168 ANIMISM AND FOLK-LORE OF GUIANA INDIANS [Exn. ANN. 30 



issues of their wars; (J) and to hunt away the Evil Spirit, Maboya 

 (loc. cit.). When the Boye has made his FamiUar Spirit appear (Sect. 

 SlJf), the latter is heard to reply clearly to the questions put to him: 

 he is heard to click his jaws as if eating and drinking the anacri, but 

 next morning they find that he has not touched it. These temporal 

 viands which have been soiled by these unfortunate spirits are deemed 

 so sacred by the magician and the people whom they have abused 

 that it is only the old men and the most illustrious among them 

 who are free to partake of them, and even then they dare not taste 

 them unless they have a certain cleanhness of person (RoP, 473). 

 "They have asked me," says Father de la Boi-de, "sometimes to 

 drink of it, and I have done so just to try and change their super- 

 stitious ideas, one of which is to drink of this oiiicou before eating, 

 otherwise you die, and purposely I ate fii'st before drinking; another 

 is to keep the cup straight so as not to spill the contents, othei-wise 

 the eyes would iim water everlastingly. I purposely spilt some, and 

 held the cup crooked " (BBR, 235). 



91. These Famihar Spirits [Icheiri or Chemin] often nestle them- 

 selves inside bones taken from a grave, which are wrapped up with 

 cotton into gi-otesque figures, and so give oracles: they say it is the 

 Spirit of the Dead that talks (RoP, 473, 479). "They sometimes put 

 the hairs, or some bones, of their deceased parents into a calabash. 

 They keep these in their huts, and use them for some sorcery. 

 They say that the spirit of the dead one speaks through these, and 

 forewarns them of the designs of their enemies " (BBR, 236). More 

 than tliis, bones prepared with cotton, as above mentioned, are used 

 for bewitching their enemies, and for this purpose the sorcerers wrap 

 them up with something that belongs to their enemy (RoP, 473). 



These Famihar Spirits also enter into the bodies of females and 

 speak through them (loc. cit.). In order to turn aside the vials of 

 then- wrath and to divert the anger of these Spirits, tobacco leaves 

 are smoked in their honor tlu-ough the agency of the Boyes, their 

 hideous likenesses are painted on the canoes, or the Indians carry 

 slung around theii- necks a small embossed effigy representing one 

 of these cursed spirits in the ugliest position in which it had ever put 

 in an appearance (RoP, 479). 



93. The Island Arawak also had a behef in certain supernatural 

 beings or spirits, and possessed effigies of them ; both the si)irit and 

 its eflagy were knowTi to these folk as Cemi or Zemi. Thus, in his 

 account of the aborigines of Haiti (Santo Domingo), Columbus says: 



But also in all the other islands and on the mainland [Cuba?] each has a house apart 

 from the village in which there is nothing except some wooden images car\'ed in 

 relief which are called Cemis; nor is there anything done in such a house for any other 

 object or service except for these Cemis, by means of a kind of ceremony and prayer 



