226 ISLAISID CULTURE AREA OF AMERICA [eth. an.n. 34 



By the author's interpretation the extended portion of this chair 

 shonkl not be confounded with the horizontal portion or seat proper. 

 We find the head, arms, and upper body of a human figure graven on 

 the former, while an animal figure is represented in the latter. The 

 anterior appendages or front legs of the seat have a rude head be- 

 tween them, and the legs of the upright figure are not represented. 

 The identification of the projection on the anterior border as a head 

 conforms with other seats having a head carved in the same position. 



Labat describes how these grinders are used. Apparently, from 

 his account, after the kernels of cacao have been rousted to a 

 paste and cleaned of their skin in a wooden mortar, they are 

 pounded on a stone to make the meal finer. "The stones," he 

 writes, "used by them should be hard, a little porous in order that 

 the fire placed below should heat them more readily : but they should 

 not be liable to split, nor to calcine, and their grain should 

 be sufficiently hard not to disintegrate, because it would spoil the 

 taste. They should be polished with care, and cleaned, washed, and 

 well rubbed immediately their use is finished. Ordinarily they are 

 15 to 18 inches in width by 2^ feet long. They are excavated their 

 whole length, so that they are concave and are left 2 or 3 inches 

 thick. They have at each extremity a foot about 4 inches square 

 and 6 inches high to hold up the stone and raise it high enough from 

 the ground to place fire under it." '* 



Labat, in speaking of the seats used by the Carib in bathing, 

 hints at the form of the chocolate stones. He says (p. 109) : "The 

 Caribs arise before day and a little before sunrise, withdrawing 

 from the house for their necessities, which thej^ never do near the 

 houses, but in a place a little away, when they make a hole and 

 subsequently cover it with earth. They immediate!}' go into the sea 

 to bathe if there is no river near; if there is, however, they do not 

 go into the ocean. When they return they sit down on a little seat of 

 one 'piece of wood shaped like a chocolate stone.''^ "^ 



The dead were buried in a contracted or sitting posture. Jefferys 

 says : "•* " The corpse was not laid out horizontally, but seated on a 

 little bench under a kind of wooden arch, to hinder the earth from 

 falling in upon it. * * * But the liodies of the Caciques were 

 not interred till they had been first well embowled and dried by fire." 



PESTLES 



The pestles of the Porto Rico-Santo Domingo area are among the 

 finest stone implements in the AVe.st Indies, and are readily dis- 

 tinguished by the carvings on the head. In the Berlin Museum there 

 is an undescribed pestle from St. Thomas (fig. 56) that approaches in 



"Labat, vol. vi. pp. 58, 59. 



'^ Op. cit., p. 109. This would certainly imply that duhos and "chocolate stones" were 

 practically the same in some instances — a conclusion arrived ac by comparative studies. 

 75a French Dominions, pt. 2. p. 16. 



