658 ARTS AND CRAFTS OF GUIANA INDIANS [BTH, ANN. 28 
parents of the deceased arrive on the day appointed for the funeral 
they lay on one side of the dead man’s body his bow, arrows, club, and 
shield (vodela), and on the other place one of his wives to look after 
and accompany him, after which the elder son inherits and takes 
possession of the deceased’s wives, except the one who bore him, and 
she it is who usually accompanies the dead. The bones are exhumed 
at the end of a year and, inclosed in a basket, are hung from the 
roofs of the houses to keep them ever in memory (G, 1, 200). 
857. Coming to more recent times, in Demerara, if the deceased 
Carib were a person of some distinction, his bones after burial were 
cleaned by the women and carefully preserved in their houses (Br, 
129). In the same colony Bernau also recognizes a difference in the 
funerals accorded to the so-called upper and lower classes. He 
seems, however, to have taken his information from Schomburgk’s 
account of the upper Pomeroon Carib (SR, um, 431-432). Thus, if 
the individual departed be a man of consequence, the corpse is put 
into a hammock and watched with much solicitude. The women 
and nearest female relations wash it often with water. After it has 
become putrid and nothing but the skeleton remains, the bones are 
cleaned, painted, and put into a pegall, or basket, and carefully 
preserved. If they should happen to quit the place, the bones are 
burned in the place where the person expired and the ashes carefully 
collected and taken with them. The women who have been engaged 
in scraping and burning the bones of the dead are considered unclean 
for several months after, and are not allowed to touch any of the 
food eaten by the men. In ordinary cases, however, the body is 
interred in the hammock in which the person died (BE, 52), outside 
his hut, and the bones, which are subsequently exhumed, are divided 
among the relatives (SR, 11, 431-432). 
858. Stedman is apparently referring to the Surinam Carib, or 
Indian of Carib stock, of whom he says: “ When an Indian is 
dead, being first washed and anointed, he is buried naked in a new 
cotton bag [? hammock] in a sitting attitude, his head resting on 
the palms of his hands, his elbows on his knees, and all his imple- 
ments of war and hunting by his side, during which time his rela- 
tions and neighbors rend the air with their dismal lamentations. 
But soon after, by a general drunken riot, they drown their sorrows 
until the following year. ... At the expiration of the year, the 
body, being rotten, is dug up, and the bones distributed to all the 
friends and acquaintances, during which ceremony the former rites 
are repeated for the last time, and the whole neighborhood look out 
for another settlement” (St, 1, 399). In Van Berkel’s day, in the 
latter half of the seventeenth century, if the deceased Carib had any 
male or female slaves they were killed so that they might wait upon 
