Part 2

Peter Martyr, who heard it spoken, said that the language in the Greater Antilles was “soft and not less liquid than the Latin,” and “rich in vowels and pleasant to the ear.” Of words of West Indian origin, those most frequently in use in the English language are avocado (aguacate) pear, barbecue, buccaneer, canoe, Carib and its derivative cannibal, guava, hammock, hurricane, iguana, maize, manatee, pirogue, potato and tobacco.

Columbus has told us of a cacique of Cuba who believed in a future state dependent on one’s actions in this world, but Sir Everard im Thurn found nothing of the kind amongst the Indians of Guiana, and it is probable that Columbus’s guide from Guanahani (Watling Island) only partially understood the cacique, or that Columbus only partially understood his guide. Their houses were primitive alike in shape and construction. In Jamaica, they were probably circular, and were provided with walls of wattle work plastered with mud, and with a high-pitched roof of palm leaves; they probably had no windows. The Indians slept in hammocks. The weapons of the Arawâks of Jamaica and the other large islands consisted of darts and war clubs; but they apparently did not possess bows and arrows, which were the form of weapons preferred by the Caribs, and the use of which gave them a great advantage over their more peaceful foes.

[Illustration:

MEALING-STONE ]

Ornaments were more worn by the men than the women. Painting was the simplest form of ornamentation; the colours used being blue, black, carmine, white and yellow, derived from plants and earths. They wore necklets of hogs’ teeth and stone beads, crowns of feathers in their heads, aprons of palm-leaves or woven cotton, and bands round their arms and legs. Their chief occupations and means of living were hunting and fishing and agricultural pursuits with, in some cases, a certain amount of trading. As they required nothing more than canoes for travelling on the water, simple houses to live in, baskets for domestic purposes, hammocks for rest, rude weapons of the chase, and implements such as hatchets and chisels, earthen vessels, and a few ornaments and articles of dress, these, with a few crude rock-carvings, formed the sum total of their arts and manufactures.

In common with the other aborigines of the West Indies generally and with the natives of New Zealand and with all the nomad tribes of the new world from Patagonia to the Arctic circle, the Arawâks of Jamaica were, when discovered, without any knowledge of the metals as such. From their kitchen middens we know that they were great fish eaters.

[Illustration:

ARAWÂK PESTLE ]

Until 1895, but few remains had been discovered to testify to the existence of a tribe which not so very long ago lived by gathering the fruits of the land and sea of Jamaica. During that and the following years several collections of Indian remains were found.[2] They are scattered fairly throughout the island, except curiously enough, the eastern end, and are thickly grouped in St. Andrew and Vere, in St. Ann, and in the west end of Westmoreland. They all supply objects similar in character and giving evidence of no very high advance in civilization or the arts; being considerably below those of Mexico and Peru. The objects consist for the most part of petaloid or almond-shaped polished celts of metamorphic or igneous rocks, found somewhat abundantly all over the island; circular or oval, shallow, unglazed bowls of baked pottery, with but crude ornamentation, used in the preparation of food, and some as mortuary vessels for the heads of their chiefs—found here and there in the caves and on the sites of dwellings; calcedony beads, hitherto found, curiously enough, only in Vere; stone and wooden images and rock-carvings and the rock-pictures; and a few shell and flint implements and mealing-stones rarely found.

Footnote 2:

For this subject consult “Aboriginal Indian Remains in Jamaica. By J. E. Duerden, A.R.C.Sc., Kingston, Ja., 1897.”

It is to be regretted that many of the objects shown at an exhibition of native remains held at the Institute of Jamaica in 1895, following on the discovery of the Halberstadt cave, as well as others discovered later, should have been allowed to leave the island. Such things once lost can rarely be regained.

Some of the early Spanish historians—putting as they frequently did X for J—wrote the name of the island _Xaymaca_, but it appears in its present form as early as 1511 in Peter Martyr’s “Decades.” He called it _Jamaica_ and _Jamica_. The island is unnamed in Juan de la Cosa’s map of 1500.

Its first appearance in cartography is on the map made by Bartolommeo Colombo, Columbus’s younger brother, to illustrate the admiral’s fourth voyage, where it is spelled _Jamaicha_. In Cantino’s map (1502–04) it appears as _Jamaiqua_: in Caneiro as _Jamaiqua_ and in Waldseemüller’s map of 1507 as _Jamaiana_. In the so-called Admiral’s map of 1507 it appears as _Jamaqua_: the name does not appear in Ruysch’s map of 1508, but in the Ptolemaeus edition, Strasburg 1513, it is given as _Jamaiqua_, and in the Waldseemüller map of 1516 it is also _Jamaiqua_.

In the Maggiolo map of 1519 it is _Jamaica_, but in the Maggiolo map of 1527 it is _Jamaicha_: in Ribero’s “Antilles” of 1529 and in Mercator’s map of 1541 it is _Jamaica_: but in Herrera’s map of 1601, it goes back to the old form _Xamaica_, and as late as 1734 in Charlevoix’s “L’isle Espagnole,” it appears as _Xamayca_. Amongst Englishmen who wrote of it from personal knowledge immediately after the British occupation, Commissioner Butler (1655) wrote it _Gemecoe_ and _Gemegoe_. Daniell (1655) calls it _Jamico_, Gwakin (1657) wrote it _Jammaca_, and General Fleetwood (1658) wrote it _Jamecah_.

Columbus on his return from his first journey was told by the natives when off Tortuga, that if he sailed in a certain direction two days he would arrive at Babeque, where he would find gold. Columbus mentions Babeque many times in his journals, but he never found it, at least under that name. The “Historie,” of 1571, identifies it with Hispaniola but this is doubted. Las Casas thought that it might refer to Jamaica.

In common with most other West Indian native names Jamaica has come to us through a Spanish source; and the native pronunciation was possibly something like Hâmîca. Several derivations have been given of the meaning of the word. The most extraordinary is that which seeks to connect it with James II. On Moll’s map of the island, published early in the eighteenth century, it is stated that it was first called St. Jago by Columbus, who discovered it, but that the name was afterwards changed to Jamaica, after James, Duke of York. In this connection it is somewhat sad to note that not one of the Greater Antilles retained the name given to it by Columbus. Española, Santiago and Juana, went back to their native Hayti, Jamaica and Cuba; and St. Juan Bautista became Porto Rico, but Hispaniola still survives to some extent and is the most convenient name for the island which contains two republics. Of the smaller islands, the names of Trinidad, Antigua, Dominica, Montserrat and Guadeloupe still remind us of their great discoverer.

James Knight, in the rough draft of his history of Jamaica (1742) in the British Museum, gives the following derivation of the word Jamaica: “In the original it was Jamajaco. Jamo in the Indian language is a country, and Jaco is water.”

John Atkins, in his “Voyage to the Guinea, Brazil, and the West Indies” (1737), says that “Jamaica was altered by King James, it being a compound of his name and ‘_ca_’ an island.” He was possibly not far wrong in regard to the “island.” The West Indian word for an island, _cai_ (or the Biscayan word cay) is supposed to appear in Lucayos (Bahamas), “Men of the Island”; in the Caicos islands, and also in various cays or keys in the West Indies; albeit modern etymology makes cay or key the same word as the Welsh cae.

Long wrote in 1774 that “it is not improbable that Jamaica is a name of Indian extraction, perhaps derived from Jamacaru, the Brazilian name of the prickly pear, which overspreads the maritime parts of the south side, where the aboriginal Indian discoverers of this island might have first landed,” but this derivation has found no supporters among later writers.

Bryan Edwards, writing in 1793, says: “The early Spanish historians wrote the word _Xaymaca_. It is said to have signified in the language of the natives, a country abounding in springs.”

Bridges, who as a rule displays a more fertile imagination than Long without half his trustworthiness as a historian, says, writing in 1828: “In the speech of Florida, _Chaübaan_ signified water and _makia_ wood (Lescarbot, I.6, c.6). The compound sound would approach to Chab-makia; and, harmonized to the Spanish ear, would be Chamakia, or some such indistinct union of these two significant expressions, denoting a land covered with wood, and therefore watered by shaded rivulets, or, in other words, fertile.” This suggested origin has been usually adopted by later writers. Why Bridges sought in Florida the meaning of words of Jamaica, he does not explain. Carib and Arawâk are probably the only two languages which Columbus heard spoken in the Greater Antilles. Wood, in Arawâk, is _ada_; woods are in Arawâk _konoko_ and in Carib _eotch_; and water is in Arawâk _winiab_ (Hillhouse) or _comiaboo_ (im Thurn), and in Carib _tona_.

Bryan Edwards points out that Fernando Columbus’s “Historie” states that the Indian name of Antigua was Jamaica, and he adds: “It is a singular circumstance that this word which in the language of the larger islands signified a country abounding in springs, should in the dialect of the Charaibs have been applied to an island that has not a single spring or rivulet of fresh water in it.” Until further research proves the contrary Jamaica must remain, what it truly is, the land of woods and streams.

Apart from the name of the island itself, there are few names of native origin left. These will be referred to in the body of the work as they occur.

There is some difficulty in discriminating between the native Indian and Spanish origin of West Indian names: and too great a faith in the laws of philology are apt to lead one astray. Placenames are not infrequently rather evolved in accordance with the rule of phonetics.

On this subject Long wrote: “From the resemblance which the language of these islanders bears in some respects to the Spanish, I am apt to suspect that many of their words have been altered by the Spanish mode of pronunciation, and the difficulty which the discoverers found in articulating and accenting them without some intermixture of their own patronymic. In some this is exceedingly obvious, where the letter _b_ is used indiscriminately for _v_, agreeably to their idiom. This perversion may easily lead us to ascribe a Spanish or Moorish origin to the names of places, such as rivers, mountains, headlands, &c., which in fact are of Indian derivation. Thus the article _gua_, so commonly met with both in these islands and on the Southern continent, was often prefixed or appended to the Indian names of places and things; and even of their provincial _caciques_. Of the latter were Gua-rionexius, Gua-canarillus, Gua-naboa, and others. Of the former a vast multitude occurs, as Gua-nama, Xa-gua, Gua-há-gua, Camayá-gua, Aicayazá-gua, Má-gua, Nicará-gua, Verá-gua, Xará-guo, Gua-ríco, Ni-gua (Chigger), etc., which may seem to confound them with derivatives from the Spanish or Moorish word _agua_ (water). So the terminations, _ao_, _ana_, _coa_, and _boa_ or _voa_, as Manabax-ao, Cib-ao, Gu-ana, Magu-ana, Yagu-ana, Ligu-ana, Zav-ana (Savannah), Furac-ana (Hurricane), Caym-ana, Guaiac-ana (Guiacum), Haba-coa, Cuana-boa, and so forth. The names therefore occurring in our island of Liguana, Cagua, Tilboa, Guanaboa, Guadibocoa, and others of similar finals are with more propriety to be traced from the Indian than the Spanish dialect.”

With regard to the Spanish occupation of the island both history and archæology are almost as scantily supplied as in the case of the Arawâks.

It is estimated that when Jamaica fell into the hands of the English the population of the capital was half Spanish and Portuguese or their descendants and half slaves; but it is a curious fact that a negro is mentioned as holding the position of priest of the Roman Catholic church.

The more important islands of Cuba and Hispaniola, to say nothing of the rich mines of South America, offered greater attractions to the Spaniards than did Jamaica, where—then, as now—the field had to be ploughed before the harvest could be reaped. They utilized for their _hatos_, or pastures, the low-lying lands on the sea-coast, which had formerly been used by the native Arawâks for the cultivation of Indian corn and cassava.

Of these hatos the principal were, going from east to west, Morante (the name of which still lives in Morant Bay), Ayala (Yallahs), Lezama (where Mona now is), Liguanea (Lower St. Andrew), Guanaboa (the name of which still exists), Guatabaco (about Old Harbour), Yama (in Vere), Pereda (Pedro Plains), El Eado (behind Bluefields) and Cabonico (near Savanna-la-Mar).

[Illustration: JAMAICA, CIRCA 1661]

They had settlements at St. Jago de la Vega (the present Spanish town, established in 1520), Puerto de Esquivella (Old Harbour, named after the first governor about 1501), Parattee (still bearing the same name), Oristan (Bluefield, named after a town in Sardinia then subject to the crown of Spain), Savanna-la-Mar, Melilla (in the north-west corner of St. James, named after a town on the coast of Barbary, then in the possession of Spain), Sevilla Nueva (St. Ann’s Bay), Chireras (Ocho Rios), Rio Nuevo and Hibanal (somewhere near Buff Bay).

Roads ran from Puerto Antonio westerly along the coast to Punta Negrilla, connecting their townships of Santa Anna, Melilla and Manteca. From Manteca a road ran southerly to where Savanna-la-Mar now is, and thence easterly to Old Harbour, and thence northerly to Santa Anna.

There are but scanty remains of Spanish masonry in the island; none of great importance. The “Columbian Magazine” in 1796 recorded that an old Spanish tavern, with laths of bamboo, was taken down to make way for Rodney’s statue, and the adjacent buildings, but there is, of course, no certain proof that this was Spanish work. The only known relic of Spanish Jamaica is the church bell from Port Royal now in the Institute of Jamaica.

Of their buildings in general, Sir Hans Sloane, who was here in 1687–88, only thirty-three years after the conquest, says that they were “usually one storey high, having a porch, parlour, and at each end a room, with small ones behind. They built with posts put deep in the ground; on the sides their houses were plastered up with clay or reeds, or made of the split trunks of cabbage trees nailed close to one another and covered with tiles or palmetto thatch. The lowness, as well as fixing the posts deep in the earth, was for fear their houses should be ruined by earthquakes, as well as for coolness.” It seems strange, according to modern ideas, to build a house one storey only for coolness; although one might do so for fear of earthquakes.

Long tells us that “a certain number of posts of the hardest timber, generally _lignum vitæ_, brazilletto, or fustick, of about 18 feet in length and 6 to 8 inches in diameter, being first well-seasoned and hardened in smoke, were fixed at proper distances to the depth of 2 or 3 feet in the ground; then a wall of brick, enclosing these posts, was carried up with very strong mortar to the plate, which was pinned with wooden spikes to the tops of the posts. The main rafters were small, but being of the like hard wood, and perfectly well-seasoned, were sufficiently strong; these were likewise pinned upon each other, and at their angle of intersection at top formed a crutch to receive the ridge pole. The smaller rafters were of the lesser ebony trees, stripped of their bark, hardened in smoke, notched at bottom, and being placed at the distance of about 18 inches from each other, were pinned to the plate. Athwart these on all rafters a stratum of the wild cane (_Arundo Indica_, bamboo species), previously smoked, was tied on by way of wattling with straps made of the bark of mahoe or mangrove trees. Upon these wattles some mortar was laid, to the thickness of about 4 inches; and the whole covered with large pantiles, well bedded in. The thickness of these roofs, from the outward shell or tile-covering to the ceiling within, was about 8 or 10 inches. A canopy of so solid a texture was certainly well contrived to shelter the inhabitants from the disagreeable effects of a vertical sun,” and accordingly it is found by experience that these old Spanish houses are much cooler than our modern ones covered with shingles. After regretting the failure to establish a manufacture of tiles, and the importation of North American shingles, Long goes on to say: “The chief error the Spaniards committed in their buildings was the placing their ground floors too low; these were nearly on a level with the surface of the earth out of doors, or at most raised only a few inches higher.” In his time there were, he tells us, upwards of fifty Spanish houses remaining in Spanish Town “very little the worse for time or weather.”

Of Spanish names given to towns and villages, St. Jago de la Vega (St. James of the plain) still survives in custom, although supplanted officially by Spanish Town. So also do Ocho Rios, Savanna-la-Mar (the plain by the sea) and Oracabessa; Esquivel became Old Harbour soon after the British occupation.

Of the Spanish names of rivers, many survive; the principal being Rio Alto (deep river), Rio Cobre (copper river), Rio Grande, Rio Minho, Rio Bueno (the good river), Rio Magno (the great river), Rio Novo (new river), Rio d’oro (golden river), Rio Pedro (Peter’s river). It is thought that Rio Pedro may be a corruption of Rio Piedra (stony river). The Rio Minho is said to have been named after a river in Portugal or, as Long says in another place, after some mine in the neighbourhood. It is thought by some that it should be Rio Mina, (the river by the mine). Others are named after rivers in Spain.

Amongst districts we have Santa Cruz (Holy Cross); as well as Pedro both in St. Ann and in St. Elizabeth. The former is said to have been named after Pedro Esquivel, the Spanish governor.

The following derivations of Spanish names in Jamaica are given by Long. Notes by the present writer are added between square brackets:

_Auracabeza._ Aura, air or breeze; Cabeza, head or high land. [This is now Ora Cabessa in St. Mary. Others derive it from Oro Cabeza, the golden head.]

_Alta Mela._ Deep Gap. (Alta Mela, Savannah, St. James.)

_Agua Alta Bahia._ Deep water Bay, corruptly Wag-Water. [Still known as Wag Water.]

_Los Angelos._ The Angels. [Angels in St. Catherine was the first terminus of the railway.]

_Rio Bonito._ The Pretty River.

_Cabo Bonito._ The Pretty Cape. [In St. Catherine.]

_Cabarita Punta._ Kid or Goat Point. [In Westmoreland, where there is a river of the same name; there is another Cabaritta Point in Old Harbour Bay, and a Cabaritta Island in Port Maria Harbour.]

_Rio de Camarones._ Perhaps from Gambaro, a crab, from the abundance of black crabs hereabouts.

_Cobre Rio._ Copper River, or Cobra Port, Snake River. [Still known as Rio Cobre.]

_Caborido._ _Quasi_ Caba Arido, the dry or withered cape (part of Healthshire highlands.)

_Carvil or Caravel Bahia._ Caravela signifies a light round kind of a ship formerly used by the Spaniards.

_Diablo Monte._ Devil’s Mount. [Now called Mount Diavolo.]

_Escondido Puerto._ The hidden harbour. [In Portland; now called Turtle Crawle Harbour.]

_Flora Ria._ Flower River.

_Fortaleza Punta._ Fort Point. [On Blome’s map there are two in St. Ann.]

_Gallina Punta._ Hen Point. [Galina Point is in St. Mary.]

_Guada Bocca._ Guada, brook of water; boca, mouth.

_Hoja Rio._ River of leaves, now corruptly Riho Hoa. [Now called Rio Hoe.]

_Jarisse Punta._ Cross-bow or arrow, probably refers to some action with the Indians.

_Javareen._ Rustic expression, signifying a wild boar.

_Lacovia._ _Quasi_ Lago-via, or the way by the lake. [A village in St. Elizabeth. Elsewhere Long suggests it may be a corruption of La agua via, the watery way. It was once in the possession of the Gladstone family.]

_Liguanea._ Lia-withe-guana, the name of an animal, probably one frequent in that part of the island. [That part of Lower St. Andrew, bordered by the Long Mountain, the St. Andrew Mountains and the Red Hills.]

_Moneque or Monesca Savannah._ Savannah of monkeys. [Now confined to the village of Moneague.]

_Mari bona._ Maria-buena, Mary the Good. [Maria Buena Bay is in Trelawny.]

_Multi-bezon Rio._ Multi, many; buzon, conduit.

_Macari Bahia._ Macari, a tile, such as is made for floors, which the Spaniards universally used here and probably manufactured them near this bay, the soil being proper for that purpose. [Long adds as a footnote to Macari: “Or perhaps it may derive more properly from the Indian word Macarij (which signifies bitter), and allude to the tree commonly called the Majoe, or Macary-bitter which grows in great abundance along this part of the coast, and with whose leaves, bark and root, which are all of them extremely bitter, some very notable cures in cases of inveterate ulcers, the yaws, and venereal distempers, were some years ago performed by an old negress named Majoe, in commemoration of whom it took its name.” Macary Bay is in Vere. Majoe Bitter, or Macary Bitter (_Picramnia Antidesnia Sus._) is a shrub about 8 feet high, with small whitish green flowers, and berries first scarlet, then black.]

_Mantica Bahia._ Butter (now Montego Bay). This part abounding formerly with wild hogs, the Spaniards probably made here what they called hog’s butter (lard) for exportation. [In a very old deed of conveyance of land in St. James a road is marked as leading to Lard Bay.]

_Ocho Rios_ said to mean eight rivers. [In St. Ann. It was more commonly called Chareiras in Long’s time; and indeed as late as 1841, William Rob wrote “Ocho Rios, called to this day by the old inhabitants ‘Cheireras,’ its early and appropriate name ‘the Bay of the Water-Falls,’ but has now gone back to Ocho Rios.” It is not unlikely that the present form Ocho Rios and the derivation from eight rivers is wrong, and that the real name is Chorréra, a spout. There is a Chorréra River in Cuba, near Havannah.]

_Perexil Insula._ Samphire Island.

_Sombrio Rio._ Shady river. [Now called the Sambre.]

_Yalos._ Frosts (whence, perhaps corruptly, Yallahs), the high white cliffs having the appearance of a frosty covering. [Now called Yallahs. Long was probably wrong in connecting Yallahs with Yalos. The Hatô de Ayala extended from Bull Bay nearly to Morant Bay, and the name is probably a personal one. Pedro Lopez de Ayala was a celebrated poet and politician in the fourteenth century; Pedro de Ayala was Spanish envoy to the Court of St. James in 1498; and, curiously, a recent Spanish representative at Havana bore the name de Ayala. There was a Captain Yhallahs, a privateer who flourished in Jamaica in and about 1671, and the locality may have been named after him.]

_Luidas._ Perhaps from Luzida; gay, fine. [Lluidas Vale is in St. Catherine.]

_Martha Brea._ Martha, a woman’s name; Brea, tar; perhaps a nickname of some Spanish sailor’s Dulcinea like the English vulgar appellation _Jack Tar_. [Martha Brea village and river are in Trelawny. The name is a corruption of Rio Matibereon.]