INDIAN HOME LIFE. IO3 



day is rare indeed. In counting, they cannot ex- 

 press themselves above twenty, and then only by 

 means of the fingers and toes. Among the Sem- 

 inoles of Florida I found a system of numeration 

 perfect up to one thousand. Their pronunciation is 

 soft and agreeable, and their language abounds in 

 those figurative expressions which make the speech of 

 our aboriginal tribes so interesting. 



Like the northern Indians, they use the expression 

 moon for month : 4100-110, moon, and kd-t?\ month, 

 meaning the same. My wife is " my heart" ; a boy 

 is a little man ; an idiot, a person without light, or 

 unillumined ; the fingers are the little ones, or the 

 babes, of the hands ; the rainbow is God's plume. To 

 signify that a thing is lost, they say it is dead. Their 

 first white visitors they styled "children of the sea," 

 because they came to them in ships from over 

 the sea. 



Though different writers have sought to prove by 

 comparative vocabularies affinity between the Carib 

 and the Jew and the Tartar, it has not been con- 

 clusively proven that this people descended from 

 either. There is, however, whatever the origin of 

 the language, a striking significance in their desig- 

 nating appellation — Carib, or Cannibal, which are 

 epithets referring to valor and strength. 



We have seen that they received this name from 

 Columbus, or his associates, who had heard it as 

 applied to them by the inhabitants of Hispaniola, the 

 year previous to the discovery of the Caribbees. 

 Humboldt relates that the Caribs of South America 

 called themselves Carina, Calina, Callinago, Caribi ; 

 and that the name Carib is derived from Calina and 



