90 ISLAND CULTURE AREA OF AMERICA [eth. ann. 34 



the shore, exposing one or more skulls and a few skeletons, some of 

 which were removed by the author."" These skeletons were interred 

 in the contracted or "embryonic" position and were accompanied 

 by broken pottery, shells, and fragments of charcoal and ashes, but 

 no whole jars were found. The place is now uninhabited and over- 

 grown with manzanillo and other bushes, but none of the trees show 

 marks of great age. The author's excavations verify the historical 

 and legendary account that Balliceaux was inhabited by aborigines 

 and that the Black Carib probably lived at Banana Bay after the 

 Carib war in St. Vincent. 



St. Vincent 



The three islands, St. Vincent, Bequia, and Balliceaux, seem to be 

 related in all archeological considerations, the objects from them 

 being practically identical. Stone axes from St. Vincent are found 

 in almost every museum which makes any pretension to a West 

 Indian collection. 



The Heye collection has over 3,000 specimens from St. Vincent, 

 mainly collected by Eev. Thomas Huckerby, who was Methodist min- 

 ister for several years at Chateau Belair. He likewise, through 

 agents, collected in Balliceaux and Bequia, large islands near by, 

 many specimens which he also sold to Mr. Heye for his collection. 



"" Evidently the bodies of the dead at Banana^ Bay were buried in the same way a? 

 those described by Du Tertre (Histoire dcs Isles des Christophe, etc., p. 455) : ".4s soon 

 as one dies the women takp the body, wash and clean it with great care. They paint it 

 with roucou from the feet to the head, greasing the head with palm oil, comb them, dress 

 their hair, and arrange as decently as it they were going to a solemn assembly ; then 

 they wrap them in a new bed of cotton which no one has ever slept in. They make the 

 grave where they are to l)e buried in the same house where they have died, or they build 

 one for the express purpose, never Inirylng the dead without covering them with earth, 

 nor omitting any ceremony they are accustomed to have wherever they happen to be" 



In an account of the burial of a child we read (op. cit., p. 456) : " They aslsed us for a 

 little al)andoned ' casa ' house in our garden, which we gave them, and they immediately 

 all set to work on the house and put it in as good condition as though entirely new. 

 They made sepulture of their child in the following manner and with these ceremonies : 

 They made a grave in the middle of the hou.se. round, and 3 or 4 feet deep. They placed 

 in it the child prepared and arranged as I have said and wrapped in. its cotton bed. 

 They placed it seated on its heels, the two elbows on the two knees, the head resting on 

 the palm of the two hands. Then all the women sat around the grave and commenced to 

 sigh strangely ; then they intoned a sad and painful song. This song was divicfed into 

 sighs and often cries in a loud voice with the eyes turned to heaven. They shed so many 

 tears that it would have saddened the hearts of the most hardened. The husbands were 

 seated l>ehind the wives, bathed in tears in imitation of them. They enil>raced them with 

 one hand as thougli to console them and caressed thera with the other. During this time 

 a man tilled up the grave with the end of a board, from time to time the women threw In 

 earth. After these ceremonies {which lasted a good hour) the women buried all the 

 valuables of the dead per.son which consisted of certain little baskets, cotton thread and 

 other little bagatelles on the grave." Referring to this method of burial Labat adds (vol. 

 VI, p. 1G3) : " I learned during my sojourn in Dominica that when the master of a house 

 came to die that he was not buried in the corner of the house, but in the middle, after 

 which the house was abandoned and another was built in a different locality without the 

 thought ever occurring to any one to return and lodge in that place. I have sought with 

 care the reason of this ceremony so extraordinary without having been able to discover 

 anything else than that it was an immemorial custom with them." 



