224 0. F. Cook — History of the Coconut Palm, hi America. 



De Candolle believed, but was already widely distributed along 

 the A.tlantic side of the American tropics. Early records show 

 its presence in Cuba, Porto Rico, Brazil, and Colombia at dates 

 so early as to preclude the idea of introduction by the Spaniards. 



The statement of Pickering, frequently cpioted in works of 

 reference, to the effect that coconuts were reported by Columbus 

 on the coast of Central America during his fourth voyage, 

 proves to be erroneous. On the other hand, there appears to 

 be a definite reference to the coconut in Cuba in the journal 

 of the first voyage of Columbus. 



De Candolle's inference from Acosta's report of coconuts in 

 Porto Rico at the end of the sixteenth century, that they had 

 recently been introduced by the Spaniards, proves to have no 

 warrant in history and is directly opposed by the more extended 

 reference to the coconut in Porto Rico by the Duke of Cum- 

 berland's chaplain, who visited the island only a few years after 

 Acosta. 



De Candolle's use of the testimony of Piso and Marcgrave 

 to support the idea of the introduction of the coconut into 

 Brazil by Europeans is also unwarranted, since those writers 

 only indicated that the plant was cultivated. An earlier and 

 more explicit record, unknown to De Candolle, gives an 

 account of the coconut as one of the native products of Brazil. 



The journal of Cieza de Leon, who accompanied the first 

 Spanish expedition to the interior of Colombia, indicates the 

 presence of the coconut palm in localities where it still con- 

 tinues to exist, as shown by the accounts of Velasco, Humboldt, 

 and more recent travelers, down to the present decade. 



Ethnological Conclusions. 



The American origin of the coconut palm and the strict 

 limitation of its status in maritime tropics to that of a culti- 

 vated plant are facts of ethnological significance. The wide 

 distribution of the coconut in prehistoric times is evidence of 

 the antiquity of agriculture in America and of very early 

 communication across the Pacific. 



The American origin of the coconut palm, along with its 

 inability to maintain itself on tropical seacoasts without human 

 assistance, compels us to believe that its trans-Pacific distribu- 

 tion was the work of primitive man. The dependency of the 

 Pacific islanders upon the coconut may be taken to show that 

 these islands could not have been occupied without the pre- 

 vious domestication and dissemination of the coconut. 



In view of the fact that several other palms of unquestioned 

 American origin have been domesticated by aborigines of the 

 American tropics, no ethnological objection can be raised to 



