Below is the uncorrected machine-read text of this chapter, intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text of each book. Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.
4 RACES OF MAIZE 75°F.; ordinarily annual temperatures range from about 40°F. to 95°, but frost has been recorded (22). Average annual rainfall varies considerably throughout the island, depending largely on the topography ( 9) . The chief agricultural areas, however, re- ceive about 45 to 60 inches annually. Precipitation in Cuba is distinctly seasonal. The agricultural regions receive about 80 per cent of their rainfall between May and November. Rainless periods of thirty days or more are not uncommon during the winter dry season. SURVEY OF CUBAN AGRICULTURE Marrero ( 32) estimated the population of Cuba in 1949 at 5,200,000 persons, about 54 per cent of whom lived in rural dis- tricts or in towns with less than 1,000 inhabitants. The census of 1943 reported that 41.5 per cent of the working population of Cuba was engaged in agriculture (fide Marrero). Approximately 17.2 per cent of the land area of Cuba was cul- tivated in 1945 ( 11 ) . Sugar cane was by far the most important crop, occupying about 52 per cent of the cultivated area and accounting for almost 42 per cent of the value of agricultural production. Surprisingly, maize was the second crop in total area of land occupied, but its estimated value was only a little more than 15 million dollars, about 4.5 per cent of the total for all crops. Tobacco was valued at about 34 million dollars, about 10 per cent of the total. Pastures are also exceedingly important in Cuba. About 34 per cent of Cuba's land area was classified as pasture. In 1945, income produced from livestock was about 69 million dollars, the equivalent of nearly 21 per cent of total value of agricultural products in that year. Crops of less importance included coffee, rice, yuca (manioc), plantains, beans, and sweet potatoes. THE ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS OF CUBA Three groups of aborigines inhabited the West Indian Islands when they were discovered by Columbus in 1492 (Rouse: 39, 40). Arawak tribes occupied most of Cuba, Jamaica, the Ba- hamas, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, and part of Trinidad. The Ciboney lived in caves in the extreme eastern part of Cuba. The
THE ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS OF CUBA 5 Lesser Antilles and much of Trinidad were under the control of the warlike Carib, well known for their cannibalistic habits and slave raids on neighboring Indian groups. The Ciboney are believed to have entered the Antilles from Florida in Rouse's "Period 1," before 930 A.D. These Indians, lacking agriculture, grubbed out a meager existence along the coasts of the Greater Antilles, gathering shellfish and living in caves. Rouse's "Period II" was ushered in with the invasion of Trini- dad and the Lesser Antilles by Arawak tribes formerly based along the north coast of South America and near the mouth of the Orinoco. The Arawak introduced agriculture into the West Indies; among the plants cultivated by them were manioc, sweet potatoes, maize, beans, cotton, tobacco, papaya, pineapples, and peanuts ( 38). This early Arawak tradition, distinguished as "Igneri" by Rouse, spread through Puerto Rico to eastern His- paniola before the end of "Period II." Further expansion of the Arawak through Hispaniola and into Cuba, Jamaica, and the Bahamas, together with development of new culture types, was characteristic of Rouse's "Period III," which began about 1200 A.D. The Taino tradition, centered in Puerto Rico and extending into the Virgin Islands and eastern Hispaniola, became the most advanced of West Indian cultures. In Puerto Rico, stone sculpture was highly developed; stone "necklaces" are a spectacular feature of its archeology. The some- what less advanced "Sub-Taino" culture developed in the western Antilles. In Cuba it expanded at the expense of the primitive Ciboney. Carib invasion of the Lesser Antilles from South America ushered in "Period IV," the beginning of which Rouse dates as about 1440 A.D. At about the same time the Taino Arawak ex- panded westward as far as the Baracoa region of eastern Cuba at the expense of the less advanced Sub-Taino tradition. Carib raids must have occurred as far north as the Bahamas, for a perusal of Columbus's Journal gives the impression that those Indians lived in mortal fear of their cannibalistic neighbors to the south. The Igneri tradition, however, was able to survive on a part of the island of Trinidad until the European conquest.
6 RACES OF MAIZE Oviedo (34) and Las Casas (27, 28) give vivid, although fre- quently conflicting, descriptions of the Indians of Cuba and Hispaniola. Oviedo attributed the rapid disappearance of the Cuban Indians to smallpox, which he interpreted as divine retri- bution for their sins, crimes, and idolatry. Las Casas, to whom can probably be traced many later ideas about the nobility of savages and the glory of a state of nature, strongly defended the West Indian aborigines against Oviedo's accusations. Although Oviedo's accounts of Arawak morals were probably distorted, his lively descriptions of their agricultural practices seem accurate. His account of how the Indians planted corn on Hispaniola is especially interesting because it agrees in nearly all respects with a description ( 23) of Arawak corn planting in Venezuela written by Padre Jose Gumilla, a Jesuit missionary who worked in the Spanish American colonies from 1702 to 1738. According to Oviedo the Hispaniolan Indians always selected wooded areas for planting, land covered with herbaceous vegeta- tion being considered less fertile. After cutting and burning the trees, shrubs, and canes and waiting for the new moon to appear, five or six Indians placed themselves in a row a step apart. Each made a small hole with a planting stick, threw in it four or five grains of maize taken from a small sack tied around the waist or slung around the neck, covered the hole with earth, then moved forward a pace and repeated the process. The planting thus was done in hills placed in regular rows separated by two to three feet. The cornfield was weeded until the maize plants were taller than the competing vegetation. When the ears began to develop, the Indians stationed boys in trees and on specially constructed platforms, called barbacoas, to frighten away parrots and other birds which might eat the corn. Oviedo, Las Casas, Gumilla, and such later field students of cultural anthropology as Farabee ( 21 ) agree that the Arawak consumed their corn before it had fully matured, either uncooked, roasted on the cob, or in a kind of stew or soup. Oviedo reported that the Indians of Hispaniola applied the special term ector to corn in the early milk stage. Mature grains were parched before eating. Rouse ( 39) states that it has been assumed that because the Tainos lacked metates, they possessed only soft
