FEWKES] CULTURE AREAS IN THE WEST INDIES 107 



are rarely collected on the island of St. Vincent. Shell was the only 

 hard substance available in Barbados for the manufacture of cutting 

 implements, and axes made of this material occur in great abundance. 



Implements of Cbescentic Fobm 



Certain crescentic stones, called sacrificial knives,"" generally con- 

 vex on one edge and concave on the other, commonly sharpened on one 

 point, are among the best found in St. Vincent. These assume a 

 variety of modifications, well illustrated by specimens in the Heye 

 collection. Although the majority of these forms were found in 

 St. Vincent and Grenada, the type is not limited to these islands. 

 The simplest forms of sacrificial knives are shown in plate 29, 

 .4, 5, C. The crescentic shape is somewhat modified in A, and a 

 projection which may have served as a handle arises from the 

 concave edge. It is popularly believed that these curved implements 

 are knives used in cutting out the hearts of victims in human sacri- 

 fices, and following out this erroneous idea certain large bowlders 

 bearing pictographs are called altar stones. 



These crescentic implements are commonly sharp at one point and 

 blunt at the opposite. They may have been used in cutting fish, 

 meat, or even human bodies, suggesting sacrificial knives. They are 

 commonly flat at two opposite sides, rounded, often blunt on the 

 edges, but they almost invariably terminate in a cutting edge or a 

 sharj) point. Their shape varies from a slightly crescent form to the 

 spiral ; sometimes their handles are straight prolongations, terminat- 

 ing in a curved extremity. No historic authority can be quoted from 

 accounts of the aborigines of the West Indies that they sacrificed 

 human beings, but there is abundant proof that they removed flesh 

 from the skeletons of the dead, even their own relatives, in their 

 mortuary ceremonies. 



Various other forms of sacrificial or ceremonial knives are figured 

 in the series represented in plate 29. One of these, plate 29, C, 

 has a semicircular cutting edge like the skin scrapers manu- 

 factured by some of the North American Indians. Figure G 

 represents a most instructive type, in which the implement is en- 



°= The crescentic form of stone implement, locally called sacrificial knives, is not very 

 common in St. Vincent, but a few fine specimens are known to exist. (See author's picture 

 of pictographs on a large bowlder in 25th Ann. Rept. Bur. Amer. Ethn.. pi. Ixii. upper 

 fig.) The best known of these is owned by Mr. Patrick Hugglns, an old resident of this 

 island, whose ancestors he affirms received it .from a " Carlb chief," who said it had been 

 used for sacrificial purposes. Local collectors in St. Vincent are accustomed to call 

 stones bearing pictographs " jumbi " stones or altars, and they say that sacrifices of 

 human beings were made on these altars with stone implements of crescentic form, but 

 none of the early contemporary accounts support this statement. The crescentic type 

 may be the curved knives mentioned by Laliat as the instruments with which the flesh of 

 men devoured in cannibal feasts was cut into pieces or scraped from the victim's bones. 



