that the women of this 

 epoch manufactured pottery, and as reptilean figures in relief 

 or effigy vases representing this animal occur constantly, we 

 may suppose that some reptile as the iguana or turtle was highly 

 prized for food. Some of the bone needles, whistles, and orna- 

 ments of shell or wood found in shellheaps show that those who 

 camped in the neighborhood were advanced in culture, while 

 other objects found in the West Indian shellheaps are, so far 

 as technic goes, equal to that of the highest of the Stone Age 

 culture. It is probable that this form of culture reaches back 

 to a very early date in culture development. 



One important consideration presents itself in relation to the 

 shellheap life in the West Indies as compared with that of the shell- 

 heaps in Florida and Guiana in South America. From the very 

 existence of the shellheap culture on the continents and con- 



