41 



HOUSES 



The houses of the aborig-inal Porto Ricans were like those of the 

 Haitians and not ver}' different from the cabins of the poorer people 

 of the island to-daj; especially those in the mountains, where old types 

 of construction still survive. Naturally modern cabins present many 

 modifications, as the use of iron nails in fastening the beams, but the 

 materials used in construction arc practically the same, and the old 

 architectural types are still followed in modern dwellings. As a rule 

 these houses, as at the present day, wei'e ei'ected on hillocks, almost 

 hidden by trees, and commonly i-emote from one another. Archi- 

 tectural modifications are necessarily greatest near the cities and 

 towns, and on the outskirts of the cities, in the poorer quarters, there 

 are generally rows of similar cabins of primitive construction, forming- 

 streets. Here the houses are constructed of modern building materials ; 

 their roofs are covered with tiles or sheets of metal from old oil cans, 

 replacing the pahu leaves, which are not there available for the purpose. 

 But these houses, like those in the country, are frequently mounted 

 on posts, with their floors raised from the ground, being universally 

 destitute of cellai-s. 



We have in the early Spanish writers several descriptions of the 

 houses of the West Indian aborigines. The account of the habitations 

 of the Haitians given by Oviedo, accompanied by pictures, applies 

 equally well to the houses of the ancient Porto Ricans. It is stated 

 by early writers that the natives lived in pueblos or villages situated 

 along the shore or in the hills, as well as in isolated cabins scattered 

 through the mountains. 



Altliough no sufficient evidence has j'et been presented to prove 

 that the prehistoric people of Porto Rico lived in caves, many aborig- 

 inal relics occur in these places. The natives are said to have inhab- 

 ited caverns after the advent of Europeans, and Oviedo speaks of 

 certain people in the province of Gaucayarima, in Haiti, who lived in 

 subterranean dwellings, declaring that they were ignorant of agricul- 

 ture, subsisted on the fruits and roots which nature provided, built no 

 houses, and had no other habitations. He regarded this race of true 

 cave dwellers as the most savage in the island of Haiti. While tiie 

 existence of cave dwellers in the neighboring islands, Cuba and Haiti, 

 might lead to the conjecture that there were also cave people in Porto 

 Rico, when Columbus discovered the island the majority of the inhal)- 

 itants were not troglodytic, but lived in the open country and resorted 

 to the numerous caves only for sepulture of the dead or for religious 

 rites. If there were cave dwellers, we may justly' regard them as sur- 

 vivors of the most archaic race that inhabited the island. 



Munoz" has given us a good description of one of the villages at the 



ajuan Bautlsta Munoz, Historia del Nuevo Mundo, Madrid, 1793. 



