HISTORICAL NAEKATWES AND FIELD WOEK 45 



Sir Robert Schomburgk reported in an article in tlie Athenaeum in 

 1851 the presence of an Indian cemetery in the valley of Constanza 

 and offers as evidence the following data : " Near by is a burial 

 ground toward the foot of the southern mountains of the valley — 

 one hour of brisk walking through pine forests brought us to a 

 rivulet. Here were earthworks of semicircular form. Crossing the 

 brook were burials covered Avith greenstone in circular form bounded 

 by the mound, the rivulet, and the pine forest." Obviously Schom- 

 burgk did not dig into these mounds, as he makes no further mention 

 of them. His observation has, however, been recorded on his map 

 of the Dominican Republic, and for many years thereafter all maps 

 of the country indicated the presence of an Indian cemeter}'' in the 

 valley of Constanza. Near by, just above the waterfall locally 

 known as El Chorro, southeast of Constanza village, begins the rocky 

 crest of a hogback, a long upvv'ard-sloping hill, under the scattered 

 comb of which Alberti had recovered several deformed Arawak 

 crania. The writer was also successful in recovering skeletal and 

 cranial fragments along with pottery offerings from under this 

 c^^clopeanlike outcropping of faulted rock. 



The culturally more advanced Arawak of the mountainous interior 

 of Santo Domingo deserve to be classified Avith the Mississippi Valley 

 mound builders, even though they did not construct burial mounds. 

 Many artificial structures of earth were erected by them, principally 

 in the uplifted valleys of the northern central mountain ranges of 

 Santo Domingo. Some of these mounds, varying in height but never 

 exceeding more than a few feet at most, are round, others are rec- 

 tangular. Most of them, however, are in the form of two parallel 

 embankments. Four series of parallel embankments were observed 

 by the writer in the valley of Constanza. The average height is 

 from 3 to 10 feet, with a width of 20 feet, in transverse section at 

 the bottom. The embankments are remarkably uniform, averaging 

 slightly less than 300 feet in length, and occurring always in parallel. 

 Three of the embankments were trenched, and it was found that in 

 every case the earth of which they were composed had been assem- 

 bled from near-by surface soil. The mounds are free from rocks 

 and contain practically no artifacts, except occasionally a broken 

 celt, hammerstone, or broken shard from some water vessel or food 

 bowl. At their bottom, beneath the embankment at a level with the 

 adjoining terrain, we again find the same soil that normally appears 

 elsewhere at a depth of a few inches to 1 foot, showing that the entire 

 structure had been laboriously piled up by the natives with earth 

 from near-by fields for some unknown purpose. 



Their use as cemeteries must be excluded, as nowhere in the em- 

 bankment is there any indication of burials. The old theory, ad- 

 54291—31 4 



