norH] FIRE, STONE, TIMBER, TOOLS 17 
Akawinni Creek, superficially examined by me in 1911, were found 
several small fragments of quartz (e. g., pl. 6 E, F, L), with chipped 
edges, seemingly used as knives for hacking away the flesh from human 
bones, the masses of which reasonably precluded any other purpose 
than the one suggested; furthermore, such quartz is not found in the 
immediate neighborhood, and must have been purposely brought 
from a distance. Similar finds have been recorded from other 
mounds (sec. 773). 
14. Knives were made of materials other than stone. The reed 
knife was found in Brazil, Guiana, and the southeastern part of North 
America (GF, 423-438), but the accounts of it from the Guianas are 
rare. An old bush negro captain in Surinam told de Goeje that some 
50 years previously the Trio used very sharp knives made of bamboo 
(GO, 5). With the Makusi of our own colony the navel string of a 
male child was severed with a sharply cut bamboo; that of a female 
with a piece of arrow reed (SR, 1, 313).? 
15. On the Ormoco Gumilla speaks of the teeth of the pirai fish 
being so sharp that the Quirruba, and others who dispense with 
their hair, employ them instead of scissors, for cutting it, by fixing 
the jaws in place and tying the ends together with twine (G, 1, 209). 
A similar practice would seem to have obtained elsewhere in the 
Guianas; the teeth were certainly commonly used as scrapers for 
sharpening the poisoned darts for the blowpipe. A fish-tooth knife 
was employed also in the Chaco and throughout Brazil (GF, 423-438), 
16. In the working of a fragment of rock into a celt many flakes 
would be obtamed which on occasion could serve as scrapers. Or a 
scraper could be made as required on the wayside—I have picked up 
dozens of them while wandering along the pathways over the Paka- 
raima ranges. These pieces (pl. 6 A~D, H—K) are interesting as in- 
dicating the practice of the stone-chipping art in a new locality. 
17. Other scrapers can be made from snail shell and similar hard 
materials. Even by the aid of fire and water alone, states Gumilla 
(G, 11, 100), after having removed sufficient from a stick to give it the 
shape of a spear, club, or arrow, a task no less wearisome and trouble- 
some presents itself. The Orinoco Indians seek or already possess 
a quantity of snails of an extra large size that thrive in areas subject 
to inundation, the shells of which they break up, thus securing chips 
having a cutting edge like a glass jug when broken. It is by means 
of these chips, combined with time and perseverance, that they give 
the finishing touches and gloss to their bows and incredible fineness 
to their spears and arrows (G, 0, 99). The shell scrapers, etc., from 
Barbados, of which many fakes have been put on the market for 
the tourist traffic, were made from the central spire or the spreading 
undulating lip of the Queen conch (Ti., vol. v, 1918, p. 54). 
? In the Gran Chaco wooden knives are still used for scaling and cutting up fish and in eating water- 
melons (NOR, 60-61). 
