GUARAUNAN (WARRAUNAN), an independent linguistic stock of South American Indians, so called from the Warraus (Guaraunos), its most important tribe. The tribes of this stock occupied at the time of the first European contact, the coast re gions of British Guiana from the Essequibo river westward to the Orinoco delta. At an earlier period, they seem to have extended over a wider territory, having been crowded into their historic habitat as a result of the dislocation of peoples consequent on the Carib invasion. The Warraus are a hunting and fishing folk, practising some agriculture and famous as canoemen. Physi cally they are of short stature. They wear only small bast breech clouts and live in communal houses of thatch, often built on piles or on tree stumps cut off several feet above ground. They thus escape the floods in the Orinoco delta region. The bow and spear are their main weapons. They make pottery but no textiles. Polygamy is usual and the chiefs often have a large number of wives. These chiefs have considerable power and inherit their position in the matrilineal line. Puberty ceremonies for both girls and boys resemble those of the neighbouring Arawakan (q.v.) tribes, and involve for the boys, tests of bravery and endurance. The dead are buried, wrapped in a hammock or sometimes sunk in the river until the flesh has been entirely removed by fish, when the bones are packed in a basket, and suspended from the roof of the house. Mimetic dances, in which various animals and birds are represented, play a prominent part in their religious ritual.
See Everard Im Thurn, Among the Indians of British Guiana (London, 1883) ; R. Schomburgk, Reisen in Britisch Guiana, etc. (Leipzig, 1848) ; W. L. Roth, An Inquiry into the Animism and Folk lore of the Guiana Indians (3oth Rep. Bureau of American Eth nology) ; An Introductory Study of the Arts, Crafts and Customs of the Guiana Indians (38th Rep. Bureau of American Ethnology) .