The Native Races [of the Pacific states], Volume 4, Antiquities: The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, Volume 4Bancroft, Hubert Howe
History
The Native Races [of the Pacific states], Volume 4, Antiquities: The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, Volume 4
Bancroft, Hubert Howe
Indians -- Bibliography; Indians of Central America; Indians of Mexico; Indians of North America -- Pacific Coast of North America
Another lava boulder similarly incised found in the parish of San
Miguel is pronounced by Mr Squier, from the examination of a drawing,
to resemble stones seen by him in other parts of Central America. I
copy Seemann's cuts of several of the characters.[II-4] The second
class includes a few stone columns, some of them ten or twelve feet
high, found at David and in Veragua as well. These seem never to have
been seen in situ, but scattered and sometimes used for building
purposes by the present inhabitants. Their peculiarity is that the
characters engraved on their surface are entirely different from those
of the Piedra Pintal, being smaller and cut in low relief. Drawings of
these possibly hieroglyphic signs, by which to compare them with those
of Copan, Palenque, and Yucatan, are not extant. The third class
comprises the _huacas_, or tombs, a large number of which have been
opened, and a variety of deposited articles brought to light. The
tombs themselves are of two kinds. Those of the first kind are mere
pebble-heaps, or mounds, three or four feet high, and the only
articles taken from them are three-legged stones for grinding corn,
known in all Spanish America as _metates_. The other graves have rude
boxes or coffins of flat stones, with, in a few instances, rude stone
posts several feet in height. Graves of this class are found to
contain golden ornaments, with trinkets and implements of stone and
burned clay. In most of them no traces of human remains are met; and
when human bones do occur, they usually crumble to dust on exposure to
the air, one skull, however, described as broad in the middle and flat
behind, having been secured, and a plaster cast exhibited to the
American Ethnological Society.[II-5]
[Sidenote: POTTERY OF CHIRIQUÍ.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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