HISTORICAL NARRATIVES AND FIELD WORK 33 



getlier with ceremonial objects, principally amuletic and zerai forms, 

 were excavated from the midden deposits. Bones of small mammals, 

 turtles, birds, and fish, and mollusk shells of different species em- 

 bedded in the midden were collected as examples of aboriginal food 

 practices. Work was continued at Anadel for a period of three 

 weeks. Altogether a greater variety of artifacts was secured from 

 the Anadel site than from the cave middens of the south shore. 

 Artifacts from Anadel on the north shore of Samana Bay and from 

 the cave middens are sufficiently similar to justify a belief in a certain 

 degree of tribal identity for the two regions. The lower stratum of 

 cave deposits belongs perhaps to a pre-Ciguayan troglodytic popula- 

 tion, but the artifacts there found were so few that any conclusion 

 formed on the strength of negative evidence alone is of the nature 

 of an assumption. 



The most extensive site explored by the expedition in 1928, and 

 the last of the season's projects to be undertaken, was the Ciguayan 

 village site at the mouth of the San Juan River, on the north coast 

 of Samana Peninsula, This village site is presumably the former 

 principal town of the Ciguayan Cacique Mayobanex, A little bay 

 known as Puerto Escondido indents the abrupt coast line and is fully 

 exposed to the Atlantic Ocean and the incoming tide and breakers. 

 Primitive travel in native dugout boats must have been difficult in 

 tlie extreme, but fishing for manatee was nevertheless successful, as 

 vouched for by the numbers of hafted picks shaped from the ribs of 

 the manatee found interspersed throughout the midden at the San 

 Juan site. 



The valle)'^ of the San Juan River is accessible by horse and 

 bullock transportation only, as there are no roads suited to wheel 

 traffic. The soil is rich and deep, and clumps of bamboo and numer- 

 ous tiny banana and plantain gardens become more numerous as 

 the valley broadens out near the mouth of the stream and the north 

 shore of the peninsula. The hills here become rougher and more 

 picturesque. Gabb, who was at the site of the San Juan village in 

 1869, speaks of the lower valley as being " as wild a spot as can well 

 be imagined, a long sand beach, ending abruptly against a high 

 bluff of black rocks, with the broad Atlantic thundering against 

 it with a ceaseless roar." Wlien Gabb visited the valley a small 

 settlement of two huts was near the mouth of the river. The United 

 States National Museum expedition found in 1928 several huts of 

 squatters and tenants scattered about the area, but no systematic 

 attempt at settlement and agriculture anywhere in the valley. The 

 peninsula as a whole is undeveloped and is almost entirely covered 

 with nondeciduous forests. Judging from the size of the midden 

 at San Juan and from the large quantity of pottery fragments 

 scattered about or embedded in the midden, the aboriginal population 



