﻿1 82 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS [VOL. 47 



as expounded by Navarette. Chaos in the last type mentioned has 

 evidently been swallowed by a huge monster whose mouth takes its 

 place. 



This likeness of the tripointed stone to a god or genius of Porto 

 Rico buried under a superposed mountain represented by the conoid 

 projection is marked in the first type, less evident in the second, and 

 wholly absent in the third. In the fourth all semblance of this kind 

 has disappeared. All theories which compare the conoid prominence 

 to a mountain, to chaos, or the like, fail when we apply them to all 

 types of tripointed stones, and do not account for the different kinds 

 of heads found in the first type. 



The tripointed stones represent several different kinds of super- 

 natural beings, anthropomorphic and zoomorphic. The Borinquen 

 Indians, like those of Hayti, recognized one great supreme god, but 

 he was not a creator. Roman Pane distinctly states that this god 

 had a mother whose rive names he has mentioned. 



I regard the tripointed stones as clan idols or images of tutelary 

 totems — true semis in the sense in which the term is employed by the 

 majority of early writers. The differences in their forms denote 

 different conceptions of the zemi in different clans. Each cacique, 

 no doubt, had one or more of these images, representing his clan zemi 

 and such others as he had inherited or otherwise obtained. I regard 

 them as the idols of which Roman Pane wrote: " Each one [Indian] 

 worships the idols of special forms called zemis, which he keeps in 

 his own house." 



ELBOW STONES 



There is another group of stone objects, also found in Porto Rico, 

 which, like those we have considered, are likewise problematical, yet 

 which may shed some light on the relationship of stone collars and 

 tripointed idols. I refer to the objects which, from their shape, may 

 be called " elbow stones," 1 several of which occur in different collec- 

 tions. Some of these stones closely resemble fractured or broken 

 collars of the slender ovate type, and often have parts which may be 

 compared to boss, panel, and panel margin of entire collars. The 

 finish of the extremities of the elbow stones indicates that they are 

 not broken collars but are of another type with some similarities to 

 them. Their significance in relation to the theory that tripointed 

 stones and collars were the two component parts of a single object lies 

 in tlie fact that a head resembling a mask-like tripointed stone is 



1 rhis designation, here used for the first time, is a convenient one to apply 

 to this group of sume objects peculiar to Porto Kim and Santo Domingo 

 I he group includes many aberrant forms of elbow shape, the exact use ,.t 

 which is problematical. One of these is illustrated by Mason in his figure 195. 



