230 ANIMISM AND FOLK-LOKE OF GUIANA INDIANS [eth. ANN. 30 



that the sheddmg of the leaves is a sign that the Spirit has taken its 

 departure; and that when the foliage is resumed, the Spirit has re- 

 turned. Considering that there are some four or five other deciduous 

 trees known to the Arawaks, it would not appear that their super- 

 stitious regard for it can be due to the periodic shedding of the leaves. 

 From the fact of the sUk-cotton tree being credited ^vith the power 

 of moving within a circuit (Sect. 8), a separate sentient existence 

 may have been claimed for it; but such a property" might equally 

 be due to the particular medicine-man or Bush Spirit {Sect. 167) 

 happening to occupy its trunk or branches. 



165. The cassava plant affords a very good illustration where the 

 associated Spirit remains distinct, and is given a separate existence, so 

 much so that it may be attacked by evil Spirits to prevent it dis- 

 tributing its favors, or may be thanked and honored for the benefits 

 bestowed by it upon mankind. The Arawaks, even at the present 

 time in the Pomeroon District, with the building of a house, or rather 

 at its completion, give a party : when all the guests are arrived, some 

 of the cassiri, before its distribution among the guests, is thi'own by the 

 house-mistress on the uprights; she also places pieces of cassava at 

 the foiu: corners under the eaves. This is supposed to feed the 

 Yawahus, or Spirits of the Bush, who, unless thus treated, would 

 not permit the Spirit of the Cassava to furnish the next crop. The 

 Warrau Indians of the Moruca River had also a special festival, or 

 thank-offering to the Cassava Spirit for the bountiful harvest which 

 it had supplied them with, such festival taking the usual form of a 

 drmking bout and a dance: they called it the Aru-hoho (lit. cassava 

 festival) . 



166. So also, the first baking of cassava bread from a new field 

 formerly was attended by unusual ceremony. " The cassava, which 

 on ordinary occasions is scraped and washed, at the preparation for 

 the first baking, was scraped but not washed. . . . The juice ex- 

 tracted from the gi-ated cassava by means of the matapi (and which 

 othei-wise would be boiled into cassirip) is, on this occasion . . . 

 poured out on the gi-ound as a libation for this, its first fruits" (Da, 

 102 — at Berbice) . This is stUl done on the Moruca Eiver, the Arawaks 

 here making the juice from the first cassava collected ofiE the new 

 field, sprinklmg it a few days later here and ther° over the center of 

 the field. The Indians say that this is a gift, a sort of thanks, to the 

 Spirit of the Cassava. On the upper Amazon a purely Indian festival 

 is celebrated the first week of February, which is called the Feast of 

 Fruits, several kuids of wild fruit becoming ripe at that time (HWB, 

 280) : this may have a meaning similar to that ascribed to the cere- 

 mony in connection with the cassava. 



167. Another curious sort of Spirit, that of "the Rot," is asso- 

 ciated with buck-corn (maize). Here is an accoimt of it: 



