BANANAS THIRTY FEET HIGH
These people of the Caribbean world have a decided race consciousness, and in their thinking and living are a world unto themselves. Separate and distinct from the Greater Antilles and the mainland, they know very little of the continental life and customs, and any attempt to classify them with American Negroes or Europeans raises a set of social problems difficult to solve.
To the North American the mental processes of the West Indian are a psychological jungle in which the explorer is soon lost. Perhaps no one has yet essayed to really understand this man, and those who have tried to analyze him maintain that he does not understand himself. Certain it is that he does not trouble himself with any self-analysis. He has enough other things to occupy his attention. With the psychological background of his remote African ancestors, his race characteristics have changed very little since the days when his forefathers were forcibly torn from their native land and deported into savage slavery.
SAN BLAS INDIANS HAVE "POKER FACES"
The social sanctions of the West Indian are rigid and well established. The list of forbidden things is long and complex, and of signs, and dreams and portents, strange and powerful, there seems no end. Numerous negatives appear in his social and personal creed, and he who violates these prohibitions must be a courageous soul. To introduce any original, new idea into this scheme of things is a difficult task, and is apt to arouse a whole chain of reactions, complex and mysterious. This man will follow literally any able leadership, but the leader must go in the direction of the established currents of opinion or he will have a hard time of it.
The West Indian has a religious capacity that impresses the visitor as a remarkable aptitude for things sacred. Such, indeed, it is. And the religious life of the earnest and conscientious members of this race exhibits a fine type of devotion and sacrifice. As might be expected, there is free expression of emotional experience, but on the whole those who are truly religious match their songs by their deeds and their testimonies by their lives. Practically nothing is known on the Isthmus of anything bordering on hysteria. When it comes to familiarity with the English Bible the average church member will put to shame his white friend, and in interpretation of scripture some very unique and interesting efforts are produced.
In matters of doctrine most of these people are rigid immersionists. The women invariably wear their hats in church, on the ground that Saint Paul commanded such observance, but they ignore the exhortation of the same apostle that the women keep silence in the churches. All special occasions possess thrilling interest, and almost any West Indian will go hungry to get good clothes. How they manage to dress as well as they do on the incomes they receive is a mystery that has not yet been solved.