ARAWAKAN, i-ra-wa'kan, STOCK (from the Arawaks, q.v.), the most widely diffused linguistic stock of South America, and originally forming a curious and significant link between the South and North American regional if not philological stocks. Their habitat reached from and southern Brazil not only to the northern coast of Venezuela, but — while barred to the westward by the Colombian Chibchas or Muycas of the Magdalena basin— occupied the entire West Indies and had an outlier of several villages in Florida. Just be fore Columbus' discovery, however, they had been expelled from the southern Antilles and part of the adjoining South American coast by the fierce Caribs (q.v.) from the lower Or inoco, who had seized their women for wives, most of the latter still speaking Arawak when the Spaniards found them. The larger Antilles were still Arawak, and the names given in the early West India voyages are intelligible in this set of languages yet. The Arawakans have neither the energy and cohesiveness of the Araucans, the splendid physique and fiery vigor of the Caribs, nor the political development of the Quichuas in the past; they are below the medium stature, and of no great stamina. Yet they had, perhaps owing to this very lack of savage vigor, an intellectual and artistic de velopment and a stage of culture above the sur rounding tribes : they made fictile vases deco rated with grotesques of men and animals, were skilled artisans in stone, gold and wood and excellent weavers; and the island Arawakans cultivated not only corn and manioc for food, but cotton and tobacco, whose use the Euro peans took from them. There are probably a
hundred or more different tribes of this stock scattered through Brazil, Bolivia, the Guianas, Venezuela and Colombia. Among the chief, besides those mentioned below under Arawaks, are the Manaos near that city, at the junction of the Amazon and Negro; the Waupes, Maipures and Miranhas, in the extreme west of Brazil next to Colombia, on the llamos be tween the Negro and Amazon; the Goajiros on that peninsula west of the Gulf of Venezuela; the Piaroas on the Orinoco near its junction with the Meta; the Maneteneris in the north west angle of Bolivia; the Baures and the Moxos or Mojos in northeast Bolivia, next Matto Grosso; and the Antas in extreme south Brazil, near Uruguay. Beuchat and Rivet within recent years have in their studies sought to extend the original territory occupied by the Arawakan stock. Consult recent works of Beuchat and Rivet, Chamberlain, Koch-Griin berg, Schmidt, especially Koch-Griinberg's 'Die Aruak-Sprachen Nordwestbrasiliens) (Vienna 1911).