Primitive Art Bibliographies

Primitive Art Bibliographies The Library The Museum of Primitive Art 15 West 54 Street NewYork,N.Y. 10019 No. DC 1971 ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE PRECOLUMBIAN ART AND ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE WEST INDIES by VALERIE CHEVRETTE c Copyright 19 71 The Museum of Primitive Art Library of Congress Number 7 4-186728 CONTENTS PREFACE 1 INTRODUCTION 2 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 4 DISCOVERY AND EARLY ACCOUNTS 5 GENERAL 5 THE BAHAMAS AND CAICOS ISLANDS 8 GREATER ANTILLES 8 CUBA 9 JAMAICA 11 THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC AND HAITI 12 PUERTO RICO 13 LESSER ANTILLES 15 VIRGIN ISLANDS 15 SABA AND ST. EUSTACIOUS 15 ST. KITTS AND NEVIS 15 ANTIGUA 15 MONTSERRAT 15 GUADELOUPE 15 DOMINICA 16 MARTINIQUE 16 ST. LUCIA 16 BARBADOS 16 GRENADA AND ST. VINCENT 17 TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO 17 SOUTH CARIBBEAN CHAIN 17 NETHERLANDS ANTILLES 17 MARGARITA ISLAND 18 PREFACE This bibliography began with an interest in the Caribbean aroused by an undergraduate course in the archaeology of South America and the Circum- Caribbean, and was compiled for the purpose of providing a survey of sources on the precolumbian art of the West Indies. The mainland areas of South America, which together with the islands form the Circum-Carib bean, have been omitted and certain islands, which are neither archaeo- logically nor culturally part of the West Indies, have been included on a purely geographic basis, so that the bibliography encompasses the Greater Antilles, the Lesser Antilles, Trinidad and Tobago, and various islands off the coast of South America such as those of the Netherlands Antilles. The sources used for compilation were immediately the bibliographies of the Handbook of South American Indians, v. 4 and the Scientific Survey of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, and then the books available in the Library of the Museum of Primitive Art, the Catalogue of the Library of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University, and the bibliographical citations in each of the sources I obtained from them. Caribbeana 1900-1965; A Topical Bibliography by Lambros Comitas was published in 1968 and offered some archaeological sources, although its contents deal primarily with the post-Columbian Caribbean and areas not included in this bibliography. The greater part of the research was done in the Library of the Research Institute for the Study of Man, and The New York Public Library at 42nd Street and 5th Ave. Listed first are the primary sources on the area - the first accounts of the Indians by explorers and missionaries. English editions were chosen when possible. Secondary sources, such as accounts of travel, and second-hand accounts of the aborigines published in the sixteenth century and later were omitted due to their repetition of material from the primary sources which it was felt made them of less value. The rest of the bibliography deals direct ly with the art and archaeology of the West Indies in general and individual islands in particular. The lack of art-oriented studies in the West Indies, as well as the sheer nature of precolumbian art, necessitates the admixture of art and archaeological sources. Nevertheless, many sources were omitted because they seemingly contributed nothing to the precolumbian art history of the West Indies, this being primarily an art bibliography. Due to the sheer volume of sources on the West Indies , this bibliography is by no means exhaustive and can offer only an introduction to the student of the Caribbean. Certain sources which were not available were included be cause it was thought they might be of value. Rather than annotations , these sources are followed by an x. I would like to thank Professor Muriel Porter Weaver for initially intro ducing me to the Caribbean and for advising me on the compilation of the bibliography. Also, I wish to thank Professor Irving Rouse for his kind suggestions and use of his material on the Caribbean, and Mr. Allan Chapman, Librarian of the Museum of Primitive Art for his helpful sugges tions and generous advice. 1 INTRODUCTION The islands of the West Indies form an important geographical link between North and South America, stretching from the mouth of the Amazon River to within 90 miles of the southeast United States and 120 miles of the Yucatan Peninsula. Their proximity to the mainland makes them of crucial interest to the study of the prehistory of the Americas, and the transmission of pre- hispanic art traditions in the New World. At the time of the first contacts with Europeans, there were three main culture groups inhabiting the islands: the Arawak, the Carib, and the Ciboney. Present archaeological and linguistic evidence indicates all three groups filtered into the West Indies from the South American mainland. The Ciboney arrived first. They were then driven back, by the Arawak, who were in turn pushed back by the mi grating Carib. The movement of people into the West Indies may have begun as early as 2100 BC, and in the first millenium BC groups with a ceramic tradition began entering the area. When Columbus first encountered the Indians (the first he met were Arawaks) he found people with a sedentary agrarian economy, living in permanent villages, with a social hierarchy and a fairly complex religious life involving various classes of deities. Columbus may himself be considered the first anthropoligist to work in the Caribbean. He kept a journal in which he recorded contacts with and observations of the Indians (no. 3) for the Spanish court. In addition he commissioned Fray Ramon Pane to record the religious beliefs and practices, and folklore of the aborigines of Haiti (no. 8). However, because the aborigines of the islands had not developed their metallurgical skills to the degree of Peruvians, and because they lacked the elaborate architecture of the Mexicans, interest in the West Indies belonged primarily to the missionaries whose interest was in the conversion of the Indians to Christianity. Bartolome de Las Casas went to the Indies as a missionary shortly after their discovery, and while he was there he became concerned with the treatment of the aborigines by the Spanish. He devoted the rest of his life to defending them and representing them in the Spanish court, and his Historia de Las Indias (no. 4) is a classic record of aboriginal culture. Decade de Orbe Novo (no. 1) by Peter Martry is another early source concerning the West Indies. Although it is primarily a history of the New World and the conquest, the work contains accounts of the Indians as told by the various shipmates of Columbus. Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes was an adventurer who spent a number of years in the Caribbean. He recorded his observations of the West Indies and their inhabitants in his Historia General y Natural de Las Indias (no. 6). These were the first works about the Indians of the Caribbean. Later writings were primarily accounts of travel in the islands and second hand accounts of the aborigines (these are not included for reasons given below). It was not until the very early twentieth century that the West Indies became of interest to archaeologists. Until that time research in the area was done on a purely amateur basis by visitors or Europeans living on the islands who had a mild curiosity in the aboriginal inhabitants. Works such as Rosny's Les Antilles (no. 53) and even the important international exhibition at Madrid celebrating the 400th anniversary of the discovery of the New World (no. 170) presented the antiquities of the area as ethnological curiosities rather than objects of cultural or artistic merit. However, the early 1900's found the United States with many possessions in the Caribbean, and American archae ologists began to focus their attention upon the islands. Walter Fewkes, along with Theodoor de Booy and Adolfo de Hostos, was one of the most active in the field producing his classic Aborigines of Puerto Rico (no. 181) and concentrating his interests primarily in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. In 1921 M. R. Harrington published his important work on Cuba for the Heye Foundation (no. 117). Nevertheless, work was being done on a very scattered, specialized level concentrating on the Greater Antilles, and, except for Harrington's work, no attempt was made to treat the West Indies as one cul tural area. During the 1930's archaeological work in the West Indies came almost to a halt, most likely because of lack of funds due to the economic crises and the impending threat of war. However, the Good Neighbor Policy of the 1940's provided an impetus for archaeological work in Latin America so that the Caribbean once more became of interest. A major result, the Handbook of South American Indians (no. 75) , was published by the Bureau of American Ethnology, the first comprehensive archaeological and ethnological study of the Antilles with one entire volume devoted to the Circum-Caribbean area. During this period, too, Irving Rouse began working in the area, concentrating on Puerto Rico and Cuba. He produced the first typological ceramic sequence for the West Indies (no. 54), and since that time has been one of the most active people in the area. But even this concerned primarily the Greater Antilles, and it was not until around 1959 when McKusick wrote his thesis (no. 215) that the Lesser Antilles were treated in any depth. Then in 1961 the Congress for the Study of Precolumbian Cultures in the Lesser Antilles convened on Martinique for the first time and has since held a second and third meeting with a fourth planned in 1971. At present there is increased interest in the Caribbean, but still nothing to compare with that of the rest of the Americas.

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