136 swanton: aboriginal name "aje" 



ETHNOBOTANY — Note on the aboriginal name "aje." John 

 R. Swanton, Bureau of American Ethnology. 



In Mr. Cook's article in this Journal for February 19, 1916, 

 entitled "Quichua names of sweet potatoes" my attention was 

 attracted to the word age, or aje, applied to a native root by the 

 aborigines of the West Indies. Mr. Cook says of this: " Several 

 of the early Spanish historians of the West Indies recorded the 

 name age or aje, but whether this belonged properly to the 

 sweet potato or to some other root-crop has been uncertain. 

 Some of the accounts evidently refer to Manihot, but Gray and 

 Trumbull settled upon Dioscorea as the correct application. 

 Gomez de la Maza claims both age and boniato as indigenous 

 Cuban names of sweet potatoes." 



Dr. Cayetano Coll y Toste in his Prehistoria de Puerto-Rico 

 also identifies it with the yam and says regarding it: 1 "Dr. 

 Chanca noted in his letter to the Seville corporation: 'All come 

 laden with ages, which are like turnips (nabos), very excellent 

 food.' Oviedo says (lib. VII, cap. Ill): 'In this island of His- 

 paniola and in all the other islands and the Mainland, there is 

 a plant which is called ajes, which look something like the turnips 

 (nabos) of Spain, especially those which have the bark or surface 

 white above, because there are of these ajes white and red, which 

 verge upon violet, and some yellow, and they are very much 

 larger than turnips (nabos) commonly are.' The same author, 

 in chapter 82, distinguishes the ajes from the batatas. Peter 

 Martyr in his third Decade, book V, chapter III, describes the 

 ajes and the batatas. Las Casas does not confound them when he 

 says (t.v. page 307) : ' There are other roots which the Indians 

 call ajes and batatas: and there are two species of these: these 

 last are more delicate and of a nobler nature: thy are sowed in 

 hills after the manner of yuca, but the plant is different.' There 

 are modern writers like Seflor Pichardo, who think that the aje 

 is the white name (yam). This plant, the name, was brought 

 from Africa with the importation of the negroes into America." 



1 Cayetano Coll y Toste. Prehistoria de Puerto-Rico, pp. 197, 198. San 

 Juan, 1907. 



