fewkes] culture areas in the west indies 89 



Bequia 



Bequia, an island near St. Vincent, has several kitchen middens 

 from which various forms of stone implements, fragments of pot- 

 tery, and other objects have been added to the Heye collection. 

 These were mostly purchased from natives and are like those of St. 

 Vincent. So far as the author can learn no systematic archeological 

 excavations have ever been attempted on the island. 



Battowia 



The island of Battowia is celebrated for its Indian caves, which 

 have furnished several instructive specimens of aboriginal life. It 

 lies east of Balliceaux, from which it is separated by a narrow chan- 

 nel, which at the stormy time the author was at Balliceaux was im- 

 possible to cross without some danger. There are several cabins on 

 the lee side of Battowia inhabited by negroes, who venture across 

 the dividing water at almost all seasons of the year. These primitive 

 people, who are genei'ally employed in raising cotton, were the la- 

 borers upon whom the author relied in his excavations at Banana 

 Bay. The best known of the objects obtained from a cave in Battowia 

 are the wooden turtle ^' found by Ober and a duho, which has not, to 

 the author's knowledge, been described or figured. 



Balliceaux 



After the Carib war in St. Vincent,''^ the most hostile of these 

 Carib Indians, called the Black Carib,'^'' were removed fi'om St. 

 Vincent to a small island, Balliceaux, from which they were later 

 transported to Euatan Island, off the coast of Honduras. Their 

 Balliceaux settlement, now abandoned, was situated on the lee side 

 at a place called Banana Bay, and is marked by walls of a well near 

 the mouth of an arroyo- These walls are European in origin and 

 resemble those found elsewhere in the West Indies. The cemetery 

 of the Carib settlement was easily found, and from it several Carib 

 skulls and some fragments of pottery were obtained. It extends 

 along the beach a few feet above high-water mark, and is small, the 

 burials being shallow. 



A general study of the mound at Banana Bay in Balliceaux indi- 

 cates that the midden was not inhabited for a great length of time, 

 and there is every evidence that it is comparatively modern. The 

 layer of soil which contains artificial objects is not more than a 

 foot thick; the sea has washed into the bank under the midden along 



"Aborigines of Porto Kico, Twenty-fifth Ann. Kept. Bur. Amer. Ethn., pi. xc, flgs. a, a'. 

 ^ See "An Historical Account of the Island of St. Vincent," by Cliarles Shcppard, 18.31. 

 ™ Said to be descendants of Negroes and Carib, the former saved from a slave ship 

 wrecked on Bequla. 



