24 THE ABORIGINES OF PORTO RICO [eth. an-n. 25 



SeiTor Brail." the most reliable historian of the island, gives the 

 following- data regarding the distribution of Indians in 1511-12 after 

 the atiair at Jaciieco, taken from the jMuuoz documents: Haciendas of 

 their royal highnesses, 500; Baltasar de Castro, the factor, 200; 

 Miguel Diaz, the chief constable, 200; Juan Ceron, the major, 150; 

 Diego Morales, bachelor at law, 150; Amador de Lares, 150; Louis 

 Sotomayor, 100; Miguel Diaz Daux, factor, 200; municipal council, 

 loO; Sebastian de la Gama, 90; Gil de Malpartida, 70; Juan Bono (a 

 merchant). 70; Juan Velasquez, 70; Antonio deRivadenej^a, 60; Gracian 

 Cansino. 60; Louis de Apueyo, 60; the apothecary, 50; Francisco 

 Cereceda, 50; to 40 other individuals (40 each), 1,600; distributed in 

 150U-10 to !» persons, 1,060; total, 5,100. The tigures given in the 

 enumeration of slaves sometimes include those introduced from other 

 islands. Thus, in 1514 the cacique Jamaica Arecibo. with 200 Indians, 

 was assigned to Lope Conchillos, but how many of the latter were 

 natives of Porto Rico does not appear. Arecibo himself was from 

 Jamaica. It is impossible to arrive at any very close estimate of the 

 population of prehistoric Porto Rico from Spanish accounts, but 

 ?)0,(>00 is probably as close an estimate as can be made from the avail- 

 able data. 



PRESENT DESCENDANTS OF THE PORTO RICAN INDIANS 



The visits made by the author were too limited to determine what 

 parts of the island are best suited for a study of the purest survivals 

 of the former race, but marked Indian features were casually observed 

 everywhere, especially in the isolated mountainous regions. 



The loft}' mountain called El Yunque is reputed to have been the 

 home of the last cacique, and the inhabitants in its neighborhood are 

 certainlj' among the most primitive on the island. This region has 

 l)een visited bj' Seiior Federico Vail y Spinosa. who has published in 

 one of the San Juan' daily papers a legend of aboriginal character 

 obtained on his visit. There is in this part of the island a range of 

 mountains called the Carib mountains that may have received its name 

 from the fact that Carib were once numerous at this end of the island. 

 The inhabitants in this region still preserve Indian features to a 

 marked degree, but whether Borincpiefio or Carib is not evident. 



It is probable that the entire mountainous interior of Porto Rico, 

 from the eastern to the western end, was the lust refuge of the aborig- 

 inal Indian population, and the names of the various caciques that are 

 applied to sections of the mountain chain support this belief. The 



(I Salvador Brau, Puerto Rico y su Historia; iuvestigaciones criticas. 2d ed., p. 1-404, Valencia, 1894. 

 This important work contains a copy of the Columbus letter sent from Lisbon to the Catholic kings 

 on his return from his first voyage, also a description of '■ Boriquen " from Istoria de las Indias con 

 la conquista de Mexico, 1552, by Francisco Lopez de G6mara, from the original in the library of 

 Beato .Tuan de Rivera, Colegio del Corpus Cristi, Valencia. See also Puerto Rico en Sevilla. Puerto 

 Kico, 1S96; and History of Porto Rico, New York, 1903. 



