280 ARTS AND CRAFTS OF GUIANA INDIANS [ETH, ANN, 38 
ment the units of one row he in spaces intervening between any two 
in the row preceding or succeeding—they run diagonally, like the 
rasps on a wood file. The board is now turned round, the bottom 
row commenced as before from left to right, and so on. When the 
top is reached the woman’s share of the work ends. Working hard, 
she will finish one in three days. 
341. The chips that have thus been placed in regular position are 
secured by (a man) pouring over them and the board a warmed mix- 
ture of karamanni milk and red paint (Bixa), pouring off and allow- 
ing to dry. When dried, he will paint, sometimes incise, the back 
of the board and the free margins of the front in various patterns 
(JO). 
342. Besides being manufactured in the area of the headwaters of 
the Essequibo by Taruma (pl. 67 B), Waiwai, Parikuta, and per- 
haps formerly on the 
Rupununi by Wapishana, 
another important source 
of supply of the stone- 
chip graters is from the 
upper Rio Negro district, 
on the Rio Igana, by the 
Katapolitani and Karu- 
tana women, both of them 
Fic. 85.—A specially made cassava ‘ canoe.” Arawak stock (KG, I, 
Beas 78-79). These latter 
articles are about 3 feet long and 1 foot wide, rather concave, and 
with a central longitudinal boss at the narrower end (pls. 67 D; 
15 C, a). 
343. To put a grater to use the woman, sitting on the ground, may 
place it between her legs and so scrape the cassava root in a sort of 
forward and backward movement; or, standing up, she may tilt the 
grater at an angle, bend over, and support it in the fold of her 
waist. On the islands, after the rough stones were discarded, it 
would seem that the grater was supported by a sort of stand, as repre- 
sented in an old woodcut, without any letterpress (RO, 105). 
Strange to say, a man is figured as doing the grating, but it is diffi- 
cult to decide whether he is intended to represent an Indian or a 
Negro slave (pl. 67 C). 
344, Cassava “canoe.”—The detritus of the cassava rubbed upon 
the grater is dropped and collected into some sort of utensil, gen- 
erally a curled-up piece of bark or a portion of broken-up corial. 
"At a Makusi village on Piwiyi Creek I saw such a cassava canoe 
specially made for the purpose, of peculiar shape and of unusual size 
(fig. 85). It was flat bottomed outside and inside, deeper and wider 
at one end than at the other; the inside cut square and sloping at 
GY 
LULL LULU LLL 
