The Arawack Language of Guiana in its Linguistic and Ethnological Relations

The work offers a detailed portrait of a small, peaceful community living between the Corentyn and Pomeroon rivers in the low‑lying forests of British and Dutch Guiana. It describes their modest stature, strong limbs and distinctive facial features, while noting how their family system tracks lineage through women and forbids intermarriage within a clan. By placing the Arawacks in the wider debate over ancient migrations across the West Indies, the author shows why understanding this tribe matters to both historians and anthropologists.

The second part turns to language, tracing the earliest known records from a 1598 account and the later missionary efforts that produced the most reliable dictionaries and grammars. Highlights include the painstaking manuscripts of a Moravian missionary who lived among the Arawacks at the turn of the nineteenth century, preserving a wealth of vocabulary and grammatical detail. Readers gain insight into how the tribe’s oral tradition was captured, analyzed, and ultimately made accessible to modern scholarship.