20 BULLETIN 15 6, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



try ; and therefore bid me go and reside with anotlier principal cacique, called 

 Guarionex, lord of mauj' subjects, whose language was understood all over the 

 island. I went to reside with the said Guarionex. I said to D. Christopher 

 Columbus : My lord, why will you have me go and live with Guarionex 

 when I know no language but that of Maroris? (Macoris — of the long-haired 

 Ciguayans of Samaua and the northeast coast.) Be pleased to give leave that 

 one of these Nohuircis (?) who know both languages go with me. 



Differences in speech between the Macorises (Ciguayans) and the 

 subjects of Guarionex of the Cibao Valley were in all probability not 

 far-reaching. The Ciguayans were a mountain folk and spoke an 

 Arawak dialect. They were not Caribs, a fact brought out by their 

 traditional friendship for the Indians of the Cibao Valley and 

 their alliance with them in war. 



NONAGRICULTURAL CAVE DWELLERS 



That the Taino (Arawak) of Cuba were preceded by an earlier 

 aboriginal population has been reported by Fewkes, Harrington,* 

 and others, based on evidence of an archeological nature from caves 

 in Cuba but anticipated in vague reports by Oviedo and others as 

 also present in southwestern Haiti. Morales wrote that in the moun- 

 tains of western Haiti there existed wild men without fixed abode, 

 without a language (obviously not understood by the Arawaks), and 

 not given to the practice of agriculture. Oviedo wrote that a cave 

 population in western Haiti was not subdued until 1504. The 

 National Museum expedition of 1928 found extensive cultural re- 

 mains of a pre-Arawak population in the caves of Samana in north- 

 eastern Santo Domingo, in the territory later occupied by the 

 Ciguayan Indians. 



Martyr^ wrote in his De Orbe Novo that a cave population similar 

 to the Guanahatabeyes " Ciboneys," also mentioned by Las Casas and 

 Velasquez, had lived on the southwestern peninsula of Haiti. Martyr 

 relates that "it is said there is a savanna district in the most westerly 

 Province of Guaccairima (Xaragua) inhabited by people who only 

 live in caverns and eat nothing but the products of the forest. They 

 have never been civilized nor had any intercourse with any other 

 races of men. They live, so it is said, as people in the golden 

 age, without fixed homes, or crops or culture; neither do they have 

 a definite language (apparently not understood by the Arawaks). 

 They are seen from time to time, but it has never been possible to 

 capture one, for if, whenever they come, they see anybody other than 

 natives approaching them, they escape with the celerity of a deer." 

 Oviedo also mentions the cave folk of the Province of Guaccairima 



* Harrington, M. R.. Cuba before Columbus, Indian notes and monographs. Mus. Amer. 

 Indian, Ilcje Foundation, vols. 1 and 2, 1921. 



"De Orbe Novo, tbe Eight Decades of I'eter Martyr d'Anghera, p. 380. New York and 

 London, 1912. 



