5'4 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 92 



they are of the belief that if a dead person shows himself to someone, 

 it is to do injury to him, and particularly to the women, and there are 

 some imposters who pass themselves ofif as these ghosts, in order thus 

 to attain their desires. And this has happened many times, not only 

 when they were gentiles but even since they have become Christians. 



And lastly others, and these the most pitiable and unhappy of all, 

 remained near their homes and those of their relatives, filling them with 

 dread and doing them certain injuries, and these are the ones for 

 whom their relatives did not lay on the pyre many feathers and other 

 things of the kind that they were accustomed to lay. And as confirma- 

 tion of this last point I shall relate a case which I myself witnessed 

 in part, and it was as follows : In the year of 1813. at the Mission of N. 

 [marginal annotation : San Luis Rey] , there died a Christian Indian, 

 and the Indians said that another Indian, also a Christian of the same 

 Mission, had poisoned or bewitched him, whose death all believed came 

 from witchery. That dead man used to make every year his little 

 garden patch of corn, pumpkins, and watermelons. This same garden 

 patch he left to one of his relatives ; and at the time when the plants 

 were in blossom, the said garden patch all got spoiled and dried up 

 without being able to harvest even a single fruit or grain, while it is 

 to be noted that when the plants were tender they were very luxuriant 

 like the neighboring ones and [those of] all the vicinity, but upon 

 blooming the plants died, and the Indians said (this they learned from 

 an old woman who had also told me about it), that the dead man was 

 walking all about through the plot and that he was killing all of it 

 little by little, which was whatever he touched. With this news I went 

 to see the prodigy and saw certain dead plants, but many of them 

 very luxuriant and fresh. The next day I returned to assure myself of 

 the truth, and I found 7 plants, some of them corn, some pumpkin, 

 some watermelon, dry and burnt to the roots, and it is to be noted 

 that I had myself pointed these out as being the most luxuriant ones. 

 And in this manner all of them dried up without harvesting a grain. 

 There is no doubt but that this is a little fable, but thus it happened. 



The dead man had died of dysentery which had come from syphilis, 

 and therefore through the path of tuberculosis, without suffering any 

 bewitching or poisoning such as they said. That the dead man should 

 be walking through the plot killing the plants we see to be the story 

 of an old woman, because nobody saw him except the old woman. What 

 causes me confusion and difficulty is how such a catastrophe may have 

 originated, for it was not through lack of care, nor through an epidemic 

 of certain animals such as worms, gophers, etc., for in addition to the 

 fact that such were not seen, if the plant had been cut, it would have 



