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THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 



pher's Cove." Columbus remained here 

 for one year and the Spaniards with him 

 had an opportunity to study the customs 

 of the Arawak. 



Oviedo, official historian to the court 

 of Spain, a contemporary of Columbus, 

 tells of the almost ideal existence of the 

 Arawak. From his accounts, as from 

 those of later writers, it appears that 

 they took life very easily. As is cus- 

 tomary with so man}' primitive tribes 

 the women tilled the fields, and did the 

 principal work, while the men engaged 

 in the chase or in fishing, and spent the 

 inter^'als comfortably in their hamacas, 

 forerunners of the modern hammocks, 

 for which there is little doubt we are 

 indebted to the Arawak. 



Picture to yourself a green, fertile 

 hilltop, from which the wood has been 

 cleared by fire. Surrounding it are 

 several other hills, on which the woods 

 and undergrowth are still in a virgin 

 state, and which consequently allow a 

 safe escape in case of a raid from the 

 dreaded Caribs. In practically all of 

 the West Indian islands, caves are plen- 

 tiful, and must have proved of the utmost 

 value as hiding-places. I have con- 

 ducted explorations in a cave near 

 Alexandria in which one could easily 

 hide hundreds of men. The gulleys 

 surrounding the hilltop on which the vil- 

 lage site is found, assured a plentiful 

 crop of cassava, while the neighboring 

 hills swarmed with conies. Snails, too, 

 were plentiful, and judging from the 

 shell-heaps existing to-day, must have 

 been eaten in enormous quantities. 



The hilltop, like all hilltops in a lime- 

 stone country, has many hummocks on 

 it, and upon these the aborigines built 

 their octagonal houses, made of upright 

 posts, thatched with palm leaves. Ac- 

 cording to early writers, these huts fre- 

 quently were of a considerable size, the 

 floors made of hard clay and always swept 



clean. In front of each was a green 

 slope, and back of it the refuse heap on 

 which the empty shells, broken stone 

 implements, and broken cooking pots 

 were thrown. Apparently the cooking 

 was also done here. In excavating some 

 of these refuse heaps, we find thick 

 layers of wood ashes, mingled with the 

 shells. Upon the location of the village 

 depends the character of the shells. In 

 inland middens are large snail shells with 

 an occasional sea product, such as a 

 conch or clam shell. The bones of large 

 fish are also found occasionally in inland 

 middens, and I dug out some vertebrae 

 of the rock fish, and the jaw bone of a 

 parrot fish, which by its size indicates 

 that the fish was three or four feet in 

 length. Ancient writers tell us that the 

 large fishes were reserved for the chief so 

 it may have been that we wei'e uncover- 

 ing the kitchen midden of the most 

 important dwelling in the village. 



My excavations were conducted at St. 

 Acre, Scarboro, Greenhill and Armor- 

 dale, in St. Ann Parish, and at Logie 

 Green in Clarendon Parish. My first 

 operations were at St. Acre where some 

 few years ago I discovered large shell 

 deposits when a new road was being cut 

 on the property. The next season I 

 unearthed some fragments of pottery 

 in the deposits. This led me to conduct 

 larger excavations, and I engaged native 

 laborers to assist me in the task. I dis- 

 covered several small hummocks on the 

 St. Acre hilltop, and made trenches 

 through these, sometimes five or more 

 feet deep, and found deposits of shell, 

 ashes, charcoal and fragments of pot- 

 tery and stone implements at different 

 levels, as if the Indians had abandoned 

 the village site, and had returned after 

 a time. In this work I was frequently 

 assisted by men who thought I was dig- 

 ging for gold. I paid them for any 

 specimens they brought to light and in 



