12 BULLETIN 15 6, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



On the south the large continental mass of South America ap- 

 proaches nearest to the island archipelago along the Venezuelan 

 coast. Some of the islands known as the Lesser Antilles, namely 

 Grenada and Tobago, are but 80 miles off the Venezuelan coast, 

 which is in part inclosed by the large island of Trinidad. Point 

 Galera on the island of Trinidad is separated from Tobago, of the 

 Lesser Antilles, by only 25 miles of water. The entire area sur- 

 rounding the delta of the Orinoco is now and in pre-Columbian 

 times probably had been occupied by the Warrau, a coast tribe 

 related linguistically neither to the Carib nor to the Arawak In- 

 dians, who occupy the Guiana coast of South America southeast of 

 Venezuela. A division of the Arawak also occupied the most north- 

 erly peninsula of Colombia just west of the Gulf of Maracaibo, 

 where they lived in striking distance of the ancient Chibcha of the 

 upper Magdalena River Valley. It is significant that this most 

 northerly Arawak division lived just 300 miles directly south of 

 Beata Island off the south coast of Santo Domingo. It is also 

 significant that prehistoric pottery figurines and decorative details 

 from the coast of the Gulf of Darien are more closely related to those 

 of Santo Domingo than are those from ancient sites on the Orinoco 

 and Amazon Rivers. 



The delta of the Orinoco River empties itself into the Gulf of 

 Paria on the Venezuelan coast. The great Orinoco discharges its 

 water into the Gulf of Paria and elsewhere along the coast through 

 20 distributaries covering 160 miles of South American coast di- 

 rectly facing the Lesser Antillean Islands. It is, therefore, probable 

 that a canoe culture developed by the coast Arawak and Carib 

 groups of northern South America reached the Greater Antilles by 

 way of northern and the smaller outlying islands of the Lesser 

 Antilles. Dislodged groups followed the outgoing current of the 

 Orinoco in their dugout canoes, paddled their way along the lee- 

 ward side of the island chain, and gradually approached the large 

 islands of Porto Rico, Haiti, Cuba, and Jamaica. In this north- 

 westward migration wind and ocean currents were favorable fac- 

 tors.^ A more direct approach from the vicinity of the Gulf of 

 Maracaibo by way of the Dutch islands of Curasao and Aruba north- 

 ward to the southern coast of Santo Domingo is not impossible for 

 a primitive folk skilled, as were the Arawaks, in ocean travel. 

 Identity in the cultural remains from the islands mentioned and 

 from Santo Domingo make this possibility higlilj'^ probable. This 

 supposition is here advanced as it has the advantage of favorable 

 wind and ocean currents. 



* The physical basis of prehistoric tribal and culture migrations in the West Indies has 

 been carefully studied by Adolfo de Ilostos in a work entitled " Notes on West Indian 

 Hydrography in Its Relation to Prehistoric Migrations," Twentieth Congr. Int. AmericaJi- 

 iBtas, p. 239. Rio de Janeiro, 1924. 



