Cuarrrr XXVIII 
WAR AND WARFARE 
Some nations of a pacific, others of a bellicose disposition (755). 
Motives and causes for war (756) ; council of war (757). 
“Call to arms and declaration of war by word of mouth, drum, or shell (758) ; 
by arrow (759). 
Commander in chief (760) ; commissariat and camp followers (761). 
Methods of attack: Seldom open hostilities (762) ; generally ambuscade, treach- 
ery, night attacks, etc. (763); use of fire arrows, concealed rafts, obstructed 
pathways, burnt peppers, women decoys (764). 
Methods of defence (765). 
Trophies and spoils of war (766). 
Fate of prisoners: Scalped (767); eaten (768); by island (769) and mainland 
Carib (770); also by Arawak (771); Betoya (772) ; further evidence of the 
shell mounds (773) ; enslaved for and by Europeans (774) ; Indian servitude 
(775) ; negro slavery (776). 
Ratification of peace (777). 
755. What Father Acuna remarked of the Amazon might, in a 
measure, be said of the Guianas, that the near neighborhood of one 
nation with another did not at all serve to keep them in amity, one 
with another, but, on the contrary, they were in continual war, and 
were daily killing and making slaves of one another (AC, 85). The 
fighting, moreover, was not always necessarily extratribal. Thus 
Schomburgk mentions the Maiongkong of the upper Orinoco being 
at war with the Guinau and Maiongkong of this region and the lower 
Orinoco (ScF, 225). Some tribes were noted for their peace-loving 
proclivities, while others were similarly renowned for their fighting 
ones. Thus, the Achagua and Saliva, though they loved to don 
feather headdresses and other ornaments of brave soldiers, were 
never a warlike people (G, 1m, 91). The same may be said of the 
present-day Maku, who constitute a large proportion of the domestic 
slaves of other Indians. In sharp contrast to these folk were the 
Otomac and the Carib. The Otomac were a numerous nation, and 
used to carry on bloody and perpetual warfare with the Carib, with 
great losses to the latter until . . . when, through the agency of the 
Dutch, the Carib obtained firearms. They never turned tail. Before 
battle each would stimulate his passions by pricking his body with 
bone points, and say to himself, “Take heed! If you are not brave, 
the Carib must eat you!” The women assisted their husbands in. 
578 
