Produced by Julia Miller and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) Transcriber’s Note A number of typographical errors have been maintained in this version of this book. They have been marked with a [TN-#], which refers to a description in the complete list found at the end of the text. The following codes for less common characters were used: œ oe ligature [lr] l printed over r THE ARAWACK LANGUAGE OF GUIANA IN ITS Linguistic and Ethnological Relations. By D. G. BRINTON, M. D. PHILADELPHIA: McCALLA & STAVELY, PRINTERS. 237-9 DOCK STREET. 1871. THE ARAWACK LANGUAGE OF GUIANA IN ITS LINGUISTIC AND ETHNOLOGICAL RELATIONS. BY D. G. BRINTON, M. D. The Arawacks are a tribe of Indians who at present dwell in British and Dutch Guiana, between the Corentyn and Pomeroon rivers. They call themselves simply _lukkunu_, men, and only their neighbors apply to them the contemptuous name _aruac_ (corrupted by Europeans into Aroaquis, Arawaaks, Aroacos, Arawacks, etc.), meal-eaters, from their peaceful habit of gaining an important article of diet from the amylaceous pith of the _Mauritia flexuosa_ palm, and the edible root of the cassava plant. They number only about two thousand souls, and may seem to claim no more attention at the hands of the ethnologist than any other obscure Indian tribe. But if it can be shown that in former centuries they occupied the whole of the West Indian archipelago to within a few miles of the shore of the northern continent, then on the question whether their affiliations are with the tribes of the northern or southern mainland, depends our opinion of the course of migration of the primitive inhabitants of the western world. And if this is the tribe whose charming simplicity Columbus and Peter Martyr described in such poetic language, then the historian will acknowledge a desire to acquaint himself more closely with its past and its present. It is my intention to show that such was their former geographical position. While in general features there is nothing to distinguish them from the red race elsewhere, they have strong national traits. Physically they are rather undersized, averaging not over five feet four inches in height, but strong-limbed, agile, and symmetrical. Their foreheads are low, their noses more allied to the Aryan types than usual with their race, and their skulls of that form defined by craniologists as orthognathic brachycephalic.