416 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 3 4 



been made the object of comparative study under the hj-pothesis that 

 here, if anywhere, was an indication of Oceanic influence. Bows and 

 arrows are universal, and the use of poison arrows is general. The 

 famous curari poison is procured from the roots of the Strychnos 

 toxifera. The arrow or dart points are of reed or hard wood or 

 bone. In Guiana there is a special weapon known as a blowgun 

 fashioned from a reed or from two hollowed and fitted stems. This 

 is also characteristic of the tribes of the upper Amazon. The darts 

 used in the blowgun are wrapped at their butt ends with slender 

 wads of raw cotton so as to fit the bore of the blowgun. Quivers 

 holding these darts are made of diagonally plaited splint fiber or 

 of bamboo. The wooden clubs of the Guiana Indians in the north 

 of this area are rectangular in section. They are short, made of hard 

 wood, frequently socketed at the operating end with a perforation 

 for the insertion of a polished stone ax head. The spear is in common 

 use, although the throwing stick is rare and limited to central Brazil. 

 The island Carib and Arawak of the West Indies did not use the 

 throwing stick or the blowgun as is frequently assumed. An inter- 

 esting carry-over in the primitive technology of the people of 

 Amazonia is their method of hafting their polished stone axes. 

 Blades from the Tocantins, crescent-shaped at their cutting edge, 

 have a narrow neck with wings at the butt end. The haft lashing 

 across the bottom of these wings is similar to that of haft lashing 

 on copper axes from upland Peru. The ceremonies in use throughout 

 the area are similar in nature, and among the ceremonial objects is 

 one, the bull roarer, the occurrence of which in central Brazil is 

 reminiscent of similar ceremonial instuments in North America. 

 Urn burials by the Caribs and the Tupi, in which the remains are 

 deposited in large pottery urns, are also similar to practices in middle 

 America and on the Gulf coast. 



Students of South American Indians have frequently called at- 

 tention to the striking culture similarities between selected tribes in 

 the North and South American continents. Similarities in the 

 pottery of the Calchaqui of northwest Argentine and of the Pueblos 

 of Arizona and New Mexico, likewise in the stone chipping and 

 scalping complex possessed alike by the equestrian Apibones of 

 Paraguay and a representative North American Plains tribe, are 

 perhaps more significant than are the semi-interlocking high cultures 

 of Peru and Mexico. A single upland agricultural area based on the 

 production of maize, the potato, the gourd, and the squash, with 

 centers of high divergent culture development in Peru, in Colombia, 

 Central America, and Mexico, is fortified by peripheral cultures 

 removed from one another by thousands of miles of intervening 

 tropical woodlands but preserving in many respects a cultural iden- 



