260 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 177 
ETHNOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE 
Ethnographic information on the Wai Wai was collected by W. C. 
Farabee in 1913-14, when the tribe was only beginning to move across 
the divide into British Guiana. Farabee’s description is sketchy 
(1924, pp. 153-176), but is accompanied by a number of illustrations 
and supplemented by a collection of material culture objects in the 
University Museum, Philadelphia. During our sojourn in Wai Wai 
territory in 1952-53, we attempted to record as much ethnographic 
information as possible and we also made a collection of objects for 
the Division of Ethnology, U.S. National Museum, Washington, D.C. 
A detailed report based on our field notes, Farabee’s published and 
unpublished materials, and Wai Wai collections at the Peabody 
Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Cam- 
bridge, Mass., and the American Museum of Natural History, New 
York, is in preparation. Consequently, only those aspects of the 
culture most significant to archeological interpretation will be dealt 
with here. 
Agriculture-——When a house is built, a slash-and-burn field is 
cleared behind it and planted. Each following year, the clearing 
is enlarged for a new planting, and this continues until the suitable 
land in the vicinity is exhausted. At this time a new field is cleared 
on another high spot. If this is more than about an hour’s travel 
away by dugout, the village is usually moved to the new location. 
Otherwise, if the old house is in sufficiently good condition, the people 
may remain at least until the old fields cease to produce. When the 
field is not by the house, it frequently contains a small lean-to for 
temporary shelter. When the garden immediately adjacent to the 
house is beginning to die out, a small area is frequently recleared and 
a second planting of manioc is set out. This practice is not extended 
to the entire field. In addition to manioc, food crops include card 
(Diascoria sp.), squash, bananas and plantains, and papaya and sugar- 
cane. Nonedible plants such as cotton, uruct (Bia orellana), and 
tree gourds are also raised, but none is planted in large quantity. The 
distribution of some of these crops in the field at Yaka Yaka is shown 
in figure 107. 
Settlement pattern.—The four main Wai Wai villages inhabited in 
1952-53 were all located on a rise from 3 to 9 meters above the low 
(December) water level. The house on the lowest spot had partially 
flooded during the preceding rainy season. Three of the houses were 
along the river, set far enough back from shore to occupy high and. 
relatively level land. Access to the water was by a path through 
uncut forest, which screens the village from passers-by. The fourth 
settlement was some 500 meters inland where a nearby creek provided 
the domestic water supply. The house tends to be toward the river 
