Pre-Colombian Jamaica: Caribbean Archeology and Ethnohistory

Aboriginal Indian Remains in Jamaica by J. E. Duerden / 225
they had any domesticated bird it was the turkey and the Muysca duck. They
trapped the Coney— the Capromys; and the only quadruped they possessed in
a state of domestication was their little household pet, the small dog they called
the Alco (Dn. Ferdinand Columbus, Hist. Dis. Am. Pt. II., lib. II., ch. 1).
Their cottages were built of stockade posts set vertically side by side in a
trench, and bound with a horizontal lattice of slight rods. This primitive style
of building still prevails in some of our country cottages. . . . The Indians of
these Islands, like their cognate tribe the Arawaks of the coast, depended on
the sea for food.
Though the Marl Hill village was situated on a stream plentiful in fish at all
seasons, their messes, if we may judge from the exceeding prevalence of seashells,
were very considerably dependent on the ocean. The traditional fishfeasts,
so frequently indulged in by the older colonists, were the associate festivities
called Barbacoes by the Indians, when the entire villagery went out on
marine and river excursions. In Don Ferdinand Columbus’s History of the Discovery
voyages of his father, he mentions that some high raised islets on the
coast of Cuba under which the discovery vessels anchored had been places visited
by the Indians in these seasonal barbacoes. It appeared, he says, that the
people were in use to go over in great numbers in their canoes to these islands,
and to a great number of other uninhabited islets in these seas to live upon fish,
which they catch in great abundance, and upon birds, crabs, and other things,
which they find on the land. The Indians, he adds, follow this employment of
fishing and bird catching according to the seasons, sometimes in one island,
sometimes in another, as a person changes his diet, when weary of living on
one kind of food.”
Vere, Clarendon.
In the year 1880, Mr. De la Haye discovered on the lands at Harmony Hall,
District of Vere, Clarendon, while making holes for the planting of canes, a
number of calcedony beads, a perforated spindle- shaped stone, and numerous
pieces of ornamental pottery. Along with these was also found an image which
Mr. De la Haye describes as “only the breast with wings to the sides, and the
body and face of a man.” Unfortunately this most important object was broken,
and nothing more is known of it.
The Hon. W. Fawcett visited the place later, and found additional objects
similar to those previously obtained. These are now located within the Museum.
The entry in the Museum book referring to the presentation of the perforated
stone is as follows: “An oval- shaped stone, probably a line- sinker, presented
by A. De la Haye, Esq., found by him in Clarendon, on the site of what
he believes to be a deserted village. At the same place Mr. De la Haye found