ROTH] THE SPIRITS OF THE BUSH 179 



the Jurupari festival, whereby sicknesses can be dispelled, and large 

 wounds healed (KG, i, 320). 



108. Sufficient has already been said to indicate that the Spirits of 

 the Forest may have their good points as well as bad; they may 

 indeed have in their nature more of the imp than the rogue. They 

 have not always borne bad reputations, but the very large majority 

 of them certainly do so now. The Caribs, however, admit that 

 they themselves are responsible for this, and concurrently for the 

 introduction of pain, misery, and death. 



How Pain, Misery, and Death Came into the World (C) ' 



In the olden times, tliere was no contention, all were happy, and no one became 

 sick or died. It was then that the Yurokons used to come and live among us as 

 our friends and associates; they were short people like ourselves. One Yurokon in 

 particular used to come and drink paiwarri with my people, whom he would visit 

 for the purpose regularly once a month. The last time he came, he appeared as a 

 woman with a baby at the breast. The C'aribs gave her of the pepper-pot, into which 

 she dipped the cassava, which .she then sucked and at«. Tlie pepper-pot was so hot, 

 however, that it burned the in.side of her mouth and "heart." and tliis made her 

 ask for water, but her hostess told her that she had none. Yurokon therefore asked 

 for a calabash, and leaving her baby up at the house, she went down to the waterside, 

 where she quenched her tliirst. On her return, she looked for her little child, 

 but it was nowhere to be seen: she searched high and low, but all in vain, because 

 during her absence some worthless woman among the company had thrown it into 

 the boiling cassiri pot. I5y and by Yurokon went to stir the cassiri with the usual 

 paddle-spoon, and, while she stirred, the body of her baby rose to the surface. She 

 wept, and then, turning on the people, upbraided them: "Wliy have you punished 

 me in this way? I have never had a bad mind against any of you, but now I will 

 make you pay me. In future your children .shall all die, and this will make you 

 weep as I am weeping. And when children arc born to you, you shall suffer pain 

 and trouble at their birth. Furtliermore, with regard to you men," continued 

 Yurokon, as she addressed the male members of tlie company, "I will give you great 

 trouble when you go out to catch fish." And so she did, because in those days we 

 Caribs only had to go to the waterside, bail the water out witli our calabashes, and 

 picking up the fish that were left exposed at the bottom of the stream, just put the 

 water back again to breed fish once more. Yurokon altered all this, and made us 

 go to the trouble, annoyance, and inconvenience of poi.soning the pools with various 

 roots. WTiat is more, Yurokon killed the worthIes.s Indian who had thrown her boy 

 into the cassiri, and tlien asked her cliildren what had become of their mother. 

 "She has gone to the field," they said. "No, .she has not; she is hunting after 

 genitalia unius personse tribus mese," was the insulting rejoinder, a reply which she 

 purposely gave in order to provoke them into a rage. She asked them the same ques- 

 tion a second time, and they tokl her she had gone to bake cassava. "No, she has not, ' ' 

 rep Lied Yurokon; "she has bored her way into my ear," an answer supposed to be 

 even more offensive. And she asked tliem the. same question a third time, but on 

 this occasion they told her that she had gone to dig sweet potatoes. As soon as they 

 mentioned the word "potatoes," Yurokon disappeared.^ 



109. The general tendency of these Spirits, however, is to do bad, 

 the degree of wickedness of which they can be guilty varying with 



1 Sec Sect. 190. 



'According to Carib tradition their Spirits of the Bush liave a marked aversion to sweet potatoes. 



