GUANCHES, the aboriginal inhabitants of the Canary islands. Strictly the Guanches were the primitive :nhabitants of Teneriffe, where they seem to have preserved racial purity to the time of the Spanish conquest, but the name came to be applied to the indigenous populations of all the islands. The Guanches, now extinct as a distinct people, were an offshoot of the Berbers of northern Africa. They are of the Cro-Magnon type (Boule, Fossil Man, 1923. p. 288). The Carthaginians under Hanno found the archipelago uninhabited, but saw ruins of great buildings. This suggests that the Guanches were not the first inhabitants, and that this extreme westerly migration of Berbers took place between the time of which Pliny wrote and the conquest of northern Africa by the Arabs. Many of the Guanches fell in re sisting the Spaniards, many were sold as slaves, and many con formed to the Roman Catholic faith and married Spaniards.
Such remains as there are of their language, a few expressions and the proper names of ancient chieftains still borne by certain families, connect it with the Berber dialects. In many of the islands signs are engraved on rocks. In the ravines of Las Balos are some genuine Libyan inscriptions. The rock inscriptions are Numidic. In two of the islands (Teneriffe and Gomera) the Guanche type has been retained with more purity than in the others. No inscriptions have been found in these two islands, perhaps because the true Guanches did not know how to write. In the other islands numerous Semitic traces are found, and in all of them are the rock-signs.
The political and social institutions of the Guanches varied. In some islands hereditary autocracy prevailed; in others the government was elective. In Teneriffe all the land belonged to the chiefs who leased it to their subjects. In Grand Canary suicide was regarded as honourable, and on a chief inheriting, one of his subjects threw himself over a precipice. In Lanzarote polyandry was practised; elsewhere monogamy. But everywhere the women were respected, an insult offered any woman by an armed man being a capital offence. The Guanches generally wore garments of goat-skins, and others of vegetable fibres, which have been found in the tombs of Grand Canary. Ornaments, necklaces of wood, bone and shells, worked in different designs, beads of baked earth, cylindrical and of all shapes, with smooth or pol ished surfaces, mostly black and red in colour, were chiefly in use. They painted their bodies; the pintaderas, baked clay ob jects like seals in shape, having been used solely for painting the body in various colours. They manufactured rough pottery, mostly without decorations, or ornamented by means of the fingernail. The polished battle-ax was more used in Grand Ca nary, while stone and obsidian, roughly cut, were commoner in Teneriffe. They had, besides, the lance, the club, sometimes studded with pebbles, and the javelin, and they seem to have known the shield. They lived in natural or artificial caves in the mountains. In districts where cave-dwellings were impossible, they built small round houses and even practised rude fortifica tion. In Palma the old people were at their own wish left to die alone. After bidding their family farewell they were carried to the sepulchral cave, nothing but a bowl of milk being left them. The Guanches embalmed their dead; many mummies have been found in an extreme state of desiccation, each weighing not more than 6 or 7 lb. The process of embalming varied. In Teneriffe and Grand Canary the corpse was simply wrapped up in goat and sheep skins, while in other islands a resinous substance was used to preserve the body, which was then placed in a cave difficult of access, or buried under a tumulus. The work of embalming was reserved for a special class, women for female corpses, men for male. Bodies were often simply hidden in caves or buried.
There was a general belief in a supreme being, called Acoran, in Grand Canary, Achaman in Teneriffe, Eraoranzan in Hierro, and Abora in Palma. The women of Hierro worshipped a god dess called Moneiba. According to tradition the male and female gods lived in mountains whence they descended to hear the prayers of the people. In other islands the natives venerated the sun, moon, earth and stars. A belief in an evil spirit was general. The demon of Teneriffe was called Guayota and lived I in the peak of Teyde, which was the hell called Echeyde. In times of drought the Guanches drove their flocks to consecrated grounds, where the lambs were separated from their mothers in the belief that their plaintive bleatings would melt the heart of the Great Spirit. During the religious feasts all war and even personal quarrels were stayed.
See "Harvard African Studies" vol. vii. (1925) ; E. A. Hooton, Canary Islands.