u± 



THE ARAWACK LANGUAGE OF GUIANA, ETC. 



Lot us place side by side with these ancient myths the national legend of the Arawacks. 19 They tell of a supreme 

 spiritual being Yauwahu or Yauhahu. Pain and sickness are the invisible shafts he shoots at men, yauhahu simaira 

 the arrows of Yauhahu, and he it is whom the priests invoke in their incantations. Once upon a time, men lived 

 without any means to propitiate this unseen divinity ; they knew not how to ward off his anger or conciliate him. 

 At that time the Arawacks did not live in Guiana, hut in an island to the north. One day a man named Arawanili 

 walked by the waters grieving over the ignorance and suffering of his nation. Suddenly the spirit of the waters, the 

 woman Orehu, rose from the waves and addressed him. She taught him the mysteries of semeoi, the sorcery which 

 pleases and controls Yauhahu, and presented him with the maraka, the holy calabash containing white pebbles which 

 they rattle during their exorcisms, and tho sound of which summons tHe beings of the unseen world. Arawanili 

 faithfully instructed his people in all that Orehu had said, and thus rescued them from their wretchedness. When 

 after a life of wisdom and good deeds tho hour of his departure came, ho " did not die, but went up." 



Orehu accompanied the Arawacks when they moved to the main, and still dwells in a treeless, desolate spot, on 

 the banks of the Pomeroon. The negroes of the colony have learned of her, and call her in their broken English, the 

 " watra-mamma," the water-mother. 



The proper names which occur in these myths, date back to the earliest existence of tho Arawacks as an independ - 

 cut tribe, and aro not readily analyzed by tin: language as it now exists. Tho Haitian Yocauna seems indeed identical 

 with the modern Yauhahu. Atabes or Atabeira is probably from itabo, lake, lagoon, and era, water, (the latter only 

 in composition, as hurruru, mountain, era, water, mountain-water, a spring, a source), and in some of hor actions 

 corresponds with Orehu. Caracaracol is translated by Brother Pane, as " tho Scabby" or the one having ulcers, and 

 in this respect the myth presents a curious analogy with many others in America. In modern Arawaek karrikala is 

 a, form, in the third person singular, from karrin, to be sick, to bo pregnant. Arawanili, which ono might bo tempted 

 to suppose gave Hie name Arawaok to the tribe, did not all writers derive this differently, may bo a form of awawa, 

 father. In the old language, the termination el, is said to have meant son. 



Of the two remaining languages said to have been spoken in the small provinces of Macorix do arriba and Macorix 

 de abajo, in I layti, we have no certain knowledge. 50 Las Casus givesoue word from tho former. It is bazca, no, not. 

 I cannot identify it. There is reason, however, to suppose one of them was tho Tupi or "longua geral," of Brazil. 

 Pane gives at least two words which are pure Tupi, and not Arawaek. They are the names of two hideous idols sup- 

 posed to be inimical to men. The one was Bugi, in Tupi, ugly, tho other Aiba, in Tupi, bad. It is noteworthy, also, 

 that Pigafetta, who accompanied .Magellan on his voyage around tho world, gives a number of words, ostensibly in 

 the language of the natives of Rio Janeiro, where the Tupi was spoken, which aro identical with those of Haiti, as 

 cacich, chief, boi, house, hamac, bod, canoe, boat. But Pigafetta acknowledges that he obtained these words not from 

 the natives themselves, but from tho pilot Juan Carvalhos, who had boon for years sailing over the West Indian seas, 

 and had no doubt learned these words in the Antilles. 51 



The remaining idiom may be supposed to havo boon Carib, although wo have; actually no evidence that Hie Oaribs 

 had gained a permanent foothold on any of the Great Antilles at the period of the discovery, some careless assertions 

 of the old authors to the contrary, notwithstanding. 



Tho investigation which I hero close, shows that ,n in his migrations on the Western Continent followed the 



lead of organic nature around him. For it is well known that tho Mora and fauna of tho Antilles arc South American 

 in character, and also, that the geological structure of the archipelago connects it with the southern mainland. So also 

 its earliest known human inhabitants were descended from an ancestry whose homes were in the far south, and who by 

 slow degrees moved from river to river, island to island, until they came within a few miles of the northern continent. 

 411 1 take these us tliey are related in BreMs, Indian Triton of Guiana, Part II, chap. x. 



»» The most trustworthy anther is has (Lisas. As his works are still in ma.nns. rip!, I ;;ive his words. '• TreS lenguas lis I, ia on esla. ysla disfiid.as c|ue la una 

 a laotrarioseonteinlla. Launaora.de [a gente que UamabamoB Mm-orix deabajo 5 la otra delos rednosdel Maoorlx de arriba. Laotralengua rue [a unlver 



sal de todala tlorru, y esla era mas elegante y mas eopiosadc vocables, y mas dulce alsorddo. En esto lade Xaraituaen tOdO llevaba vonla.ja, y era. i nas 



nrinia." (iHMoria Apchattica, eap. 1W). "Be aim! de saber que mi giw laj I esta costa (that of the norl hem part of Haiti), Men mas de veintey cinco 



" l.reinl.a lo K uas y gainst huenas y ami yolntodo an, -ho hssla las sierras haren desla parte del noH.e |„ sl ,,„ Vega Inclusive, era pel, la. una. gentei 



Be lla.ma.ron MajOrlget, J ot.ras (!ii;uayos, y teniae diversas lenasiasde la universal lie todas las Islas." (Ilinlnria Genera.!, lib. 1, eap. 77). " l.lamalian ClgUnyos 

 porque travel, lodoslos eabollos mui lUengOS eonio en Nueva Castilla las muieres," (Id. eap, 77). The cacique of the (!ii;uayos was nai iUsyoinanox or Ma- 



yobanex,(l<i. lib. I, cap. ISO). They went almost naked, and bad no arms, "mn Salllflae almenos para con losuBos, como no levies™ armas," (iu.cap.no.) 

 S1 Pigafetta, Heine vm die Well, so, 21, 26, 217, (Ootha, 1S02 ; a translation of the Italian original In the library at Milan)- 



