Descourtilz and Haitian Antiquities

Naturalist Descourtilz sketched some examples of figures he called cemis from what is today Haiti. Shown them by Desdunes-Lachicotte and presumably coming from the Artibonite region, one of the pieces ir rather remarkable. According to Descourtilz, a turtle cemi figure's shell included a Sun, Moon, and star depicted on it. Given the symbolic role of the turtle in some of the myths recorded by Pané, the turtle cemi figure may be connected to the cosmology of the indigenes.