34 BULLETIN 134, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



cherry trees, from which an annual harvest was gathered and often 

 preserved. The nut-gathering may have aided in the diffusion of 

 many varieties of nut-bearing trees, but nowhere do we find evi- 

 dence of conscious effort toward their cultivation or diffusion. In 

 tropical America, however, many fruit trees show traces of long- 

 continued cultivation, the fact that the numerous varieties of the 

 fruit of Spondias and Per sea are so different in color, form, size, 

 taste, and time of maturity testify to their age. 



Among the native fruit trees of tropical America the calabash 

 tree (Crescentia cujete) plays an important role. It ranges from 

 Florida south through the West Indies, Mexico, Central and South 

 America, to southern Brazil. It grows to a height of 15 to 25 feet, 

 and when laden with green fruit bears a slight resemblance to an 

 apple tree. The fruit is ordinarily round and about the size of a 

 man's head; if of a smaller variety it is ovoid or bottle-shaped. 

 The term " calabash " is of Spanish extraction. The Aztecian term, 

 " Xical," or " jical," in Spanish transformed to jicara, should not 

 be applied to the Crescentia but to the fruit of a vine belonging to 

 the family Cucurbitaceae, which is gourd-shaped and easily distin- 

 guishable from the calabash. Because of its shape and size, the 

 fruit of the calabash must have early focussed the attention of the 

 primitive Indian, and its hard shell served undoubtedly as one of 

 his earliest eating and drinking vessels. It served also as an early 

 model for the pottery vessels of these regions, where many pot- 

 tery types of the present portray the characteristic forms of the 

 local calabash variety. 



In the Museum collections the varied uses to which the calabash 

 is put by the Darien tribes are represented by receptacles, telescoping 

 containers, cups, spoons, stirrers, ladles, sieves, strainers, rattles, and 

 water canteens. 



There are several reasons why the calabash is more useful than 

 is the gourd or coconut : Its shape and size make it more adaptable 

 as a dish or canteen ; its hard and thin shell is less fragile than that 

 of the gourd; another advantage lies in the yellowish surface that, 

 after the removal of the green outer covering, serves admirably 

 for the affixing of decorative design. The paucity of decoration on 

 the pottery of the natives of southeastern Panama is evident in their 

 calabash work as well. The method employed in preparing and 

 decorating the objects (pi. 1) is as follows: When the fruit becomes 

 ripe it is removed carefully from the tree. The shell is then cut 

 to the dimensions of the object for which it is destined. The 

 watery soft pulp with the included seeds is removed. The next 

 step is to engrave on the still green cortex, or outer layer, by means 

 of a mussel shell (Area, species) the comparatively simple design. 



