Note 14 — Chapter I

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."