INTRODUCTION I! 



The ( laribs occupy the greater part of the north coast 

 of ( Guatemala ami Honduras, running east from the port 

 of Livingston on the Gulf of Amatique. These people, 



originally of South America and Later of the Wot [ndies 

 as well, were deported by the English from the Island 

 of St. Vincent in L796. They have now established 

 themselves in the new land where they raise the manioc 

 or cassava root and press out the poisonous juice 1 in a 

 basketry tube as do their kindred in the Orinoco Val- 

 ley. Long before the forcible immigration it is likely 

 that the Caribs, who were cannibalistic in habit, had 

 raided the shores of Central America in their seagoing 

 canoes. A significant passage in the chronicles of the 

 Mayas states that naked man-eating savages visited 

 Yucatan long before the coming of the Spaniards. 



The Mosquito Indians of the east coast of Nicaragua 

 and Honduras have a very considerable negro admix- 

 ture. They are fishermen of low culture. Farther in- 

 land are found the Sumo who flatten the heads of their 

 children and who hold strange feasts in honor of the 

 dead in which the dancers are masked so that none may 

 be recognized. A string is stretched over the tree tops 

 from the grave to the feasting place and over this string 

 the ghost of the dead person is supposed to walk. When 

 everyone has fallen in a drunken stupor from mi si, hi 

 the ghost of the dead man departs for the land of the 

 dead. These Sumo Indian- build large houses with open 

 -ides and are very skilful at fishing with bow and 

 arrow and steering their canoe- through white rapids. 

 They practise polygamous marriage^, weave cotton, 

 and make interesting beadwork ornaments. 



In the narrow Isthmian region there are tribe- of 

 Indian- that resist manfully the inroads of civilization. 

 Perhaps the best known of the8e are the San Bla- 

 Indian- who inhabit the mountain fastnesses easl of 



