CA.VE DWELLINGS FEWKES. 61 7 



close of the fifteenth century, when Cohunbus discovered America, 

 there were cave dwellers in certain regions of the West Indies, which 

 were mentioned in the writings of early historians. The people who 

 inhabited the greater part of these islands were dwellers in the 

 open and had attained a considerable cultural elevation as shown 

 in the polished stone objects called " collars " and three-pointed 

 idols or zemis. The germ of this culture came from South America. 

 In addition there were settlements of Caribs who had migrated north- 

 ward from South America along the Lesser Antilles as far as Vieques 

 Island and the eastern shore of Porto Rico. It would appear from 

 history that there were at least three distinct stocks, indicating three 

 kinds of culture, in the West Indies at the epoch of discovery. The 

 first and most primitive of these three were the cave dwellers, rem- 

 nants of an aboriginal people once spread all over the West Indies, 

 but at that time inhabiting the western ends of Cuba and Haiti. 

 They were known to early writers as the Guanahatibibes,^ and were 

 said to have been low in cultural development, possessing a character- 

 istic idiom, their livelihood being obtained by fishing, hunting, or 

 gathering wild fruits or roots. These apijarently had not yet become 

 an agricultural people, and had no knowledge of how to prepare 

 cassava from the poisonous root of the yuca. 



The existence of this race of natural cave dwellers in the West 

 Indies has long been known through legends extant since the time of 

 Columbus. Roman Pane, the oldest folklorist of the American 

 Indians, in one of the legends of the natives of Haiti refers inci- 

 dentally to their former life in caves — a legend which was no doubt 

 founded on historical fact. It is known that some of the Haitian 

 caves were inhabited by man at the discovery of the island, and we 

 may infer that these troglodytes were survivals of an antecedent 

 epoch, referred to in the legend, when the aborigines of the island 

 were cave dwellers. 



A\^iile, as seen from the above remarks, evidence drawn from folk- 

 lore supports history, the archeological verification has jet to be 

 gathered. Our knowledge of the character of the West Indian cave 

 culture is fragmentary and can be greatly enlarged by systematic 

 excavation of the caves of Cuba, Haiti, and Porto Rico. Skeletal 

 remains which may be referred to the cave men of Cuba have been 

 investigated by several Cuban anthropologists, who have regarded 



1 In western Cuba ; their province in Haiti was called Gaucarima. Tlae structures 

 called " cacimbas " in the Isle of Pines and elsewhere in western Cuba may have been 

 made by the prehistoric cave dwellers of Cuba. These cacimbas are large earthern jars, 

 apparently fashioned and baked in place, filling a hole 6 feet deep, with rim level with 

 the surface of the ground. Additional study is necessary to determine their age and use. 



Note. — A careful study of 25 of these cacimbas in May, 1911, showed that while they 

 are almost universally shaped like jars their walls were not of clay baked in place, as I 

 had been informed, but made of masonry plastered or excavated in solid rock. A thin 

 layer of tar on their sides and floors seems to indicate they were used as receptacles for 

 turoentine or tar. Their construction as well as their use is still doubtful. — J. W. F. 



