34 BULLETIN 14 7, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Guiana and Venezuelan coasts. It is in agriculture that the essen- 

 tially South American culture elements reappear throughout the 

 native provinces of Haiti. The Ciguayans maintained that they 

 had originally occupied caves in the island, but that some of their 

 number had come from the island of Martinique in canoes. This 

 somewhat vague tradition must be accepted as merely unauthenticated 

 folklore, unless we assume that their culture changed materially since 

 their reputed emergence from the cave habitations. No group of 

 Ciguayan Indians are known ever to have occupied caves as their 

 principal habitation sites. 



Antillean tribes had retained or borrowed the elements of cassava 

 culture from tribes of southeast South America, where it continues 

 to be characteristic of the area. The making of bread from the 

 cassava plant {Manihot Vitilissinia) and the making of vinegar from 

 its juices, used as a seasoning for the pepper-pot, was introduced 

 from South America. In the West Indies the culture of cassava was 

 subjected to environmental changes. The fact that cassava and not 

 maize was the principal food of the aboriginal population of Santo 

 Domingo is significant of the antiquity of South American culture 

 influence rather than of Mexican culture origins. 



Pottery was brought to the islands and there developed into 

 artistic forms not known in the pristine home of the island Arawak. 

 Stoneworking became especially developed in Porto Rico and in 

 Haiti and in certain islands of the Lesser Antilles, but this art ap- 

 pears not to spring from any South American focus of Arawak or 

 Carib culture. It is rather a special growth affiliated with Mexican 

 or Central American art. The Carib-Arawak of the Guianas and 

 other parts of South America remain in a prestone age grade of 

 culture peculiar to the tropical forest and savanna tribes of South 

 America. The West Indies are not repressive areas like the over- 

 powering forests of South America, but include drier areas where 

 agriculture is practiced to advantage. 



Culture development in the Greater Antilles does not express it- 

 self so much in an additional number of culture elements as in local 

 embellishment of form. This is especially noticeable in pottery 

 and in the sculptor's arts as applied to religious motives. It is pos- 

 sible, too, that Cuba, Haiti, and Porto Rico were subjected to in- 

 fluences in pottery production from North America. The hand- 

 molded anthropomorphic heads and figurines in clay are essentially 

 West Indian in form but Central American in origin, their nearest 

 prototypes being the anthoropomorphic figurines o«i ancient Chirique 

 ware from Panama. Unpainted pottery was brought with the is- 

 land Arawak from South America and many later contacts have 

 stimulated the iDroduction of pottery after the fa^iion of South 

 American ware. 



