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no.2

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2379

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1879

no.2

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NOTES

ON THE

'^•N 0 5 2001

No. 2.— INDIAN ANTIQUITIES.

Charles Waterton in his classic "Wan d«rings in Sonth America" wrote, " I could find no monuments or marks of antiquity amongst these Indians ; so that after pene- trating to the Eio Branco from the shores ©f the Western Ocean, had anybody ques- tioned me on this subject, I should have answerfd, I have sren nothing amongst these Indians which tells me that they have existed here for a century; though, for angbt I know to the contrary, they may have been here before the redemption, but their total want of civilization has assimi- lated them to the forests in which they wander. Thus an aged tree falls and moul- ders into dust, and you cannot tell what was its appearance, its beauties, or its diseases amongst the neighbouring trees ; another has shot up in its place, and after nature has had her course, it will ma1<e way for a successor in its turn. So it is with the Indian of Guiana ; he is now laid low in the dust ; ho has left no record behind him, either on parchment, or on stone, or in ear- thenware to say what he has done- . . . All that you can say is, the trees where I stand appear lower and smaller than the rest, and from this I conjecture, that some Indians may have had a settlement here formerly. Were I by chance to meet the son of the father who moulders here, he could tell me that his father was famous for slaying tigers and serpents and cay men, and noted in the chase of the tapir and wild boar, but that he remembers little or nothing of hisjgrandfather."

* Even from the first two notes of this series it ■will be apparent that the various subjects do not follow each other in any sequence but that of convenience. Each note will, however, as far as possible deal with a distinct subject.

The above passage is only true in so far as it describes the ignorance of the Indian as to his own fore-runners and their real history. In the half century which has e'apsed since he who wrote these words wandered through the interi r of ** Deme- rara" many antiquities have been found in the country ; enough, indeed, to make it highly probible that many more remain to be discovered. Unfortunately those already known are not enough in number, and have not been sufficiently studied, to allow any inference as to the history and int T-relations of the makers of such objects to be drawn from them j and, perhaps yet more unfortunately, even the lew facts known have been recorded so fleetingly, and chiefly in such scat- tered papers, that they are hardly generally available. An account of all known anti* quities of British Guiana should therefore be useful, even if only to those who wish to look further into such matters. To such it will show what has already been done, and will indicate the directious in which further search should be made.

The antiquities in ihis colony may, for the sake of convenience, be classed under five he. ds: (1) Pictured Bocks, (2) Shell- mounds, (3) Stone Implements, (4) Stand- ing Stones, (6) Sites of Ancient Villages. Before dealing with each of these in turn, it may be as well to state that in no one case is it as yet poFsib'e certainly to assign any of these traces of past human life to the people, or even to the nation which produced them ; nor will this be possible until mnch more information has been gathered. With regard, however, to the pictured rocks and the shell-mounds, good reason will be shewa

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2

for snppoiing that tbe former are not the work of any tribe now living in this part of the world, and jet stronger reason for supposing that the latter are the work of the Caribisi,

ROCK PICTURES.

The pictured rocks, certainly the most noteworthy of our antiquities, are — and this .has, apparently, never yet been pointed out — not all of one kind. In all cases figures, presumably of the nature of hiero* glyphic writings are depicted on larger or smaller surfaces of rocks. But sometimes these figures are painted, though such cases are few and, as will be shewn, of little moment ; sometimes they are en» graved, and thesa alone are of great im« portance. Rock-pictures of this latter kind may again be dis'inguished in^o two classes, according to the depth of incision, the apparept mode of execution, and — most important of all — the character of the figures represented.

Painted rocks in British Guiana are mentioned by Mr, C. Barrington Brown, lata Gtological Surveyor of the eolony. He says, for instance, that in coming down past Amailah Fall (in the same district and range as the Kaieteur) on tbe Curibrong river, he passed "a large white sandstone rock ornamented with figures in red paint-" When in the Pacarairoa mountains, on tlie Brazilian froa- tier, I heard of the existence of similar pain'ings in that neighbourhood, but was unable to find them. Mr. Wallace in his ac- count of his *'Tiavels on the Amazons" mentions the occurrence of similiar drawings in more han one pUce near the Amazons; and from other accounts it seems probabe that they occur in many parts of South America. If, as seem^ likely, these figures are drawn with faroah (a red paint very commonly nsed by the Indians and prepared from the pulp round the seeds of Bixa orelland)^ or, as is also possible, with some sort of red earth, they must be modern, the work of Indians of the present day. For these redpig*

ments would not long withstand the eflfects of the weather, especially where, as in the case quoted from Mr. Brown, the draw- ings are on such an unenduring substance as sandstone. Some further accouLt of these paintings is, however, much to be desired ; for, even if they are modern, it would be a mat- ter of much interest to know whether the designs in any way resemble either those depicted on the engraved rocks or those which the Indian at the present time draws, by way of ornament, on his own skin.

The engraved rocks on the contrary must be of considerable antiquity ; that is to say they must almost certainly date from a time before the tribes now inhabiting British Guiana came into their present homes. As has already been said, they are of two kinds, and are probably the work of two different people, both now absent from British Guia- na ; nor is there even any reason to euppose that the two kinds were produced at oue and the same time.

These two kinds of engravings may, for the sake of con venience, be distinguished as "deep' and " shallow" respectively : according as the figures are deeply cut into the rock or are merelv scratched on the surface. The former vary from one eighth to one half of an inch, or even more, in depth ; the latter are of qute inconsiderable depth. This difference pro« bably points to a difference in the means by which they were produced. The deep eu- gravings seem cut ii? to the rock with an edged tool of some kind ; the shallow figures wore apparently formed by long continued friction with stones and moist sand. The two kinds seem never to occur in the same place, or even near to each other. The deep form occurs at several spots on the Hlssequi* bo, Ireng, Ootinga, and Quitara rivers and, it is said, on the Berbice river. The shal* low form has as yet only been reported from the Corentyne river, where, however, examples occur in considerable abundance, but the 1 Wo kinds differ not only in the depth of incision, in the apparent mode of their production, and in the plaoe of their occur-

rence, but also -and this is tlie chief differ- ence between the two— in the figures repre- sented. This will best be explained by describing an example of each kind. The Temehri rock at Wanitoba cata- racts on the Corentyne is a fine ex» pie of the latter, or shallow, form; and the group of rocks at Warrapuia ca aiac s on the Essequibo bear many fine examples cf the former, or deep, style. The inscrip- tions at both these places have been photo- graphed. The picture on Temehri rock coun sists of a large single figure or combination of simple lines, and is of large size. In common with all the shallow drawings its outline may be described as a rectangular figure, of greater height than width, crown- ed by a semi-circle marked with dis inct radii. This outline is filled in bv a pattern oi straight lines. Unlike the outline, this pat- tern is not always the same as at Temehri, and is indeed often cGnsiderably varied. The whole height of the figure at Temehri is 1 3 feet, its greatest width 5 feet 7 inches; but figures of this sort vary very considerably in dimensions. The deep drawings, on the other hand, consist, not of a single figure, but of a greater or less number ol rude drawings. These depict the human form, monkies, snakes and other animals, and also very limple combinations of two or three straight or curved lines in a p:^ttern, and occasionally more elaborate combinations. The individual figures are small, averaging from 12 to 18 inches in height, but a considerable number are generally represented in a group.

The nearest, and one of the best, examples of deep rock-engraving is at Warraputa Cataracts, about six days journey up the Essequibo. At that place a large number of figures occur scattered over the surfaces of a group of granite boulders in the very midst of the cataracts. These rocks when the river is high are covered by water, but the drawirgs are exposed during the dry season. The sculptures often occur on several sides of the same block, but never on the side or sides which show signs of most recent

fracture. From the fact that they are on two or even three sides of the blocks, it is evident that the drawings were not, as might have been supposed, executed on the face of a cliff which has since broken up into these boulders. Often they are on that surface which now rests on other rocks of the pile; thus shewing that the blocks are no longer in the position in which they were when the drawings were made. Again the fact that the blocks, all of which are under water in times of high rains, are many of them always below water mark except in the very driest seasons, affords further strong ground for presuming that the rocks have been displaced since the sculptures were executed.

The commonest figures at Warraputa are figures of men, or perhaps sometimes monkies. These are very simple, and gene- rally consist of one straight line, represent- ing the trunk of the body, crossed by two straight lines at right angles to the body- line ; one, at about a third of the distance from the top, represents the two arms as far as the elbows, where upward lines represent the lower part of the arms; the other, which is at the lower end, represents the two legs as far as the knees, from which point downward lines represent the lower part of the hgs. A round dot, or a small circle, at the top of the trunk-line forms the head ; and there are a few radiating lines where the fingers, a few more where the toes, should be. Occasionally the trunk- line is produced downward as if to represent a long tail. Probably the tail. less figures represent man, the tailed, monkies. In a few cases, the trunk, instead of being indi- cated by one straight line, is formed by two curved lines, representing the rounded out- lines of the body; and the body, thus formed, is bisected by a row of dots, almost invari- ably nine in number, which seem to repre- sent vertebrae.

Most of the otler figures at Warraputa are very simple combinations of two, three, or four straight lines, similar to the so'called

" Greek pattern,"which is of sach wide-spread occurrence. Combinations of curved lines and simple spiral lines also frequently occ ir. Many of these combinatio is closely resemble the figures which the Indians of the present day paint on their faces and naked bodies. The resemblance is, how- ever, probably only due to the fact ihut the figures -are only the simple combinations of lines which would occur independently to the rock-engravers and to the body-painters, as to all other untaught designers.

At Warraputa, thi re are only two ins'anoes of figures occuring in only a single represen- tation ; one of thesu is a rayed sun, the other is the top of a rounded arch. Tne former, at least, of these figures, occurs frequently in other pbces. Notat Warraputa, but in many places on the rivers of the Essequibo system, and also probably on the Bt rbice, in addi- tion to the drawings menti n d above, figures of lizards, alligators, biids or other animals occur. Sir Robert Sohomburgk in bis ''Views in the Interior of British Guiaua" mentions a drawing at Arissaro, a mountain not far from Warraput i, in which ships were represented ; but this was pro- bably not Indian but Dutch, or at any rate, European work.

The shallow engravings, such as that on the Temehri rock at VVanitoba cataract, stem confined to the neighbourhood of the C.'oren* tyne river. They seem alwajs to occur on comparatively large ^.nd more or less smooth surfaces of rock, and never on detached blocks of rock, piled one on the other. The figures, too, are generally much larger, always combinations of s'raight or curved lines into figures much more elabjrate than those which occur in the deep pictures. And these shallow pic ures always represent, not animals, but greater or less variations of the same single figure. What this fi^^ure is has already been describe 1.

One characteristic those two kinds of draw- ings seem to have in common, in that they always — or nearly always, for there is said to be an exception in the Paoaraima mountains

— occur near water, and, as I believe, near a waterfall or cataraci. There is* inde d another exception mentioned by Mr. Brown, in the district of the Cotinga, where he observed figures of suns, curved snakes, spirals and circles on a jasperous rock exposed on a savannah ; but even this was not very tar from the river.

The many differences seem sufficient to shosf that the two kinds are the work of difi'erent people, and have difEjrent intentions.

No theory as to the origin of either of these kinds of rock- pictures has ever baen formed. The Indians of the present day know nothing about them ; and if they ever speik of them tell some such story as that *' women made ttiem," or that they are the work of Makenaima (God's son), who when he wandered about on earth drew them with the point of his finger on the rock ; it is hardly necessary to point out that the latter quasi tradition has not even the merit of antiquity ; for it must have originated aftar white missionaries came into South America and there first toJd the story of Christ. If the Indians at present occupying the dis- tricts in which these drawings occur were the descendants of those who produced these figure?, they would either have some tradition uf the stone-carvers, or they would themselves be in the habit of carving similar figures on stone ; for it is a mistake to suppose, as Waterton did and others have done, that Indians have no traditions of the acts and customs of their forefathers, or that they do not long retain the customs and simple acts of their tribe. Night alte^ night, for weeks at a time, I have been kept awake by the monotonous sound of fearfully long tales of former Indian deeds told by firelight in a language unknown to me. Nor would t be difficult; to show that the ornaments which the Indian of to-daj wi ars and the utensils which he uses are, where not supplanted by articles of Euro- pean manufacture, of tho same form as those which the Indians of Qaiaua, at the

time of the discovery of the country, wore and used.

Some considerable light might be thrown on the real history of these drawings by a care- ful comparison of accurate transcripts of those occurring in Gniana and of those in other parts of America. Humboldt and Schom- burgk both supposed that our rock drawings are merely a part of a widely extended belt of similar drawings occurring both in North and South America. Bat it yet remains to be proved that these figures are really every- where so similar as to indicate a common source, and that the rock engravings of the Americas are not several in origin and in meaning, as in form. Unfortunately the means of making a really comprehensive comparison of this sort have not yet been brought together. Mr. Wallace during his travels on the Amazon met with several examples of these sculptures, but unfortunately he lost, by fire at sea, nearly all the drawings which he had made. Two copies of drawings occurring on the river Uaupes were, however, published by him ; and in these the figures correppond closely with the deep drawings on the rocks of Guiana. Again in Wilson's " Prehis- toric Man" is a drawing of an inscription on the Moro rock in North America, in which occurs a very simple figure of two locg lines, close to each other, and crossing each other again and again at very frequent regular intervals. The same figure occurs in more than one place in British Guiana Of course the design is very simple, and its occurrence in two such widely separated places need not indicate even the slightest connection between the designers ; or, if the figure represents, as is very likely, the "quip- pa," the knotted string or notched sti-jk, by some form of which nearly all unlettered people have kept and keep an account of days or numbers, each kind or notch represent, ing a day or an item, then it is a figure which is extremely likely <o occur in these sculptures, which are probably commemora- tive. Foi instance, let us suppose one of

the simplest examples of commemorative writing ; a human figure side by side with one of these knotted airings, might indi« cate that a certain number — equal to the number of the knots — of men, did a certain thing, which thing might be indicated by some other sign in the same group.

Lastly, before leaving the subject of these rock pictnres, it may be as well just to refer to a suggestion which I have heard made, that they are the work of Indians of the present day. No one who has seen the rocks can imagine this for one instant ; and no one who has lived much among the In* dians and has questioned them about these sculptures, can believe that at the present day the Indians knew anything about these pictures.

SHELL-MOUNDS.

After the rock»drawings the Shell.mounds claim a'tention. These are very similar in structure and contents to those which occur — and are known as kitchen middens — in Europe, in Denmark, Norway, the Orkneys and other places ; but these in South America were made at a much later time than were those in Europe. The earUer stages ot civilization through which a people passes are much the same in all parts of the world and at all periods of the wcrld*« history ; and so, just as our primitive ances- tors in Europe made kitchen-middens in the far-off so-called "prehistoric ages," the Indi- ans were yet making them a very few centuries ago in South America, and are possibly — in very remote p irts of the con- tinent— still making them even now.

A kitchen-midden is a place where the people of a village or settlement threw the refuse of that which they eat, — shells of " shell-fish ",|.on which they chiefly lived, bones of animals, and other such matter. Often the fragments of their rnde imple- ments or weapons, when any of these are broken, were thrown or fell neg- lected on to this general refuse heap: sometimes even whole tools fell on to the heap by accident and were quickly covered

up and lost. The Indians of Guiana even now tlirow fish bones a-d all other sharp fragments which might wound their unco«« vered feet into some definite place ; but no special place is now long used for the refuse of a whole settlement, and so no large collections of refuse, no kitcheu*=middens are now form.ed, But the old neglected mid- dens reraain, and by searching into these it is possible to discover something of what their makers eat, how they eat it, often what tools they used, and, generally, not a little of their way of life.

The shells mounds or k'tchen-miidens of Guiana occur, with only one known excep- tion* in the northern, swampy district which is watered bv the Orinoco and Pomeroon rivers. This is almost certainly the part of the mainland which the Caribisi Indians,! who originall^y lived in the Antilles, reached in their first voyages t > the main*- land ; and to them, with good reason the mounds are generally attributed. If this was the case, and as the Caribisi were invading the mainland about the time of the discovery of Guiana, then these shell-mounds are be- tween three and four centuries old. The state of the material of the mounds certainly does not indicate an earlier date, but rather that the mounds, though perhaps begun some four centuries ago, were possibly not finished till considerably later.

At least five mounds are at present known in the neighbourhood of the Pomeroon and one on the Morajbo, a river north of the Pomeroon, between the Waini and the Barima. In the latter district the Indians say, that there are many more, and as that country is almost unknown, they are very possibly right. Nearest to the coast

* The exception alluded to is a mound which is Baid 10 exist at Pin. Skeldcn in Berbice. I should be veiy grateful for any infoimaticjn as to this mound, or as to any others additional to those men- fioned.

f In a fomier nolo I bavf^ tried to point out that the Caribisi, here often called " Caribs" are really only a branch tiibeof the Carib family, to v/hich family belong alco. the Ackawoi, Arccuna, and ^aousi Indians.

is the mound nt Warramuri on the Moruca, a river which runs into the sea side by side with the Pomeroon. Further from the sea, and some distance up the Pomeroon, two mounds lie close together at Sitiki and Warrapana. The fourth is at the mission house at Cabacabouri; and the fifth, first discovered during my visit to Pomeroon in December 1S78, is a mile or two further up, on a creek called Piracca. Two of these, vhose at Warramuri and Cabacabouri, are placed on high hills close to, and overlooking the river. The others are in sec'uded pi ices, on islands of firm ground in the midst of troolie palm (Manicaria saccifera) sv^amps. All, therefore, are in strong defensive posi- tions, and near running water. The need of defence against the people of the country, and of fresh water for their meals, were the two points which probably chiefiy guided the ( aribisi in choosing sites for their tempo- rary camps when on their raids on to the mainland. All the mounds — so far as they have been examined — are alike in character and con fonts. They consist chiefly of great accumulations of a small shell (Neritina lineolata). In some the more decayed state of the shells and other refuse seems to indicate a somewhat greater age.

The mound at Warramuri was first opened in 1865, under the direction of the Eev, W. H. Brett, and was again opened in February 1866, in the pre- sence of His Excellency Governor Hincks This mound is from 20 to 25 feet in height with a diameter of about 130 feet. Like all the others, it consists almost entirely of a vast accumulation of one species of snail-like black and white shells. Among these, but in far less abundance, were some bivalve shells (Lucina), together with fragments of crab she lis, bones of fish and other animals, and lat-ty — and most important — human bones. There wf re also some stone axe-heads, pieces of charcoal, and lumps of a red sub- stance, apparently a pigment. The mass of shells evidently lies in more or less distinct laj«rs betwcm each two of which is «

thin stratam of a hard, apparently burned substance.

E irly in the following year the mound at Siriki was measured and opened, though, I believe, not under the per* sonal superintendence of an educated man. 1 his mound, which must be far the largest known, is said to be oblong, 250 feet long by 90 feet wide, and between 20 aid 25 feet high. Among other human bones was on6 skull, which though when found was in twenty seven piecesj was afterwards fitted together, and provel to be perfect but for a hole in the top apparently made by some such implement as a atone hatchet.

In the mound at Cabacibouri, which was searched at various times by Mr. Brett, were found two small silver earrings very similar to those worn by some of the iSavannah Indians at the present day. In the autumn of 1877 I spent some time at Cabacabouri, and devoted two days to excavating this mound in a new place. The only novelties I found were two pin-heads delicately carved in bone, and some quite inexplicable red-like bodies of very puz- zling nature. The only possible e pla- nation which has occurred to me is that they are the calcined fore-teeth of deer or sojie such animal; but this seems Hardly satisfactory. One new species of shell, {Purpura coronata) — in a single example — I found in this mound,

About the same time t' e newly discovered mound up the Piracca creek was opened in my presence. It is almost completely circular* with a diameter of 38 fett and a height, in the centre, of only 4 feet; as however it stands on an island of high ground, it rises considerably above the surrounding swamp. It is the smallest of the mounds, but is exac ly similar in structure and con- tents to the others. One or two imper- fect stone axes and chis 4s, a go d ojany ojster shells, a few fragments of a fresh water shell, common in the river at the present day, and called by the Indians " Kee-way,''

and a good many human, fish and other bones, were the most noticeable of the things embedded in the mass of snail-shells. Great quantities of sharp edged fragments of white semi-transparent quartz were also pres-^nt, as, in smaller quantities, in the other mounds. Their shape together with the fact that they are otherwise absent from the district,- seems to suggest that they may have been used as knives, for which purpose they must have been brought from a distance .

A remarkable feature in all the mounds is the presence of the burnt clay-like slabs between the layers of refuse. It has been suggested that these were used ai baking* slabs, like the stone-slabs used by some of the Arecunas, and other remote tribes at the present day. But this suggestion is quite untenable. In the first place, these hard slabs do not occur in small pieces, unless when broken by the pickaxes and shovels of excavators, but extend in large strata-like surfaces throughout the mound ; and in the second place, they are so irregular in thickness that bread could only be baked on them very unevenly. Nor are they in the least like the baking slabs of the Indians of the interior, which are very regu- larly shaped, oblong, and of sandstone. A much more probable explanation seems to be that fires ^vere made at intervals — that is, at each visit of the mound-makers — on the mounds, and that these " slabs" are merely the burnt surface of shell and earth on which the fires rested.

Such are the contents of the mounds, and an at(empt must now be made to infer from these something of their history. It may be as well to state at once that the natural conclusions are (1) that they were made, not by ih.Q resident inhabitants of the coun- try, but by strangers; (2) that thesa strdngers came from the sea and not from further inland ; and (3} that these strangers were the Islands Caribs who afterwards took tribal form as the Caribisi.

The evidence for the assumption thft^the

motiDd makers were not permanently resident in the district is to be found in the nature of the positioLS of these mounds, in their stratified formation, in the proofs of canni- balism with which they abound, and in the character of the stone weapons which occar in them.

The positions of the mounds seem to show that they were used only as temporary camps and not permanent settlements. The monnds, with the exception of those at Wnrramuri and Cabacaburi, which are placed in strong positions on two of the very few hills in the district, stand in swamps on islands of firm ground which, while they might be easily temporarily defended, are far too small to hold a permanent settlement. Again the stratified structure of these mounds, which has already been described, points to the likelihood that the places were only temporarily, but repeatedly occupied. Each layer probably contains the refuse thrown away during one single visit. And perhaps most telling of all as regards the fact that the mounds were made by strangers, are the large quantities of human bones which occur mingled with the refuFe of countless meals. These were not placed there in the ordinary course of burial, for not whole skeletons, but only separate scattered bones are found. The ikull, already mentioned, on which was the mark of a murderous blow from some instrument, confirms this. Moreover these bones are found at a greater depth than would be the case if they had been placed there in burial ; and they have been broken* as is the case with the bones in the kitchen middens of Europe, evidently to allow the marrow, of which all Indians are very f(-nd, to be extracted. On the whole, there can be little doubt that the mound-makers were cannibals, But as each Indian tribe lives in a separate district, within which corno no interlopers of any other tribe, and as the tribal fieling is always very strong among Indians, bo that they can not be buspccted of

feeding on individuals of their own tribe, the mound' makers could only have obtained human flesh for food in or from a foreign country.

Again, the stone implements found in the mounds seem to differ slightly from those found strewn over the other parts of the ground, which were presumably the property of the natives of the country. The mound implements seem to have been made by a different people, and are, as a rule, of a rougher, less-finished character.

That these stranger mound-makers came from the sea seems probable from the fact that they lived, at least during their stay in those parts, largely on the sea fish, of the remnants of which the mounds are in great part formed. Of all the mounds, that at Warramuri, which is only two or three hours pull from the mouth of the Moraca, is the only one near the sea ; the others are at a considera- ble distance, more or less great, up the rivers. From the occurrence of the sea. shells it is evidert that the mound-ma- kers made frequent long journeys be^ tween the sea and the sites of their camps. Now it is far more likely that strangers making raids into the interior carried with them large stores of sea- fish as food, than that strangers making a raid toward the sea from inland penetrated further than was necessary through a hostile country, merely to get a supply of seafish when they had plenty of animal-food nearer at hand ; and even if th^y had done so, they would have devoured the sea fish near the shore ratVer than have dragged it back with them for so many miles.

For all these reasons, therefore, it seems probable that the mounds were made by a people hostile to the natives of the district, and coming frc-m the sea. It now remains to be shown that there were in all proba- bility parties of Caril s from the islands.

In ihe first place all the mounds, with the one exception already mentioned^ fire

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in the very district of the mainland which the island Caribs would and did most natu- rally first reach. Moreover the moundw apparently date from a time just about that at which the Carib immigration took place. Again there can be little doubt that the Caribs were yet at that time cannibals, while there is no ground for supposing that any of the other tribes then and now inha- biting the coast region of Guiana retained that custom up to so recent a date.

That the Caribisi came from the islands is shown by the close similarity in man- ners, language and appearance ol Caribisi of Guiana and the Caribs of the islands ; and by the hostility towards the Caribisi which to this day is the only feeling com- mon to all the other tribes of the coun- try. The records of the earlier voyages in the Caribbean seas tell of the mi» gration. In passing to the mainland in their somewhit unseaworthy canoes they would naturally land at the first point reached. This would be the districB in which the shell mounds occur. Moreover the Caribisi tribe, the members of which are the strongest and most energetic of all the Indians of Guiana, is up to quite recent times the only tribe which held and holds no district peculiar to ! them. They arrived just at the time that Europeans also made their way to the mainland ; had it not been so, the Cari- bisi would have cleared some special district of its former inhabitants and would them- selves have occupied this. As it was, over- shadowed by the greater power of the white man, they were unable to do this; and so to this day, though some few families have wandered southward, the greater part remain thickly scattered among the tribes occupy- ing the district in which they first landed, and where their ancestors heaped up kitchen middens.

Europeans first appeared in Guiana about the end of the sixteenth century ; so that the Caribisi immigration was in progress about thre§ centuries ago. The sheU

mounds have every appearance of being about that age. They are certainly little, if any older ; and if they had been more recent some record of their origin must have remained.

Again it is almost an historical fact that the Caribisi did not come once for all» in a body, to the mainland and there remain ; but that they were in the habit of passing to and from the mainland in their raids from the islands. It wa3 only gradually that they settled permanently in Guiana. This would satisfactorily account for the stratification of the mounds. Each layer represents one visit; and each time that the Caribisi visit- ei the mainland they added a new layer.

That The Caribisi were cannibals, there is little doubt. Travellers of those days were all agreed as to this. Moreover all the other tribes yet retain a tradition and dread of the man-eating habits of the Caribisi and of no other tribe. The Caribisi all deny the fact when charged with it; bat they do this with a superfluity of indignation which is in itself suspicious.

Lastly in connection with this subject some slight evidence is afforded by the fact that the Caribisi, unlike the savannah Indians, are in the habit of eating certain animals which most Indians hold unclean and will not touchi and that the remains of these unclean animals are amongst the commonest constituents of the mounds. In short, there can bo little doubt that the mounds were made by the Caribisi at the time when they were passing from the islands, but had nob yet permanently settled on the main land.

Stone Implements. Something has necessarily been said of the stone implements which occur within the shell mounds ; but besides these many are found scattered through* out the country on the surface of the ground. It has already been stated that these exposed instruments seem dis* tinguishable from those from the shell mounds, The difference is, however, more

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in finisb than in form. The rudest of the mound hatchets certainly belong to the unpolish d stage ; while the most highly finished of the hachets occurring elsewhere than in shell mounds arc), almost equally obviously, of the polished stage. As a rule these highly polished axes seem to occur outside the mounds, while the rude forms seem to occur within the mounds. No definite line can however ba drawn between the two series-

In shape most of the axes correspond very closely with European examples. Three forms, however, claim special notice. The first, which is perhaps the commonest form of all, especially within the mounds, is some what peculiar ; it has been well described as like the section of a '* button " mushroom which has been cut in half from the apex of the cap down through the stem.* The second is a very peculiar form which I have seen in a single instance. This is shaped almost exactly like the blade of a modern hatchet. The shape together wiih the high state of finish suggest that this is comparatively of very recent origin, probably since the arrival of white men. It was dug up with a st' ne chisel and some other articles on the East Coast. The third, also occurring only in a single instance, is strangely like a human foot with the leg as far as the knee cap. Chisels and a few implements the use of which is, not at once apparent are not uncommon. No instance of the occurrence of stone-airow beads in the mounds is known to me ; but some of the more remote Arecunas and other Indians use such weapons even at the present day.

Stone implements occur scattered over the whole country. In one place, however, on the Brazilian side of the Takutu, they occur in large quantities, lying on the surface of the ground. They are often picked up and

* 'Ibis form Bcems to correspond closely with the «' hammer" represented on the left in Figure 11 (i o eleven) of Wilson'ft " PrehiBtorio Man," (London, 1866)

Valued by the Indians cs tools for smoothing their clay pottery. Three axes, evidently of old date, have been brought to me, recently fitted into wooden handles by Indians. These three specimens are curious, as showing the Indians' own ideas as to the way in which ttieir ancestors fitted these axe heads with handles.

One kind of stone utensil still in use in the very remote parts of the country deserves especial mention. This is the cooking slab on which their flat cat-cake*like cassava |3read is cooked. 4t the present time most Indians use a circular iron girdle of European manufacture for this purpose ; but before thry were able to procure this, they chose the flattest slabs of stone, gene* rally sandstone, and baked their bread on these. Even now the Arecunas near Roraima — as probably also the yet more remote tribes — who seldom or never visit town and who live in a sandstone region, use these stone« slabs. These are so highly valued that it is difficult to persuade an Indian to part with one. One in my possession is a flat piece of sandstone about J of an inch in thickness, oblong in shape, and with the corners neatly cut off. It re quires, as I have seen, a considerably longer time to bake bread on these stones, than on the iron-girdles.

Standing Stones. The two traces of old Indian life which yet remain to be mentioned are both given on the authority of Mr. C. Barrington Brown. One is a circle of standing stones. (Jf this Mr. Brown says " In the Pacaraima mountains, between the villages of Mora and Itabay, the path passes through a circle of square stones placed on one end, one of which has a cafv«« ing on it." In a note he adds that ''this circle of stones is very like that on Stanton Moor, shown in Ferguson's "Rude Stone Monuments."

Sites of Ancient Villages. Many examples of ancient village sites are also mentioned by this same traveller. These

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are said only to be d is tingui stable from the surroundiog country by the rich black colour of the soil and by the abundance of broken fragments of pottery. Of course it is possible that these sites are those of deserted villages of comparatively, or even very, modern date. But on the other hand, as all the repoited examples occur far inland, and as the inland tribes make but very little pottery, j it IS more likely that such places were

the homes of tribes other than those which now inhabit the surrounding country. Only a very careful search in such places can settle this question. And such a starch would probably be rewarded by results of extreme ethnological and archiological value.

EYERARD F. m THURN. British Guiana Museum, June 6th, 1879,

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PAMPHLET BINDER

ZZ^ Syracuse, N. Y. ~~~ Sfockfon, Calif.

3 9088 01029 9535

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