218 THE ABORIGINES OF PORTO RICO [eth.axs. 25 



gentlemen who "had acquired the Virginia and Floridian languages 

 and had spent some time in North America." The latter sa_ys the 

 Caribbeans were originally inhabitants of that part of America which is 

 now called Florida. But Davies's subsequent discussion of the ques- 

 tion of the origin of the Carib shows that this opinion had little weight 

 with him, for he advances arguments for the derivation of the Carib 

 from South America. 



Accoi'ding to Ale.xander von Humboldt, "theCaribs in the sixteenth 

 century extended from the Virgin islands on the north to the mouth 



of the Orinoco, perhaps to the Amazon Those of the 



continent admit that the small West Indian islands were anciently 

 inliabited by the Arawaks. a warlike nation yet existing on the 

 Main. . . . They assert that the Arawaks. except the women, 

 were exterminated by the Caribs, wlio came from tlie mouth of the 

 Orinoco." 



According to Rochefort the Carib came from Guiana, and Edwards 

 saj'S that the Carib considered the islanders colonies of Arawak. 



According to Brinton" ""all the Antilles, both Greater and Lesser, 

 were originally occupied by its meml>ers (Arawack stock), and so were 

 the Bahamas. ■■ . . . 



The argument for a derivation of the islanders from South America 

 drawn from the nature of the food supply is one of the strongest. 



"We have seen," says Ober, '" that historical traditions point toward 

 the southern continent as their ancestral abiding place: let us make 

 another inquiry. Of the animals that constituted their food supplj% 

 nearly all the mammals were allied to species or genera of the South 

 American continent. Such were the agouti, peccary, armadillo, opos- 

 sum, raccoon, muskrat, the dumb dog (now extinct), perhaps the aico, 

 the yutia, and alinique (of Cuba), and possibly, in the extreme south, 

 a species of monkey. Add to these the iguana, which is peculiarly 

 typical. . . . and we have their entire food supi)ly of an animal 

 nature." 



The linguistic argument contirming the athnity of the ancient lan- 

 guage of Cuba to South American, rather than to North American, 

 languages, is well put by Lucien Adam, who saj's: " J'ajouterai que, 

 sur 41 mots du taino ou ancienne langue de Cuba qu'il m'a ete possible 

 d"identifier, IS appartienuent au parler des femmes Caraibes, 8 a I'Ar- 

 rouague, 1.3 soit au Galibi, soit au parler des homnies, 3 au Cumanagota 

 et au Chayma" — all of which, writes Torres, in a commentary on this 

 passage, were languages of South America. If this be the true rela- 

 tion of the ancient Cuban tongue, the conclusion is logical that the 

 language of the island Borinquen, which lies nearer South America than 

 does Cuba, had the same relation. 



«The Arawack Language of Guiana in its Linguistic and Ethnological Relations. Tran8aclio7is oj 

 ike American PhUosophical Society, Philadelphia, 1871; The American Race, New York, 1891. 



