INHABITANTS OF CUBA. 367 



same race, they must have had frequent relations with them. The Mayas them- 

 selves, who claim to have sprung from the sea, regarded the islanders as kinsmen, 

 and Orozco y Berra has suggested that the Mayas may have passed from Florida 

 through the Bahamas and Cuba to Yucatan. 



But in any case the Mayas greatly resembled the Cibuneyes of Cuba as described 

 by the historians of the conquest. Both were stoutly built, with broad face and 

 chest, brown complexion and artificially-depressed forehead ; both were also of 

 equally peaceful disposition and ardent lovers of freedom. Nevertheless, the 

 Cibuneyes were vastly inferior to the Mayas in general culture. Nowhere in 

 Cuba have monuments been found comparable to those of Palenque, Uxmal or 

 Chichen-Itza. A few cairns, graves, and rude carvings on the rocks are all the 

 remains that can be attributed to the primitive inhabitants. Amongst these 

 carvings noteworthy are the crude representations of manatees in every respect 

 resembling those found in the mounds of Ohio, and strongly suggesting a common 

 origin. 



The dwellings, which varied with the different tribes and the rank of the 

 owners, were usually the so-called barahacs, vast structures of branches, foliage 

 and reeds large enough to shelter hundreds of persons. They had also broad- 

 beamed craft, in which they ventured far seawards. They tilled the land and 

 were skilful fishers, and were even said to have acquired the art of capturing 

 turtles by means of the pegador fish (cc//encis naucrafcs). 



In three years, 1512-15, the interior of the island had been explored, and in 

 many districts the aborigines had already disappeared. They offered no resis- 

 tance, but simply perished. The cacique Hatuei alone, who had reached the 

 eastern part of the island fi'om Haiti, attempted to fight. It was he that, even 

 under torture, refused to be baptised in order to avoid entering the same heaven as 

 the " good " Spaniards. 



In 1521 the Cuban Indians had already been reduced by two-tliirds ; some 

 yielded to their sufferings, others hastened their end by swallowing earth and 

 gravel, or eating the bitter manioc before being deprived of its poisonous sap. 

 According to an official report scarcely 4,000 natives had survived till 1532, so 

 that in twenty-one years nearly the whole I'ace had completely disappeared ; yet the 

 names of the various tribes and the territories occupied by them have all been care- 

 fully preserved. In 1554, 60 families of aborigines still wandering over the western 

 part of the island were confined in a sort of lazaretto at Guanabacoa, near Havana, 

 but a few fragments of tribes still survived in the uplands of the eastern districts. 



Even so late as the year 1847 Rodriguez-Ferrer visited a family of full-blood 

 Indians which occupied a valley of the Sierra Maestra near Tiguabo, and which 

 comprised over a hundred members with children, grandchildren, and great-grand- 

 children. Several other families in the same district are supposed to be of Indian 

 origin, though the racial characteristics have been modified by alliances with 

 blacks and whites. Miscegenation has been even more general than is usually 

 supposed. Nearly all the women were taken by the Spaniards, and their offspring- 

 were regarded as belonging to the dominant race. 



