Pre-Colombian Jamaica: Caribbean Archeology and Ethnohistory

224 / Appendix D.
The surface of the ground exhibits numerous weathered marine shells, such
as those of Strombus, Pyrula, and Arca, mingled, in a black earth, with fragments
of pottery.
A cursory examination of the spot indicates a facies much like that of Norbrook
or the Long Mountain.
Caymanas.
These refuse- heaps were known to the late Hon. Richard Hill, one of Jamaica’s
early naturalists. They were further brought to notice by Mr. H. Vendryes.
From Hill’s manuscript notes for a series of lectures upon the Indians of the
West Indies, now in the possession of Mr. L. Hutchings, the following is extracted
in reference to these deposits in particular, and also to the general habits
of the Indians and the construction of their villages: “We have already adverted
to the circumstances under which those that inhabited the West Indian
Islands wasted, and waned, and perished out, leaving scarcely any vestige of
how they had lived, or where they had lived, beyond the heaps of shells and broken
pottery where their villages had stood. Let us describe the remains of an Indian
village, accessible to anyone curious in these researches, and not far away
from Kingston. At the Marl Hill, descending into the plain of Caymanas, the
highway cuts through the remains of an Indian village. Broken pottery with a
quantity of shells of both land and marine molluscs embedded in ashes reveal
this vestige of the ancient people of the island. In looking into these heaps—
minutely examining the materials that strew the hill slope to discover bones of
vertebrates— I found portions of human skeletons, portions of two skulls and
parts of arm bones and a shoulder blade. The Indians removed their dead from
their dwellings, and buried them, or deposited them in caverns at some distance
away. In these remote places their remains are still to be found with specimens
of their [15] pottery. The human vestiges at the Marl Hill, with traces of their
ancient dwelling places, their food, and their hearth fires, would imply that the
village had been destroyed by violence and that these are bones of persons who
had died in conflict.
Indian villages were always erected on hillsides in the neighbourhood of
streams of water. In past times the Rio Cobre swept at the foot of this hill, and
wound at the base of the mountains, through the lagoon, and descended to the
sea, by the Fresh River. The storm of 1722 divided the Cobre from its channel,
and opened for it a more direct course into the harbour.
We may picture what this Indian village was at the time of the discovery.
The plain round which the river swept was a series of fields and gardens, producing
their staff food, the yam, the maize, and manioc, beans, cucumbers, and
melons— with such fruits as the Cainite or Star- apple. They wound cotton for
cordage, or twined into yarn, which they wove into vestments for women. If