64 Timehri, 
T have come across another very interesting extract from the Southern Guianas. 
Father d’Acugna, in 1639, tells us that all the tools which the Indians have, either 
to make their canoes, to build their huts, or to do other necessary jobs are axes 
and hatchets made of tortoise-shell. They cut the hardest part of the shell 
(which is that under the belly of the animal) into laminae (plates) of about a 
hand’s breadth ; and not quite so thick as one’s hand. After having dried it in 
the smoke, they whet it upon a stone, then fasten it into a wooden ‘ helve ’ and 
make use of this tool to cut everything they fancy, as well as if it were the best 
axe that can be, but with little more pains, They make their hatchets of the same 
matter, and the handle they put to them is a manatee jaw-bone, which nature 
seems to have purposely fitted for this use. With these instruments, they finish 
all their works, not only their canoes, but their tables, their cupboards, their 
seats and their other household goods, and that as completely as if ‘hey had the 
best joiners’ tools—their chisels, planes, and wimbles—are made of wild hog’s 
teeth, and of the horns of other animals, which they graft into wooden handles. 
There are some among the nations who make their axes of stones they grind 
to an edge with main strength ; these are much stronger than those of tortoise- 
shell, so that they will cut down any green tree which they have a mind to fell, 
with the less fear of breaking them, and with much more speed. 
Father Gumilla, another of the old authors, tells us that it took the Indians 
—the Orinoco ones are referred to—two months to cut down a tree with their 
axes, which were made of a double-edged flint fixed midway in a suitable wooden 
handle. To make their flints, the same missionary says, they told me that they 
used to break them with pian stones and then, by g ‘grinding them on very smooth 
ones with the assistance of water, they gave then the required shape and edge. 
We have the trustworthy statements of Stedman, Pinckard and Fermin that 
scalping was practised in the Guianas. The first mentioned tells us how the 
Indians scalp their male prisoners ; bring home their hair, and even their bones 
as trophies of war and presents to their wives : on another occasion he speaks of 
scalping as never being practised by the negroes. Fermin, writing at about the 
same period, confirms this view for the Indians of Surinam. Pinckard, about 
two decades later, however, opposed their statement (of the negroes not indulging 
in this custom) for the Demerara, and in referring to the military being surprised 
and defeated by the blacks, he specially mentions that very few of the soldiers 
escaped, most of them being killed, and their scalps or bodies fixed against the 
trees. This charge of Pinckard’s would not seem to tally with the view held by 
Frederici, who distinctly expresses himself to the effect that it was not introduced 
by the negroes, for, as he says, with the exception of its occurrence in the 19th 
century in Dahomey, it was not known on the Dark Continent. The question 
arises as to how the occurrence of scalping in the Guiana is to be explained. 
The custom was highly developed among the Timucua people in Florida, yet 
the theory that it may hence have been transmitted to Guiana finds no substantial 
support. In a similar way there is no evidence that it was introduced by the 
whites. On the other hand it does not seem improbable that it was brought in 
through the slave trade ; that is, through enslaved Indians. Indian slaves from 
Carolina, Georgia and Forida, were far dispersed by the whites, and a portion 
of them were brought to the mouth of the Orinoco and the shores of South America 
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