MATERIAL CULTURE OF THE INDIANS OF SAMANA 43 



placed the concoction with leaves in jars or cooking pots and boiled 

 it for three or four hours. When cooled it was strained through a 

 cloth and was " esteemed in proportion as it intoxicates." 



Irrigation was not necessary in humid Samana, as cassava and 

 maize ripened without much attention on the part of the primitive 

 " tillers of the soil." Irrigation has not been reported from Porto 

 Rico, but was extensive in the southeastern Province of Haiti, in 

 what is now the Haitian Province of Jeremie, then Xaragua. Irri- 

 gation trenches have also been observed in Cuba. 



In the culture of the cassava root {Manihot utilissima) more care 

 was required than in the planting of maize. This additional care 

 was due to the poison (prussic acid) contained in the roots when 

 untreated, also to the necessity of producing enough slips of the root 

 to obtain plantings. Like the cassava, yams and sweet potatoes were 

 cultivated in mounds, while maize was grown in hills separated by 

 the distance of a pace. A digging stick was employed in planting 

 kernels of maize. The soaked, kernels to be sown were carried sus- 

 pended from the neck in a woven bag. It is noteworthy of the great 

 extent of native plantings and of the advanced stage of agriculture 

 in aboriginal Haiti that even in mountainous Samana the caciques 

 of the primitive Ciguayans, after their defeat by the Spanish, mus- 

 tered 5,000 men, and as a peace gesture brought this body of men 

 before the adelantado without their weapons but carrying fire- 

 hardened digging sticks. 



The Arawak agriculturist made his plantings in a cleared field in 

 the forest. The savannas were unavailable because of the grasses, 

 the tangled root masses of which he could not penetrate. The mod- 

 ern practice in Haiti remains as it was with the aborigines, to allow 

 the open grasslands to remain uncultivated. Soil in the mountains 

 is thin and stony, but the valleys have fertile soil in Samana. Some 

 of the best cocoa and coffee lands on the island may be found in 

 Samana, although the industry is stagnant. Practically no coffee 

 or cocoa is produced for export. There are few new plantings, as 

 the Dominican of Samana feels he can not compete with the fertile 

 lands of the Yuna Valley. This valley, that of the great Cibao, is 

 traversed by the Santiago-Samana Railroad, which, however, reaches 

 neither Santiago or Samana. An export trade in yams, plantains, 

 yautias, and other tropical products has recently been developed 

 whereby the merchants of Samana supply the demand of former 

 residents of the "West Indies now living in New York. Samana 

 Peninsula remains almost entirely forested, although groves of coco- 

 nut palms have been planted along the shore and on the lower ter- 

 races of the south shore, as also on the flat sandy shores of San 

 Lorenzo Bay near Sabana de la Mar. 



