Description of the Indians, Aborigines of Guiana—Their Food—Arms—Ornaments—Employments—Diversions—Passions—Religion—Marriages—Funerals, &c.—Of the Caribbee Indians in particular—Their Trade with the Europeans.
On the 18th of January 1774, I at last bid farewell to the Hope, of which I am convinced the reader by this time is as tired as I have been. Thence rowing down, I slept at the estate Arentlust, and next day dined at the beautiful plantation Catwyk. In this place I had nearly ended all my travels; for Mr. Goetzee, the owner, having lent me one of his horses to ride round the estate, the animal and I both at once disappeared: a wooden bridge over which we passed being rotten, the part under us gave way, and we dropped through into the canal. With much exertion however (being alone) I got ashore, and having run to call some negroes, the horse, which stuck in the mud, was (though with great difficulty) extricated.
In the evening I rowed to Paramaribo with the ebb tide, which gave me an opportunity of seeing the mangroves that line the banks of the river Surinam full of oysters, stuck in the branches like fruit, from the water’s edge up to high-water mark. These oysters attaching [379]themselves to trees as they do to rocks, has given rise to the vulgar error that they grow, or vegetate like fruit; but it is not more extraordinary that they should stick on any one substance than on another, for many species of shell-fish are as commonly found to adhere to ships’ bottoms as to rocks. These oysters, which at some distance look like mushrooms, are, indeed, very small and trifling; for one hundred are not comparable to one dozen that come from Colchester. In Surinam are also a kind of muscles, but these are so small and insipid, that they are scarcely worthy of mention.
The day after my arrival I visited the governor: as also Mr. Kennedy, Mrs. Lolkens, Mrs. De Melley, &c. who all congratulated me on my acquaintance with Mr. De Graav, and highly honoured me, and approved of what I had done for my Mulatto and her infant.
On the 22d, our few remaining troops being mostly at Paramaribo, a Mr. Van Eys gave an entertainment to the whole corps.
On the 25th a great number of Indians, or natives, arrived at Paramaribo; which afforded me an opportunity of seeing and describing this people, who are the aborigines of the country. These Indians, who appear the happiest creatures under the sun, are divided into many casts or tribes, such as the
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besides which, there are many others whose manners are unknown to us. All these tribes of Indians are in general of a copper-colour; while the negroes of Africa, that live under the same degree of latitude, are perfectly black. This, however inconceivable it may appear, is easily accounted for, when one considers, first, that the American Indians in Guiana are constantly refreshed by the cooling sea breeze, or easterly wind, that blows between the tropics; and that those who dwell in Terra-Firma and Peru, on the West coast, enjoy that same easterly breeze, still kept cool by the great chain of inland mountains over which it passes, and which have their summits perpetually covered with snow. While the inhabitants of Africa, south of the river Senegal, get the same east wind rather heated than cooled, by the prodigious quantity of inland, hot, sandy deserts over which it passes.
Indian Family of the Carribbee Nation.
London, Published Decr. 1st, 1792, by J. Johnson, St. Paul’s Church Yard.
These are the most probable reasons why the Americans are of a copper-colour or red, and the inhabitants of Africa, called Negroes, are black, viz. the one being more burnt by the sun than the other, and not because they are two distinct races of people: since no person who examines and reflects, can avoid seeing that there is but one race of people on the earth, who differ from each other only according to the soil and the climate in which they live. I am further of opinion, that these aborigines, or Indian natives, will appear to have still less title to be called a distinct people from those of the old continent, when we consider the proximity of Russia to North America, [381]whence apparently they have emigrated, and hitherto but thinly peopled the New World, the Mexicans and a few others excepted, till they were butchered by Spanish avarice and superstition. A happy people I call them still, whose peace and genuine morals have not been contaminated with European vices; and whose errors are only the errors of ignorance, and not the rooted depravity of a pretended civilization, and a spurious and mock Christianity.
“Lo! the poor Indian, whose untutor’d mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind
His soul, proud science never taught to stray,
Far as the solar walk, or milky way;
Yet simple nature to his hope has giv’n,
Behind the cloud-topt hill, an humbler heav’n;
Some safer world, in depth of woods embrac’d,
Some happier island in the wat’ry waste;
Where slaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.
To be, contents his natural desire,
He asks no Angel’s wing, no Seraph’s fire;
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.
Go, wiser thou! and, in thy scale of sense,
Weigh thy opinion against Providence.”
For my part I must say, with Socrates, that this kind of poverty is alone the truest kind of riches; as those who want least approach nearest to the gods, who want nothing. [382]This naturally leads me to the speech of an Indian, in reply to a sermon preached by a Swedish minister at an Indian treaty, held at Covestogue, of which the principal substance was as follows:
“Do you then really believe, that we and our forefathers are all, as you would teach us, condemned to suffer eternal torments in another world, because we have not been taught your mysterious novelties? Are we not the work of God? And can the Almighty not manifest his will without the help of a book? If this is true, and God is just, then how is it consistent with his justice to force life upon us without our consent, and then to condemn us all to eternal damnation, because we did not meet with you. No, Sir, we are convinced that the Christians are more depraved in their morals than we Indians, if we may judge of their doctrines by the general badness of their lives.”
There cannot indeed be a more laudable undertaking, than the endeavour to engraft divine truths on the pure minds of these innocent people, so worthy of instruction; but I fear, and it is too observable, that the words of one good man will have but little effect, when the practice of the far greater number of Moravian preachers settled amongst them on the banks of the Seramica rivers, where they endeavour to convert the negroes as well as the Indians, is in direct contradiction to his life and precepts.
All the Guiana Indians believe in God as the supreme [383]author of every good, and never inclined to do them an injury; but they worship the devil, whom they call Yawahoo, to prevent his afflicting them with evil, and to whom they ascribe pain, disease, wounds, and death; and where an Indian dies, in order to avert future fatality, the whole family, soon after, leave the spot as a place of residence.
The Guiana Indians are a perfectly free people, that is, they have no division of land, and are without any government, excepting that in most families the oldest acts as captain, priest, and physician, to whom they pay a reverential obedience: these men are called Peii or Pagayers, and, as in some civilized nations, live better than all others.
Polygamy is admitted among them, and every Indian is allowed to take as many wives as he can provide for, though he generally takes but one, of whom he is extremely jealous, and whom he knocks on the head the moment he receives a decided proof of her incontinency. These Indians never beat their children on any account whatever, nor give them any education, except in hunting, fishing, running, and swimming; yet they never use abusive language to each other, nor steal; and a lye is totally unknown among them. To which I may add, that no people can be more grateful when treated with civility, of which I shall in future relate a remarkable instance: but I must not forget that, on the other hand, they are extremely revengeful, [384]especially when, as they suppose, they are injured without just provocation.
The only vices with which to my knowledge they are acquainted, if such amongst them they may be called, are excessive drinking when opportunity offers, and an unaccountable indolence: an Indian’s only occupation, when he is not hunting or fishing, being to lounge in his hammock, picking his teeth, plucking the hairs from his beard, examining his face in a bit of broken looking-glass, &c.
The Indians in general are a very cleanly people, bathing twice or thrice every day in the river, or the sea. They have all thick hair, which never turns grey, and the head never becomes bald; both sexes pluck out every vestige of hair on their bodies, that on the head only excepted: it is of a shining black, which the men wear short, but the women very long, hanging over the back and shoulders to their middle; as if they had studied the scriptures, where it is said that long hair is an ornament to a woman, but a disgrace to a man.
The Guiana Indians are neither tall, strong, nor muscular: but they are straight, active, and generally in a good state of health. Their faces have no expression whatever, that of a placid good-nature and content excepted; and their features are beautifully regular, with small black eyes, thin lips, and very white teeth. However, all the Guiana Indians disfigure themselves more or less by the use of arnotta or rocow, by [385]them called cosowee, and by the Dutch orlean. The seeds of the arnotta being macerated in the juice of lemon, and mixed with water, and gum that exudes from the mawna tree, or with the oil of castor, composes a scarlet paint, with which all the Indians anoint their bodies, and even the men their hair, which gives their skin the appearance of a boiled lobster; they also rub their naked bodies with caraba or crab-oil. This, it must be allowed, is extremely useful in scorching climates, where the inhabitants of both sexes go almost naked. One day, laughing at a young man who came from the neighbourhood of Cayenne, he answered me in French, saying, “My skin, sir, is kept soft, too great perspiration is prevented, and the musquitoes do not sting me as they do you: besides its beauty, this is the use of my painting red. Now what is the reason of your painting white?” [meaning powder in the hair] “You are, without any reason, wasting your flour, dirtying your coat, and making yourself look grey before your time.”
These Indians also make use of a deep purple blue, which they call tapowripa; but this is purely for ornament, and is absolutely indelible for about nine days. It is the juice of a fruit in size like a small apple that grows on the lawna tree, and which is bruised and macerated in water. With this these people make figures on their faces, and all over their bodies, resembling hieroglyphicks, like those that were a few years since called [386]à la Grec in Europe, and are still cut in coal-grates, fenders, &c. But for a more correct idea I must refer the reader to the annexed plate, where the children alone are not painted. So very permanently does this paint adhere to the skin, that one of our officers, who could not believe the fact, having by way of a frolic made a pair of enormous whiskers with it on his face, was obliged, to our great amusement, to parade Paramaribo with them for above a week, and wait till they gradually disappeared.
The only dress worn by these Indians consists of a slip of black or blue cotton worn by the men to cover their nakedness, and called camisa; something like that of the negroes. Being wound round their loins, it passes through between their thighs, and the ends of it, which are very long, they either throw over their shoulders, or negligently let them trail on the ground. For the same purpose, the women wear an apron of cotton, with party-coloured glass beads strung upon it, which they call queiou. This covering is of no great size, being only about one foot in breadth by eight inches in length, ornamented with fringes, and fastened round the waist with cotton strings; but being heavy, though of no larger dimensions, it answers all the purposes for which it was intended. Many also wear a girdle made of human hair round their waist, through which, before and behind, they fasten a square broad piece of black cotton, but lighter, and without a train, like the camisa of the men: both sexes wearing these belts or girdles so low, that they [387]almost slide down over their buttocks, and make their bodies appear wonderfully long.
In the inland parts, many Indians of both sexes go quite naked, without any covering whatever. The Indian women also, by way of ornament, often cut small holes in their ears and their lips, in the first of which they wear corks or small pieces of light wood, and through their lips they stick thorns, and sometimes all the pins they can lay hold of, with the heads inside against the gums, and the points like a beard dangling down upon their chins. Some wear feathers through their cheeks and through their noses, though this is but seldom. But the most unaccountable ornament in my opinion is, that the girls at ten or twelve years old work a kind of cotton garter round their ankles, and the same below the knee; which being very tight, and remaining for ever, occasions their calves to swell to an enormous size by the time they are grown women, and gives their limbs a very odd and unnatural appearance. They also wear girdles, bands, and bracelets, of various coloured beads, shells, and fish-teeth, about their necks, across their shoulders, or round their arms, but generally above the elbow. Upon the whole, the Indian women, naturally disagreeable in their shapes, with their toes turned inwards, are still less attractive by their ornaments. But from this general description I must exempt one cast in particular, called Arrowouks, whom I shall describe in their proper place. [388]
The ornaments of the men consist of crowns of various coloured feathers, or a sash of boars or tygers teeth across one shoulder, as a token of their valour and activity. The chiefs of families sometimes wear the skin of a tyger, and a silver plate resembling a croissant, called by them a caracoly; they also frequently have small oval bits of silver in the cartilaginous separation of their noses, and sometimes a green or yellow coloured stone. All these nations live in the forest, near rivers, and along the sea-coast, where they are scattered in small villages or hamlets. Their houses or wigwams, which they call carbets, are built as I have already described those of the negroes; but instead of being covered with the leaves of the manicole-tree, they are covered with the leaves of rattans or jointed canes, here called tas, which grow in clusters in all marshy places: but they mostly use troolies, which are leaves that diverge immediately from the root, and are no less than twenty or twenty-four feet in length, and from two to three in breadth, and this will for years effectually exclude all inclemencies of weather.
Their furniture is very simple, but sufficient for their wants, consisting of a few black earthen pots of their own making; a few callebashes or gourds; a few baskets, called pagala; a stone to grind, called matta, and another to bake their cassava bread; a fan to blow the fire; a wooden stool or mulee; a sieve they call manary; a press to squeeze the wet cassava, called matappy; and a cotton hammock or net for them to sleep in. [389]
Besides these, since their intercourse with the Europeans, many of them are furnished with a hatchet and a knife, which last, like a dagger, the Indians always wear by their side. But I must not forget that every Indian family is provided with a large boat or canoe to carry all that they possess when they travel by water, which is not unfrequent.
The only vegetables cultivated by these people are the yams, plantains, and bananas, already described, and particularly cassava or manioc. This last is a shrub, which grows about three feet high, of a grey colour, and knotted; the leaves are digitated and large, and supported by cinnamon-coloured foot-stalks. Of this shrub there are two species, distinguished by the appellation of the sweet and the bitter cassava, of which the roots alone are for use. These are soft and farinaceous; and in colour, size, and shape, much resemble European parsnips. The sweet cassava, roasted in hot ashes, like the green plantains, and eaten with butter, is an agreeable and healthy food, tasting much like the chesnut. But the bitter cassava, which when raw is the most fatal poison both to man and beast, is (however strange it may seem) when prepared by fire, not only a very safe food, but the most natural bread of the Indians in this country, as well as of several Europeans and negroes. The manner in which the Indians prepare it is first by grinding or grating these roots on the matta or rough stone: [390]after which they put it in a press, to separate the juice from the meal. This press is a kind of long tube, made of warimbo or reeds; which being hung to a tree, and filled with ground cassava, a heavy stone or log of wood is fixed to the bottom, the weight of which gradually lengthens the tube, which is compressed in proportion, and the liquid substance is squeezed through the plated reeds. This done, the meal is baked on a hot stone in thin round cakes, until it becomes brown and crisp, and then it is a wholesome food, that will keep good for half a year; yet I must acknowledge that the taste, which by that process becomes sweetish, is at the same time extremely insipid. The extracted water of this root, if not carefully prevented by the slaves, is sometimes drunk by cattle, and poultry on the estates, whom it instantly kills with convulsive tortures and swelling; yet this very liquid, if boiled with pepper, butcher’s meat, &c. is frequently made use of for soup. None should use the cassava root for food but such as are perfectly acquainted with it: many people having been poisoned, to my knowledge, by using the one species for the other; the distinction between the two consisting chiefly in a tough ligneous fibre or cord running through the heart of the sweet or innocent cassava root, which the fatal or bitter has not. The acajou nuts are also used by the Indians; and they often bring them to Paramaribo, where they are called inginotto. The kernels of these nuts are in size and shape very like [391]lambs kidneys, and are exceedingly delicate. They grow very far inland upon high trees, which having never seen, I cannot describe.
The other food of the Indian consists of sea and land turtle, and crabs, called seereeca, which last are seen in great quantities in the mud all along the coast of Guiana at low water. Of these they are extremely fond, as also of the river lobsters called sarasara, which are here in great abundance. But nothing pleases them so much as the iguana or wayamacca lizards, that I have already described: every thing they eat is so highly seasoned with Cayenne pepper, that the mere tasting of their food excoriates the mouth of an European. They use little or no salt, but barbacue their game and fish in the smoke, which equally preserves it from putrefaction; and if an Indian has neglected to provide food by hunting or fishing, his hunger is asswaged by eating the seeds of the green-heart or the eta tree, or of similar productions of the forest.
Their drink consists of various fluids, such as the juice of the coumoo fruit. The coumoo tree is one of the smallest of the palm kind. Its seed grows in bunches of purple blue berries, resembling grapes, the pulp of which thinly adheres to a round hard stone, about the size of a pistol bullet. These berries are dissolved and macerated in boiling water; which beverage, when mixed with sugar and cinnamon, is frequently used by the fair inhabitants: it tastes very much like chocolate. [392]A drink they call piworree is a composition of the cassava bread, chewed by the females, and fermented with water, when it has something of the taste of ale, and will intoxicate. It appears at first very extraordinary, that what has been within the teeth, mixed with the saliva, and spit from the mouths of others, should be drank without loathing by the people of any country: but those who have read Cook’s Voyages will find that this practice was so common in the islands he discovered, that had he not complied with it, his refusal might have fatally offended the inhabitants. His officers, indeed, did not think it so necessary for them to comply, and therefore excused themselves from the disgusting draught. A beverage nearly of the same kind they compose from the maize, or Indian corn, which is first ground and baked into bread, after which it is crumbled and macerated with water till it ferments like the former, and this they call chiacoar. Another drink called cassiree is also much used by these Indians, being a composition of yams, cassava, sour oranges, and sugar or treacle, well macerated, and fermented with water. I shall only add, that all these beverages are inebriating, if used beyond moderation, which is frequently the case with both males and females among the copper-coloured generation I am speaking of. This is the only time when they are unruly, and when quarrels arise among themselves.
In pronunciation the language of the Indians in general much resembles the Italian, their words being sonorous [393]and harmonious, mostly terminating with a vowel, as may be observed by the few specimens above. They have no calculation of time, a string with some knots being the only calendar they are acquainted with. Their musical instruments consist of a kind of flute called too-too, and made of a single piece of thick reed, on which they make a sound no better than the lowing of an ox, without either measure or variety.—Another instrument is also used by them to blow upon, called quarta (by Ovid a sirinx; by some poets Pan’s chaunter) and consists of reeds of different lengths, that are joined together like the pipes of an organ, but even at the top, which they hold with both hands to the lips, and which, by shifting from side to side, produces a warbling of clear but discordant sounds, agreeable to none but themselves; nor have I seen a better representation of the god Pan playing on his chaunter, than a naked Indian among the verdant foliage playing upon one of those reedy pipes. They also make flutes of the bones of their enemies, of which I have one now in my possession. Their dancing, if such it may be called, consists in stamping on the ground, balancing on one foot, and staggering round in different attitudes for many hours, as if intoxicated.
The Indians are a very sociable people among themselves, and frequently meet together in a large wigwam or carbet that is in every hamlet for the purpose, where, if they do not play or dance, they amuse each other with fictitious stories, generally concerning ghosts, witches, [394]or dreams, during which they frequently burst out into immoderate fits of laughter. They greatly delight in bathing, which they do twice at least every day, men, women, boys, and girls, promiscuously together. They are all excellent swimmers without exception. Among these parties not the smallest indecency is committed, in either words or actions.
The employments of the men are, as I have stated, but very few, and, indeed, may be comprized in two words, hunting and fishing: at both of these exercises they are indisputably more expert than any other nation whatever. For the first they are provided with bows and arrows of their own manufacturing, the arrows being of different kinds for different purposes. The Indian bows are all made of the hardest and toughest kind of wood, about five or six feet in length, and wonderfully well polished; and this is effected by means of a stone. In the middle they are wound round with cotton, and strung with chords made of silk-grass. The arrows are generally about four feet long, made of a very straight and strong kind of reed, to the end of which is fixed a thin twig about one foot long, to balance them; this is armed with a point made of steel or of fish-bone, generally barbed. Some of the Indian arrows are pointed like a lance, others are doubly and trebly barbed, and so contrived as to stick in the wound when the reedy part is pulled back. These are used mostly for game and fish; for though they be not mortal, [395]they encumber the first, and being buoyant bring the latter to the surface, till both are taken. These arrows, like all others, are stuck with feathers six or seven inches long. Some arrows have blunted heads instead of points, about the size of a large chesnut, like what our ancestors called bolts; with these they do not kill, but stun the macaws, parrots, and small monkeys, so that they can take them with their hands, soon after which they recover, and are sent alive to Paramaribo. Some of the arrows for killing fish have the appearance of a trident, three and sometimes five barbed sticks being fixed to the reed instead of one, which enables them to shoot fish even at random. A few of the above arrows are frequently dipped in the woorara poison1, which is instantaneously fatal: but when intent on certain destruction, this people make use of another kind of arrow that is not above ten or twelve inches long, extremely thin, and made of the hard splinters of the palm-tree bark, having, instead of feathers, one end wound round with a tuft of raw cotton, so as to fill up a hollow tube made of reed near six feet in length, through which they blow them with their breath. These little implements of death will carry to the distance of forty paces, and with so much certainty, that the intended [396]victims never escape, the points being dipped in the woorara poison. As an instance of the dreadful effects of this poison, I shall only mention a negro woman, who, during the late rebellion in Berbicè, being slightly wounded by a poisoned arrow, not only almost instantly expired, but her sucking infant, though not touched by the arrow, lost its life by tasting her milk.
Their manner of catching fish is much the same as I have described at the Hope, by inclosing the entry of small creeks or shoal water with a paleing, shooting them with their trident arrows, or poisoning the water by throwing in it the roots of hiaree2, in Surinam called tringee-woodo or konamee, by which the fish become stupified, and are taken by the hand, while they float on the surface of the water; as boys in England, who by mixing the Coculus Indicus, or drugs of similar effect, with baits which the fish will take, find them soon after rise to the surface, whence, if they are not speedily taken, they will recover and escape, the drugs only stupifying them for a while. These are the only occupations of the men, except making their furniture, ornaments, and arms.
I must not forget that every Indian carries a club, which they call apootoo, for their defence. These clubs are made of the heaviest wood in the forest; they are [397]about eighteen inches long, flat at both ends, and square, but heavier at the one end than the other. In the middle they are thinner, and are wound about with strong cotton threads, so as to be grasped, having a loop to secure them round the wrist, as the sword-tassels are used by some cavalry. One blow with this club, in which is frequently fixed a sharp stone, scatters the brains. They are used by the Guiana Indians like the tomahawk by the Cherokees, on which, besides other hieroglyphical figures, they often carve the number of persons they have slain in battle. The manner of fixing the stone in the club or apootoo is by sticking it in the tree while it is yet growing, where it soon becomes so fast that it cannot be forced out; after which the wood is cut, and shaped according to fancy.
The women are occupied in planting cassava, plantains, and other roots, besides yams, &c. in dressing the victuals, and in making earthen pots, bracelets, baskets, or cotton hammocks. Their best baskets are called pagala, and are formed of a double matting of rushes called warimbo, some white, some brown, between which is a separation of tas, or trooly-leaves, to keep out the wet. The covering is usually larger and deeper than the basket itself, which it altogether envelopes, and thus makes it stronger; the whole resting on two cross pieces of wood fixed to the bottom. Their hammocks are woven, which must require a considerable portion of time and trouble, being done [398]thread after thread, traversing the warp in the manner that a hole is darned in a stocking; after which they are stained with the juices of trees according to fancy.
The Indian girls arrive at the time of puberty before twelve years old, indeed commonly much sooner, at which time they are married. The ceremony consists simply in the young man’s offering a quantity of game and fish of his own catching, which, if she accepts, he next proposes the question, “Will you be my wife?” If she answers in the affirmative, the matter is settled, and the nuptials celebrated in a drunken feast, when a house and furniture is provided for the young couple. Their women are delivered without any assistance, and with so little inconvenience or suffering, that they seem exempt from the curse of Eve. They go about the menial services for their husbands the day after their delivery; then, however ridiculous and incredible it may appear, it is an absolute fact, that every one of these gentlemen lie in their hammocks for above a month, groaning and grunting as if they had been themselves in labour, during which time all the women must attend them with extraordinary care and the best food. This the Indian calls enjoying himself, and resting from his labour. Most of these people esteeming a flat forehead a mark of beauty, they compress the heads of their children, it is said, immediately after their birth, like the Chactaws of North America.
No Indian wife eats with her husband, but serves him [399]as a slave: for this reason they can take but very little care of their infants, which, nevertheless, are always healthy and undeformed. When they travel, they carry them in small hammocks slung over one shoulder, in which sits the child, having one leg before and the other behind the mother. For an emetic they use the juice of tobacco, which they seldom smoke.
When the Indians are dying, either from sickness or old age, the latter of which is most frequently the cause, the devil or Yawahoo is at midnight exorcised by the peii or priest, by means of rattling a calibash filled with small stones, peas, and beads, accompanied by a long speech. This office is hereditary, and by these pretended divines no animal food, as I have before said, is publicly tasted, and yet on the whole they live better than all the others. When an Indian is dead, being first washed and anointed, he is buried naked, in a new cotton bag, in a sitting attitude, his head resting on the palms of his hands, his elbows on his knees, and all his implements of war and hunting by his side; during which time his relations and neighbours rend the air by their dismal lamentations; but soon after, by a general drunken riot, they drown their sorrows till the following year. This practice, by the way, bears some affinity to Dr. Smollet’s description of a burial in the Highlands of Scotland. At the expiration of the year, the body, being rotten, is dug up, and the bones distributed to all the friends and acquaintance, during which ceremony the former rites [400]are repeated for the last time, and the whole neighbourhood look out for another settlement. Some tribes of Indians, having put their deceased friends in the above posture, place them naked for a few days under water, where the bones being picked clean by the piree and other fish, the skeleton is dried in the sun, and hung up to the ceiling of their houses or wigwams; and this is done as the strongest instance of their great regard for their departed friend.
When these Indians travel by land, their canoe, which is made of a large tree hollowed by means of fire, is always carried along with them to transport their luggage across swamps, creeks, and rivers; it is, like themselves, all over besmeared with arnotta. If they travel in the rivers, they generally paddle against the tide, to have a better opportunity of shooting such game as they see in the trees or on the banks; whereas, if they went with the current, the rapidity of the stream would often make them run past it. When travelling on the coast, it frequently happens that these canoes ship a sea which fills them, but no such thing as a shipwreck is heard of: both sexes immediately leaping over-board; then with one hand they hang by the canoe, with the other, and by means of calibashes, they throw out the water.
Notwithstanding the Guiana Indians are upon the whole a peaceable people, they sometimes go to war among themselves, purely for the sake of capturing prisoners, to which they are too much encouraged by the [401]Christians, who receive them in exchange for other commodities, and make them slaves, which is too frequently practised. But these kind of slaves are only for shew and parade, as they absolutely refuse to work, and if at all ill-treated, or especially if beaten, they pine and languish like caged turtles, even refusing food, till by affliction and want they are exhausted, and finally expire.
The Indians always fight their battles by midnight: indeed their contests resemble more a siege than a battle, as these broils consist only in surrounding the hamlets of their enemies while they are asleep, making prisoners of the women, boys, and girls, while they shoot the men with poisoned arrows, or with their clubs or apootoos divide their sculls when they come to close quarters; they also scalp their male prisoners, bring home their hair, and even their bones, as trophies of war, and presents to their wives, unless they intend to sell them to the Europeans at Paramaribo. In their open rencounters, which happen very seldom, the bows and barbed arrows are their principal weapons of offence; with these they often kill at the distance of sixty paces; nay, the swiftest bird in its flight, provided it has the magnitude of a crow, seldom escapes them. In truth, such is the skill of these people at these manly exercises, that the best archers at Cressy, Poictiers, and Agincourt, must have yielded to their superiority. [402]
Now with full force the yielding bow he bends,
Drawn to an arch, and joins the doubling ends;
Close to his breast he strains the nerve below,
’Till the barb’d point approach the circling bow.
Th’ impatient weapon whizzes on the wing,
Sounds the tough bow, and twangs the quivering string.
Pope’s Homer.
I shall only add farther on this subject, that when these Indians go to war they chuse one general commander, whom they distinguish by the title of Uill.
The trade or traffic which the Indians of Guiana carry on with the Dutch consists chiefly in slaves, earthen jars, canoes, hammocks, baskets, Brazil-wood, hiaree-roots, macaws, parrots, monkeys, balsam capivi, arracocerra, caraba or crab oil, and arnotta, for which they receive in return checquered cloth, fire-arms, gun-powder, hatchets, knives, scissars, different coloured beads, looking-glasses, fish-hooks, combs, needles, pins, &c. The balsam capivi exudes from the bark of a thick tree that grows far inland, with large pointed leaves, bearing a fruit like a cucumber. This gum is yellow, hard, and transparent, resembling amber; when melted, it has an agreeable smell: its uses are for varnish, and to stop diuretic complaints, &c. The gum called arracocerra exudes from an inland tree also; it is yellow as the former, but tenacious and soft; it has a most fragrant smell, and is held in great esteem by the Europeans as well as Indians, [403]on account of its efficacy in curing wounds, and many other complaints. The caraba or crab oil is made by bruising, macerating, and boiling the kernels that grow on the crab-tree in brown angular nuts, much about the size of a large chesnut; this oil, which is bitter, besides anointing the Indians, is used for many purposes by the Europeans. The tree grows to near fifty feet high, with leaves resembling those of the laurel; but as I neither have seen this nor the two former growing, to my knowledge, I can say nothing more concerning them. The mawna tree is high, straight, and light brown coloured; its leaves are oval; its nuts resembling nutmegs, but without either taste or flavour. The gum exuding from its trunk by incisions in the bark is dissolved by the Indians in water, and, as I have said, mixed with arnotta to anoint them. The castor or palmachristi bush, by botanists called the ricinus, is a shrub about four feet high, jointed, being covered with large digitated leaves on long foot-stalks, viz. both the stem and the branches. This shrub consists of the red and the white, and produces triangular nuts inclosed in a green hulk, which, when ripe, turns to brown, and falls off. From these nuts is expressed the castor oil; in Surinam it is called carrapat oil; it is very like that made of olives, and, as I have mentioned before, is much used by the Indians to paint themselves with.
Among all the Indian nations, the Caribs are the most numerous, active, and brave. These reside in great numbers [404]near the Spanish settlements, which they often harass, in immortal revenge for the inhuman cruelties inflicted on their forefathers at Mexico and Peru. They are commanded by a captain, and assemble by the blowing of a conch or sea-shell; they have also frequent battles with neighbouring Indians; but what disgraces them above all others in Terra Firma is, that however unnatural it may seem, and however much it has been contradicted, they are anthropophagi or cannibals; at least they most certainly feast on their enemies, whose flesh they tear and devour with the avidity of wolves, though this is generally supposed to be more from a spirit of revenge than from any depravity in their taste.
The Accawaw Indians are few in number, and live farther distant from the sea than the former. Though like these they live in friendship with the Dutch, they are both treacherous in administering slow poison concealed under their nails, and very distrustful, as they palisade the ground round their hamlets with poisoned spikes.
The Worrow Indians, if not the most cruel, are the most despicable of any in Guiana. These are settled along the coast from the river Oronoque to Surinam; they are dark-coloured and extremely ugly; though strong they are pusillanimous, and withal so very lazy and indolent, that their poverty will scarcely afford them a covering to hide their nakedness, which they often supply by the web-like bark of the palm-tree. They often go quite naked, and are stinkingly dirty; from [405]their sluggish inactivity they are reduced to live mostly upon crabs and water. If it should seem strange to have called these people happy, let it be recollected that their wishes are confined to their enjoyments, and that no Indian was ever heard to complain that he was unhappy.
The Taiiras are settled also on the sea-coast between Surinam and the river Amazon. These are exceedingly numerous, being computed, in this settlement alone, to amount to near twenty thousand: they are a very peaceable but indolent people, and in many particulars resemble the Worrows.
The Piannacotaus live very far inland, and are enemies to the Europeans, with whom they refuse all connection or dealings whatever: of this tribe the only thing that I can say farther is, that they would murder all the Christians in Guiana, if they had an opportunity.
The only Indian nation within my knowledge now remaining to be mentioned are the Arrowouks, my favourites;—but as this Chapter is already swelled to a considerable length, I must defer them to another opportunity.——Thus for the present do I take my leave of this happy people, who with the distinctions of rank or land (the causes of contention in more enlightened states) are unacquainted; who know no evil but pain and want, with which they are very seldom afflicted in this ever-verdant, this ever-blooming climate; who, while their wishes are so very limited, [406]possess all that they desire in this world: and who, while they expect a future state, never give their minds the smallest uneasiness, but die in peace; nay, who seldom think upon to-morrow. But while I allow them this species of negative happiness, let it not be understood that to the contented European I have held up their condition as an object of envy.
For a better idea of their furniture, ornaments, and arms, I refer the curious to the annexed plate, where
Arms, Ornaments & Furniture of the Indians.
London, Published Decr. 1st, 1791, by J. Johnson, St. Paul’s Church Yard.
For a fuller botanical description than either my knowledge or my limits will allow, I refer the reader to the ingenious Dr. Bancroft, whose merit in this particular is perhaps known by few, but who claims every attention from having lived so long in Demerary; and to whom the thanks of the world in general are due, for his ingenious “Letters to Dr. Pitcairn, F. R. C. P. &c.” published in 1766.
END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
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