THE INDIANS OF THE NORTH WESTERN 
DISTRICT. 
By Rev,-FAaTHER CooksEy. S.J. 
General.—The immense area, larger than that of the ancient 
colony and County of Demerara, of the North Western District of the 
County of Essequibo makes it difficult for one man to write with any 
amount of intimate knowledge of the Aboriginal inhabitants, of five 
different races spread in isolated settlements all over eight thousand 
square miles of hill and flood and forest. For each tribe, and to a 
certain extent, each community, must be known for some time before 
their confidence can be won and their character approximately under- 
stood. Of course it is possible for tourists’ (the most prolific writers on 
these subjects) in a few days to form impressions of the shy, timid, sad- 
faced, decadent Indian, the last representative of a dying race, forced 
out of existence by the triumphant march of civilisation and such like 
nonsense ; but on better acquaintance they will find that he is cautious 
and cunning rather than shy and timid and that though he undoubtedly 
suffers much from the barbarous pioneers of civilisation when true 
civilisation reaches him he flourishes and increases and multiplies. 
The Indians of the North Western District are of both classes. 
The Akawois and true Caribs of the southern hill country to the Cuyuni 
watershed, which forms about two-thirds of our area, are out of contact, 
except of a very passing nature, with missionary or protector or doctor ; 
and civilisation comes to them disguised as the gold-digger and the 
halata-bleeder and the gold-fields’ grocery and its clerks. In the northern 
swamps and isolated hills we have a few Akawois and Chaimas and many 
Arawaks and Warraus, living in touch with more civilised conditions, 
regularly paid wages, effective protection and reasonable prices, and they 
are multiplying in direct proportion to their appreciation of these 
benefits. 
For these reasons I confine my remarks to the swamp tribes and 
will leave the particulars of the hill tribes to the pen of another whose 
more intimate association with these people will enable him to write 
from first-hand information of the Caribs and Akawois. 
The Swamp Tribes.—The Warraus, Arawaks and Chaimas are for 
the most part immigrants, and now are gradually leaving their swamps 
for the insular hills between the Aruka and Amakura. With regard to 
these, in general it may be said that they are advancing slowly but 
perceptibly from the wild Indian life of the past to be a people of 
peasant labourers, and that they have already reached a pitch of 
civilisation well in advance of many citizens of Georgetown and _ its 
suburbs, and I can testify from my three years’ experience of one and five 
