30 THE ABORIGINES OF PORTO RICO 



and burial mounds in the region about Arecilio. have been carried to 

 Europe; it is hoped that, if descriptions of them have not yet appeared, 

 they will soon be published. 



While osteological data from Porto Rico are verj' scanty, we are not 

 wholl}^ ignorant of Borinquen somatology. The several skulls from 

 Cuba, Haiti, and the Bahamas that have been described afford a good 

 idea of the craniological characters of the same race." 



Several aboriginal skulls have been discovered and described by 

 Poey, Montone, and other Cuban somatologists. Some of these crania 

 now in the University Museum and the Royal Academy at Havana* 

 are incrusted with limestone, and bear every evidence of great age. 

 Certain Luca3ran skulls examined by Prof. W. K. Brooks'' "are arti- 

 ficially flattened to so great an extent that the distinction between the 

 frontal and the coronal portion of the frontal bone is obliterated, the 

 male skulls being somewhat more flattened than the female." The 

 probabilities are that the Porto Rican Indian crania will be found to 

 resemble those of the other islanders, the essential measurements of 

 which are recorded in the works mentioned. The accompanying illus- 

 tration (plate i) represents two aboriginal skulls from the eastern end 

 of Haiti. 



As the island Vieques and possiblj' Culebra, both of which are now 

 parts of our West Indian colony, were inhabited by Carib, and as 

 Carib features were prominent in the eastern parts of Porto Rico, a 

 description of the bodil}- features of these Indians naturally interests 

 the student of the anthropology of our island possessions. Davies in 

 1666 gave the following account of the physical features of these Indians: 

 "The Caribbeans are a handsome, well-shaped jjeople, of a smiling 

 countenance, middle stature, having broad shoulders and high buttocks; 

 their mouths are not over large, and their teeth are perfectly 

 white and close. True it is, their complexion is of an olive color, 

 naturally; their foreheads and noses are flat, not naturally, but by 

 artifice, for their mothers crush them down at their birth, as also 

 during the time they suckle them, imagining it a kind of beauty and 

 perfection. Thej' have large and thick feet, because they go barefoot, 

 but they are, withal, so hard that they defy woods and rocks. . . . 

 They are great lovers of cleanliness, bathing everj' day; are generous 

 and hospitable. . . . Like man\' natives, they eradicate the beard 



a A. C. Haddon, Note on the Craniology of the Aborigines of Jamaica. Journal of the Inttitute oj 

 Jamaica, ii, no. 4, p. 23, 24, July, 1897. Sir William H. Flower, On Recently Discovered Remains 

 of the Aboriginal Inhabitants of Jamaica. Nature, Oct. 17, 189.^. 



Seiior Imbert has kindly sent the author a photograph of undescribed prehistori(f skulls from 

 Haiti. (Plate I.) 



b '*' These skulls, of which several were obtained," writes Ober, " are brachycephalic, having a 

 cephalic index of about 90, one of them showing 93.75, another 90, and all with more or less pro- 

 nounced frontal depressions, artificially produced." 



cQn the Lucayan Indians. Memoirs o/ National Academy of Sciences, 10th Memoir, iv, 215-223. 

 Washington, D. C, 1889. 



