102 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVr. No, 394. 



exercised the healing art and consulted 

 idols for oracular purposes. The idea of 

 a future life was found to be universal 

 among- the inhabitants of the island. In 

 a work ascribed to the Admiral's son, Fer- 

 nando, the author sets forth more in detail 

 the general character of this religion which 

 his father found in the Antilles, and con- 

 temporary writers have supplemented it 

 with an account of the exoteric character of 

 the cultus of the natives of Cuba, Hayti and 

 Porto Rico. 



It is but natural that some of these 

 writers, and those of the two centuries fol- 

 lowing that in which America was dis- 

 covered, should have formed erroneous 

 impressions of the natixre of this, cultus. 

 Recognizing a well-developed idolatry, they 

 sought and found in it, to their satisfac- 

 tion, a god of good and one of evil, or two 

 supreme deities, analogues of the Christian 

 God and Devil. There could be no more 

 erroneous and misleading explanation of 

 the meaning of zemeism than this, and the 

 error is apparent when we review subse- 

 quent historical interpretations in the light 

 of modern ethnology. The misinterpreta- 

 tion threw discredit on all that had been 

 written, most of which was strictly accurate 

 so far as statement of facts was concerned, 

 for while the Antilleans may not have had 

 the ethical gods imputed to them by early 

 writers, we need not deny them the pos- 

 session of a religious sentiment, or agree 

 with the conclusions of a prominent Porto 

 Rican ethnologist that everything points to 

 the belief that the Boriquen Indians were 

 wholly destitute of religious ideas. There 

 are to my mind many and conclusive arch- 

 eological proofs which practically support 

 what Columbus, Oviedo, Herrera and others 

 state regarding the religion of the Antil- 

 lean, although I am unable to accept the in- 

 terpretation of its nature advanced by 

 them. 



In order to determine the nature of the 

 Porto Rican aboriginal cultus, let us ex- 

 amine the writings of those who saw or 

 knew of it first hand and have recorded 

 their observations, and the available arch- 

 eological matei'ial, a great amount of which 

 has come down to our time in the shape of 

 idols and religious paraphernalia. 



It will be evident to any one who reads 

 the early accounts of these images that the 

 same names are applied indiscriminately 

 to the idol and the spirit or magic power 

 it represents, indicating that one person- 

 ates or symbolizes the other. 



Pray Roman Pane says that the Haytian 

 caciques had certain stones called zemis 

 which they religiously preserve; that each 

 of these has a peculiar virtue; thus one 

 can make grain sprout, another aids women 

 to be delivered without pain, and the third 

 is efficacious in bringing rain. 



I shall later be able to give you some 

 idea of the shape of some of these zemis 

 from available archeological material, but 

 it is sufficient at this point to note that 

 magic powers were ascribed to certain 

 stones. Stone zemis are the most numerous 

 in all collections from the Antilles. But 

 this was not the only material out of which 

 these zemis were formed, for according to 

 Oviedo and other writers various accounts 

 have come down to us recording the forms 

 of these images. They are said to represent 

 various bizarre animals, frogs, turtles, 

 snakes, lizards and birds. They had many 

 specific names, and according to Fernando 

 Columbus each clan chief had his own 

 tutellary zemi with a characteristic name, 

 and Gomarra in 1553 adds that they were 

 named water, corn, safety and victory. 

 Several Spanish writers state that both sun 

 and moon were regarded as zemis by the 

 people of Hayti, and according to Charle- 

 voix these luminaries were supposed to have 

 originated from a cave near Cape Francois 



