OF THE ISLANDS AND ARAWAK DIE TIES

Fred Olsen

More than ten years ago I became interested in Arawak petroglyphs--strange figures scratched into the surfaces of prominent rocks. Friends familiar with sailing in the Les­ ser Antilles had told me of seeing carved pictures on stones on St. Vincent and Guadeloupe. They said they resembled children' s playful drawings although some of the natives of the islands insisted they had religious significance.

Eager to see them at first hand, we chartered the Viking II, a 56-foot ketch in April 1959 and, sailing south from Martinique, visited several of the petroglyphs on St. Vincent. Later, in April of 1961, we sailed again on the Viking II, this time from Dominica, and visited the petroglyphs at Trois Rivieres on Guadeloupe. Later, in August 1967, I visited the ceremonial plazas near Utuado in west central . Finally in March 1971, my wife and I visited the Dutch island of Bonaire and investigated the pictographs painted on the roof of the at Onima. During all of these visits I made sketches and took pic­ tures of the petroglyphs and paintings, many of which I have used in this paper.

Between the last two dates, I met Dr. Jose Arrom, a professor of Spanish at Yale University who, I found to my delight, was much interested in the Arawak religion. I in­ vited him to see my collection at Guilford, Connecticut, and on his arrival he went imme­ diately to the great humped-back figure or Zemi illustrated in Figure 2 and immediately identified it as "Yocahu, the great Arawak male god -- the giver of manioc. The yoca part of his name is the same as in the word man-ioca. " (Olsen 1970:4). This identifica­ tion is based on a Spanish document written about 1525 by Herman Perez de Oliva and pre­ sented by him to Fernando Colon, son of Christopher Columbus, and presently preserved in the Beineke Library at Yale University. From Dr. Arrom' s (1967) book on this manus­ cript, it is clear that Yocahu stood first in the Arawak pantheon. Next in importance was Atabeyra, a female deity who had five names describing her functions as mother of moving waters, of the seas, ofthe tides and springs, goddess of the moon, and fertility or goddess of childbirth. The third member of the Arawak pantheon was Obiyel Guaobiran, a dog- diety "who takes care of the souls of the dead and is the son of the spirit of darkness" (Olsen 1970:13).

In 1959 we were taken up a small valley near Layou, St. Vincentj to view the amaz­ ing which is located in a beautiful spot, a sort of grotto, where the stream wid­ ens into a pond. Its great smooth face (12 feet wide by 19 feet high), which.slopes upward from the bank of the stream, is covered with petroglyphs. Our 1959 chalking (Fig. 1) un­ wittingly had included some natural cracks in the . Eliminating them, one principal face surrounded by several smaller ones becomes clear. The dominant figure has a gro­ tesque face with a bulbous nose and eyes consisting of double circles, each contained with­ in an almond shape. The points of the almonds are connected by a long sweeping line cur­ ving above the nose. The elongated mouth is filled with teeth, and below the mouth a sec­ ond curve terminates at each end in small spirals. Surrounding the face is a triangular line at the apex of which is a circle containing an obliquely set with a small circle in the lower segment. On each side of the face is an oval with an oblique cross and circle. These ovals may represent ear ornaments.

35 36 PETROGLYPHS AND ARAWAK DIETIES

I was most curious about the identity of this "deity", but at that time (1959) I could find no hint in the chronicles, the current technical papers, nor from archeologist friends. It was not until about ten years after that visit to Layou that the significance of the gro­ tesque triangular face was clarified. I was working with the large Yocahu zemi mentioned earlier, taking shots from various angles in an attempt to get the most dramatic photo­ graph. From a directly frontal and almost horizontal position (Fig. 2) I noticed that the hump of Yocahu provides the same triangular outline of the face that appears on the Layou petroglyph (Fig. 1). I have made sketch of the two face in Figure 3 to show the resem­ blances more clearly.

The figure on the Layou rock, I now believe, is the Arawak petroglyph for Yocahu. I could imagine that ancient Arawaks participating in rituals at this outdoor shrine would have no trouble in recognizing the triangle surrounding the face as representing the "hump" of the zemi, the volcano- of Yocahu. As I continued looking at the photo­ graphs I could appreciate the problem those early artists encountered in depicting a three- dimensional conical form on a two-dimensional surface.

Going back to the total picture on the Layou Rock (Fig. 1), I am still puzzled by the eight circular symbols accompanying the central Yocahu figure. Two of these appear to be heads, each suspended on the end of a long cord. What are these hanging heads? Anyone familiar with Peruvian will wonder if they are related to the "trophy heads" which hang so prominently from the hands of warrior figures depicted on Paracas, Nazca, and Mochica artifacts. We have no evidence that the Arawaks practiced head-hunting, but it is well to be alert to anything that could connect the Arawaks with earlier peoples from whom they might have been derived. Geographically, Peru is a possible point of origin, and these hanging heads merit consideration as hinting at a linkage of the Arawaks with that country.

I offer the suggestion that Yocahu, the main figure in the Layou petroglyph, the pa­ tron god of the Arawaks and giver of manioc, may have had rival deities to contend with: and that these hanging heads may represent hostile gods whom he had overcome during his ascendancy to the position of principal deity.

In 1959 after leaving Layou, we travelled north to Barrouallie, a small village where we had been told a "picture-stone" could be found in a hillside garden. This turned out to be quite different from the Yocahu figure at Layou. Judging by the fringe which the figure wears as a head-dress, it might be a petroglyph of the Sun God (Fig. 4). At first glance the figure appears to have four eyes, but closer examination suggests that only the two up­ per circles are eyes, and that the lower ones are more probably spiral terminations of a long sweeping curve, possibly to be considered as cheek ornaments, but perhaps hinting at scarification. Paralleling the upper part of this curve is a second line whose ends come to a point forming the nose. An outer curved band contains thirteen points or rays. Per­ haps these refer to the thirteen lunar months, although I know of no other example of Ara­ wak concern for astronomical data.

More puzzling is the labyrinthine pattern below the head. Is it just a chance arrange­ ment of geometrical lines in contrast with the multiple curves of the head? To me this seems too elaborate a figure, with too much concern for detail, to warrant any such ex­ planation as mere doodling. I recall from my trip to and other in the Dor- dogne area of France that the or artists were much concerned with symbols for the male and female organs. The vulva was painted on many of the cave OLSEN 37

•walls, and I wonder if the Arawak artist who carved this symbol was unconsciously seek­ ing a counterpart for the Cro-Magnon female organ (Fig. 5). Perhaps the T-form shown in the lower part of Fig. 4 and the right hand element of Fig. 5 is the symbol for the male organ. If so, the composite figure may represent the penetration of the one by the other, perhaps depicting the copulation of the Sun God of the Day and the Moon Goddess of the Night. It is a theme often used by those Peruvian "cousins" of the Arawaks, especially on Mochica that might be roughly contemporaneous with these Arawak petroglyphs.

Next we went to the Lourdes Shrine near the east coast of St. Vincent. High up on a rock face was a cut stone shrine in the form of a niche wherein Our Lady of Lourdes was standing to receive visiting pilgrims. My eyes, however, were quickly attracted by a group of four Arawak petroglyphs six to ten feet below the shrine. These we chalked, photographed, and sketched (Fig. 6). These four heads, each about six to ten inches in diameter, were in general similar to the small heads surrounding the Yocahu figure at Layou. Even after many viewings I have not been able to suggest any interpretation for these Yambou petroglyphs.

At Guadeloupe in 1961, we found the Trois Rivieres petroglyphs in an attractive sylvan setting reminiscent of the Layou location on St. Vincent. The petroglyphs, how­ ever, were much more numerous and varied. One large rock, called Roche La Tortue, is about eight feet wide and twelve feet high and covered with small figures, many of them quite dissimilar from those at Layou. Again the density of the foliage made photographing difficult without adequate flash equipment, but I did get pictures for record against which to check the quick sketches I made (Figs. 7-8).

I find these petroglyphs quite baffling. The two upper-right figures appear to be of the same style and maybe by the same artist. I hazard the guess that they are female fig­ ures, as indicated by the suggestion of breasts and vulva. The bottom-right figure may be allied to the so-called "sun-god" figure we saw at St. Vincent on the petroglyph at Barrouaillie. At the present stage of our ignorance about the interpretation of Arawak petroglyphs, there may be little we can do other than to continue collecting illustrations of these rock-face figures throughout the islands, and build up a sort of dictionary of glyphs that will permit the formulation of hypotheses about the nature of the Arawak rituals.

On some of the nearby rocks were figures that appeared to be wearing a head-dress of plumes of feathers (Fig. 8). Again we spotted another figure whose "plumed" head-gear was attached to an attenuated body of strange configuration (Fig. 9).

Finally we came across a powerfully drawn petroglyph (Fig. 10) depicting an indivi­ dual with a somewhat sullen expression. The tilt of his eyes is particularly striking. I have looked at him a great many times and have become strongly impressed by his sinister appearance. But so far I cannot fit him into any picture of the Arawak pantheon.

The next encounter with Arawak petroglyphs occurred in August 1967, when I visited the Capa Ceremonial Plaza near Utuado in the central plateau of Puerto Rico. It was an attractive river valley location with a picturesque backdrop of mountains. The site has been meticulously restored by Prof. Ricardo E. Alegria, of the Instituto de Cultura Puer­ torriqueña at San Juan.

The main plaza-is flanked on its east and west sides with 160-foot long "walls" of vertical slabs of limestone. I counted more than fifty of these on the west side of the rec- 38 PETROGLYPHS AND ARAWAK DIE TIES

tangle -- with a dozen large stones, some of them six feet square and six inches thick probably weighing about two tons apiece, in the center grading down to smaller ones at each end (Alegria N. D. :6-7). The north and south sides, 120 feet long, provided "side­ walks" about four feet wide, laid with smooth igneous rocks brought from the stony bed of the Rio Tanama which runs northward through the site to join the Rio Grande de Arecibo about six miles before it enters the Atlantic Ocean at Arecibo.

It is on the huge vertical slabs of the west wall that the petroglyphs occur (Alegria N. D. :13). One of these was vociferously signalling for my attention (Fig. HA) , a vigorous figure with skinny upraised arms, perhaps even with clenched fists. The head is almost heart-shaped, with large ears, eyes and mouth. Even the nostrils are shown. But it was the egg-shaped body that eventually demanded attention. A large circular groove was shown on the upper part of the body with a small but prominent indentation which might be the "turn my-button. " Someone had made the figure more clearly visible by marking the in black, but as I examined these markings more closely I believe he had failed to notice the two dotted circles that formed ear ornaments instead of representing the right and left fists of the figure. I therefore made a sketch of the petroglyph (Fig. 11B), chang­ ing the position of the forearms to correspond to the outline clearly shown on the trans­ parency when examined with a hand lens. Further examination of the slide strongly sug­ gests that the circle below the squatting legs may be the head of the emerging babe. In this drawing I may have over-accentuated the marks I can discern on the stone to show them as eyes, ears and mouth. The position, however, reminds me of our Atabeyra fig­ ures, from and Puerto Rico (Figs. 12-15). Two of these (Figs. 12-13) represent the fertility goddess Atabeyra squatting in the act of childbirth. The other two (Figs. 14-15) are examples of the degree of abstraction the Arawak sculptors could at­ tain.

In the same central group of slabs is a large stone with a carefully incised, strangely complicated figure (Figs. 16-17) . Again there is a well defined heart-shaped head with even more prominent circular ear ornaments, but there is also a quite elaborate head-dress. The figure is squatting and the female genitals are clearly shown, so I regard this as another Atabeyra figure. Once again a close examination of the transparency with a lens reveals lines on the stone that the person, whoever he may have been, had not marked with chalk. It may be that the circle in the center of the figure represents the head of the babe, still within the mother, and indeed, when the slide is held upside down, other lines are revealed that could be the body and legs of the baby. I once more admit to interpreting marks on the stone to fit the picture of the babe to a degree which may not be completely warranted. I regret not being able to return to Capa for a careful washing of the surface of the stone and a more accurate interpretation of the figure, but I believe the identification of the Arawak deity Atabeyra to be a probable one.

Since the two figures occurring in the center of the west wall closely resemble avail­ able examples of Atabeyra, with no other figures appearing on that wall nor on the opposite east wall, it would seem that this ceremonial plaza at Capa may have been dedicated to Atabeyra, the Arawak goddess of fertility.

As I stood in the plaza it was easy to picture rituals being conducted in this large rectangular area, with spectators seated on the north and south stone terraces. Marker stones protrude from near both ends of the east and west walls, presumably indicating where participants turned in their marches or dances, but I couldn't help wondering if the women had left votive offerings before the central slabs of the west wall bearing the petro- OLSEN 39

glyphs of Atabeyra.

While struggling with the interpretation of the petroglyphs at the Capa Ceremonial Plaza I recalled that I had obtained three stones bearing petroglyphs in the Cecil Stevens collection, which were alleged to have been found at Capa. Obviously they were small enough to have been carried away from the site and I wondered from what part of the site they might have come. They did not seem to belong to the walls of the plaza but they might have been markers from the ball courts surrounding the plaza.

The largest of the three stones (Fig. 18) is about two feet high and weighs 70 pounds. It is very simple in design and under a raking light is quite a provocative sculptural achieve­ ment. A broad shallow groove around a natural bulge on the stone provides the outline of a face which has two large cavities to serve as eyes and a slight oval depression as mouth. Long linear grooves radiate above and below the head, perhaps representing the sun' s rays and giving rise to the usual name of "Sun God" for the figure.

A smaller version weighs 18 pounds (Fig. 19). A heavy rounded ridge outlines the face having two large oval eyes with shallow depressions, but without expanding rays. In­ stead, there are straight line grooves below the chin suggesting a beard -- a strange de­ vice among beardless people -- and stimulating the thought that what I have been calling sun' s rays may have nothing to do with the sun. Indeed the lines on the top of the large "Sun God" (Fig. 18) may represent a feathered headgear, similar to what we encountered on the petroglyphs at Guadeloupe (Figs. 8-9).

The third columnar block of stone has a triangular cross-section with petroglyphs on two sides (Fig. 20, a-b) . It is a foot long and weighs eleven pounds. One side (Fig. 20, A) shows a figure with outstretched arms. Two grooves outline the face, but stop short of the chin. They terminate in cavities which may represent ear ornaments. Ten incised lines on top of the head may be interpreted as five feathers of a crown since three of the pairs of lines definitely form points. (The other pairs may have been similarly joined, since the stone shows damage that could have broken the points. ) Below the face are eight somewhat heavier grooves which resemble the "beard" decoration shown in Figure 19, but the sharply cut horizontal line also suggests a cape or coat. The arms and legs are crudely drawn, each hand being provided with the requisite five fingers, but the one undamaged foot is in­ definite as to the number of toes.

The other side (Fig. 20,b) shows an equally primitive incised head with deeply gouged eyes and mouth. Below the chin there seems to be an ornament chich may be a string of beads.

Summary

I think that we can conclude that some of the petroglyphs seen on St. Vincent, Guade­ loupe and Puerto Rico show a definite relationship with the Yocahu and Atabeyra figures we know were such an important part of the Arawak religion. But there seems to be a strik­ ing omission of any pictographs of the dog deity, Obiyel guaobiran. There is also strong evidence that the petroglyphs on St. Vincent and Guadeloupe were made by Arawaks since they were the inventors of Yocahu' and Atabeyra, rather than by the Caribs to whom these petroglyphs are commonly attributed. Certainly the Puerto Rico petroglyphs of Atabeyra could not have been made by Caribs since they were not permanent residents of the . 40 PETROGLYPHS AND ARAWAK DIETIES

Fig. 1. Arawak petroglyph at Layou, St. Vincent

Fig. 2. Arawak male deity - Yocahù (front view, large three-pointed Zemi)

Fig. 3. Comparison, Layou petroglyph and Yocahù zemi from Puerto Rico. OLSEN 41

Fig. 4. Petroglyph at Barouaillie, St. Vincent.

uw

Female symbols

Fig. 5. Female and male symbols.

a-c, g, French caves; d-f, St. Vin­ cent petroglyphs.

Male symbols

Fig. 6. Petroglyphs below Lourdes Shrine, Yambou, ¿£^> St, Vincent. 42 PETROGLYPHS AND ARAWAK DIETIES

o o O

"©o

Fig. 7.

Fig. 9.

Fig. 10, a

Figs. 7-10. Petroglyphs from Trois Rivières, Guadeloupe. OLSEN 43

Figs. 11. a-b. Squatting figure of Atabeyra, Arawak goddess of childbirth - petroglyph on rock wall of main plaza, Capa, Puerto Rico.

Figs. 12-13. Atabeyra representa­ tions in the round. 44 PETROGLYPHS AND ARAWAK DIETIE;

Fig. 16. Petroglyph on west wall of Fig. 17. Drawings of design in Fig. Plaza A, Capa, Puerto Rico. 16, evidently Atabeyra, Arawak god­ dess of childbirth. •

Fig;. 19. Sun god again, on smaller stone, Capa, Puerto Rico. Figs. 20, a-b. Two face triangular column at Cap Puerto Rico. Fig. 18. Sun god on pillar stone, Capa, Puerto Rico. 46 PETROGLYPHS AND ARAWAK DIE TIES

References Cited

Alegría, Ricardo E. N. D. El centro ceremonial indigena de Utuado. Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña. San Juan.

Ariom, Jose Juan 1967 El mundo mitico de los tamos: notas sobre el ser supremo. Instituto Caro y Cuervo. Bogotá.

Olsen, Fred 1970 The Arawak religion: Cult of Yocahu. Mill Reef Diggers' Digest, pp. 1-18. Antigua Archeological Society. Antigua.