3 canocum. Ar. _kannikún_, many, a large number, _kannikukade_, he has
many things.
4 yamoncobre, evidently formed from yamosa, as Ar. _bibiti_, four, from
_biama_, two.
The other numerals Las Casas had unfortunately forgotten, but he says
they counted by hands and feet, just as the Arawacks do to this day.
Various compound words and phrases are found in different writers, some
of which are readily explained from the Arawack. Thus _tureigua hobin_,
which Peter Martyr translates "rex resplendens uti orichalcum,"[23] in
Arawack means "shining like something red." Oviedo says that at
marriages in Cuba it was customary for the bride to bestow her favors on
every man present of equal rank with her husband before the latter's
turn came. When all had thus enjoyed her, she ran through the crowd of
guests shouting _manícato, manícato_, "lauding herself, meaning that she
was strong, and brave, and equal to much."[24] This is evidently the Ar.
_manikade_, from _mân_, _manin_, and means I am unhurt, I am
unconquered. When the natives of Haiti were angry, says Las Casas,[25]
they would not strike each other, but apply such harmless epithets as
_buticaco_, you are blue-eyed (anda para zarco de los ojos),
_xeyticaco_, you are black-eyed (anda para negro de los ojos), or
_mahite_, you have lost a tooth, as the case might be. The termination
_aco_ in the first two of these expressions is clearly the Ar. _acou_,
or _akusi_, eyes, and the last mentioned is not unlike the Ar.
_márikata_, you have no teeth (_ma_ negative, _ari_ tooth). The same
writer gives for "I do not know," the word _ita_, in Ar. _daitta_.[26]
Some of the words and phrases I have been unable to identify in the
Arawack. They are _duiheyniquen_, dives fluvius, _maguacochíos_ vestiti
homines, both in Peter Martyr, and the following conversation, which he
says took place between one of the Haitian chieftians[TN-11] and his
wife.
She. Teítoca teítoca. Técheta cynáto guamechyna. Guaibbá.
He. Cynáto machabuca guamechyna.
These words he translated: _teitoca_ be quiet, _técheta_ much, _cynato_
angry, _guamechyna_ the Lord, _guaibba_ go, _machabuca_ what is it to
me. But they are either very incorrectly spelled, or are not Arawack.
The proper names of localities in Cuba, Hayti and the Bahamas, furnish
additional evidence that their original inhabitants were Arawacks.
Hayti, I have already shown has now the same meaning in Arawack which
Peter Martyr ascribed to it at the discovery. Cubanacan, a province in
the interior of Cuba, is compounded of _kuba_ and _annakan_, in the
center;[27] Baracoa, the name of province on the coast, is from Ar.
_bara_ sea, _koan_ to be there, "the sea is there;" in Barajagua the
_bara_ again appears; Guaymaya is Ar. _waya_ clay, _mara_ there is none;
Marien is from Ar. _maran_ to be small or poor; Guaniguanico, a province
on the narrow western extremity of the island, with the sea on either
side, is probably Ar. _wuini wuini koa_, water, water is there. The
names of tribes such as Siboneyes, Guantaneyes, owe their termination to
the island Arawack, _eyeri_ men, in the modern dialect _hiaeru_,
captives, slaves. The Siboneyes are said by Las Casas, to have been the
original inhabitants of Cuba.[28] The name is evidently from Ar. _siba_,
rock, _eyeri_ men, "men of the rocks." The rocky shores of Cuba gave
them this appellation. On the other hand the natives of the islets of
the Bahamas were called _lukku kairi_, abbreviated to _lukkairi_, and
_lucayos_, from _lukku_, man, _kairi_ an island, "men of the islands;"
and the archipelago itself was called by the first explorers "las islas
de los Lucayos," "isole delle Lucaí."[29] The province in the western
angle of Haiti was styled Guacaiarima, which Peter Martyr translates
"insulae podex;" dropping the article, _caiarima_ is sufficiently like
the Ar. _kairuina_, which signifies _podex_, Sp. _culata_, and is used
geographically in the same manner as the latter word.
The word Maya frequently found in the names of places in Cuba and Haiti,
as Mayaba, Mayanabo, Mayajigua, Cajimaya, Jaimayabon, is doubtless the
Ar. negative _ma_, _mân_, _mara_. Some writers have thought it
indicative of the extension of the Maya language of Yucatan over the
Antilles. Prichard, Squier, Waitz, Brasseur de Bourbourg, Bastian and
other ethnologists have felt no hesitation in assigning a large portion
of Cuba and Haiti to the Mayas. It is true the first explorers heard in
Cuba and Jamaica, vague rumors of the Yucatecan peninsula, and found wax
and other products brought from there.[30] This shows that there was
some communication between the two races, but all authorities agree that
there was but one language over the whole of Cuba. The expressions which
would lead to a different opinion are found in Peter Martyr. He relates
that in one place on the southern shore of Cuba, the interpreter whom
Columbus had with him, a native of San Salvador, was at fault. But the
account of the occurrence given by Las Casas, indicates that the native
with whom the interpreter tried to converse simply refused to talk at
all.[31] Again, in Martyr's account of Grijalva's voyage to Yucatan in
1517, he relates that this captain took with him a native to serve as an
interpreter; and to explain how this could be, he adds that this
interpreter was one of the Cuban natives "quorum idioma, si non idem,
consanguineum tamen," to that of Yucatan. This is a mere fabrication, as
the chaplain of Grijalva on this expedition states explicitly in the
narrative of it which he wrote, that the interpreter was a native of
Yucatan, who had been captured a year before.[32]
Not only is there a very great dissimilarity in sound, words, and
structure, between the Arawack and Maya, but the nations were also far
asunder in culture. The Mayas were the most civilized on the continent,
while the Arawacks possessed little besides the most primitive arts, and
precisely that tribe which lived on the extremity of Cuba nearest
Yucatan, the Guanataneyes, were the most barbarous on the island.[33]
The natives of the greater Antilles and Bahamas differed little in
culture. They cultivated maize, manioc, yams, potatoes, corn, and
cotton. The latter they wove into what scanty apparel they required.
Their arms were bows with reed arrows, pointed with fish teeth or
stones, stone axes, spears, and a war club armed with sharp stones
called a _macana_. They were a simple hearted, peaceful, contented race,
"all of one language and all friends," says Columbus; "not given to
wandering, naked, and satisfied with little," says Peter Martyr; "a
people very poor in all things," says Las Casas.
Yet they had some arts. Statues and masks in wood and stone were found,
some of them in the opinion of Bishop Las Casas, "very skilfully
carved." They hammered the native gold into ornaments, and their rude
sculptures on the face of the rocks are still visible in parts of Cuba
and Haiti. Their boats were formed of single trunks of trees often of
large size, and they managed them adroitly; their houses were of reeds
covered with palm leaves, and usually accommodated a large number of
families; and in their holy places, they set up rows of large stones
like the ancient cromlechs, one of which is still preserved in Hayti,
and is known as _la cercada de los Indios_.
Physically they were undersized, less muscular than the Spaniards, light
in color, with thick hair and scanty beards. Their foreheads were
naturally low and retreating, and they artificially flattened the skull
by pressure on the forehead or the occiput.[34]
Three social grades seem to have prevailed, the common herd, the petty
chiefs who ruled villages, and the independent chiefs who governed
provinces. Of the latter there were in Cuba twenty-nine; in Haiti five,
as near as can be now ascertained.[35] Some of those in Cuba had shortly
before the arrival of the Spaniards moved there from Haiti, and at the
conquest one of the principal chiefs of Haiti was a native of the
Lucayos.[36]
The fate of these Indians is something terrible to contemplate. At the
discovery there were probably 150,000 on Cuba, Haiti, and the
Bahamas.[37] Those on the latter were carried as slaves to Haiti to work
in the mines, and all of the Lucayos exterminated in three or four years
(1508-1512).[38] The sufferings of the Haitians have been told in a
graphic manner by Las Casas in an oft-quoted work.[39] His statements
have frequently been condemned as grossly exaggerated, but the official
documents of the early history of Cuba prove but too conclusively that
the worthy missionary reports correctly what terrible cruelties the
Spaniards committed. Cuba was conquered in 1514, and was then quite
densely populated. Fourteen years afterwards we find the Governor,
Gonzalo de Guzman, complaining that while troops of hunters were
formerly traversing the island constantly, asking no other pay than the
right of keeping as slaves the natives whom they captured, he now has to
pay patrolmen, as the Indians are so scarce.[40] The next year (1529)
the treasurer, Lope de Hurtado, writes that the Indians are in such
despair that they are hanging themselves twenty and thirty at a
time.[41] In 1530 the king is petitioned to relinquish his royalty on
the produce of the mines, because nearly all the Indians on the island
are dead.[42] And in 1532 the licentiate, Vadillo, estimates the total
number of Indians on the island, including the large percentage brought
from the mainland by the slavers, at only 4,500.[43]
As a specimen of what the treatment of the Indians was, we have an
accusation in 1522 against Vasco Porcallo, afterwards one of the
companions of Hernando de Soto. He captured several Indians, cut off
their genitals, and forced them to eat them, cramming them down their
throats when they could not swallow. When asked for his defence,
Porcallo replied that he did it to prevent his own Indians from
committing suicide, as he had already lost two-thirds of his slaves in
that way. The defence was apparently deemed valid, for he was
released![44]
The myths and traditions of the Haitians have fortunately been
preserved, though not in so perfect a form as might be wished. When
Bartholomew Columbus left Rome for the Indies, he took with him a lay
brother of the order of the Hermits of St. Jerome, Ramon Pane by name, a
Catalan by birth, a worthy but credulous and ignorant man.[45] On
reaching Haiti brother Pane was first sent among the natives of the
small province called Macorix de abajo, which had a language peculiar to
itself, but he was subsequently transferred to the province of Guarinoex
on the southeastern part of the island where the _lengua universal_
prevailed. He remained there two years, and at the request of Columbus
collected and wrote down the legends and beliefs of the natives.
He is not a model authority. In the first place, being a Catalan he did
not write Spanish correctly; he was very imperfectly acquainted with the
native tongue; he wrote hastily, and had not enough paper to write in
full; he is not sure that he commences their legends at the right end.
Moreover his manuscript is lost, and the only means we have of knowing
anything about it is by a very incorrectly printed Italian version,
printed in 1571, and two early synopses, one in Latin in the Decades of
Peter Martyr, the other in Italian, by Messer Zuane de Strozi of
Ferrara, which has been quite recently published for the first time.[46]
By comparing these we can arrive at the meaning of Brother Pane with
considerable accuracy.
His work contains fragments of two distinct cycles of legends, the one
describing the history of the gods, the other the history of the human
race.
Earliest of creatures was the woman, Atabéira or Ataves, who also bore
the other names Mamóna, Guacarapíta, Iiélla, and Guimazóa. Her son was
the supreme ruler of all things, and chiefest of divinities. His names
were Yocaúna, Guamaónocon, and Yocahu-vaguaniao-vocoti. He had a brother
called Guaca, and a son Iaiael. The latter rebelled against his father,
and was exiled for four mouths and then killed. The legend goes on to
relate that his bones were placed in a calabash and hung up in his
father's house. Here they changed into fishes, and the calabash filled
with water. One day four brothers passed that way, who had all been born
at one time, and whose mother, Itaba tahuana, had died in bringing them
into the world. Seeing the calabash filled with fish the oldest of the
four, Caracaracol, the Scabby, lifted it down, and all commenced to eat.
While thus occupied, Yocaúna suddenly made his appearance, which so
terrified the brothers that they dropped the gourd and broke it into
pieces. From it ran all the waters of the world, and formed the oceans,
lakes, and rivers as they now are.
At this time there were men but no women, and the men did not dare to
venture into the sunlight. Once, as they were out in the rain, they
perceived four creatures, swift as eagles and slippery as eels. The men
called to their aid Caracaracol and his brothers, who caught these
creatures and transformed them into women. In time, these became the
mothers of mankind.
The earliest natives of Haiti came under the leadership of the hero-god,
Vaguoniona, a name applied by Las Casas to Yocahu, from an island to the
south called in the legend Matininó, which all the authors identify, I
know not why, with Martinique. They landed first on the banks of the
river Bahoboni in the western part of Haiti, and there erected the first
house, called Camotéia. This was ever after preserved and regarded with
respectful veneration.
Such, in brief, were their national myths. Conspicuously marked in them
we note the sacred number four, the four brothers typifying the cardinal
points, whose mother, the Dawn, dies in giving them birth, just as in
the Algonkin myths. These brothers aid the men in their struggles for
life, and bring to them the four women, the rain-bringing winds. Here,
too, the first of existences is the woman, whose son is at once highest
of divinities and the guide and instructor of their nation. These
peculiarities I have elsewhere shown to be general throughout the
religions of America.[47]
The myth of the thunder storm also appears among them in its triplicate
nature so common to the American mind. God of the storm was Guabancex,
whose statue was made of stones. When angry he sent before him as
messenger, Guatauva, to gather the winds, and accompanied by
Coatrischie, who collected the rain-clouds in the valleys of the
mountains, he swept down upon the plain, surrounded by the awful
paraphernalia of the thunder storm.[48]
Let us place side by side with these ancient myths the national legend
of the Arawacks.[49] They tell of a supreme spiritual being Yauwahu or
Yauhahu. Pain and sickness are the invisible shafts he shoots at men,
_yauhahu simaira_ the arrows of Yauhahu, and he it is whom the priests
invoke in their incantations. Once upon a time, men lived without any
means to propitiate this unseen divinity; they knew not how to ward off
his anger or conciliate him. At that time the Arawacks did not live in
Guiana, but in an island to the north. One day a man named Arawanili
walked by the waters grieving over the ignorance and suffering of his
nation. Suddenly the spirit of the waters, the woman Orehu, rose from
the waves and addressed him. She taught him the mysteries of _semeci_,
the sorcery which pleases and controls Yauhahu, and presented him with
the _maraka_, the holy calabash containing white pebbles which they
rattle during their exorcisms, and the sound of which summons the beings
of the unseen world. Arawanili faithfully instructed his people in all
that Orehu had said, and thus rescued them from their wretchedness. When
after a life of wisdom and good deeds the hour of his departure came, he
"did not die, but went up."
Orehu accompanied the Arawacks when they moved to the main, and still
dwells in a treeless, desolate spot, on the banks of the Pomeroon. The
negroes of the colony have learned of her, and call her in their broken
English, the "watra-mamma," the water-mother.
The proper names which occur in these myths, date back to the earliest
existence of the Arawacks as an independent tribe, and are not readily
analyzed by the language as it now exists. The Haitian Yocauna seems
indeed identical with the modern Yauhahu. Atabes or Atabéira is probably
from _itabo_, lake, lagoon, and _era_, water, (the latter only in
composition, as _hurruru_, mountain, _era_, water, mountain-water, a
spring, a source), and in some of her actions corresponds with Orehu.
Caracaracol is translated by Brother Pane, as "the Scabby" or the one
having ulcers, and in this respect the myth presents a curious analogy
with many others in America. In modern Arawack _karrikala_ is a form, in
the third person singular, from _karrin_, to be sick, to be pregnant.
Arawanili, which one might be tempted to suppose gave the name Arawack
to the tribe, did not all writers derive this differently, may be a form
of _awawa_, father. In the old language, the termination _el_, is said
to have meant son.
Of the two remaining languages said to have been spoken in the small
provinces of Macorix de arriba and Macorix de abajo, in Hayti, we have
no certain knowledge.[50] Las Casas gives one word from the former. It
is _bazca_, no, not. I cannot identify it. There is reason, however, to
suppose one of them was the Tupi or "lengua geral," of Brazil. Pane
gives at least two words which are pure Tupi, and not Arawack. They are
the names of two hideous idols supposed to be inimical to men. The one
was Bugi, in Tupi, _ugly_, the other Aiba, in Tupi, _bad_. It is
noteworthy, also, that Pigafetta, who accompanied Magellan on his voyage
around the world, gives a number of words, ostensibly in the language of
the natives of Rio Janeiro, where the Tupi was spoken, which are
identical with those of Haiti, as _cacich_, chief, _boi_, house,
_hamac_, bed, _canoe_, boat. But Pigafetta acknowledges that he obtained
these words not from the natives themselves, but from the pilot Juan
Carvalhos, who had been for years sailing over the West Indian seas, and
had no doubt learned these words in the Antilles.[51]
The remaining idiom may be supposed to have been Carib, although we have
actually no evidence that the Caribs had gained a permanent foothold on
any of the Great Antilles at the period of the discovery, some careless
assertions of the old authors to the contrary, notwithstanding.
The investigation which I here close, shows that man in his migrations
on the Western Continent followed the lead of organic nature around him.
For it is well known that the flora and fauna of the Antilles are South
American in character, and also, that the geological structure of the
archipelago connects it with the southern mainland. So also its earliest
known human inhabitants were descended from an ancestry whose homes were
in the far south, and who by slow degrees moved from river to river,
island to island, until they came within a few miles of the northern
continent.