16 November, 2001
Ceremonial Seat Found

by Lennox Honychurch

A carved wooden seat used by important Amerindian people in Dominica many hundreds of years ago has been found in a storeroom in England. The seat, which was carved from what is probably Coubaril wood, has been located in a collection at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, England, by a researcher.

This is an important find because it increases our knowledge of the people who lived on Dominica before the arrival of Christopher Columbus. It also shows that their society was more advanced than was originally thought.

The seat was brought to England from Dominica and sent to Kew in 1860 by Dr. John Imray, the leading doctor on the island at the time. He gave it to the head of Kew Gardens, the famous botanist Sir William Hooker.

Imray wrote to Hooker that "it was found by a negro boy in a cave among the woods of Dominica. There were some objects of the same description which unfortunately I was unable to procure…From its weight it is made from some hard wood of this country. I almost think Coubaril". There is no indication of where the cave was located.

It is the first time that a seat of this kind has been attributed to any island in the Eastern Caribbean. These seats are usually associated with the Taino people who lived in Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, Jamaica and Cuba. In the Taino language such a seat is called a "Duho". These Duhos were carved with sacred images and were used by chiefs and shamans or priests.

This Dominica Duho is carved in the form of a male spirit figure lying on his back with his head raised. The space for his eyes and mouth would have been filled with hammered gold or shell. The man's ribs are carved into the wood and a sign for fertility is carved on his chest. Part of his arms seem to have fallen off. The Duho was located at Kew by Dominican born Catherine Lord, a professor at the University of California at Irvine who is now working on a book about Dominica.

Another significant indigenous artifact from Dominica is located at the Museum of Mankind in Paris. It is a carved stone image, called a "three-pointer" by archaeologists, which was found at Soufriere in 1878 during the construction of the Soufriere church. The parish priest sent the stone to Paris where it now forms an important part of the French national collection.

Both of the recently rediscovered seat and the "three-pointer" shows that Dominica has had a far richer past than was originally believed.

 

Search again

top