[14] The most interesting artifacts from the Antilles are the stone rings, triangles, and elbows, which must be regarded as certainly ritualistic in character, and probably as used in fertility rites. This is not only indicated by Columbus and Ramon Pane, but is supported by numerous analogies. Ramon Pane (ch. xix) says: "The stone cemis are of several sorts: some there are which, they say, the physicians take out of the body of the sick, and those they look upon as best to help women in labour. Others there are that speak, which are shaped like a long turnip, with the leaves long and extended, like the shrub-bearing capers. Those leaves, for the most part, are like those of the elm. Others have three points, and they think they cause the yucca to thrive." It is perhaps not far-fetched to see in the triangular stones analogues of the mountain-man images of the Tlaloque in Mexico, or of the similar images from South America, certainly used in connexion with rain ceremonies. Very likely separate forms were employed for different plants, as maize or yucca. The stone rings, again, could very reasonably be those which were supposed to help women in labour, as seems to have been the case with the analogous rings and yokes from Yucatan (see Fewkes, 25 ARBE, pp. 259-61). Even if the two types of stones were combined, as seems altogether likely, at least for magic and divination, there is congruity in the relationship of both types to fertility, animal and vegetable respectively. Señor J. J. Acosta has suggested that the Antillean stone rings represent the bodies, and the triangular stones the heads, of serpents; and this is not without plausibility in view of the frequency with which serpents are regarded as fertility emblems. It may be worth recalling, too, that an Antillean name for doctor, or medicine-man, signified "serpent."
[15] There is no reason to assume any essential difference in character in the shamans or medicine-men of the North and South American Indians. In general, the lower the tribe in the scale of political organization, the more important is the shaman or doctor, and the more distinctly individual and the less tribal are the offices which he performs; as organization grows in social complexity, the function of priest emerges as distinct from that of doctor, the priest becoming the depository of ritual, and the doctor or shaman, on a somewhat lower level, attending the sick or practising magic and prophecy. Apparently in the Antilles the two offices were on the way to differentiation, if, indeed, they were not already distinct. The bohutis, buhuitihus, boii, or, as Peter Martyr latinizes, bovites of this region were evidently both doctors and priests. Certainly both Ramon Pane's and Peter Martyr's descriptions imply this; though there are some hints which would seem to point to a special class of ritual priests, who may or may not have been doctors, as when priests are said to act as mouthpieces of the cacique in giving oracles from hollow statues, or as when Martyr (following Pane) says that "only the sons of chiefs" are allowed to learn the traditional chants of the great ceremonials (p. 172). The term peaiman, applied to the shamans of the Guiana tribes, is, says im Thurn (p. 328), an Anglicized form of the Carib word puyai or peartzan. The peaiman, im Thurn states, "is not simply the doctor, but also, in some sense, the priest or magician." As matter of fact, the priestly element is slight among the continental Caribs, their practice being pure shamanism; and Fewkes (, p. 54) says that they "still speak of their priests as ceci-semi"—a term clearly related to zemi. "The prehistoric Porto Ricans," he says again (ib. p. 59), "had a well-developed priesthood, called boii (serpents), mabouya, and buhiti, which are apparently dialect or other forms of the same word." It was in Porto Rico, of course, that Carib and Taïno elements were most mixed. Brett [a], p. 363, in a note, derives the word piai from Carib puiai, which, he says, is in Ackawoi piatsan; while the Arawak use semecihi, and the Warau wisidaa, for the same functionary. Certainly the resemblance of boye and puiai, and of zemi and semecihi, or ceci-semi, indicates identities of origin, though the particular meanings are not altogether the same.
[16] Little is preserved of Antillean myth, and that little is contained almost wholly in the narrative of Ramon Pane. The authorities here quoted are Ramon Pane, chh. i, ix-xi, ii-vii (tr. Pinkerton, xii); Peter Martyr (tr. MacNutt, i. 167-70); Benzoni; and Ling Roth, in JAI xvi. 264-65. Stoddard gives free versions of several of the tales.
[17] Peter Martyr, loc. cit. (quoting pp. 166-67, 172-76).
[18] Gómara [a], ch. xxvii, p. 173, ed. Vedia (tr. Fewkes , pp. 66-67); cf. Benzoni, pp. 79-82; Las Casas , ch. clxvii. The plate representing the Earth Spirit ceremony is taken from (cf. Fewkes , Plate IX) Picart, The Religious Ceremonies and Customs of the Several Nations of the known World, London, 1731-37, Plate No. 78.
[19] Im Thurn, pp. 335-38; cf. Fewkes [e], p. 355.
[20] Ramon Pane, chh. xiv, xxv; Gómara [a], ch. xxxiii, pp. 175-76, ed. Vedia, gives supplementary information.
[21] Authorities cited for Carib lore are Columbus, Select Letters, pp. 29-37; im Thurn, pp. 192, 217, 222; Fewkes , pp. 27, 217-20, 68; Ballet, citing du Tertre and others, pp. 421-22, 433-38, 400-01; Davies, cited by Fewkes , pp. 60, 65; Currier, citing la Borde, pp. 508-09.
[22] Holmes, "Areas of American Culture" (in AA, new series, xvi, 1914) gives a chart of North America showing five culture areas for Mexico and Central America, in general corresponding to the grouping here made. The American Indian of Wissler, the Ancient Civilizations of Spinden, the Manuel of Beuchat and the Mexican Archaeology of Joyce follow approximately the same lines. E. G. Tarayre's "Report" in Archives de la commission scientifique du Mexique, iii (Paris, 1867) contains "Notes ethnographiques sur les régions mexicaines." For linguistic divisions the standard works are Orozco y Berra , Nicolás León [a], and especially Thomas and Swanton, Indian Languages of Mexico and Central America (44 BBE); cf. Mechling . Contemporary ethnography is described in Lumholtz [a], , [c], in McGee, and in Starr [a], .