8 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 94 



while some mark them by extracting one of their front teeth. Also, the caciques 

 and their subjects paint themselves, and their devices and inventions in this 

 respect are much different from those that they use for their slaves.' 



The reports of " blacks " in the Panama territory fail also of any 

 corroboration by later writers. In 1901 Vergara y Velasco states that, 

 according to a report of a subchief, there existed in the Cuna district 

 of Darien, until 10 years before, " remnants of an aboriginal popu- 

 lation of reduced height, black skin, not exceeding 100 or 200 indi- 

 viduals and entirely savage " ; * but as this applies to something existing 

 (if such was the case) nearly four centuries after the introduction of 

 the Negro into the Spanish American possessions, it can at best have 

 but little bearing on the subject under discussion. 



Nevertheless, the reports on the Darien " blacks " are evidently 

 taken for facts by De Quatrefages, one of the foremost European 

 anthropologists of his time. As early as 1861, in his " Unite de I'espece 

 humaine ", Quatrefages says (p. 405) : 



Study of the physical characters leads, hence, to the admission that America 

 has been peopled by emigrants from the Old World and belonging more or 

 less to the three principal races of the same, namely, the white, the yellow, and 

 the black. 



On page 413 he refers to the " Negroes " spoken of by Martyr and 

 Gomara. The above thought involves only the African Negro, but 

 in time Quatrefages' view extends. One of the main though not 

 immediate causes of this is the discovery of the Lagoa Santa type of 

 skulls in South America. 



Lehmann adds to the above one or two references (p. 331) from 

 hazy legends of pre-Columbian Peru on black-skinned prisoners or 

 slaves ; he mentions further the paintings on two pieces of pottery 

 found in the vicinity of Trujillo and pictured by Wiener, which show 

 " dark-colored people who are driven by light-colored ones " building 



* " Y los mismos cagiques daban a los espanoles algunos indios que entre ellos 

 tienen por esclavos, y se sirven dellos, que los han avido en la guerra, la qual 

 nunca falta entre los indios unos con otros y al ques esclava llamanle paco, y 

 cada cagique tiene sus esclavos herrados con su sefial diferengiada en el brago 

 6 en la cara, y algunos tienen por serial sacarle al esclavo un diente de los 

 delanteros de la boca. Tambien los cagiques se pintan a si y a sus indios y gente, 

 y tienen sus divisas e invengiones de pinturas para esto de otra manera, muy 

 diferengiadas de las que usan poner a los esclavos." (Vol. 3, lib. 29, cap. 2, p. 8.) 



* " Segun informes de uno de sus prinzipales jefes, en esas montanas existian 

 hace diez anos restos de una poblacion aborigen, de reducida talla, negra la piel, 

 muy escasa en numero (100 a 200) y enteramente salvaje; refer ia que los Cuna- 

 cunas quitaron a ese pueblo el terreno que hoy ocupan despues de una gran 

 matanza y temen encontrar a alguno dellos que quedaron por creerlos hechiceros 

 y hasta demonios." (Vol. i, p. 878; quoted by W. Lehmann, p. 331.) 



