Daniel G. Brinton

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hospitable, peace-loving, quick to accept the humbler arts of civilization and the simpler precepts of Christianity, they have ever offered a strong contrast to their neighbors, the cruel and warlike Caribs. They are not at all prone to steal, lie, or drink, and their worst faults are an addiction to blood-revenge, and a superstitious veneration for their priests. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 [15] 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;” ”

“ The termination of the masculine is i, of the neuter u, and, as I have already observed, a permutation of the semi-vowels l and r takes place, the letter becoming l in the masculine, r in the neuter. A slight difference in many words is noticeable when pronounced by women or by men. The former would say keretin, to marry; the latter kerejun. The gender also appears by more than one of these changes: ipillin, great, strong, masculine; ipirrun, feminine and neuter.
There is no article, either definite or indefinite, and no declension of nouns. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Jerome, Ramon Pane by name, a Catalan by birth, a worthy but credulous and ignorant [17] 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 other words, singular nouns used with plural pronouns, or construed with several other nouns, take a plural form. Petrus Johannes mutti ujúnatu, the mother of Peter and John.
Genders. A peculiarity, which the Arawack shares with the Iroquois3 and other aboriginal languages of the Western continent, is that it only has two genders, and these not the masculine and feminine, as in French, but the masculine and neuter. Man or nothing was the motto of these barbarians. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The passive voice is formed by the medium of a verb of permission, thus:
The personal pronouns are united to the verbs as they are to the nouns. They precede all verbs except those whose infinitives terminate in ên, in, and ân, to which they are suffixed as a rule, but not always. When they follow the verb, the forms of the pronouns are either de, bu, i he, n she, it, u, hu, je or da, ba, la, ta, wa, ha, na. The latter are used chiefly where the negative prefix m, ma or maya is employed. ”

“ I take pleasure in bringing forward this opinion of the great naturalist, not only because it is not expressed so clearly in any of his published writings, but because his authority on this question is of the greatest weight, and because it supports the view which I have elsewhere advanced of the migrations of the Arawack and Carib tribes.9 These “hardly recognizable remains of the Tupi tongue,” we shall see belonged also to the ancient Arawack at an epoch when it was less divergent than it now is from its primitive form. ”

“ 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. ”

“ NOUNS.
Like most Indians, the Arawack rarely uses a noun in the abstract. An object in his mind is always connected with some person or thing, and this connection is signified by an affix, a suffix, or some change in the original form of the word. ”

“ This tradition is in a measure proved correct by the narrative of Sir Walter Raleigh, who found them living there in 1595,10 and by the Belgian explorers who in 1598 collected a short vocabulary of their tongue. This oldest monument of the language has sufficient interest to deserve copying and comparing with the modern dialect. It is as follows:
The syllables wa our, and da my, prefixed to the parts of the human body, will readily be recognized. ”

“ Martyr, (Decad. p. 25) . The latter truncated form of the word was adopted by Rafinesque and others, as a general name for the people and language of Hayti. There is not the slightest authority for this, nor for supposing, with Von Martius, that the first syllable is a pronominal prefix. The derivation is undoubtedly Ar. nüddan to look well, to stand firm, to do anything well or skilfully.
Nucay or nozay, gold, used especially in Cuba and on the Bahamas. The words caona and tuob were in vogue in Haiti (Navarrete, Viages, Tom. 1, pp. 45, 134) . ”

“ Semi, the divinities worshipped by the natives (“Lo mismo que nosotros llamamos Diablo,” Oviedo, Hist. Gen. lib. v. cap. 1. Not evil spirits only, but all spirits) . Ar. semeti sorcerers, diviners, priests.
Siba, a stone. Ar. siba, a stone.
Starei, shining, glowing (relucens, Pet. Martyr, Decad. p. 304) . Ar. terén to be hot, glowing, terehü heat.
Tabaco, the pipe used in smoking the cohoba. This word has been applied in all European languages to the plant nicotiana tabacum itself.
Taita, father (Richardo) . Ar. itta father, daitta or datti my father. ”

“ While in general features there is nothing to distinguish them from the red race elsewhere, they have strong national traits. Physically they are rather undersized, averaging not over five feet four inches in height, but strong-limbed, agile, and symmetrical. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ III, cap. 27, criticizes him severely.
14 Columbus says of the Bahamas and Cuba: “toda la lengua es una y todos amigos” (Navarrete, Viages, Tomo I, p. 46.) The natives of Guanahani conversed with those of Haiti “porque todos tenian una lengua,” (ibid, p. 86.) In the Bay of Samana a different dialect but the same language was found (p. 135) .
15 Gomara says the language of Cuba is “algo diversa,” from that of Espanola. (Hist. de las Indias, cap. 41.) Oviedo says that though the natives of the two islands differ in many words, yet they readily understand each other. ”

“ While these South American affinities are obvious, no relationship whatever, either verbal or syntactical, exists between the Arawack and the Maya of Yucatan, or the Chahta-Mvskoki of Florida and the northern shore of the Gulf of Mexico. ”

“ As his works are still in manuscript, I give his words. “Tres lenguas habia en esta ysla distintas que la una a la otra no se entendia. La una era de la gente que llamabamos Macorix de abajo y la otra de los vecinos del Macorix de arriba. La otra lengua fue la universal de toda la tierra, y esta era mas elegante y mas copiosa de vocablos, y mas dulce al sonido. En esto la de Xaragua en todo llevaba ventaja, y era mui mas prima.” (Historia Apologetica, cap. 197) . ”

“ 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. ”