334 Timehri. 
Ho Sororo, or falling water, from the beautiful cascade which intersects 
it. They also extend to and beyond the adjoining Lourdes Mission to 
Crown lands and southward to the Consolidated Rubber & Balata Estates 
at Koriabo mouth. 
From these people and from the true Chaima patriarch, Pasqual 
Moreno, who lives beside the cascade, I have learnt some particulars of 
the origin of their tribe. 
The Chaima tribe is a Carib-speaking race living on the banks of the 
Caroni River which rises on Roraima and flows into the Orinocco near 
Bolivar. The Spanish Capuchin Franciscan friars had a large and 
flourishing mission (see Father Strickland’s collection of Vatican doeu- 
ments relating to the Venezuelan border dispute) extending throughout 
the Chaima country to the Venamu or Wenamu and Akarabisci branches 
of the Kuyuwini or Cuyuni River until the outbreaks of the revolutionary 
wars, when the Friars were driven out and the tribe raided to provide 
soldiers for the various conflicting parties of those troubled times. 
Under the leadership of some Spanish laymen many Chaima men fled to 
Trinidad, where some of the Indians claimed relationship to Morucca 
people a few years ago, and to Morucea which was not then administered 
as British territory. Here they were several times raided by Vene- 
zuelans until they united with the Pomeroon Caribs, with whom they 
were usually at feud and on two occasions are said to have massacred 
their invaders, once at Assacotta and once at Morueca mouth. Portions 
of the raided raider-sloop are said to be still in the Assacotta creek. 
But in times of peace the Chaimas seem to have fraternized with 
their Arawak neighbours and taken Arawak wives and when Mr. 
Hillhouse discovered them he found them, as he thought, Spanish 
Arawaks and Catholics, but as far as | ean ascertain no Arawaks came 
from Venezuela ; indeed there do not seem to have heen any to come. 
Mr. Hillhouse’s representations to the Government of the illtreatment 
of the Indians led to the erection of the Santa Rosa Mission and the 
appointment of Father Cullen as Missionary Protector before the 
Catholic Emancipation Bill had purged the law of Great Britain and 
Ireland of its old persecuting enactments. 
The Chaimas have continued to come all through the intervening 
periods and Pasqual Moreno, who came in Father Cullen's time, was fol- 
lowed by a soldier half-breed in the days of Father Messini and Jose Leon ; 
a young man who works on the Rubber Station is the latest comer. So 
the connection with the Caroni remains unbroken and the memory of 
the Capuchins is kept up by the numerous boys and girls who are 
named after the poor man of Assisi. Investigation of the family tradition 
of those bearing Spanish surnames almost always reveals Chaima an- 
cestors or parents. 
These people work on either side of the border, unless they are 
wanted by the authorities on one side or the other, and seem to be quite 
