XXVI 
WARLIKE WOMEN 
467 
The accounts heard by Raleigh on the Orinoco, 
in 1595, of a nation of female warriors existing on 
the Amazon, seem to combine both the above- 
specified sites. " I made inquiry," says he, "among 
the most ancient and travelled of the Orinokoponi 
[the Indian inhabitants of the Orinoco] respecting 
the warlike women, and will relate what I was in- 
formed of as truth about them, by a Cacique who 
said he had been on, that river [the Amazon], and 
beyond it also. Their country is on the south side 
of the river, in the province of Tobago [Topayos], 
and their chief places are in the islands on the south 
side of it, some 60 leagues from the mouth. They 
accompany with men once in a year for a month, 
which is in April. . . . Children born of these 
alliances, if males, they send them to their fathers ; 
if daughters, they take care of them and bring them 
up," ^ etc. Another report he heard was that " there 
is a province in Guyana called Cunun's, which is 
governed by a woman " — plainly a Cufia-puyara. It 
is to be noted that these reports were heard near 
the mouth of the Orinoco, or some 2000 miles away 
from the supposed country of the Amazons, from 
Indians who had them from one another and not 
from the Spaniards ; and that the Cunun's is for 
the first time indicated by name in this relation of 
Raleigh's. We have the most complete account 
of the river and district of Cunuris, and of the ex- 
tant traditions respecting the Amazons, in Acuna's 
description of his voyage down the Amazon in 1639. 
He mentions four nations who inhabit on the river 
Cunuris, the Cunuris (Indians) being nearest the 
mouth, and the Guacaras the highest up ; while 
^ Cayley's Life of Raleigh, pp. 194- 195. 
