WHOLE VOL, ARAUCANIAN CHILD LIFE — HILGER I57 



and consequently hired a machi to conjure. The machi smoked, and 

 then either in the smoke or in a later dream — I cannot recall which — 

 she got the answer. She said the man still lived. The machi had sent 

 her witchcraft over to Argentina to find out. Before the year ended, 

 the woman's husband came back to Chile. His wife asked him if he 

 had seen any sign of the machi's witchcraft, and he answered, 'Yes, 

 I was coming through the woods one day when I saw a llelleqkefi 

 sitting on a fallen tree trunk. The bird sat there a long time and 

 looked at me. I wondered why he was sitting there so tame. What 

 could it mean and who could it be, I thought. I went home, but I 

 kept thinking about the bird. And now I have the answer.' " 



OMENS 



Both good and bad omens are Icnown. Those related to sickness or 

 death seem to have much significance (cf. pp. 109, 158), as do those 

 that forebode famine. A 70-year-old Panguipulli man told about one 

 of the latter : "Any year that all the colihiie blossom — normally only 

 a few blossom each year — the people are overtaken with hunger. This 

 is unfailingly true; something happens to the wheat fields. We can 

 never tell just when the damage is done to the wheat, but at harvest 

 time there is practically no grain left to be harvested ; it stands ex- 

 ceedingly thin. Ten years ago the colihiie all blossomed and that year 

 we suffered plenty. Already now the people are saying, 'What will 

 happen this year? Have you seen how the wheat is thinning out?' " 

 A non-Araucanian listener-in added, "What he says is true. But 

 what happens, I think, is that rats and mice come to eat the colihiie 

 seeds ; they are attracted by the abundance of these seeds. We know 

 that foxes and birds of prey come in goodly numbers that same year, 

 and we see them eat the rats — but by that time the rats have already 

 eaten much of the grain. The foxes become a pest then, they stay 

 around and eat the chickens." 



In Panguipulli it is a bad omen if a puma comes out of the woods 

 and walks into a glade or on some cleared land "and walks around 

 on it ; it is a positive sign that the man who owns that piece of land 

 will be forced to relinquish it to a Chilean," said the informant with 

 some resentment. "The same holds true," he added, "if parrots land 

 on a piece of land and do a great deal of chattering there." In both 

 Panguipulli and Alepue areas a person who is making a journey on 

 horseback can expect to have a good journey if the bird called chukau 

 sings his call note to the rider's right ; misfortune will befall him if the 

 bird does so at his left. 



