FEWKEsJ CULTXTRE AKEAS IN THE WEST INDIES 257 



tion a great many objects from Cuba have been added to the Heye 

 Museum, little material has been obtained from the Isle of Pines. 



Among enigmatical structures of supposed Indian origin are the 

 so-called cacimbas — an Indian word which occurs in place names in 

 Venezuela and even on the west coast of Florida with the spelling 

 " caximba." The Indian word means a pipe, but the structures to 

 which it is applied are subterranean depressions with openings at 

 the level of the ground shaped like buried oUas. They likewise have 

 in a few instances lateral entrances, and are generally accompanied 

 by small areas showing evidences of fire and much charcoal. They 

 occur among the pine trees; and as tar and evidences of turpentine 

 occur on their inner surfaces, they may be places where tar or other 

 products of the pine were obtained for ships or canoes. They are 

 widely distributed in the Isle of Pines, a few being situated only a 

 short distance from Xueva Gerona, the capital of the island. 



It seems probable that these cacimbas ascribed to the Indians of 

 the Isle of Pines may have been constructed by the aborigines under 

 direction of their Spanish masters. Nothing of distinctly Indian 

 culture was found in these subterranean depressions or near them, 

 a fact that may have a bearing on the relative time when they were 

 constructed. 



In the neighborhood of Nueva Gerona there are numerous caves 

 called " cuevas de Ids Indios." in the floor of which skeletons and frag- 

 ments of the same, including a mutilated cranium, were found, but 

 no accompanying artificial objects. These bones are of Indian 

 origin, but whether the}' date back to prehistoric times or not it is, 

 of course, impossible to saj. It was a custom, not only in Cuba 

 but also in all the West Indies, to bury the dead in caves, but ante- 

 cedent to that custom we have good authority for the belief that 

 caves were inhabited. Whether, therefore, the bones exhumed from 

 the Cue\a de los Indios, near Nueva Gerona, indicated this original 

 cave population of the western extremity of Cuba, or burials in the 

 historic epoch, no one can now tell. No pottery or mortuary objects 

 of any kind which might have shed light on this question were 

 found with the human remains. 



JAMAICA 



The antiquities of Jamaica are well known from the researches 

 of Duerden,^^ and many specimens from this island in the Heye 

 collection, collected bj^ Theodoor de Booy, have been described by 

 him in a paper in the American Anthropologist.-^ leaving it un- 

 necessary for me to consider that island in detail. 



== Aboriginal Indi.Tii Rem.iins in .lamaica. .Toiirn. .Tamaica Inst., vol. ii, pt. 4. 

 =2 Certain Kitchen-middens in .Tamaica. Amer. Antlirop., n. s., vol. xv. pp. 42.1—434. 

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