mcceeJ ANTHROPOLOGIC LITERATURE u 179
technical and historical literature. The chapter on the people
of Cuba presents an appreciative and pleasing picture of a much-misun- derstood folk, and summarizes conveniently the hereditary and indus- trial classes comprising the population of the island. The Cubans are classed as white, colored (mestizo or mixed), and black ; and it is pointed out that, up to the recent revolution and the consequent His- pano- American war, the white population alone has been able to hold its own, while the blacks and mestizos have steadily decreased in number. " The five hundred and twenty thousand people of African descent, one half of whom are mulattos, represent the diminished sur- vival of over one million African slaves that have been imported " (p. 105). In addition to Spaniards and other Europeans, the
people of Puerto Rico are divided into four classes : " The better class of Creoles, who call themselves Spaniards ; the lower class of white peasantry, known as gibaros ; the colored people, or mestizos ; and the blacks " (p. 166). The aborigines are entirely extinct as individuals, though there are a few persons whose hair and color indicate a mixture of Indian and negro blood. Race feeling is strong ; the negroes form a numerical minority of the inhabitants, yet are contented with their lot, which " is much better than that of the negroes in the French, English, and independent islands " (p. 168). Although a
model English colony, the island of Jamaica is shown to be populated chiefly by negroes ; in 1891 there were 488,624 blacks, 121,955 colored, only 14,692 whites, with 10,116 East Indian coolies, 481 Chinamen, and 3623 unclassified. " The Jamaican negroes are sui generis ; nothing like them, even of their own race, can elsewhere be found — not even elsewhere in the West Indies" (p. 227). Though they out- number the whites nearly forty to one, they have no voice in govern- mental affairs ; yet they appear to retain definite traces of social organization, imported with enslaved ancestors from Africa, which doubtless facilitates governmental control. They are said to retain much or all of their primitive mythology beneath a scant veneer of the alien cult impressed by white masters. Clerical teachings have little effect on their simple minds ; " only the ceremonial and emotional phases impress them ; an empty bottle, — a potent power of evil, — if set down at the door of a congregation, would send it into paroxysms of fear" (p. 229). The rustling of the wind through a ceiba-tree, mythic dwelling-place of jumbies, instantly effaces Christian sermon and cere- mony ; even the educated young women of a normal school have been known to faint at sight of spilled mercury, trembling and sending forth distorted images with the shaking of the floor. Their belief is termed obiism ; it is a faith in mystical potencies, chiefly of evil, haunting places
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