154 SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 



foliated masses of rock and pebbles in circular heaps from five to eight 

 feet in diameter projecting from one to four feet above the surround- 

 ing soil level under which lay rock fragments and pebbles similarly 

 exfoliated and disintegrated. The regularity of these natural mounds, 

 dotting a flat valley floor in a striking way, is remarkable. The proof 

 that they could not be aboriginal burials was near at hand if one were 

 provided with pick and shovel. Test holes were made of these peculiar 

 formations at Manabao, also in the valley of the Rio Tireo, and in 

 the valley of Constanza on the otherwise level valley floor between 

 the village of Constanza and the streamlet named Pantufle. 



Sir Robert Schomburgk in an article in the Athenaeum published 

 in 185 1 reported the presence of an Indian cemetery in the valley of 

 Constanza and offers as evidence the following data : ' Nearby 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 semi-circular form. Crossing the 

 brook were burials covered with 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 cemetery in the valley of 

 Constanza. Nearby, just above the waterfall locally known as El 

 Chorro southeast of Constanza village, begins the rocky crest of a 

 hogback, a long upward-sloping hill, under the scattered comb of 

 which the writer was successful in recovering skeletal and cranial 

 fragments along with pottery offerings. This cyclopean-like outcrop- 

 ping of faulted rock has been mistakenly cited by some writers as an 

 aboriginal monumental wall erected for defense. 



The culturally more advanced Arawak of the mountainous in- 

 terior of Santo Domingo deserve to be classified with 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 rectangular. Most of them, however, are in the form of two par- 

 allel embankments. Four series of these parallel embankments were 

 observed by the writer in the valley of Constanza. Their average 

 height is from 3 to 10 feet, with a width of 20 feet in transverse sec- 

 tion at the bottom. The mounds are free from rocks and contain 



