RoTH] WAR AND WARFARE 585 
in the course of the year, when they return in the following one [the 
caciques], may go on purchasing in their behalf. And in order that 
there should be no fraud two or three Carib Indians are left with 
each of those nations to keep an eye on the goods, which they call re- 
demption or ransom money; but a better name for it would be slave 
money, because by its means so many innocent people lose their lib- 
erty. When taking their departure they warn the caciques that if on 
their return they find that their men have received any hurt or an- 
noyance from them they will burn their villages and carry off all their 
women and children. Hence these “ guests” are well taken care of 
(G,m, 77). “Indeed,” as Depons says of the Indians in the captain 
generalship of Caracas, “ deceit and treachery were ranked by them 
among the first of military virtues; poisoned arrows were in general 
use; they murdered their prisoners taken in battle, and not unfre- 
quently devoured them” (FD, 49-50). Of the Orinoco tribes, all 
their warfare can be summed up as ambuscades, false retreats, night 
attacks, and other inventions (nventivas) (G,u, 99). In Surinam 
the Indians always fight their battles by night. Indeed, their con- 
tests resemble more a siege than a battle, as these broils consist only 
in surrounding the hamlets of their enemies while they are asleep, 
making prisoners of the women, boys, and girls, while they shoot 
the men with poisoned arrows, or with their clubs divide their skulls 
when they come to close quarters (St, 1,401). Rochefort thus speaks 
of the methods of the istand Carib: They have this imagination that 
the war they should begin openly would not prosper; so that having 
landed in the country of the Arawak, if they are discovered before 
they give the first shock, or that a dog, as one would say, did bark at 
them, thinking it ominous, they immediately returned to their vessels, 
and so to their islands, leaving the design to be prosecuted some other 
time. But if they are not discovered they fall upon their enemies, 
even in their houses. 
764. If they can not easily come at them, or find them well fortified 
in some houses that have good palisades (sec. 291), whence they play 
upon them with their arrows with some advantage, they are wont to 
force them out by shooting fire to the houses with their arrows, at the 
points whereof they fasten lighted cotton. And these arrows being 
shot on the roofs, which consist of grass or palm leaves, they pres- 
ently set them on fire, ete. (RO, 529). Brett also has a reference to 
. flaming arrows used by the same folk on the mainland (BrB, 139), 
[Such fire arrows are still occasionally used by the Matacos of the 
Gran Chaco (NOR, 134).] 
Among details of treachery, ambuscade, and other “ inventions” 
of military strategy on the part of the attacking forces may be men- 
60160°—24 38 
