d them from the bites of mosquitoes and other insects. The
dandies among them added to this airy apparel a few bright feathers in
their hair, a shell or two in their ears and nostrils. And the
caciques wore a disk of gold (guarim) the size of a large medal round
their necks to denote their rank.

The huts were built square or oblong, raised somewhat above the
ground, with only one opening for entrance and exit, cane being the
principal building material. The chief piece of furniture was the
"hamaca," made with creepers or strips of bark of the "emajagua" tree.
The "totumo" or "jigueera" furnished them with their domestic
utensils, as it furnishes the "jibaro" of to-day with his cups and
jugs and basins. Their mode of making fire was the universal one
practised by savages. Their arms were the usual macana and bow and
arrows, but they did not poison the arrows as did the Caribs. The
largest of their canoes, or "piraguas," could contain from 40 to 50
men, and served for purposes of war, but the majority of their canoes
were of small size used in navigating the coast and rivers.

There being no mammals in the island, they knew not the use of flesh
for food, but they had abundance of fish, and they ate besides
whatever creeping or crawling thing they happened to find. These with
the yucca from which they made their casabe or bread, maize, yams, and
other edible roots, constituted their food supply.

There were in Boriquen, as there are among all primitive races,
certain individuals, the embryos of future church functionaries, who
were medicine-man, priest, prophet, and general director of the moral
and intellectual affairs of the benighted masses, but that is all we
know of them.[60]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 60: For further information on this subject, see Estudios
Ethnologicos sobre los indios Boriquenos, by A. Stahl, 1888. Revista
Puertoriquena, Ano II, tomo II.]

CHAPTER XXIX

THE "JIBARO," OR PUERTO RICAN PEASANT

"There is in this island a class of inhabitants, not the least
numerous by any means, who dwell in swamps and marshes, live on
vegetables, and drink muddy water." So wrote Dr. Richard Rey[61] a
couple of decades ago, and, although, under the changed political and
social conditions, these people, as a class, will soon disappear, they
are quite numerous still, and being the product of the peculiar social
and political conditions of a past era deserve to be known.

To this considerable part of