Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1903-06-06
SURVIVAL OF PREHISTORIC ARCHITECTURE.

the terrible cyclone which swept the island
a few years ago this idol was overturned
and covered with debris.
These ball courts were dance places,
according to DR.. Fewkes. They were the
chapels, so to speak. to the cemeteries adj
joining. Upon their raised stone platforms
mortuary dances were held These rites
were held after the burial, and during the
dancing songs concentrating the dead
were chanted One or more of the stones in
the wall surrounding the court near
Utuado had rude pictures carved upon
them, and in the adjacent burial mound
was uncovered a stone mask-shaped disk,
representing human face. Apparently
these stone faces were attached to slaves
and set up over the mound at the time of
burial The prehistoric Porto Ricans were
ancestor worshipers and these stones evil
IDENTIFY represented the dead, believed by
their descendants to have become gods.
The idea that ball games were played
upon these courts originated. DR.. Fewkes
says. from the finding in or near them of
spherical stones. varying from four inches
to several feet in diameter. But these stone
balls were evidently water-worn river
boulders carried to these places for some
purpose. possibly for use in the worship of
water. The Mokf and Zuni people of our
southwest, in their crude philosophy of
cause and effect, believe that ceremonial
use of anything wo.- by water is potent in
causing rain. The archaeologist does not
believe these stone balls were used in
games, for the reason that the aboriginal
Porto Ricans were described by the early
Spanish explorers as having played ball
with spheres made of vegetable resin.
Moreover, many of the stone balls are too
large to have been handled. Oviedo the
first Spanish chronicler of Porto Rico de-
scribed these games with resin balls, and
stated that the chiefs or caciques sat upon
stone chairs while witnessing them.
Nauseated Themselves.
Sticks were thrust down the outlets of
these strange people prior to their dance
ceremonies. This operation they performed
upon themselves to excite nausea. Violent
and complete neausea had to be effected
by each participant in a ceremonial dance
before he could come into the presence of
the stone gods or ''zemis." By violent vom-
iting the worshipers could cleanse their
hearts and the custom is compared by
DR.. Fewkes to one which always obtains
in the Moki villages after the rattlesnake
dances. The Moki dancer ends the snake
ceremony by drinking a powerful emetic
which he believes to thoroughly purify him.
But the prehistoric Porto Rican thus puri-
fled his heart before rather than after a
sacred ceremony, as suggested. The sticks
with which the aboriginal Porto Ricans
produced their neauSea were sometimes
deliberately carved. They were curved to
fit the outlets of their users. DR.. Fewkes
saw five of them, made of black wood two
feet long and bearing a carved figure upon
the handle. A shorter ivory instrument
with the exquisitely carved figure of a
kneeling man upon the handle was 'broue hit
back with him and inasmuch as it has the
same form as the others which he saw he
believes 1t to have served the same pur-
pose.
The dance courts studied by the archaeol-
ogist were probably built before the dis
covery of America by Columbus. At the
time of the advent of the Spaniards the
neighboring regions were inhabited by
people whose chief, Guarionex took part In
a battle, not far from the present city of
Ponce, which was waged against Ponce
de Leon. GuarioneX commanded thousand
or more of warriors. In that battle Agu-
bana II, head chief of all the Porto Ric-
ans of that part of the island was killed
and the whole power of his armies crushed
1t is said that Agubana was killed by a
shot from Ponce de Icons own weapon.
When First Seen by Whites.
Columbus had landed at the northwest
ern corner of the island bringing his ships
into the harbor still called Aquadillo. Dur
ing his stay he captured beautiful Porto
Rican maiden, whom he called Catalina.
But Catalina was not particularly fasci-
mated with her white lords. She jumped
from the caravel into the sea and swan
two miles to outlying island. She was
never heard of more. Columbus sailed
away. and Porto Rico was not again visited
by white men until 1868. when Ponce de
Leon, then governor of Santo Domingo was
attracted there by reports of the islands
natural wealth. He told the natives that
he and his soldiers were immortal and they
generally believed him until two of them
a triie skeptical, held a Spanish soldiers
head under water and proved to their sat
isfaction that the wonderful whites could
die. BY deceits and crueltes the Span
iards eXterminated most of the natives,
and reduced the remnants to slavery. Blood
hounds were imported to hunt the poor
natives down.
Suffocated Their Sick.
The ancient people whose skeletons Dr.
Fewkes has exhumed had probably died in
peace before these Spanish massacres. But
it is related by the ancient chroniclers that
their sick were never allowed to die nat
ural deaths. When their last struggles
commenced they were FASTENED to the other
world by attendants who suffocated them |
After death, it is said their bodies were
cut open and dried by fire, both internally
and externally. 1t is also chronicled that
the favorite wives were buried alive with
their husbands that their blissful love
might be Immediately continued in the spirit
world. 1t was the fashion to wear no hair
upon the face or person, and it was care
fully piucked out by the roots wherever evil
dent Just as the priests of ancient Greece
and Rome were the real oracles which spoke
to the ignorant multitude, the priests of the