MATERIAL CULTUEE OF THE INDIANS OF SAMANA 61 



Porto Kico, and claimed that " guanin " (pale gold) came to them 

 from the island of Carib (Porto Rico). Ornaments of gold plates 

 were worn in the ears and nose, also suspended about the neck. The 

 cacique Goacanagaric appeared before Columbus wearing a head- 

 dress resembling a crown and shaped from gold plate. This he 

 placed on the head of Columbus as a gift. Las Casas is authority 

 for the statement that Goacanagaric presented a girdle to Columbus 

 which he describes as a " belt, which in place of a pouch, was fur- 

 nished with a mask, with two great ears of hammered gold, nose 

 and tongue also. This belt was of very minute jewel-work, like 

 baroque pearls, made of fishbones, white in color, intermingled with 

 a few red. It was sewn with cotton thread in the manner of em- 

 broidery, with such skill that the threadwork on the reverse side 

 resembled fine needlework, though all in white, very pretty to look 

 at, as if it had been woven on a frame, like chasuble-borders in 

 Castile. And it was so stout and strong that I believe it could not 

 be pierced, or only with difficulty, by an arquebus," It was 4 inches 

 broad. Another Spanish writer mentions woven belts as incorporat- 

 ing thin plates of gold interwoven in the cotton fabric with wonder- 

 ful skill, Caribs adorned themselves with crescent-shaped plates 

 of gold suspended from the ears and on the breast. When the 

 Ciguayan Indians of Samana said that " pale gold " and " tuob " 

 (gold without alloy) came to them from the east they probably 

 told the truth, as the term generally applied to gold elsewhere on 

 the island of Haiti was " caona " — a term they did not understand 

 when used by Columbus's guides from the Lucayan Islands. 



Gold mining on the island was primitive, indeed. A hole was 

 dug in the sand, the nuggets extracted and placed in containers of 

 calabash. Washing in wooden pans was also practiced. Nuggets 

 were then beaten into thin plates with stone hammers. Some of 

 the masks fashioned by hand from thin plates of gold were set in 

 cement. 



A spatula-shape object of copper alloy was recovered from the 

 midden at Anadel. It is impossible to determine what the uses were 

 to which the metal spatula was put. It is 10 centimeters (3.9 inches) 

 long and tapers from the base to a sharp point. The basal section is 

 flattened by hammering into a semilunar disk, while the object is 

 elsewhere rectangular in section. Several similar metal spatulas 

 from Ecuador are in the archeological collection of the United States 

 National Museum. (Cat. No. 341054, IJ.S.N.M,) 



Natives of Samana at the time of the discovery relied on imple- 

 ments of sto])e in the manufacture of their implements. No doubt 

 most implements of teeth, bone, and other more perishable materials 

 have vanished long ago. Implements of shell appear to have been 

 44055—29 5 



