PREHISTORIC INDIANS.

Taihape Daily Times, 20 February 1919, Page 3

PREHISTORIC INDIANS.

RELICS IN VIRGIN ISLANDS.

The absorption of the Danish West Indies by the United States has resulted in an expedition to collect pre-Columbian specimens as might be found upon the islands and to gather data which would throw light upon their aboriginal £*opulatson. Mir. Theodoor de Booy has produced an interesting treatise on the results.

He states that, on the smaller of the Wet India. Islands, the village sitcjs are located &n (proximity to sheltered bays and inlets where the aborigines found a sloping beach, for the hauling,-up of their canoes, and the surrounding waters assured them of an unfailing supply of fish and shellfood. The actual location of the Magen's Bay village-site on the Bt. Thoma,s, one of the Virgin Islands was a difficult matter, as the shores of the bay were covered with dense bush. An examination of the cavity left by the roots of a large "turpentine tree" whieh had been overturned by the destructive hurricane of October 9, 1916, brought many shells and several large potsherds to light. It was then realised that the entire Magen's Bay valley had been covered by a two feet deep deposit, of diluvium since the days of the aborigines. After the and trees had been cleared, .a mound ten feet high was discovered. This ,'was excavated and the soil carefully searched. AVhile the majority of the artifats found in the two layers directly under the alluvial deposit were the fragments of broken vessels, entire vessels were occasionally met with. Frequently, in fact in the majority of cases, these vessels accompanied burials, and in consequence had been buried entire, probably filled with foodtuffs which were to serve the departed for his journey to the Great Beyond. But sometimes a vessel would turn up in the Magen's Bay deposits which was unaccompanied by a burial, and consequently must been either discarded by its Indian owner owing to a flaw in the ware, or else have accidentally been buried under a mound of shells.

It was in the original surface of sea sand come five feet below the surfoce of their mound that the Indians seem to have deposited their dead. The practice of burials in the floors of the dwellings was not uncommon on many of the West India islands,as has been proved by the researches of

other investigators. Of the nine burials that wore found on the Magen 's JB'ay site, seven wero of adults and two of children. >Six of the burials wore accompanied by mortuary vessels, but no other objects were found with the dead. The vessels were of the plainest construction, without decoration, and were a great contrast to the elaborately decorated vessels that are found on the islands to the vpostward, Porto Rico and Santo "Domingo. That the tribe inhabiting St. Thomas either made piratical raids on its neighbours to the west, or else held commerce with them is proved, beyond a doubt, by some dozen typical Arawak specimens I that were found in the kitchen-mid- j dens. These specimens differed in ' both art and technique from the I thousands of other specimens found. I