102 SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 



ered in the middens of the southwestern section of the valley is strik- 

 ing evidence of cultural infection. Painted pottery in the West Indies 

 is unknown west of the Virgin Islands, with the exception of red 

 painted ceramic wares in the vicinity of Ponce, Puerto Rico, and 

 white kaolin slipware from northern Santo Domingo in the vicinity 

 of Monte Cristi. 



After an intensive archeological investigation of the Magens Bay 

 site, the writer undertook a survey of the island of St. Croix. In this 

 project he received the active direction and cooperation of Harry 

 Taylor, Administrator of the island, an enthusiastic student of arche- 

 ology, who hopes to develop for the Insular Government a museum 

 featuring the prehistory and natural history of the Virgin Islands. 



The largest Indian village ruins on St. Croix are located on the 

 west side of an inlet and lagoon which indents the north shore of the 

 island at its approximate center. Here at the mouth of Salt River, 

 really a streamlet, but always providing an abundance of fresh water, 

 was the tribal seat. Excavations were undertaken at this major site, 

 also at other middens notably at Fair Plain, midway on the south 

 coast, at Prosperity, diagonally opposite the Salt River site on the 

 west end of the island, and finally at Ackles on the southwest coast 

 near the west-end Saltpond on the Camporico estate. Excavations 

 made at each of these sites afforded new data on the daily life of the 

 prehistoric Indian inhabitants of St. Croix and served to verify tenta- 

 tive conclusions based on the finds at Magens Bay, St. Thomas. Out- 

 standing at each site was the overwhelming evidence of cannibalism. 

 Complete human skulls and skeletal remains in quantity were mingled 

 with turtle, bird, and fish bones in the deep ash beds surrounding the 

 primitive hearths. 



The German historian Oldendorp is authority for the statement 

 that the Virgin Island Indians were exterminated about 1550 at the 

 order of Carlos V of Spain. Perhaps Carlos V was in the right in 

 ordering Indians addicted to such practices to be treated as enemies 

 and to be exterminated, but we can only wish he had delayed the 

 execution of this order until an anthropologist could have studied them 

 as a living group. Cannibals sometimes are lovable people, and it is 

 conjectured that such a study might have shown the anthropologist 

 that these primitive St. Crucian cannibals were, as a part of their 

 defense mechanism, exercising a culture trait borrowed from their 

 enemies — the Caribs. 



