NARCOTICS AND STIMULANTS 437 



are ever used in conjunction, except as an occasional 

 stimulant, and in small quantity. 



On Spirits or Demons among the Indians 



I have never heard any mention among the 

 native races with whom I have sojourned of a 

 Spirit or Demon the paye was supposed to invoke, 

 but there has been so much testimony to that effect, 

 that it can hardly fail to be true. This demon- 

 the Maboya of the Antilles, the Yawahoo of 

 Guayana (according to Bancroft and Stedman) is 

 surely the Yamadu of the Casiquiari and Alto 

 Orinoco. But when I made inquiry about the 

 latter, I was always assured that it had a bodily, 

 and not merely a ghostly existence. It is, in fact, 

 a Wild Man of the Woods or Forest Devil the 

 Curupira or Diabo do mato of the Amazon, the 

 Munyia of the eastern foot of the Equatorial Andes 

 -a little hairy man, not more than four to five feet 

 hi^h, but so strong and wiry that no single Indian 

 can cope with him. His great peculiarity is that, 

 although his tracks are often met with, no one can 

 tell which way he has gone. Either, as on some 

 parts of the Amazon, he has a perfectly human foot, 

 but set on the contrary way ; or else, as on the 

 Casiquiari, Uaupes, Napo, etc., he has two heels on 

 each foot and never a toe. This little devil plays 

 many pranks, of which the most serious is his 

 carrying off women who venture alone into the 

 forest ; but he never attacks two people together, 

 so that in some parts a man or woman will take a 

 little child into the forest rather than go alone. If 

 an Indian loses his wav in the forest, he blames the 



