g A STUDY OF CHIRIQUIAN ANTIQUITIES. 



" La provincia que los espanoles llaman Judea, llaman los indfos Barecla, la qua! 

 confina con Cheriqui y esta en la mesma costa del Sur, seys leguas mas al Poniente 

 de la dicha Cheriqui : llamaronla Judea, porque es la gente de alii muy vil e sugia 

 e para poco." 



Southern Chiriqui, the region which has furnished practically all the antiquities, 

 is to-day almost as difficult of access as it was in the time of Espinosa, Campanon 

 and Oviedo. In order to reach it one must still cross the Isthmus and go by boat 

 from Panama, a distance of 300 miles around the peninsula of Azuero, to the port 

 of David. With the completion of the Panama Canal and the development of the 

 more direct routes over the mountains from Bocas del Toro and by way of Costa 

 Rica this region will become better known commercially as well as archeologically. 1 

 It first became prominent as a field for archeological research with the discovery 

 of the golden treasure at Bugavita in 1858-9. 



Cemeteries and Tombs. A mountain chain divides Chiriqui into two nearly equal 

 parts. As has been intimated, the ancient cemeteries or huacals, as they are called, 

 in Spanish America are practically confined to the southern half, that is to say, 

 the Pacific watershed. In fact, Dr. Merritt, at one time director of a gold mine in 

 Veragua, had never " heard of any such burial grounds on the northern side of 

 the Isthmus, from the lagoons of Chiriqui to the valley of the Chagres and where 

 they would have been discovered by the gold-seeker, who has been ransacking 

 this section for more than 300 years." Nevertheless, it is probable that this region 

 will yet yield a rich archeological harvest when it is explored as thoroughly as a 

 part of the Atlantic coast of Costa Rica has been. On the other hand, ancient 

 cemeteries are met with everywhere on the Pacific slope, from near the mountain 

 tops to within a short distance of the sea. An idea of their number and distri- 

 bution may be had from the account of Thomas F. Meagher, 2 who crossed the 

 Isthmus from David to Bocas del Toro fifty years ago : 



" A mile outside Dolega the party stopped at the house of Don Roberto Soes, 

 the discoverer of the golden relics in the Indian graves of Chiriqui. All the way 

 from David we had ridden through thousands of these disemboweled and ransacked 

 graves, and in every direction, for leagues and leagues, from Terraba and Boruca 

 to Santiago de Veragua, we might have seen tens of thousands more." 



One of the best known huacals is that of Bugavita (near Bugaba), where so 

 many gold ornaments were found in 1858-9. Dr. Merritt's description of this 

 cemetery is quoted at length because of its excellence and of the fact that copies 

 of his paper are extremely rare : * 



" The Huacal of Bugaba embraced an area of twelve acres, but was divided 



into two sections by a slight depression extending in an east-and-west direction 



- in which not a single grave has been encountered. This depression of the 



surface varied in width from eighteen to ten yards, toward the east. The two 



1 A railroad is now being built from Panama to David. 

 ! The new route through Chiriqui. Harper's mag., XXII, 198, 1861. 



3 J. King Merritt. Report on the huacals, or ancient graveyards, of Chiriqui ; publ. by 

 the Amer. ethnol. soc. previous to vol. I of its Bulletins. 



