TREATMENT OF CHILDREiN 297 



plentiful. In fact, they have the disagreeable habit of 

 getting up frequently during the night to eat, and thus 

 it happens that anyone staying with Indians will be 

 awakened repeatedly during the night by the movements 

 of one or other of the party. This habit of gorging is 

 acquired during early youth, when the children are 

 allowed to eat as much as they can — that is, when food 

 is abundant. Neither are the children interfered with 

 much in other matters, nor are they punished in the 

 way Europeans punish theirs, I do not remember ever 

 having seen the Indians at Mura beat or in any way 

 ill-treat their little ones. It may be this freedom in the 

 method of his bringing up which makes the full-grown 

 Indian impatient of any sort of control. 



Of the numerous tribes which dwelt on the Caura and 

 its neighbourhood, only the Waiomgomos have survived, 

 and they also, although so far removed from civilisation, 

 have, according to Isidor's accounts, decreased to an 

 appalling extent within a comparatively short period. 

 To-day the compound on the Merevari range does not 

 contain more than fifty or sixty people, of whom about 

 two-thirds are women. They are polygamous, some of 

 the men having two or even three wives. In the few 

 books I have read dealing with the Indians of Guiana, 

 ihese people are referred to as Maionkongs. They call 

 themselves, however, Waiomgomos. I was particularly 

 careful to satisfy myself on this point, and I even 

 mentioned the word Maionkong to Isidor as being the 

 name by which his tribe was known abroad. He told me 

 that the Indians through whom his tribe received such 

 articles as knives and fish-hooks from British Guiana, 

 spoke dialects so different from that of the Waiomgomos, 

 that they would probably find it almost impossible to 



