14 A STUDY OF CHIRIQUIAN ANTIQUITIES. 



the bones or only a part of them instead of the corpse. Pinart believes that this 

 custom also prevailed in Chiriqui. 



Human Remains. The rarity of human remains in Chiriquian graves has often 

 been emphasized as indicating either the practise of cremation or a great antiquity 

 for the graves. Evidences of cremation, however, are lacking. That it would 

 require a long period of time for bones buried in a region of great rainfall to 

 decay completely, is by no means certain. Dr. Merritt points out that a black 

 loamy earth marked the position of the body in all the graves at Bugavita. No 

 human hair was found in these, but the enamel of a molar tooth, as well as 

 human hair, were obtained from neighboring cemeteries. In the double burial 

 noted by Bateman, " there were no signs of human remains, only the black loamy 

 earth showing the original position of the body." He also mentions having seen, 

 " taken from a grave of the quadrangular kind, three teeth, a small piece of bone, 

 apparently a rib, and three pieces of the skull of a human body, but so fragile 

 that they crumbled at the touch and by exposure." Seemann states that human 

 skeletons are sometimes met with in the graves, but that they crumble into dust 

 on being removed. McNiel, who opened more than a thousand graves, found 

 human bones in some of them, but did not succeed in obtaining a single skull 

 even approximately complete. The disposition of the human bones in the graves 

 was such as to convince Pinart that the bones were buried after the flesh had 

 been removed. Another peculiarity recorded by the latter author is that gold, 

 when present, was always associated with the bones, whether the latter were 

 placed near the walls of the vault or in adjacent niches, while the artifacts of 

 stone and bone were not. 



De Zeltner states that very friable fragments of human remains are sometimes 

 found in graves of the second, fourth and fifth types, as described by him, but 

 no trace of human bones is found in the other three types. He secured one 

 cranium sufficiently well preserved to be cast. A copy of this in plaster was 

 presented to the American Ethnological Society at its April meeting in 1860, by 

 Dr. J. P. Kluge and Mr. William Nelson l of Panama. The cranium is described 

 as " entire except the upper jaw, small for an adult, and rather broad in the 

 middle and flat behind." All efforts to trace this cast or its original have proved 

 unavailing. 



Another Chiriquian human skull, collected by Dr. E. Menard, 2 a physician in 

 the employ of the French Panama Canal Company, was given by him in 1890 

 to the School of Anthropology, Paris. It is described as having " un front bas 

 et retreci mais droit, avec bosse frontale saillante, un indice cephalique. 78.5." 

 Dr. Menard also speaks of an artificial deformation that would seem to indicate 

 some connection with ancient Peruvian skulls. 



People. The discoverers of the Isthmus all testify to its relatively large Indian 

 population. A century later (1606), the missionary, Melchor Hernandez, found as 

 many as six distinct languages spoken on and near the shores of the Chiriqui 

 lagoon by ten different tribes, as follows : Borisques, Bugabaes, Chagres, Cothos, 



1 Hist, mag., IX, 158, 1865. 



2 Les poteries des sepultures indiennes du Chiriqui ; chez Pichat a Chatillon-sur-Seine, 1881. 



