FEWKES] RELIGION 69 



case the ball continued until those assembled could no lonoer endure 

 the odor of the corpse." 



It is highly probable that some of the prehistoric Porto Rican music 

 survives in the negro dances called honihas, still celebrated by country 

 people. The following woi"ds* of one of the aboriginal West Indian 

 dances are given by Schoolcraft, who obtained them from Rev. Ham- 

 ilton Pierson, v/ho in turn received them from W. J. Simone, long 

 a resident of Haiti: 



Aya bomba <■ ya bombai 



La massana Anacaona 

 Aya bomba ya bombai 



La massana Anacaona. 



According to Rachiller y Morales, Don Joaquin Perez states in his 

 Fantasias Indigenas that the words Ljl aya hauihe are fragments of 

 an areito. Each stanza of the Borinquen or national song of the 

 Porto Ricans has in some versions the refrain uil?/(?, Aye^ Aye, a survi 

 val of some old arc/to. 



"To return to their songs," says Charlevoix,'' "which with them 

 took the place of annals, as I have already remarked, they were 

 always accompanied by circular dances in which tlie leader began 

 alone and the rest followed. The leader regulated the step and the 

 others imitated him, first in advancing and then in retreating, all tiie 

 troop following his lead. Sometimes all the men danced on one side 

 and the women on the other; at other times the two sexes were 

 mixed, and then it was immaterial whether a man or a woman com- 

 menced the dance. But in the public feasts and on important occa- 

 sions they .sang or danced to the sound of the drum, which was 

 ordinarily beaten by the most important man of the village or the 

 cacique himself. The drum of which I have spoken was simply the 

 trunk of a tree of cylindrical shape having about the middle of its 

 length an opening." 



BURIAL CEREMONIES 



After a deatli they made tire, rubbing two sticks together, the act 

 being connected in an esoteric way with the ^perpetuation of the life of 

 the deceased. Among the common people, according to Herrera, the 

 relatives solemnly cared for the skull of the dead. Relatives of a 

 cacique frequently strangled him if it appeared to them that he -was 

 on the point of death. Some of the dead the}^ took out of the house, 



« Dances are even now occasionally performed on the occasion of the death of an infant sini. but 

 they have almost wholly ceased. 



^ See Bachiller y Morales, Cuba Primitiva. 



c.\ negro dance in Porto Rico is called bomba, this name being given also to the drum used in the 

 dance — a hogshead over which is stretched a sliin. 



d.Histoirede risle Espaguola ou de S. Domingue, i, 39, Paris, 1730. 



