FEWKES] RACE AND KINSHIP 27 



mented upon by Las Casas and Oviodo, who declare that in customs 

 and hmguage these islanders were ver}' much alike. 



The accounts of the Indians of Haiti are more complete than those 

 of the Porto Rican Indians, for the earh' writers generallj- made their 

 homes on that island, and naturally were more familiar with its natives 

 than with those of the islands on either side. It has been customary 

 to fill out imperfect knowledge of the Porto Ricans by regarding them 

 as identical with the Haitians, especiallj^ since Oviedo himself has stated 

 that the culture of the two peoples was pi'actically the same. The 

 older writei's recognized some differences. Oviedo remarks that, while 

 the inhabitants of Porto Rico were essentially like the Haitians, they 

 were unlike them in being archers who did not poison their arrows 

 with herbs. He says that in their worship and in their dances (arf/'fos) 

 and ball games, in navigating canoes, in agriculture, fishing, and build- 

 ing houses and hammocks, in marriage customs, subjection to caciqws, 

 witchcraft, and in many other things the one people (Borinquefios) 

 were very like the other (Haitians). One statement of Oviedo that 

 should ])e emphasized as separating the Borinquen Indians from the 

 people of the three other Greater Antilles is that they were more 

 given to war and more adept in the use of Carib weapons, a charac- 

 teristic that can be traced either to contact with the Carib or to a 

 greater proportion of Carib blood, for the aborigines of Porto Rico 

 were more closel}- related to the Carib than were the Tainan people 

 of Cuba and Haiti. 



At the time of the discovery of America the insular Carib possessed 

 a culture resembling in man}' respects that of the Tainans and some- 

 what unlike that of the Carib of the continent of South America. 

 These insular people were confined at that time to the chain of islands 

 called the Lesser Antilles, extending from South America to Porto 

 Rico. They made many raids on the peaceful inhabitants of the other 

 islands, but, except in Porto Rico, their influence on, the Greater 

 Antilles was not sufficient to modify profoundly the existing culture. 

 Apparentlj' this Carib modification had replaced or submerged a pre- 

 vious culture on the Lesser Antilles, the Tainan men having been 

 killed and their women appropriated as wives of the conquerors," who 

 left in their offspring a mixture of Carib blood with that of the peace- 

 ful islanders and produced corresponding modification of culture in 

 the eastern part of Borinquen. 



There is direct as well as indirect evidence that the population of the 

 eastern end of the island of Porto Rico was somewhat different in blood 

 from that of the western. The neighboring island Vieques, onlj- a 

 short distance awaj^ was practicall}' Carib, and hostile warriors from 



a In this account of prehistoric Porto Rico the author includes the islands of Mona and Vieques, 

 the former inhabited by Tainan Indians, the latter by true insular Carib. For differences in culture 

 at the opposite ends of Cuba see his article on the Prehistoric Culture of Cuba, in American Anthro- 

 pologist, VI, n. s., October-December, 190-J. 



