A Remarkable Mound Discovered in British Guiana. 25 



any of the existing tribes. The fact that plantain and pine-apple plants 

 were growing on the mound might be thought evidence that they were not 

 very ancient, but this in reality has no bearing whatever as the cultivated, 

 plants might have been accidentally dropped there by travellers or by 

 wandering negro fishermen or hunters. Moreover, many of these knolls 

 are regular camping grounds for negro wood-cutters passing up and down 

 the river and temporary sheds or benabs are often erected upon them. It 

 might very well happen that such people should leave traces of their 

 occupancy behind them and as the plantain trees were less than six 

 months old and the pine-apples less than a year their presence proves 

 nothing, except that they led me by merest chance to a very interesting 

 discovery. 



My conviction that these long-forgotten inhabitants antedated the 

 existing tribes and were distinct from them is based on the following 

 facts. No known British Guiana tribe buries its dead in urns, although 

 burial urns have been found in various parts of the colony. But as 

 far as I am aware, no traces have hitherto been found of urns exposed to 

 fire for crematory purposes. 



Moreover, none of the existing Indians dwell upon the swampy 

 savannahs of the coast and the Warraus have no large settlements and 

 have not developed pottery-making to any extent. 



The other two coastal tribes, the Arowaks and Caribs, have no such 

 burial customs as must have been possessed by the Abary savannah 

 Indians. Wherever remains of ancient Carib occupancy occur we find 

 shell heaps, stone utensils and remains of cannibal feasts, or at least 

 fragments of human and animal bones associated with charcoal and 

 broken as if to extract the marrow. In the portion of the colony now 

 most thickly populated by Arowaks and Caribs no such mounds as 

 described have been found, but shell heaps are common, and stone imple- 

 ments are universally found. 



Certainly the mound could not have been the burial place for 

 Akawoias, or any of the forest or highland dwellers, for these tribes have 

 always been confined to the interior. I am therefore of the opinion that 

 the pots are the sole remaining evidences of a once numerous prehistoric 

 people who dwelt upon the savannahs near the coastland and who passed 

 out of existence ages before the advent of Europeans. Unfortunately, I 

 was unable to make investigations of all the similar knolls or mounds upon 

 these savannahs, and there are hundreds, but I should not be at all 

 surprised, if a large portion were the sites of ancient villages or the burial 

 places of the inhabitants and I am confident that a systematic search of 

 the mounds would result in most remarkable and interesting discoveries 

 of remains of what were perhaps the earliest human inhabitants of 

 Guiana. 



