no SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I33 



many, but the bird is seen by no one." "In Queule a machi was locked 

 up by Chilean policemen because a chonchon flew round and round 

 a place, trying to get in. It was worrying the people." 



All ill health, both physical and mental, it is believed, is due to the 

 spirit of sickness, which is inflicted by a sorcerer upon someone against 

 whom there is ill will. The sorcerer may be a machi (certain machi 

 are sorcerers) or an outright witch, known as a kalku. The ill will may 

 be the sorcerer's own, or that of a person who has hired the sorcerer. 

 If a medium is used, no one but the sorcerer knows what it is. Many 

 suspect it is the choiichoii. One instance was related in which the 

 medium was known. "My wife's sickness [abdominal tumor] was 

 inflicted upon her by a machi," said a man. "Here is how it was 

 done: a neighbor woman [26 years old] cut off two opposite corners 

 of my wife's chamall, and the machi used these to bring sickness upon 

 my wife." Another instance was related in which the medium was not 

 known. Four girls of two families were known to be jealous of a 

 young woman because a man had married her and not one of them. 

 When the young woman became sick her family accused these four 

 girls of hiring a kalku to bring sickness upon her, and intended to 

 hire a machi to discover whether these were the culprits. "Certain 

 machi, you know, have the powers to make such discoveries." 



In general, it is believed that the spirit of sickness is transferred 

 from a sick person to one that is well. Two schoolboys, when ques- 

 tioned by their teacher one morning for the reason of their bruised 

 faces, merely cast angry looks at each other. Girls in the school 

 volunteered the information that the two boys had had an angry fist 

 fight on the way home from school the previous afternoon. One of 

 the boys then said, "Yes, when my mother was sick and we had the 

 machitun made for her at our home, his father was there." "Yes," 

 interrupted the second boy, "he was even good enough to help your 

 family pay the machi by donating 10 pesos toward the price of your 

 machitun." "Yes," said the first boy, "and then when your sister died, 

 your family said that the machi took the devil of sickness out of my 

 mother and put it into your sister." 



Kalku were known to bring about an immediate death, or a pro- 

 longed sickness with gradual loss of vitality and weight and ultimate 

 death, by putting poison into food or drink. Araucanians themselves 

 warned non-Araucanians who worked among them not to drink milk 

 or eat milk products, such as cheese; for an Araucanian with ill will 

 might have put poison into the milk — neither taste nor eye could 

 discern it. They were advised, too, not to eat eggs given to them by 

 Araucanians, unless the eggs had been stored for three days. Poisoned 



