264 ARTS AND CRAFTS OF GUIANA INDIANS [ETH, ANN. 38 
be regarded as houses built on piles or posts—an error into which 
it would appear that more than one traveler has fallen. 
315. In connection with the alleged old-time pile dwellings of the 
Warrau, over water, in the coastal swamp lands, Hilhouse says: 
“The mauritia (ite) grows in clusters as thick as trees can grow. 
The Warrau selects one of these groves and fells the trees about 4 
feet from the surface, and on their stumps he lays a floor of their split 
trunks. The trulis (manicaria) are generally adjacent for the roof, 
but if not the ite leaf serves. Lumps of clay are laid on the floor, on 
which fires are made .. .; but the habitation is an irregular hut, 
raised on a platform just above the level of the water, which in these 
regions is 3 feet above the earth for three-fourths of the year. Some 
of them can contain 150 people” (HiB, 327). 
Schomburgk makes mention of a Warrau settlement on the Barima 
with. miserable huts 7 or 8 feet long (SR, 1, 195). On the Orinoco, 
Gumilla speaks of the Warrau who raise their houses, streets, and 
market place (plaza) upon stakes and poles sunk through the mud 
until their ends reach firm ground. To these stakes, which are 
necessarily of such a length that neither the tides nor swell of the 
Orinoco cover them, are fixed and fastened the requisite timbers. 
On the transoms and woodwork stretching from one pole to an- 
other is laid the flooring, formed of the hard trunk or outsides of the 
murichi palm (mauritia), the name which they give it in their 
language ... They thatch the houses with the leaves of the same 
palm (G, 1, 145). According to an illustration given by Crévaux, 
the floor would appear to consist of two layers of tree trunks, at right 
angles to one another, the components of the lower one spaced ; those 
of the upper touching (Cr, 607). 
316. Coming now to houses on posts in lands high and dry, there is 
Barrére’s incomplete description left to us of the Sura (sec. 312) of 
the old-time Cayenne Galibi. This is nothing but a number of posts, 
fixed in the ground, about 8 or 10 feet high, on the top of which is 
constructed a flooring of timbers split from the trunk of the ouassie 
(manicol) palm, and tied crosswise to form a firm flooring. The roof 
is of the same leaves as the koubouya (sec, 312), i. e., truli, but, un- 
fortunately, no account is given of the structure of the wall plate, etc., 
or the manner in which the roof, ridgepole, and rafters are supported. 
To get inside one has to climb saplings, inclined at not very much of a 
slope, on which are the notches to which the rungs are affixed, but so 
insecurely that they lean now to this side, now to that (PBA, 142-143). 
My own opinion of these Sura houses of Cayenne—and we meet with 
similar ones in Surinam (GOK, pl. x11, 2)—is that they are identical 
with the rectangular buildings of the Arawak, Warrau, and coastal 
Carib described in section 311, save that flooring has been laid across 
