MATERIAL CULTURE OF THE INDIANS OF SAMANA 87 



in the form of figurine heads luted on earthenware vessels of various 

 descriptions are purely formal and must be considered figments of 

 the imagination of the aboriginal artist. As in other aboriginal* 

 culture areas, the relationship between animal forms, including rep- 

 resentations of the human figure and creatures of the spirit world, 

 is close, indeed. The services of the individual worker in clay were 

 utilized to crystallize these forms and to give them shape. In so 

 doing the artist's imagination was given little choice. Convention- 

 ality played the major role, as it always has in any creation of 

 totemic art. 



Petroglyphs amd yicto graphs. — Friar Ramon Pane writes that 

 natives of Haiti carved images of their zemis on rocks in caves. It 

 is known that stalagmites were employed as media for representa- 

 tions of zemis in stone. This form of stone sculpture has come to 

 be Imown as " pillar stone carving." Pane relates ^^ a Haitian tradi- 

 tion regarding a — 



Province in Hispaniola called Caanan [sic], in which there is a mountain call'd 

 Canta, where there are two grots or caverns ; the one called Cacibagiagua, the 

 other Aniaiauva ; most of the people that first inhabited the island came out of 

 Cacibagiagua. These being in those caverns, kept watch by night, and one 

 Marocael had the charge of it, who coming one day too late to the door, they 

 say the sun took him away. Seeing therefore that the sun had carried him 

 away for his neglect, they shut the door against him, and so he was turned into 

 a stone near the door. * * * They say, therefore, that the sun and moon 

 <"anie out of a grotto, that is in the country of a cacique, whose name is Maucia 

 Tiuvel, and the grotto is called Giovovava; and they pay a great veneration to 

 it, and have painted it all after their fashion, without any figure, but leaves, 

 and the like. In the said grotto, there were two little stone cemies, about a 

 quarter of a yard long (shaped from stalagmites), their hands bound, and they 

 Igok'd as if they sweated. These cemies they honour'd very much ; and when 

 they wanted rain, they say they used to visit them, and they presently had it. 



The citation just made from Pane's manuscript mentions both the 

 painting of sacred images on the rock walls of the caves and the 

 carving of spirit images on the stalagmites of the cave floor. A 

 good example of such a " pillar stone " is the columnar figure of a 

 zemi carved from the dome-shape top of a stalagmite at the entrance 

 to the cave occupied by the Museum expedition during its stay in 

 the caves of the south shore of Samana Bay. The carving is anthro- 

 pomorphic and has a sinister appearance. Facial features as mouth 

 and eye orbits are represented by transverse lines having upturned 

 joints at their ends. The nose lines are deep and indicate a wide 

 nostrility. This zemi carving is the most massive of any of the stone 

 carvings observed in the caves. 



At the entrance to the San Gabriel cave, on the ceiling of the 

 arched entrance vault, is a mazelike series of paintings in black color. 



^ Churchill's Collection of Voyages and Travels, vol. 2. pp. 544, 547. 



