46 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1913. 



were examined in Trinidad, the most representative of which is situ- 

 ated near San Jose, the old Spanish capital. Promising shell-heaps 

 were discovered also at Mayaro Bay on the eastern coast. 



One of the most important results of the West Indian field work 

 by Dr. Fewkes was a determination of the geographical distribution 

 of certain types of artifacts and a comparison of the prehistoric cul- 

 ture areas in the so-called Carib Islands. Evidence of the existence 

 of a sedentary culture on these islands preceding that of the Carib 

 was obtained, showing it to have distantly resembled that of Porto 

 Eico ; this culture, however, was not uniform. Dr. Fewkes also found 

 that there were a number of subcultures in these islands. In pre- 

 historic time Trinidad and Tobago, it was determined, were some- 

 Avhat similar culturally, just as they are similar geologically and bio- 

 logically, to northern South America. In Dr. Fewkes's opinion per- 

 haps nowhere is the effect of environment on human culture better 

 illustrated than in the chain of islands extending from Grenada to 

 Guadeloupe, which were inhabited, when discovered, by Carib, some 

 of whose descendants are still to be found in Dominica and St. Vin- 

 cent. The earlier or pre-Carib people were culturally distinct from 

 those of Trinidad in the south, St. Kitts in the north, and Barbados 

 in the east. The stone implements of the area are characteristic and 

 the prehistoric pottery can readily be distinguished from that of the 

 islands beyond the limits named. 



A large number of shell-heaps on St. Vincent were visited and 

 studies made of localities in that island in which caches of stone 

 implements have been found. Six groups of petroglyphs were ex- 

 amined, even some of the best known of which have never been de- 

 scribed. Special effort was made to obtain information respecting 

 the origin of certain problematical objects of tufaceous stone in the 

 Heye Museum, said to have been collected from beneath the lava beds 

 on the flank of the Soufriere. 



Dr. Fewkes visited the locality on the island of Balliceaux where 

 the Carib of St. Vincent were settled after the Carib wars and be- 

 fore they were deported to Eoatan on the coast of Honduras. Ex- 

 tensive excavations were made at the site of their former settlement 

 at Banana Bay, where there is now a midden overgrown with brush. 

 Here much pottery, as well as several human skeletons and some 

 shells and animal bones, were found. 



The mixed-blood survivors of the St. Vincent Carib who once lived 

 at Morne Eond, near the Soufriere, but who are now settled at 

 Campden Park near Kingstown, were visited. These still retain some 

 of their old customs, as making cassava from the poisonous roots of 

 the manihot, and preserve a few words of their native tongue. A 

 brief vocabulary was obtained, but Carib is no longer habitually 

 spoken in St. Vincent. 



