SEALED WITH RIVER STONES

by Jack Ewing

A clang of shovel against stone penetrated the jungle. Osvaldo and I cautiously approached the pre-Columbian burial ground, hoping to surprise the grave robbers. No such luck; the four men caught sight of us and scattered into the jungle, leaving everything behind. We both fired shots into the air, a strong warning that we were serious about protecting indigenous cemeteries on the hacienda. Osvaldo thought he recognized one of the men, but wasn't sure enough to file formal charges. To my knowledge no more grave robbing occurred on Hacienda Barú after that day, in 1978.

Osvaldo, the Hacienda Barú forest guard, showed me how robbers know where to dig. “Cemeteries are easy to find if you know what to look for. They're almost always located on ridge tops and sealed with smooth river stones. Picking up a sharp-pointed piece of construction rod left behind by the trespassers, he began to probe the soil. “You just keep poking until the bar strikes a large surface of stone. Then dig down a few centimeters. If you find river rocks it's a grave for sure. Someone had to carry the stones from the river. They didn't walk up to the ridge all by themselves.

Why did they seal the graves? I asked.

“Who knows. Probably to keep wild animals from digging them up.

Eugenia Ibarra Rojas, in Las Sociedades Cacicales de Costa Rica (Siglo XVI) , tells us that the first Spanish expeditions to this part of Costa Rica, found no indigenous people between the Barú and Savegre Rivers. One explanation offered for this lack of occupants is that a constant state of war existed between the Quepo tribe, located northwest of the Savegre River and the Boruca and Coto tribes to the southeast of the Barú. The area may have been a no-man's-land.

In the early 1970s, at the Costa Rican National Museum, a large map of the country provided basic information about pre-Columbian peoples from each region. The area between the Barú and Savegre Rivers was blank with a label stating that no Indians had ever lived there. This error was probably due to the information cited above, originating from the first explorers. The map was later corrected to say that Indians had lived here at one time, but little was known about them. Anyone who lives here knows that at some time in the distant past many people occupied the region.

Estimates of pre-Columbian populations vary widely from one investigator to the next, but I have seen no estimates at all for our region. Evidence suggests that, at one time, human populations may have been much higher than today. On Hacienda Barú National Wildlife Refuge, an area of 330 hectares, we have counted a total of 267 open graves, ones that were discovered and dug up by grave robbers. All of the neighboring properties have a similar density of open tombs. We can safely estimate that an equal or greater number of graves are probably covered by the root structures of large trees or simply have not been discovered, suggesting a probable total to over 500 graves. If that many people were buried just on Hacienda Barú, how many people once lived here?

Compare the number of graves in the cemetary of any present day community to the living population of that community. There will be many more people living than dead. It is conceivable that 1000 or more people lived on Hacienda Barú at one time, where today there are less than two dozen. The entire Hatillo voting district, and area of about 45 square kilometers, has only 300 registered voters. What was the environmental impact of that many people? How much land did they deforest to grow food for their population? When and why did they all disappear? Were there really that many people living here, or is the number of open graves misleading? Perhaps some natural catastrophe killed large numbers of Indians prior to the arrival of the Spaniards. These are questions that may be answered by future investigators. For now we can only speculate, but the subject is fascinating.

In the near future, Hacienda Barú National Wildlife Refuge with the collaboration of The Firestone Center for Restoration Ecology will offer a tour called the Pre-Colombian Experience. We don't have the answers, but we can at least show you some of the evidence. Perhaps we will uncover some more clues about the disappearance of the occupants of this region, and why so many early Costa Ricans were sealed in tombs of river stones.

Tel. (in C. R.): (506) 787-0003
Fax (in C. R.): (506) 787-0057
Email: info@haciendabaru.com

Focussed in Birdwatching Costa Rica and Ecotourism