552 ARTS. AND CRAFTS OF GUIANA INDIANS [ETH. ANN. 38 
place, and is there left without food or care for a day or two. If it 
survives this treatment, it is taken out, and it is then generally docile 
and ready to eat the food given to it (Ti, June, 82, p. 39). The 
natives of the upper Amazons procure the coaita (couata) when full 
grown by shooting it with the blowpipe and poisoned darts, and 
restoring life by putting a little salt (the antidote to the urari poison, 
with which the darts are tipped) in its mouth. The animals thus 
caught become tame forthwith (HWB, 127, 333). 
717. Dogs—Our own domestic dog, which is used by the Indians, 
of course originally reached these shores with the Spaniards, but 
there seems no doubt that indigenous ones existed on the arrival of 
the foreigners and are still to be met with, though it is doubtful if 
they were ever really domesticated; they may occasionally have been 
tamed. Such indigenous creatures must not be confounded with the 
so-called wild dog, the “ chien sauvage,” crabedago (FE, 1, 120-121), 
crabbo-dago, crabbed dog (St, u, 41), or crab-dog (SR, m, 443). 
On the islands dogs were noticed by the first Spanish discoverers; 
e. g., at Santo Domingo the explorers saw some dogs of various col- 
ors, “as in our own country,” says Chanca, but in shape and size like 
lap-dogs (DAC, 447). For the southern continent, Von Humboldt 
mentions that in the countries he and his companions had just passed 
through, between the Meta, the Arauca, and the Apure, there were 
found, at the time of the first expeditions to the Orinoco in 1535, 
those “ mute ” dogs called by the natives maios and auries. This fact 
is curious in many points of view. We can not doubt, he says, that 
the dog, whatever Father Gili may assert, is Indigenous in South 
America. The different Indian languages furnish words to desig- 
nate this animal which are scarcely derived from any European 
tongue. [The Pomeroon Arawak call a domestic dog kariru, i. e., 
big tooth, as well as perro, the Spanish term. The Makusi call it 
arimaraka.] To this day the word awri, mentioned 300 years ago by 
Alonzo de Herrera, is found in the Maypure. The dogs we saw at 
the Orinoco may perhaps have descended from those that the Span- 
iards carried to the coast of Caracas; but it is not less certain that 
there existed a race of dogs, before the conquest, in Peru, in New 
Granada, and in Guiana, resembling our shepherd’s dogs. The allco 
of the natives of Peru, and in general all the dogs that we found in 
the wildest countries of South America, bark frequently (AVH, n, 
509). Just previously Stedman had reported that in Surinam the 
dogs lose the faculty or at least the habit of barking; and it is a 
known fact that the native dogs never bark at all... if the American 
dogs do not bark, their howl is very loud (St, m, 80). The in- 
digenous dogs referred to are probably the Canis cancrivorus 
and Canis [Lycalopex| [Pseudalopex| azarae. 'The former is known 
