NONAGRICULTURAL CAVE DWELLERS 25 



settlements in Porto Eico and along the north coast of Haiti and 

 of eastern Cuba. How long a period of occupancy of the Antilles 

 by the Arawak had elapsed prior to the advent of the Carib remains 

 an unsolved problem. Cuba, Haiti, and possibly Porto Rico had 

 previously been occupied by a primitive aboriginal culture group 

 characterized by the custom of dwelling in caves. The deposition of 

 culture remains in the form of shell middens, shell implements, and 

 of several other forms of crude and extemporized implements — all 

 are a remainder of the former existence of this troglodytic pre- 

 Arawak population. 



That the Taino of Santo Domingo and of Cuba were preceded by 

 an earlier aboriginal population has been reported by Harrington, 

 based on evidence of an archeological nature from caves in Cuba ^^ 

 but anticipated in vague reports by Las Casas, Oviedo, and ethers 

 as also present in southwestern Haiti. Morales wrote that in the 

 mountain of western Haiti there existed wild men without fixed 

 abode, without a language, and not given to the practice of agri- 

 culture. Oviedo wrote that a cave population in western Haiti was 

 not subdued until 1504. The National Museum expedition of 1928 

 found extensive cultural remains of a pre-Arawak population in the 

 caves of Samana in northeastern Santo Domingo, in the territory 

 later occupied by the Ciguayan Indians. No previous accounts re- 

 garding a pre-Arawak population as having lived in eastern Santo 

 Domingo have ever been made. 



Martyr wrote in his De Orbe Novo ^* that a cave population simi- 

 lar to the Guanahatabeyes " Ciboneys," also mentioned by Las Casas 

 and Velasquez, had lived on the southwestern peninsula of Haiti. 

 Martyr relates that " it is said there is a savanna district in the most 

 westerly province Province of Guaccairima (Xaragua) inhabited 

 by people who only live in caverns and eat nothing but the products 

 of the forest. They have never been civilized nor had any inter- 

 course with any other races of men. They live, so it is said, as 

 people did in the golden age, without fixed homes or crops or cul- 

 ture; neither do they have a definite language. They are seen from 

 time to time, but it has never been possible to capture one, for if, 

 whenever they come they see anybody other than natives approach- 

 ing them, they escape with the celerity of a deer." Oviedo also men- 

 tions the cave folk of the Province of Guaccairima (Xaragua). 

 Las Casas lived in the villages of the extreme southwestern portion 

 of the island in Xaragua. He did not see the cave dwellers re- 

 ported by other chroniclers, but reported the population of Xara- 

 gua (Guaccairima, the present Haitian Province of Jeremie) as 



" Cuba Before Columbus, by M. R. Harrington, vols. 1 and 2, 1921. 



1* De Orbe Novo, the eight decades of Peter Martyr d'Anghera, by Francis Augustus 

 MacNutt, New York and London, 1912. P. 380. 



