Chapter XV: Section 4: West Indies

The valuable paper of A. L. Pinart (_a_), giving a description of the petroglyphs found by him in the Greater and Lesser Antilles, is received too late for reproduction of the illustrations. He explored a number of the groups of the West Indies with varying success, but found that the island of Puerto Rico was the one which now furnishes the greatest amount of evidence of development in the pictographic art. His marks translated with condensation appear below.

PUERTO RICO.

The first petroglyph to be mentioned is found at la Cueva del
Islote, on Punta Braba, about 5 leagues east from Arecibo and on the
north side of the island of Puerto Rico. The grotto is found in an
immense blackish mass of igneous rock, forming a point projecting
into the sea, which beats furiously against it; it communicates with
the sea at the foot, and the water entering this passage, which
is quite narrow, produces a terrific roaring followed soon after
by veritable thunder claps. The people of the neighborhood have
a superstitious fear of it, and it is only with great difficulty
that anyone can be found to accompany one there. The entrance on
the land side is toward the east--a yawning crevasse, filled partly
with rubbish and partly by the stunted vegetation of the coast.
On penetrating to the interior we find, after following a short
but wide passage, a pyriform chamber 20 meters in diameter. In the
ceiling a very narrow crack admits a ray of light which, reflected
in the water of the sea, filling the bottom of the cave, produces a
bluish twilight. Notwithstanding this twilight, we are obliged to
carry torches to distinguish objects. All around us, but especially
over the point where the sea enters in, are to be seen the
inscriptions represented here. The incisions are very deep, and the
edges are generally dulled by the blows of the hammer; in certain
spots, toward the lower part of the grotto, several inscriptions are
partially effaced by the action of the sea, but those of the upper
part are in a remarkable state of preservation. Beneath certain
principal figures of the groups are little circular basin-like
depressions cut in the rock with a trench running down toward the
bottom.

I will not attempt here to give a formal explanation of these
inscriptions, but may we not regard the spot in which they are found
as having served for a rendezvous for the ancient Borrinqueños
where they performed their sacrifices or the ceremonies of their
religion? On the other hand, the appearance of these inscriptions
is very peculiar. One of them might be considered a representation
of those little figurines and statuettes of stone found in Mexico,
in Mixteca, and in the country to the south. In another a head
is curiously decorated with a diadem of feathers, and apparently
represents one presiding at a feast served in the small circular
basin set before him. The most noticeable thing in this group of
inscriptions is the frequency of the grinning faces in a circle,
often alone, often accompanied by two others placed at the sides,
which are universally met with in every inscription found in the
Greater and Lesser Antilles. The same may be said of the human
figure apparently swaddled in cloths like a very young infant, the
head and body more or less decorated, which is also very frequently
found.

Following these petroglyphs of Islote, we present a list of
others discovered at Puerto Rico, hastily describing them and giving
a particular description only of those which are of the greatest
interest.

In the above-mentioned grotto of Cueva de los Archillas, near
the village of Ciales, we observed the curious figures bearing
traces of a crown and peculiar ear ornaments. In la Cueva de los
Conejos, some distance from Arecibo, on the road from Utauado, we
found a figure partly incised and partly painted in a dark red; it
is very artistically fashioned, and represents the famous “guava,”
the monster spider of the Greater Antilles, of which the natives
have a great dread. It is probable that the ancient Borrinqueños
also considered it with a certain awe, and we find images of the
same animal in la Cueva del Templo on the coast of Haiti, at Santo
Domingo. A solitary rock of a reddish color, in a field of the
hacienda of Don Pedro Pavez at la Carolina, a short distance from
the Rio Pedras, bears a series of grimacing faces in circles. On a
granitic rock of large dimensions, superimposed on a heap of rocks
of the same character, in the midst of a grove of Indian trees
and at the entrance of the Cano del Indio into Rio la Ceiba, near
Fajardo, on the east side, are found three swaddled human figures,
the heads decorated with various ornaments. On a black rock in
the Rio Arriba, one of the branches of the Rio de la Ceiba, is a
petroglyph which presents but little that is of interest.

On the Loma Muñoz, near the Rio Arriba above mentioned, and
on the summit of the hill, stands a dark rock with smooth face
protected by another mass of rock, forming a sort of shelter on
which is an inscription composed of a number of incised grinning
faces. At the confluence of the Rio Blanco and the Rio de la Ceiba,
in the district of Fajardo, is a series of violent rapids formed
by immense rocks of a granitic character, on which are cut a large
number of other grimacing faces and also some swaddled figures, and
other incisions which are not of interest.

BAHAMA ISLANDS.

Lady Edith Blake, wife of Sir Henry Arthur Blake, formerly governor of the Bahama islands, has kindly furnished the following information and sketches (Figs. 100, 101, and 102), relating to petroglyphs in the Bahama islands. Lady Blake says:

The carvings are on the walls of an “Indian hole,” also called
Hartford cave, in the northern shore of a small island in Rum Cay,
one of the Bahama group. Rum Cay measures 5 miles from north to
south and about 8 or 9 from east to west. It lies 20 miles northwest
of Watlings island, the San Salvador of Columbus.

The cave is situated on the seashore about a mile and a half
from the western point of the island to the eastward of a bluff,
close to which is a “puffing hole,” through which the waves blow
when the seas roll in from the north. The cave is semicircular in
shape and about 20 yards in depth, and is partially filled with
debris of rocks, earth, and sand.

Like all rocks of which the Bahamas are formed, those in
Hartford cave are a mixture of coral, detritus, and shell, very
rough and full of cracks and indentations, and in this cave, from
the constant damp of filtration and spray, the walls were coated
with a deposit of lime and salt, so that it would be impossible
to say if the carvings had been colored. If ever they had been,
any traces of coloring must long have disappeared. Besides the
markings copied there were others scattered over the walls of the
cave, most of which were circles apparently resembling human faces.
Unfortunately, we neglected to measure the carvings, but I should
judge the circles or faces to be 10 inches or more across, while
others of the figures must have been a foot and a half in length,
and the markings must have been nearly half an inch in depth, cut
into the face of the rock, and seemed to us such as might have been
made with a sharp stone implement. Although we visited numerous
caves in the various islands of the Bahamas, in no other did we find
any appearance of markings or carvings on the walls, nor could we
hear of any reported to have such markings.

The absence of any traces of carvings in other caves whose
situation was better adapted for the preservation of markings,
had such ever existed, and the proof that their contents afforded
that most of those caves had been known to the Lucayans and used
by them as burying places or otherwise, and the close proximity of
Hartford cave to the sea, taken in connection with the great number
of markings on its walls, led me to think that possibly this cave
had been the resort of the marauding tribes whom the Lucayans gave
Columbus to understand were their enemies, and who were in the habit
of making war upon them; and if so, the Caribs, or whatever tribe
it may have been, had left these rock markings as mementos of their
various expeditions and guides to succeeding ones.

The above-mentioned petroglyphs bear a remarkable similarity to those in British Guiana figured and described below, and the authorship would seem to relate to the same group of natives, the Caribs.

GUADELOUPE.

In the Guesde collection of antiquities, described in the Smithsonian report for 1884, p. 834, Fig. 208, here reproduced as Fig. 103, is an inscribed slab found in Guadeloupe. It weighs several tons and it is impossible to remove it. In the vicinity are to be seen many other rocks bearing inscriptions, but this is the most elaborate of the group.

The inscriptions may be compared with those from Guiana presented in this work.

ARUBA.

Pinart (_b_) gives the following account, translated and condensed:

The island of Aruba forms one of the group of the islands of
Curaçao, on the north coast of Venezuela. This group consists
of three principal islands, Curaçao, Buen Ayre, Aruba, and some
isolated rocks. It belongs to Holland.

Aruba is the most western island of the group and is situated
opposite the peninsula of Paraguana, on the mainland. The distance
between the two is about 10 leagues, and from the island the shores
of the continent can be seen very distinctly.

These islands, at the time of the discovery by the Spaniards,
were inhabited by an Indian race which has left numerous traces
of its occupancy; pottery, stone objects, petroglyphs, etc., are
met with in large numbers in Aruba and in a less quantity on Buen
Ayre and Curaçao. * * * These petroglyphs are quite different in
character from those which I have recently described in a brief
study of the Greater and Lesser Antilles, and their appearance
brings to mind those found in Orinoco, in Venezuela, in the
peninsula of Paraguana, on the border of the Magdalena river,
and as far as Chiriqui. They differ from these, however, in
several respects, and especially in that they are almost always
multi-colored. The colors usually employed are red, blue, a
yellowish white, and black. They are, moreover, painted and not cut
in the rock. They show the same degree of variance as I have already
noticed in North America--in Sonora, Arizona, and Chihuahua--between
the petroglyphs which I have designated as Pimos, which are always
incised, and those in the mountains which I designated as Comanche,
and which are always painted and in many colors. The petroglyphs
are, as has already been said, very numerous on the island of Aruba.
I have personal knowledge of thirty, but, according to my friend
Père van Kolwsjk, there must be more than fifty. The most important
groups are as follows:

(1) _Avikok._ An enormous dark rock forms the summit of a wooded
knob, and in this rock are two large cavities, one above the other,
on the walls of which are the petroglyphs represented.

(2) _Fontein._ On the border of a fresh-water lagoon, a short
distance from the northeast part of the island, near the sea, is a
grotto of coralline origin, whose walls are of remarkable whiteness.
This grotto is composed of a principal passage, quite wide, cut off
toward the lower end by a row of stalactites and stalagmites, which,
joining together, form a curious grimacing figure. On the wall to
the left, as we look toward the bottom of the grotto, are found some
petroglyphs. They are well preserved, thanks to their situation and
the shelter from inclement weather, and they show no indication of
painting, being distinctly traced on the walls.

(3) _Chiribana._ On some granitic spurs of a hill of the same
name are found curious petroglyphs.

(4) At Lero de Wajukan, near Avikok, and at the foot of a hill,
petroglyphs are found on some blocks of granite. I notice specially
the human figure which in the original is outlined in red and bears
on the shoulder a hatchet of the Carib type with a haft.

(5) At Ayo I discovered petroglyphs with figures in blue and red.

(6) At Woeboeri inscriptions are found on the wall of an immense
mass of granite.

(7) Some petroglyphs on the walls of a grotto at Karasito.