Whiskers, Claws and Prehensile Tails: Land Mammal Imagery in Saladoid Ceramics

Lawrence Waldron CUNY Graduate Center

Abstract: While early Conquest era accounts mention the importance of certain animal species in the iconography of the Greater Antilles, many other species appearing in Pre-Columbian sculpture and ceramics remain un-deciphered. Chief among these mysterious symbols are the terrestrial mammals. From their numerous appearances, especially on Saladoid and Barrancoid pottery, land mammals are obviously of great importance in the symbolic repertoire of the ancient Antilleans. While most of the myths and folktales linking these animals to the ritual life of the Amerindians are lost, some important clues to the iconographic value of land mammals can be found in the study of their habitat and behaviors, and from their roles in the mythology of related groups living today.

Résumé: Alors que des récits datant de la première période de la conquête espagnole font état de l’importance de certaines espèces animales dans l’iconographie des Grandes Antilles, beaucoup d’autres espèces apparaissant dans des sculptures ou sur des céramiques caribéennes précolombiennes restent encore énigmatiques. De première importance parmi ces symboles mystérieux sont les mammifères terrestres. A en juger par la fréquence de leurs apparitions, particulièrement dans la poterie saladoïde et barrancoïde, les mammifères terrestres prennent de toute évidence une grande place dans le repertoire symbolique des premiers Antillais. Alors que la plupart des mythes et des contes associant ces animaux aux pratiques rituelles des Amérindiens nous font défaut, quelques indices importants de l’intérêt iconographique des mammifères terrestres peuvent être retrouvés grâce à l’étude de leur habitat et de leur comportement mais aussi d’après leur rôle dans la mythologie de peuples proches des Amérindiens encore présents de nos jours.

Resumen: Aunque los primeros narrativos de la época de Conquiste habla de la importancia de ciertos especies de animales en la iconografía de las Antillas “Greater Antilles”, muchos otras especies que figuran en la escultura y cerámica pre-colombinas quedan por descifrar. En esta simbología algunos de los más importantes son los mamíferos terrestres. Por su alta frecuencia sobre todo en la cerámica Saladoide y Barrancoide, queda claro que los mamíferos terrestres eran de gran importancia en la Antigua simbología antillana. La gran mayoría de la mitología y los cuentos folklóricos que conecta a estos animales con la vida ritual de los Amerindios se ha perdido. No obstante, hay indicaciones importantes del valor iconográfico de los mamíferos terrestres que podemos encontrar a través del estudio de los hábitos, comportamiento y del papel que desempeñan dentro de la mitología de las sociedades actuales relacionadas con la Antigua antillana.

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The ancient ceramics of the Caribbean are notable for their modeled adornos and clever figure-ground reversals in white and red slip. Of the artistic conventions in the region’s pottery, it is the modeled tradition that persisted until the Conquest. Much of the sculptural treatments on ancient Antillean ceramics are dedicated to zoomorphic and anthropomorphic figuration. The images range from highly stylized representations (whose speciation is impossible to guess) to depictions of taxonomical accuracy. Conquest-era accounts of Amerindian ritual and myth suggest that some animals had religious significance, including turtles and bats. But many animals depicted on Antillean ceramics receive no mention in these early reports. With the exception of dogs, land mammals are almost completely neglected. But armadillos, opossums, coatis, monkeys, peccaries and even anteaters can be seen clearly on the handles, rims and walls of Saladoid pottery. Few of these species were retained in the later Taíno pottery. The habitats of the actual animals extend from South America to the Windward and sometimes the Leeward Islands, many of them not endemic to the Greater Antilles. Most Amerindian land mammal depictions likewise do not extend beyond the Leewards. Thus land mammal imagery is mostly a Saladoid-Barrancoid phenomenon confined to the Lesser Antilles, with a geographical link between the ceramic and faunal records. These land mammal depictions also display at once a connection to and a separation from South America. Their appearance in the more southerly islands of the Eastern Caribbean1 is a reflection of the zoological connection with South America but the relative deemphasis of iconic South American animals such as the jaguar and increased emphasis on others such as the opossum and armadillo illustrates a growing difference in the iconographic priorities of the Antilles. With the prominence and variety of land mammals in the Saladoid symbolic repertoire, we are in dire need of some means by which we might decipher their meaning. In the dearth of textual evidence from the Conquest era, and in the absence of a living tradition that spans the centuries from the Saladoid, we must resort to far less than satisfactory methods of decipherment: zoology (including animal ethology); ethnozoology; comparative mythology and ethnographic analogy. Any aspect of an animal species is a potential repository of symbolic value. An animal’s iconography may derive from the Amerindians’ observation of and/or interaction with the physical species. Observation and interaction with animals would form the foundation of practical knowledge about that species but would also potentially lend itself to the mythology and/or iconography of the creature. Within a framework derived from empirical observation of the animal and cultural responses to it, there are several aspects of the animal to consider: its appearance e.g. outstanding features and markings, gender, and resemblances to other animals; its habitat and environment; its behaviors, including reproductive and settlement habits, food gathering, changes in behavior from day to night, across seasons and over the course of its life and any perceived associations with natural phenomena; uses to which the animal’s flesh, skin and/or bones are put by people; the name of the animal in the language in question2 and the

1 Trinidad and (often excluded from the Lesser Antilles by natural scientists) are included here as obvious islands that are part of both the Lower Orinoco and Windward Islands interaction spheres. 2 The admittedly problematic assumption here being that the Saladoid were Arawakan speakers but Orinochian and Amazonian peoples of other linguistic groups can also provide useful ‘zoo-linguistic’ analogies.

557 prefixes, suffixes, rhymes, puns and synonyms that might involve the use of this name; and, of course, any mythical mention of the animal that controverts or nuances the above analysis. Comparative studies are of particular importance in reconstructing mythological contexts for Saladoid zoomorphic imagery. A comparative study of zoology/ethnozoology and known myths reveals many connections between the actual lives of animals and their role as symbols and archetypes. But as mentioned earlier, many Caribbean animals have no myths recorded about them. Thus, a comparative study of the surviving Caribbean, Orinochian and Amazonian myths that all mention the same species helps to triangulate the range of symbolic variance between related but divergent mythologies on the same animal. Thus, when we encounter an animal image in one region with no accompanying mythology, we can use the aforementioned regional comparisons to direct but also limit the range of hypothetical motifs we might attribute to the animal depicted. Comparison thusly checks wild speculation. Armadillos As a result of the advanced stylizations, hybridizations and visual puns employed by Saladoid potters in modeling their figural adornos identifying the species of an animal depicted on a Saladoid pot can be difficult. But clear depictions of armadillos were made in Trinidad, Tobago and Grenada, and an armadillo is referenced in a hybrid depiction from (see figures 1, 2 and 3). This armored, burrowing animal makes many appearances in the ceramics and mythology of South America (see figure 4). Among the myths likely to have had analogues in the Caribbean are the myths related to the Underworld, agriculture and the assignment of feminine gender. But certain aspects of armadillo reproduction and the folk belief about armadillo diseases may also have played a part in Saladoid mythology. Their digging holes in the ground causes armadillos to appear: in and Warao myths where heroes temporarily hide in burrows in the manner of chased armadillos (Roth 1915 122, 182); in Cariban Makushi songs where people are buried by the armored creatures (Roth 1915 368); Tacana legends about living in or visiting the Underworld, in a multi-tiered universe in which the underside of the earth harbors otherworldly beings (Lévi-Strauss 1973 339, 343); and in (Kogi) comparisons to the feminine activity of digging fields (Lévi-Strauss 1973 339, 343). But the excavating armadillo has also appeared in a series of myths about the creation of women from Arawak, Gê and other language groups from the Guianas to Argentina. In many versions, dried meat is repeatedly and mysteriously stolen from a camp or settlement, seemingly peopled only by male hunters. With the help of several animals, the hunters finally discover that the thieves are voracious feminine creatures that descend nightly on woven cords from the heavens and devour whatever meat they find. These ‘women’ hunger not only for food! When the men and their (male) animal companions finally confront them, the meat thieves eye their earth-bound captors with keen desire, intending to make “husbands” of them. They even begin fighting over which males will be theirs. This is a frightening prospect for the men as these lusty females have vaginas dentatas (Lévi-Strauss 1983 112-14). The men conspire to capture and subdue these females nevertheless, and with the assistance of the animals, the voracious celestials are cut from their heavenly cords and as they plummet to the ground, they fall directly into burrows made ready by Armadillo. Armadillo claims one female for himself after extracting her from one hole. The animals and men each take a captive and wed them (ibid). But the Lévi-Strauss version of the myth I located, has no mention of how these lusty creatures are ‘de-fanged.’ The answer may lie in a related Hispaniolan myth recorded by Pané. In it beguiling, sexless creatures descend on cords through the tall trees and men who have lived long without women resolve to capture them. The men try

558 to seize the “women” but these celestials slip through their fingers and so they enlist rough- skinned elders (i.e. syphilitics or caracaracoles) to pluck them from their tethers. In order to make proper women of their captors, the salacious men ask a woodpecker to excavate a genital orifice in the featureless groin of each (Pané 1999 11-2). Despite the reversal of the randy dispositions in the main characters, and the omission of certain supporting zooic players, most of the elements of the South American and Antillean myths remain consistent. There is no woodpecker in the mainland myth but there is an armadillo who excavates passages. In fact the mainland myth notes that Armadillo’s frenzied digging injures some of the captured brides as he extracts them from his burrows: some are lacerated; one has an eye blinded (or gouged out) in the bloody affair. The solution to the vagina dentata problem seems obvious then: an endemic woodpecker3 replaced the armadillo in the Greater Antilles where armadillos are not native. Thus armadillos may have referenced the assignment of gender in myth and rites of passage in the Eastern Caribbean Saladoid. Armadillo vessels may have been heirlooms related to womanhood initiations. Scientists have easily grown the leprosy mycobacterium in armadillos and have also found it naturally occurring in some wild specimens. The mycobacterium thrives in the cooler parts (often the extremities) of any host and finds armadillos’ unusually low body temperature particularly hospitable (Lord 2007 12). Leprosy and syphilis have an unusual symptom in common, namely that they cause lesions to break out in the palms of one’s hands (Venes et al 2005 1224), a curious trait of the caracaracoles whose rough hands enable them to grab the asexual celestials in the Hispaniolan myth recounted above. The assignment of gender roles to uncivilized/uninitiated females by sexually mature (indeed sexually afflicted and therefore scaly) males makes the armadillo an important player in these myths, even the myth in which the armadillo does not appear ‘in person.’ Finally, armadillos are the only animals that always give birth to four identical young. Four is a sacred number that recurs in the mythology of the Pre-Columbian Antilles, including: the birth of Deminán, the most famous caracaracol who is one of four (quadruplet) brothers; the number of caracaracoles selected to capture the celestial nymphs; and in the family mythology of the late Pre-Columbian and Conquest era cacique Caonabo (who was reputed to be one of four brothers as part of a regal mythological tradition that legitimized his caciquedom) (Stevens- Arroyo, 93, 106-7; Keegan 2007 51). The culture hero Deminán Caracaracol and his four brothers are the sons of Itiba Cahubaba, “Ancient Bloodied Woman” (Stevens-Arroyo, 93, 106-7). In remote prototime these quadruplets, “from one womb and identical,” were pried from the lifeless, bloodied husk of their mother who died in childbirth (Pané, 13-4). The brothers grew up and embarked on a series of adventures, culminating in Deminán’s dorsal pregnancy. Having developed a painful protuberance on his back (which, for a time would have caused him to resemble both a turtle and an armadillo), Deminán’s brothers eventually pry open his back with a stone axe to discover Turtle Woman (turtles being the other creature with a prominent and distinctive ‘shell’ in Antillean mythology).4 Eventually, the four brothers marry Turtle Woman and their offspring are

3 The species is still called Inriri in today as it was in the Pané version of the myth. 4 The Arawak tendency to cite resemblances in myth and imagery is perhaps borne out by the Saladoid penchant for creating visual puns in the depiction of multiple species at once. A Guyanese Arawak myth likewise makes a series of comparisons between cultural and natural products, including a direct comparison of armadillos to black land crabs because of their “shells.” In this tale a man is sent on a series of fool’s errands by a monstrous forest spirit. When the creature sends him to look for cassava “cakes,” it really means giant mushrooms. By “firewood” it means whole, felled trees. By a “cooking pot” it means a giant, coiled serpent and by some “black land crabs” it means whole armadillos for dinner (Roth 1915 193).

559 the Antilleans. It is possible that Itiba Cahubaba, mother of a scaly-skinned5 hero and his three identical siblings, was likened to an armadillo in more complete versions of the myth Pané reported. If so, we would have a tale of four brothers with a shelled woman at either end, one as their (earthly/armadillo) mother, the other as their (marine/turtle) wife. Opossums As in the case of captured celestial “females,” inversions, substitutions and omissions of elements might have characterized the mythic transitions from mainland South America to the Antilles. If so, similar changes might have taken place with myths of the opossum. Although Sebastián Robiou-Lamarche suggested a symbolic link between frogs and the Pleiades in his 1984 essay “Astronomy in Taíno Mythology” these clusters of frogs, frogs’ eggs and/or tadpoles may have replaced swarms of bees or the opossum6 as symbols of this important star cluster. For the Arawakan and the Tukanoan Barasana of the northwestern Amazon, the “death” and resurrection of the Pleiades herald the beginning and end of the rainy season respectively. A Barasana legend tells of a battle between Opossum and Tinamou Chief7 over a bride, in which Opossum is defeated. As he falls dead from a tall tree, the first rains of the season commence. The Barasana call these first rains the “Pleiades Rains,” declaring that “Opossum has died” (Hugh-Jones 1979 170-1, 300; Bingham 2004 84). As the rains signal the beginning of the agricultural cycle the opossum is a symbol of both. The curled appearance of the Pleiades somewhat resembles the prehensile tail of the (nocturnal) opossum as it sits on or hangs from a branch in the trees through which the constellation is glimpsed as it ‘falls down’ the sky. Of course, the summer disappearance then winter reemergence of the Pleiades reflect the seeming death and reawakening of an opossum, complete with the rotting smell that follows the demise of both (i.e. the moldiness of the damp forest after the rains have begun and the glandsecreted stench of the opossum playing dead). Opossums have other mythical associations with agriculture and the stars. This is a natural association given the tendency of these scavenging animals to turn up near human habitations looking for food, the fruits of horticulture whose schedules are dictated by heavenly bodies. Several myths from the Amazon and Orinochia describe the opossum as having first taught people how to grow food. In an Apinaye version, a young widower falls in love with a beautiful star (perhaps another Pleiades reference) and wishes he could have it as his wife. The star comes to earth in the form of a pretty, tiny woman who teaches him and his family all the secrets of agriculture. One day, while bathing with her mother-in-law, this ‘Star Bride’ turns into an opossum, climbs unto the old woman’s shoulder and points to a great, magical tree from which sprout numberless ears of corn. She climbs up the tree and shakes the cobs off for her adopted people. The people decide to cut down the tree and bring it to their village, but they run short of stone axes to complete the felling. In the myth, some neglectful boys sent to get more axes stop to kill and eat an opossum. They quickly become old men, ushering old age and death into the world by eating the animal that represents the benevolent, agronomic Star-Bride (Lévi- Strauss 1983 165). South American opossum myths seem to go past the animal’s distinguishing marsupiam to the deeper implication of it. The pouch continues the safe development of their minuscule, almost larval offspring. It is this detail that South American mythology seizes upon. In a Tacana

5 Turtles and armadillos both also being scaly creatures. 6 (See Stephen Hugh Jones 1979 70-7 and Lévi-Strauss 1973 81). 7 The tinamou is a species of bird, often yellow, and associated with the sun (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1971 102) and so this battle between Tinamou Chief and Opossum suggests that opossums, which are nocturnal, are a stellar or perhaps lunar (night) symbol.

560 myth, an opossum eats the ticks off a tapir and is cursed by a jealous tick-eating bird to forever give birth to tick-like offspring, which will in turn be eaten by that bird in revenge. However, the same tiny offspring are a blessing in Xerente and Munduruku myths where the opossum is rewarded with the gift of painless childbirth for lovingly suckling an abandoned culture hero (Lévi-Strauss 1983 179, 181). There are many such myths that feature this maternal animal (who carries her young on her back until they are almost her size). These myths envision the opossum as the selfless mother or wet nurse. To seal the association with motherhood: a Guianese Arawak tradition tells that when a woman’s friends and family discover that she wants to conceive a child, they secretly mix the powdered claw of an opossum into her drink to facilitate impregnation (Roth 1915 238). In these traditions, the opossum is like the armadillo in being a feminine symbol (and a maternal one at that), but also has multiple associations with agricultural production and hence the feminine spheres of harvest, food preparation and pottery. In Saladoid adornos, a pointy face ending in a bulbous nose and a mouth represented by a linear incision along the underside of the face identifies the opossum (figures 4 and 5). Rodents, Coatis and Raccoons Amerindians introduced several species of rodents into the Antilles where they encountered other, endemic ones (Wing in Woods and Sergile 2001 493). While they are often supporting characters in the mythology of South Americans, the depictions of rodents in Caribbean ceramics are quite rare (figure 6) and there is no mention of them in the myths collected in reports during the Conquest or thereafter. Seemingly more than any symbolic value rodents may have had, they were primarily an important food source throughout the mainland and the Antilles (Rouse 1992 13) and this is perhaps their main relevance to the uncommon rodent adornments. Like rodents, coatis and raccoons do not appear to be important characters in Antillean myth or ceramic adornment. Raccoons seem to be entirely absent but some generic looking but occulate adornos with round heads might represent these creatures. The elongated, bicolor faces of coatis do appear as adornos on a few ceramics from Trinidad, Tobago, Antigua and perhaps in one hybrid example from Grenada (figures 7, 8 and 9). The iconographic incidence of this particular animal is far beyond its natural habitat but coatis were likely transported throughout the Caribbean as pets. In Amazonian myth, these wily creatures offer some useless help here or bad directions there to itinerant culture heroes (Lévi-Strauss 1978 123). They seem to fit the mythical requirements of the region only as supporting characters. But in Kraho, Timbira, Kayapo and Apinaye mythology, the surviving brother of a set of hero twins marries into a tribe called the “Coati People,” who welcome and hail him as a great hunter (Lévi-Strauss 1973 124-6). In this myth, the Coati People are obviously a tribe bearing the name Coati as their emblem. The use of animals as clan emblems (instead of just cult emblems as studied here) is well established throughout Amazonia and Orinochia (See Gary Urton’s Animal Myths and Metaphors in South America). Zooic phratries may have existed amongst the Saladoid era Antilleans as well but there is little evidence of that with the later Conquest era people of the region. We cannot discount the possibility that zoomorphic iconography on Saladoid ceramics may have borne clan significance. These affinity groups, perhaps related by marriage, but each with different mythically prescribed roles, might have had their own zooic emblems distinguishing their pottery. Monkeys

561 Saladoid era simian imagery seems confined to the southernmost islands of the Antilles. Most endemic Caribbean species of monkeys seem to have been long extinct by the arrival of Ceramic peoples to the archipelago.8 Saladoid monkey imagery then seems to refer to South American and Trinidadian species domesticated and brought to Tobago and Grenada (where such imagery also appears), perhaps as pets.9 Based on their habitats in northeastern South America and Trinidad, the monkeys best known to Saladoid islanders were likely the red howler monkey (Alouatta seniculus), weeping capuchin (Cebus olivaceus) and white-fronted capuchin (Cebus albifrons) (Boomert in Sued- Badillo, 156; Emmons, 124-5; Lord, 150). As trickster agents of chaos, mythical monkeys are instructive alter egos of human beings. In South American myths, monkeys compete with humans for food, sexual partners (often spiriting away the spouses of men and women alike) and culture itself. They are convincingly human but always manage to offend or undo human culture in some way. In some myths, they were once cannibals who hunted humans before they became prey themselves so that monkey morality myths always warn humans that tables can be turned (Guss 1989 97-101, 115; Bingham 2004 66-7; Lévi–Strauss 1983 260, 310; 1990 98). In Arawak and (Cariban) Yekuana myth, disobedient monkeys unleash a great flood and total darkness (the first night) respectively upon the world (Roth 1915 148; Guss 1989 55). Occasionally, monkeys help people out of their natural affection for them (Lévi-Strauss 1973 61, 131; 1983 203), but more often than not, they are rivals of human beings. On the handles or rims of ceramic vessels monkeys may refer to symbolic vanquishing of enemies. Monkeys are known to have been a food source for Saladoid era people (Boomert in Sued-Badillo 2003 156) and since the human-monkey resemblance is obviated in so many nemesis myths, eating monkeys can be likened to a form of exo-cannibalism,10 a means of attaining the monkey’s powers of cleverness, agility and sexual prowess, without adopting its selfishness, irregularity/unpredictability and sexual promiscuity. In Saladoid pottery, monkeys are often almost indistinguishable from people. It is also easy to imagine anthropomorphized bat adornos as simian or monkeylike. However a feature unique to New World primates: the lateral location of the nostrils can provide a clear identification of monkeys, even in hybrid depictions. In ceramic depictions in the Windward Islands, this feature often takes the form of circular modeling at the side of the nose (figure 10). Likewise, heavy brows and outlined faces that mimic the simian hairline make some monkey adornos quite clear (figures 10 and 11). Anteaters Long, conical faces with small slit or button eyes are quite numerous in the ceramics of the Lower Orinoco Interaction Sphere (figure 12) but these impressive, peculiar creatures and their iconography did not extend beyond Tobago (figures 13 and 14). In South American myth, anteaters have a recurring association with intoxicated wandering. In myths of the Arawakan Iranxe and the Barasana hapless anteaters inhale tobacco concoctions prepared by their enemies that addle their minds. In these myths, and those of the Timbira and Tacana as well, they stumble about, confused and inebriated (Lévi-Strauss 1973 61; 126-7).

8 Francisco Watlington, “The Physical Environment: Biogeographical Teleconnections in Caribbean Prehistory,” in General : Autochthonous Societies, ed. Jalil Sued-Badillo (London and Oxford: Macmillan Caribbean, 2003), 41- 5. 9 Ibid., 44. 10 Eating people from outside one’s own community.

562 Both the inhaling and the bumbling about are based on observations of the anteater as it searches in a seemingly haphazard fashion for ant and termite nests, sniffing with its conical nose as it goes. As the mythic anteaters snort hallucinogens, so too might have the owners of these anteater vessels as they attempted to divine the future or the secret workings of the cosmos. There is a significant number of Saladoid snuff vessels, confirming the ritual use of powdered hallucinogens as observed today in the Amazon and amongst the Taíno at the Conquest. Anteater vessels may have held such hallucinogens or served in the preparation of them from combined ingredients. The anteater’s apparent confused wandering may have had some analogue in Saladoid era myth and actual shamanic practice, with the shaman not sitting stationery for his psychospiritual journey, in the manner of the wooden Taíno shaman sculptures, but making some perilous, physical quest through the forest, while under the influence. Although Reichel-Dolmatoff describes the anteater as a phallic symbol for the Desana of the northwest Amazon (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1971 198), anteaters actually have such unapparent genitals that they are widely considered genderless and parthenogenic by other South American indigenes (Lévi-Strauss 1973 346-7). It is possible that these animals represented the harmonious union of male and female (and/or other complimentary or opposing) forces; were viewed as pre- gender in conjunction with myths now lost; or were seen as the grantors or diviners of unborn babies’ genders as they are amongst the Kaingang-Coroado in Brazil (Lévi-Strauss 1973 350). Anteater vessels might have been the tools of shamans charged with predicting such binary, either-or outcomes. Peccaries As a food source peccaries appearing on Saladoid pottery might simply refer to the contents of the vessels. These pig-like comensals (i.e. introduced species intended for food) were probably an elite or festival food for Saladoid settlers within the confined borders of the Caribbean islands where they would have been increasingly rare. Catching a wild one would have been a sign of hunting prowess or at least good fortune. In South America, wild peccaries are more feared than jaguars, roving in bands of dozens, wrecking property and even killing people. Their downward curling teeth (unlike the upward curving tusks of wild pigs), when broken or sharpened by the animals themselves are de facto fangs (Lord 2007 125-6). Among the Desana, these animals are the mythical army of Vaí- mahsë, the guardian spirit of the forest, chasing or killing intruders. Also in Desana mythology, wild peccaries are sometimes the embodied spirits (boraro) of the forest, who lure hunters to their deaths, before re-animating them and returning them to their villages to bring back more victims (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1971 82, 87-8). Singular examples of peccary-like adornos have been found in Trinidad (fig. 15), Tobago and Antigua,11 with a possible example from Grenada. Whether as captured forces of nature, subdued forest demons or conquered adversaries, these formidable animals were probably savored after hunting initiations. Additionally, by virtue of their musky odor when in season, peccaries may have held a sexual connotation for Saladoid Antilleans as they still do for Amazonians (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1971 200). As potential symbols of the onset of sexual maturity, peccary vessels may have related as much to the initiation of hunters as to marriages. Dogs In late pre-Conquest times, the dog was of great importance in the sculptural iconography of the Greater Antilles, but does not seem to have played any major role in the ceramic iconography of that area. In the Eastern Caribbean the dog appears throughout the Saladoid in a

11 Peccaries in Antigua and other Leeward Islands would have been artificially introduced.

563 variety of ceramic depictions but not in other media. Though they both have bulbous heads and upturned noses of roughly the same dimensions two canine adornos, a lifelike modeled and painted one from the site of Vivé in Martinique (fig. 16) and another from Blanchisseuse in Trinidad that employs clever composite imagery to suggest another animal atop the head of the canine (fig. 17) contrast markedly. Yet these highly varied canine depictions are relatively dispersed when compared to the high concentration of dog imagery in the Huecoid12 style of Guadeloupe (particularly at the Morel site in the east) and others in the northern Leeward Islands. With their erect heads (and tails), and incised and punctated backs (fig. 18), these Huecoid dog adornos represent a distinctive corpus of canine iconography, contemporaneous with the Cedrosan Saladoid in Trinidad but earlier than most other Saladoid substyles of the Lesser Antilles. The Huecoid phenomenon is confined to the northern extremity of the Saladoid territory, i.e. from Guadeloupe to Puerto Rico (Wilson 2007 70-81) so the relationship with later Saladoid depictions of dogs in the Leeward Islands such as one from northern Martinique (see fig. 19) is unclear. Cedrosan Saladoid canine iconography from the Lower Orinoco to Grenada (fig. 20) seem to have also played a part in the development of the alert dog imagery illustrated in figure 19. For the greater number of Huecoid dogs and for their absence in the pottery of the Windward Islands, it would seem Huecoid ceramicists developed part of this canine iconography (and the dog cult that likely accompanied such imagery) and exported it southwards even as Cedrosan Saladoid canine elements were also migrating north. The two styles seem to have collided in Martinique and Guadeloupe. The high incidence of dogs in the Huecoid Lesser Antilles might indicate that dogs took on unprecedented importance as a cult symbol within the archipelago, more so than in South America. The spike in ceramic dogs among the Huecoid Antilleans compared to the dearth of Taíno ceramic canines also implies that at different times in the ancient history of the Caribbean certain animal symbols might have been associated more with one material than another. The Taíno had no shortage of wooden, stone and shell canine imagery, but no apparent interest in decorating their pots with canines as did their Huecoid and Saladoid forbears. Thus the dog is one of the best indications of a distinct and dynamic evolution of land mammal iconography inside the Antilles, divergent from South American prototypes. While the canine-centered visual culture in the central Antilles strongly distinguished the region from South America, mythical commonalities are likely to have persisted in modified, vestigial or even reversed forms. For the Taíno, the zemi Opiyelguobira was a metaphorical canine, the guardian spirit of the dead. Being a devotional icon it may have existed outside the normal category of other animal symbols, far removed from the quasi-utilitarian sphere of ritual ceramics.13 No other animal is known to have had such a clear zemi-status as the dog spirit that guided the dead through the haunted forests to the watery underworld (Pané 1999 28). It may be that an early version of this zemi was worshipped in Saladoid times. But if so, where are the

12 The Huecoid style (whose name derives from the type site of La Hueca on Vieques Island off eastern Puerto Rico) is sometimes referred to as “Huecan-Saladoid” for its close style resemblance to the painted and modeled Saladoid ceramics but its advanced stylizations of figural representations and its contemporaneousness with (and in many cases, antecedence of) the Saladoid style in the Leewards seems to indicate that Huecoid pottery represents a separate but related migration of ceramicists from the Middle to Lower Orinoco (Wilson 2007 67-81). 13 Or, in the Taíno context, the canine zemi might have out-competed most other zooic icons by the time of the Conquest.

564 stone and shell dogs from the Saladoid Eastern Caribbean as have been found in Eastern Taíno Antigua, the Greater Antilles and the Bahamas?14 There is some evidence of a proto-dog-god cult in the Eastern Caribbean. The concept of a dog as guardian through the afterlife, much like Opiyel-guobiran, has precedents even in South America (see Roe 1995 155-72). The Warao15 were buried with their hunting dogs (Roth 1915 157), expecting that the dogs would continue to head out in front of them as they did on hunting expeditions. The Warao myth and the Huecoid and Saladoid canine vessels (themselves often found in grave contexts) indicate a common tendency towards a funerary association for dogs and dog imagery. Dogs intentionally buried by Pre-Columbian Antilleans have been found at Indian Creek, Antigua; Pitch Lake, Trinidad; Silver Sands, Barbados; Hope Estate in St. Martin; Sorcé on Vieques Island and several other locations.16 In many cases, the canines accompanied human remains. Yet despite the commonalities with mainland Warao funerary dog myths and ritual, the canine appears a far more central cult image in the Antilles than in ancestral northern South America. A Question of Cats: Felines Quite unlike their counterparts in South America, the Amerindians of the Antilles ascribed relatively little symbolic importance to felines in their ceramics or in any other material. There are few clearly feline images in the archipelago (although ambiguous adornos and figures are often taken for these). Additionally, some feline imagery in the more southerly Windwards are apparent trade items. In the transition to an insular Saladoid few mainland iconic species fizzled out as quickly as the feline. Thus, one of the most favored zooic archetypes in mainland lore was subsumed beneath a plethora of insular-maritime ones. Cats are extremely uncommon in the recovered Saladoid art of any island beyond Trinidad and Tobago.17 Some ceramic depictions from the Windward Islands might possibly be cats, but as was the case with most other species (including the anteater who often is the savannah nemesis of the forest jaguar),18 South American animals were usually not retained in the Saladoid ceramics if they were not present in the Caribbean either naturally or as introduced species. The Saladoid felines of Trinidad and Tobago (figs. 21 and 22) are thus like the Huecoid condors/vultures of Vieques, i.e. iconographic retentions by recent arrivals whose cult imagery did persist as did those of the quintessential dog or frog.

14 Countless incised shell dentures in Eastern Caribbean collections attest that there were wooden zemis but with no surviving wood sculptures, the anthropomorphic and/or zoomorphic content of these images remains unknown. 15 While the Warao are not , and in fact their language is an isolate, they are a people of great antiquity in the Lower Orinoco and Trinidad. It is likely that the Arawakan people of the Antilles and the Lower Orinoco spent many centuries, perhaps even millennia, living near these people whose roots in the region go back to Archaic times (Boomert 2000 88-91; Roth 1915 157). As close neighbors, the Warao and the Saladoid era people would have come to share ideas about various animals as natural, spiritual and symbolic forces. 16 (Boomert 2001 64; Rouse and Faber Morse 1999 57; Wing in Woods and Sergile 2001 493; personal communications with Jay Haviser and Christian Stouvenot). 17 Trinidad did have an endemic ocelot (Felis pardalis), a smaller wild cat but no jaguars and so the few large/ferocious cat depictions found there and in Tobago are likely trade items or stylistic retentions. 18 Various myths from the Guianas to southern Brazil denote the jaguar and anteater as polar opposites and enemies, the former for its deadly fangs and the latter for its equally lethal claws. As with the sun and moon, the often diurnal anteater and nocturnal jaguar seldom encounter each other on their rounds, each master of their own domain and at opposing times. So the Amazonian saying goes that in the open savannah (the anteater’s domain), the jaguar always prevails in a collision with the anteater, but in the close quarter forest (the jaguar’s haunt), the anteater gains supremacy with is deadly, disemboweling embrace. The two are seen to be perpetually in battle in two complimentary voids visible in the Milky Way, an Amazonian yin and yang, which exchange positions just after sunset (to favor the jaguar) and just before sunrise (when the anteater wins) (Lévi-Strauss 1983 189- 90; 1973 63, 134-5; Lord, 19, 21; Roth 1915 225).

565 It is difficult to believe that the entire symbolic cache of the jaguar was abandoned by Saladoid era people making their way into the West Indies. So Roe’s theory of mythic substitution suggests that symbolic elements of the jaguar and others may have been transferred to other animals. Roe makes a compelling case for the hunting dog being the ‘new jaguar’ as it were.19 There is some proof of this kind of substitution in that later Taíno myths and images from the Greater Antilles seem to have replaced elements of South American or Lesser Antillean mammal symbols with Greater Antillean birds or amphibians; and in the case of the armadillo that I demonstrated above, a Lesser Antillean mammal’s quadruplet symbolism was retained in myth but beyond any recollection of the armadillo’s appearance in visual culture. However it is not simply that mythical and symbolic categories entirely pre-exist an encounter with a new species and have to be satisfied (so that ‘old’ species are replaced by ‘new’ ones) in myth or art. Nor is it just that encounters with new species are bound to inspire entirely new symbolic categories with no recourse to pre-existing ones. Both are likely means by which new animals can be introduced to a mythic and iconographic pantheon. It seems that a constant dialogue between pre-existing categories and new metaphorical animals modified and sometimes transformed the mythology and artistic symbolism of the Saladoid era people as they settled into their island environment. Far more dynamic than a series of “substitutions,” the encounter between Saladoid myth and Antillean fauna was reciprocal. Instead of a jaguar, a brightly colored bird (such as the parrot) could become the originator of fire or serve as the unruly lord of the forest in the Antilles and that bird might bring new symbolism of its own, extending fire symbolism beyond what was associated with the jaguar. Indeed, in the Amazon, the jaguar was not universally a fire symbol anyway. Bats, owls and dogs could be considered lords of the night and Saladoid era settlers in, say, Martinique would not even miss the jaguar functioning in that capacity. With the armadillo, I have demonstrated just a part of this complex dynamic but additionally the inriri bird and the turtle are not simply “substitutes” for the armadillo but rather cart off different aspects of the armadillo, adding these to their own fully developed Antillean symbolism. The mythical master hunter in the Caribbean could easily have been the shark (as knowingly modeled in a vessel from Barbados, see fig. 23) and pound for pound, tooth for tooth, this Caribbean king of predators, so uncommon in lowland South American iconography, would eclipse the jaguar. Far from being merely pendant of South America, the Antilles became culturally, ritually, mythically and artistically unique. Many of the new and composite mythologized species reflected in the ceramic record involve non-mammal species and are beyond the scope of this essay. In a realm of marine mega fauna, turtle-armadillos, manatee-dogs and a host of avian-amphibians, the absence of the jaguar (or for that matter the caiman and anaconda on most islands) might not only go unfelt but might be immaterial and unknown. Ultimately, a distinct mythology, iconography, ritual life and social structure would emerge from these insular variants and variables, characterizing the culture of a new ‘island culture.’ No class of animals better illustrates the insular Saladoid’s symbolic connections to and separations from South America than mammals. Jaguars disappear almost right away. Anteaters are retained only in the southernmost islands before they too are discarded. Opossums reach a little further north in the Windwards before they are perhaps subsumed by frogs as per Robiou-Lamarche and armadillos extend beyond the Windwards only by transforming into a shelled, quadripartite abstraction which remains so in spoken myths of Itiba Cahubaba but which can be reconstituted into turtles in the visual iconography. Dogs seem to

19 Roe 1995 161-3.

566 come to prominence as never before within the Antilles and as such are the most endemic Caribbean icon, a distinction they share with one other reformulated mammal species: the bat. But bats are a separate essay altogether as my forbears in Pre-Columbian Caribbean iconographic analysis will attest.20

20 See Henry Petitjean Roget, Peter Roe and Arie Boomert in the Bibliography.

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