410 
among the Talamanca Indians. Their 
crops consisted mainly of cassava and 
plantains, to which squashes and red 
peppers were probably added. Maize 
was hardly cultivated and beans were 
certainly unknown, since up to the 
present day they are found but seldom 
among the aborigines of the Atlantic 
coast of Costa Rica. 
DRIVEN FROM THEIR HOMES 
While this simple diet remained 
plentiful, the nation continued to thrive, 
until strangers began to invade the 
more accessible parts of their territory. 
Year after year these came in growing 
numbers, settling themselves in the 
fields of the hapless natives, who were 
thus robbed of their subsistence and 
frightened back into the narrow valley 
of the Tararia. The climax of the 
spoliation came about the time of my 
visit, when speculators grabbed what 
was left of the rich lands of the plains 
in prevision of future operations by a 
large banana concern. 
These changes took place gradually, 
and gradually too, the living conditions 
of the natives became more impaired 
The narrow talweg of the valley, swept 
year after year by the torrential freshets 
of the larger streams, could not be 
tilled profitably, and the slopes are 
everywhere too steep for permanent 
cultivation. So the crops were forcibly 
reduced to a scanty minimum. The 
fish which abound in the lower course of 
the river, become scarce in the upper 
reaches and, at the time of my visit, 
the forest game had practically dis- 
appeared. All this necessarily resulted 
in a slow starvation of the Tirub, with 
the corresponding lowering of the 
vitality of the race. The resistance to 
diseases and other adverse conditions 
became less, the rate of mortality in- 
creased and with a diminished number 
of births came also the disturbance of 
the ratio of sexes as vividly shown in the 
above tables. 
Among the Bribri, the process of 
attrition has been about the same, 
though perhaps a little slower. These 
were among the people subjected to 
the dire oppression of the Tirub during 
the period preceding the arrival of the 
The Journal of Heredity 
Spaniards. At that time also they were 
more or less obliged to seek the seclusion 
of their mountains, their enemies extend- 
ing over most of the beautiful inner 
plain of Talamanca. Besides they paid 
tribute, according to tradition, to the 
Misquito Indians, who at that time 
dominated the coast from Gracias a 
Dios in the North to beyond the Chiriqui 
Lagoon, as is indicated still by numerous 
localnames. A tradition gathered from 
the old men in Bribri has it that each 
year, the flotilla of the warring Misquitos 
would appear at a certain time at 
Cahuita Point, and a slave runner was 
dispatched to the Bribri bearing the 
insignia of command, a cane made of 
the cacique wood. This put the whole 
tribe on the way to the coast, 
every man and woman loaded with 
propitiatory presents. After the Span- 
ish occupation, this dependency came 
to an end, though very much against 
the will of the Misquitos, who tried by 
every means to maintain it, and even 
penetrated once far into the Talamanca 
Valley with their dugouts after they 
had succeeded in crossing the dangerous 
bar at the mouth of the Tarire. On 
this occasion, however, they were not 
satisfied with provisions and cotton 
clothes, the usual tribute levied on the 
Bribri, but a number of women and 
children were carried away into cap- 
tivity. 
After the last appearance of the 
Misquitos and the retreat of the Tirub 
into their own valley of the Tararia, 
the Bribri enjoyed a relative quiet 
and attained some prosperity under the 
easy rule of the friars. Not that they 
submitted altogether meekly, for there 
were times of open revolt, when mis- 
sionaries and colonists were pitilessly 
massacred and the churches and in- 
cipient towns destroyed. These out- 
bursts were of course followed by bloody 
reprisals, but on the whole the tribe 
maintained itself in a relatively pros- 
perous condition even to the last days 
of the past century. 
MARRIAGE BETWEEN CLANS 
With relation to marriage, their 
customs were very ditterent from those 
of the Tirub. While polygamy was the 
