694 ARTS AND CRAFTS OF GUIANA INDIANS [HTH, ANN. 38 
“only a few minutes before. Within half an hour she appeared 
with another baby that she had just given birth to in the bush with- 
out. any assistance. She went into her own hut, which was close to 
the stranger’s house. Here she sat on the ground with baby in her 
lap, while her husband built a partition wall with palm leaves (SR, 
11, 389). On the other hand, if delivered in a hut she may, under 
certain circumstances, remain in it for a number of days subse- 
quently. 
The position assumed in parturition by Arawak women is appar- 
ently to press the coccyx upon the top edge of a section of banana tree 
trunk wedged against two pegs driven into the ground at the same 
time that she presses with her feet against the wall of the hut, and 
pulls with her hands on a rope, etc. The Wapishana will sit astride 
a longitudinally slit hammock, with her toes just touching the 
ground and her hands dragging at a rope attached to a beam above. 
In Surinam, it has been said, that should the slightest difficulty be 
experienced in labor, the women have recourse to the sap of a tree, 
which insures them an easy and prompt delivery (FE, 81). 
905. As to the navel string, it is either bitten, cut, burned, or tied. 
The umbilical cord is bitten with the teeth and tied with a strand of 
the Bromelia karatas, but this tying process the Warrau don’t seem 
quite to understand as yet (SR, 1, 166). The Kobéua of the Uaupes 
River use the Scleria,a species of razor grass, for cutting it (XG, m1, 
146). Among the Makusi it is severed by the mother or sister with a 
sharpened piece of bamboo cane (for a boy) or arrow reed (for a 
girl), and then tied with cotton thread (SR, nm, 313). So also, but 
apparently without distinction of sex, it is severed with a sort of 
“paper knife ” made of bamboo by the Roucouyenne of Cayenne, the 
Piapoco of the Guaviar (Cr, 526). Arawak at the present day use 
a piece of sharpened arrow reed, but the women tell me that in the 
olden days a fire stick was employed. This is confirmed by a passage 
in Bancroft, that they divide the umbilic vessels with a brand of 
fire, which cauterizes their orifices and renders a ligature unnecessary 
(BA, 330). Arawak tell me that the mother keeps the cord until her 
child, as man or woman, dies, when it is buried with the body. The 
afterbirth is buried by the mother immediately after it is expelled. 
It is also said of these people that when the child is born the mother 
does not touch it, but the old midwife has to do this first and pick 
it up. 
906. Delivery would seem to be followed, sooner or later, by the 
ablution of both mother and child. Thus St. Clair speaks of the 
Corentyn Arawak. These women are very prolific and seldom 
miscarry. No sooner are they delivered than, proceeding to the next 
river they bathe, and hanging their child around their necks in a 
