It is probable that these Boriquenos were allied in speech and custom, as well as in blood, to their neighbors the Haytiens, of whom saith Peter Martyr, "The land among these people is common as sun and water. 'Mine' and 'thine,' the seeds of all mischief, have no place among them. They are content with so little that in this large country they have more than plenty. They live in a golden world without toil, in open gardens, not intrenched, defended, or divided. They deal truly with one another, without laws, judges, or books. He that will hurt another is an evil man, and while they take no pleasure in superfluity, they take means to increase the roots that are their food--diet so simple that their health is assured." Still, it is known that in their defence against the marauding Caribs the Porto Ricans were courageous, and had become adept with arrow and club, and it was believed by some of the first explorers that they ate their captives. The aborigines of Porto Rico probably differed little, if at all, from the Haytiens in their faith in an all-powerful, deathless god, who had a mother but no father, who lived in the sky and was represented on earth by zemes or messengers. Every chief had his zemi, carved in stone or wood, as a tutelary genius, to whom he addressed his prayers and who had a temple of his own. Zemes directed the wind, waves, rains, rivers, floods, and crops, gave success or failure in the hunt, and gave visions to or spoke with priests who had worked themselves into a rhapsodic state by the use of a drug (it may have been tobacco), in order to receive the message, which often concerned the health of a person or of a whole village. The Spaniards regarded these manitous as images of the devil, and in order to keep them the natives hid the little effigies from the friars and the troops. In the festivals of these gods there were dances, music, and an offering of flower-decorated cakes.