Pre-Colombian Jamaica: Caribbean Archeology and Ethnohistory

272 / Appendix D.
cipal amulet is of carbonate of lime in bladed crystallization. It represents a
maboya (evil spirit) with bended arms and legs, and the virile organ in a state
of action. The shoulders are pierced posteriorly to allow of suspension of the
amulet.”
Owing to the broken imperfect state of the lower portions of the Long
Mountain specimens, and considering the conditions under which they were
discovered, washed out of the earth associated with a refuse- heap, there can be
little doubt in regarding them as amulets discarded by the aborigines, because
broken. The Long Mountain, even at different levels, was evidently a thickly
populated locality in pre- Columbian times, and further examination may yield
additional important results.
These two objects, so far as the Museum collections show, are the only ones
belonging to this group of aboriginal relics hitherto found [45] in Jamaica;
though, as quoted above, somewhat similar examples are known from other
parts of the West Indies. They were probably worn or carried about the person
and intended to act as charms or preservatives against evil or mischief. That the
Indians were accustomed to wearing such objects for this purpose is recorded
by various writers. Peter Martyr (Dec. 1, lib. ix., pps. 50–54) gives a long account
of the worship and superstition of the inhabitants of Hispaniola (Hayti),
which we may assume to be very much the same as those of Jamaica. The following
extracts (italics added) relate to their images: “they make certain images
of Gossampine cotton. . . . These images they make sitting muche like unto the
pictures of spirits and devilles which our painters are accustomed to paint upon
walles. . . . These images the inhabitauntes call Zemes, whereof the leaste, made
to the likenesse of young devilles, they binde to their foreheads when they goe to
the warres against their enemies. . . . Of these, they believe to obtaine raine, if
raine bee lacking, likewise faire weather; for they thinke that these Zemes are
the mediators and messengers of the great God. . . . divers of the inhabitantes
honour Zemes of divers fashions; some make them of wood; other. . . . make
them of stone and marble. Some thay make of rootes. . . . They say also, that
in the kinges village there are sometime children borne having two crownes,
which they suppose to be the children of Corochotum the Zemes.”
CHAPTER VI
ORNAMENTS
Close investigation of the cave earth at Richmond Hill has yielded to Lady
Blake, Mr. Rumsey, and the writer, a collection of thirty- two small examples of
the shell of Oliva reticularis, Lamk. (Figure XIV). They are all artificially per-