< Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu
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ABORIGINES OF THE WEST INDIES.

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to point to the fact that there were other Indians living in some of the islands besides Arrowauks and Caribs. We know that from time to time Indian traders from the mainland visited the islands, and some of them may have remained and settled in them. On his fourth voyage Columbus met some of these trading canoes, and Peter Martyr gives a detailed account of the event from a letter written by Columbus himself.

Leaving the islands of Cuba and Jamaica on his right hand toward the north, he [Columbus] writeth that he chanced upon an island more southward than Jamaica, which the inhabitants call Guamassa, so flourishing and fruitful that it might seem an earthly paradise. Coasting along by the shores of this island, he met two of the canoes or boats of those provinces, which were drawn of two naked slaves against the stream. In these boats were carried a ruler of the island, with his wife and children, all naked. The slaves, seeing our men aland, made signs to them to stand out of the way, and threatened them if they would not give place. Their simpleness is such that they neither feared the multitude or power of our men, or the greatness and strangeness of our ships. They thought that our men would have honored their master with like reverence as they did. Our men had intelligence at the length that this ruler was a great merchant, which came to the mart from other coasts of the island, for they exercise buying and selling by exchange with their confines. He had also with him good store of such ware as they stand in need of, or take pleasure in: as laton bells, razors, knives, and hatchets, made of a certain sharp yellow stone, with handles of a strong kind of wood; also many other necessary instruments, with kitchen stuff, and vessels for all necessary uses; likewise sheets of gossampine cotton, wrought of sundry colors. Our men took him prisoner, with all his family, but Columbus commanded him to be loosed shortly after, and the greatest part of his goods to be restored to win his friendship.

The Arrowauks were ignorant of the working of metals, so the mention of "laton bells" as part of the stock in trade of this roving trader points to his having come from the mainland, where the Zuñis, Aztecs, Mayas, and Peruvians were all workers of bronze, or laton, though they had not progressed so far as the use of iron.

That the Caribs were later comers in the Antilles than the Arrowauks seems likely from the fact that they had only established themselves in the smaller islands, and made thence raids on the inhabitants of the larger ones; for it is highly improbable that, had so fierce and domineering a people had time to increase and multiply, they would have left their weaker neighbors in possession of all the larger islands, though it is possible they regarded the latter as stock farms whence to draw supplies for their larders. Some authors even assert that the arrival of Caribs in the islands could only have shortly preceded the Columban discovery. The Spaniards were astonished to observe that the Carib women spoke a different lan-

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