The Prehistoric Puerto Rican: A 1902 Historical Account

Introduction

I spend a great deal of time reading historical books, magazines, newspapers, and articles about Puerto Rico—the ancestral home of my family for hundreds of years and possibly much longer.

Genealogical research involves much more than collecting names and locating supporting documents. Whenever possible, I try to put a face to an ancestor by asking relatives for photographs. When no photograph survives, I allow historical documents and accounts written during that person’s lifetime to help create a picture of how they may have lived.

I want to understand how my ancestors lived: what they ate, how they prepared their meals, how they dressed, how they worked, and what their social lives may have been like. Reading historical accounts about Puerto Rico and its people allows me to feel closer to them. To understand our ancestors, we must also understand the world in which they lived. History and genealogy go hand in hand.

The following two-part article appeared in The Puerto Rican Herald in August 1902. It reports on an address titled “Prehistoric Puerto Rico,” delivered by American anthropologist and archaeologist J. Walter Fewkes before the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The article examines the Indigenous inhabitants of Puerto Rico, their customs, ceremonies, material culture, and migrations through the Caribbean.

Editorial Note

The original article is reproduced below without rewriting or modernizing its language. It was published more than 120 years ago and reflects the terminology, assumptions, racial classifications, and scholarly interpretations of that period. Some of its conclusions have subsequently been challenged or revised by archaeological, historical, and genetic research.

Its inclusion here is intended to preserve and examine a historical account—not to endorse every description or conclusion expressed by its author.

Part I : Prehistoric Puerto Rico

His Habits and Customs.—How the Greater and Lesser Antilles Were Peopled.—Interesting Ceremonies.—The Caribs and Their Migrations

The address of J. Walter Fewkes on “Prehistoric Puerto Rico” before the Pittsburgh meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, is reported in full in Science. Mr. Fewkes drew his facts in regard to the Antillean race in the new possession of the United States from many works on the subject, and from original research in the island, and declares that all the available evidence supports the conclusion that the purest Indian blood among the present mountaineers of the island must be looked for in the inaccessible region called Loquillo. In the isolated valleys of that region are still found the old Carib canoe, surviving in the hollowed-out log of wood by which produce is drawn down the slippery mountainsides. There also are the old forms of hammocks, different from those now generally used. Maize is a staple article of food, and the primitive mills with which it is ground, date back to a remote past.

The prehistoric inhabitants of the Antilles from the Bahamas to the coast of South America belonged to one and the same composite stock differing in minor characteristics which are not racial. The people of the Bahamas, Cuba Hayti, and Puerto Rico were a mild-mannered agricultural race which had lost in vigor what they had gained by their sedentary life.

The Caribs, confined to the Lesser Antilles, were more warlike, and their ferocity was known everywhere in the West Indies. The later, although confined to the Lesser Antilles, made frequent predatory expeditions upon the more peaceful inhabitants of Cuba, Hayti, and Puerto Rico—especially the latter— carrying away the women as slaves, thus bringing into the Carib communities a new speech, and bringing about an amalgamation of the two stocks. There are, unfortunately, no authentic craniums of typical prehistoric Puerto Ricans to compare with those of the Caribs, but it is believed that a systematic search of the caves of the island would produce such skulls.

The prehistoric Puerto Ricans did not differ materially from those of the country people to-day. Stone or adobe buildings were not constructed, but a fragile cabin, the frame of which was tied together with maguey fibre and covered with bark of the royal palm or yucca, and thatched with straw, furnished a home for the prehistoric Puerto Rican. These houses, like their modern representatives, were raised on posts to avoid dampness and insects, suggesting pile-dwellings, a feature of house-construction with which the Caribs were familiar. In many of the streets of Puerto Rico are still found houses built in the same primitive way, inhabited by poorer people, negroes, or peons. Some of these modern buildings are of the rudest construction and practically the same as those of four centuries ago.

The furniture of the house of the ancient Puerto Rican was limited but ample. The bed was a hammock made of the leaves of the palm, maguey, or fibre of native cotton. In the mountainous regions, primitive hammocks, like those of the ancients, are still made, and the palm fibre is wholly employed in their construction. Calabashes or cocoanuts served for household implements as drinking-cups, and in the poorer parts of the island are still used for the same purpose. Clay vessels of rude construction were used by the Puerto Rican Caribs, who lived along the shore. These clay vessels were unglazed, their rims commonly adorned with raised heads representing animals of grotesque forms. Many of these heads have a likeness to monkeys, and, as there are no monkeys in Puerto Rico, they are generally ascribed to the Caribs rather than the Puerto Ricans.

The most characteristic of all objects made by the Caribs were the canoes, with which they navigated from island to island, or travelled along the numerous rivers and lagoons. These craft often reached a great size, and were in some instances made of logs of wood hollowed out with stone tools, aided by fire. The number of stone-implements in collections from Puerto Rico is very large, including objects of all sizes and many shapes. The arms of warfare were mostly adzes and hatchets with wooden handles, war-clubs made of the iron wood of the island; spears, and possibly throwing- sticks. No arrow-points have been found. Most of the implements are of polished stone, although two have been found which show marks of clipping. The culture of the prehistoric inhabitants of the island as shown by their pictography was of the same general character as the North American Indian. In the caves on the island there are still many excellent specimens of the picture-writing, the figures studied appearing to be clan totem and other symbols.

The social organization appears to have been the same as that of the Indians of other parts of North America. The unit of organization was the clan, of which the chief was called a cacique. It also appears that some of these caciques had control over others, and that unions of several smaller caciques for mutual defence occurred at rare intervals. The names of many of these caciques are still preserved on the island, and it would appear as if localities, mountains, rivers, and modern towns were called after powerful rulers who had raised themselves to the positions of governors of some regions. Aguenaba is commonly reputed to have been ruler of the island, but it is doubtful if he was able to maintain his position at all times.

The worship of ancestors was a feature of the Carib religion. From the existence of many skulls in their houses it had been supposed that these people were anthropophagous, but it is probable that many of these skulls, carefully wrapped in basket-ware or woven-cotton coverings, were the crania of their own ancestors—preserved with pious care and used in the rites and ceremonies of ancestor worship. Their ceremonial dances had religious motives in which the praise of the ancestors was only one, although an important part. In these dances songs commemorating valor or worth of the dead were sung on ceremonial occasions. In these dances the priests personated their ancestors as do the Pueblos, but with far different paraphernalia. One of the most important ceremonies of the prehistoric Antillean was the dance to the Goddess of Growth in which the image of the Earth Mother played an important part.

In conclusion, Mr. Fewkes says: “From this imperfect sketch, and much more of a like import, certain general conclusions have been drawn which have a relation to the early migrations of man on the American continent.

Part II: Prehistoric Puerto Rico [continuation from last Issue]

His Habits and Customs.—How the Greater and Lesser Antilles Were Peopled.—interesting Ceremonies.—The Caribs and Their Migrations.

“The peopling of the Antilles is believed to have occurred at a comparatively modern date, and to have been brought about by offshoots of the Arawak stock, migrating in old times from South America to Heriquen, via the chain of islands forming the Lesser Antilles. The peculiar culture of this race attained its highest development in Hayti and Puerto Rico, where conditions were most favorable to its growth. Cuba and the Bahamas had likewise been peopled by the same race, but in neither of these islands was the culture the same as in the islands mentioned.

The Lesser Antilles, exposed to inroads from savage South American tribes of the same stock as those of Puerto Rico, were unable from physical and agricultural conditions, to preserve the sedentary culture of the more central islands. They were practically the starting-place of the foraging parties which constantly attacked Boriquen.

“The cradle of the prehistoric Antilleau was on the banks of the Orinoco and its tributaries in the great republic of Venezuela. His ancestors belonged to the Arawak stock of South America. His culture, having naturally developed certain distinctive features in fluviatile waters, among great forests, became maritime, and spread from island to island until it came to Boriquen.

There a part of the race became sedentary, but with the adoption of this kind of life lost much of its early prowess and daring, retaining only certain linguistic and other kinship with South American relatives. In the same way the Caribs another race-related in some respects but distinct in others, swarmed out of the same Orinoco valley, coasted from island to island in the wake of its predecessor, and extended its excursions to Florida and our South eru States.

This race also yielded to the insular environment and, commingling its blood with that of the former, developed to composite culture which we have called Antillean. These two peoples, and others of like kin, at first tribally distinct, though members of the same stock by admixture and changed by environment, were fast coming to be homogeneous and thoroughly amalgamated when the advent of the European practically exterminated the Boriquenos and reduced the insular Carib to a wretched remnant of one of the finest races of America.”

Sources

• The Puerto Rican Herald, Año II, Núm 56, NY, August 2, 1902, pg. 37
• The Puerto Rican Herald, Año II, Núm 57, NY, August 9, 1902, pg.54