4 BUULETIN" 15 6, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



None of the wide variations in form and decorative design char- 

 acteristic of the intensive centers of pottery development in Central 

 America and in the Mississippi Valley, or of the more recent painted 

 designs characteristic of lowland South America and of Andean 

 areas are to be found in this ancient Arawak culture center. 



Within the Greater Antilles was the strengthening bond of a com- 

 mon speech. Columbus observed that the Arawak speech was under- 

 stood as far west as Pinar del Rio Province in Cuba, as far north as 

 the Bahamas, where it was the common speech, and as far east as 

 the Carib islands of Dominica and Guadeloupe. He also discovered 

 that the natives of Cumana and of Paria, on the Venezuelan coast, 

 knew of the existence of the islands of Haiti and Porto Rico, although 

 they spoke a different language. Las Casas writes that one type of 

 custom, prevailed throughout the island of Santo Domingo. Al- 

 though local dialects were noted, notably that of the Ciguayans of 

 Samana, this did not interfere with their being understood to consid- 

 erable extent by natives throughout the entire West Indian archi- 

 pelago with the exception of the Caribs of the Lesser Antilles, but 

 even here the many captive Arawak women preserved a knowledge 

 of their language. The son of Goacanagaric, cacique of Marien on 

 the north coast of Haiti, easily conversed with native women from 

 Porto Rico (Borinquen) who had been rescued from the Caribs by 

 Columbus. 



Daniel G. Brinton ^ was the first to demonstrate that the primitive 

 language of Cuba was identical with that of the Arawak stock. Ho 

 first published his discovery in the Transactions of the American 

 Philosophical Society for 1871. 



It had formerly been supposed that the Tupi stock, of Brazil, or 

 the Maya, or even the Canary Island stock language, had been that 

 of the aborigines of Santo Domingo, Haiti, and Cuba. This thesis 

 is advanced by Antonio Bachiller y Morales in his Cuba Primitiva. 

 Brinton also remarks that it was from the natives of the extreme 

 western province of Pinar del Rio that Spaniards first heard of the 

 Mayan and Aztecan civilizations. The most frequently cited ex- 

 ample of Yucatec influence in Cuba, namely, the presence in Cuba 

 of beeswax supposedly brought there by traders from Yucatan, is 

 of little significance. We know of no other trade objects from that 

 source. 



Some writers have derived the insular Caribs from a South Ameri- 

 can stock on the ground of linguistic affinities. And it is yet to be 

 shown whether the differentiation of insular Carib linguistics oc- 

 curred before or after their ancestors left South America. Im Thurn 

 has derived the Guiana Caribs from those of the Lesser Antilles. 



» The Archeology of Cuba. Amer. Archeol., vol. 2, pt. 10, pp. 253-256, October, 1898. 



