noTHl THE MEDICINE-MAN 341 



no inducement would liave tempted him to kill any of them; among 

 them were powis . . . maroodies, and the Arua tiger. . . . The 

 latter he always told he could put his hand upon any time he went out." 

 Anothei' apt illustration is furnished by Schomhurgk: "In our 

 peregrinations in the savannahs we frequently met with the nests of 

 wild bees. They belonged to a species which the Makusi Indians 

 called wampang; the Wapisiana canmiba. The hives or nests are 

 generally fixed to branches of trees, and are from 2 to 3 feet in 

 length. ... It stings severely; and in order to secure nests, the 

 Indians kindle fires under them, when the insects abandon theirfabrics 

 en masse. I have, however, seen an Indian who was the conjurer or 

 piaiman of his tribe, merely approach the nest, and knocking with 

 his fingers agamst it, drive out all the bees without a single one 

 injuring him. I noticed him drawing his fingers under the pits of 

 his arms before he knocked against the hive" (ScT, 40). The piai 

 system made a secret art of hunting; from the priest-doctor the 

 hunters learned to hunt for the particular game they required, and 

 received at his hands charms — maklar and hina — to insure their 

 success (Da, 2.51). Among the Indians of the Uaupes River, the 

 piais are believed to have power to destroy dogs or game and to 

 make the fish leave a river (ARW, 347). The medicine-man further- 

 more could transform himself into an animal (Sect. 154): if his wife 

 becomes pregnant she may bear him a tiger, an animal into which, 

 he himself may be transformed at death (KG, ii, 154). 



299. Certainly among many of the tribes the "doctors" were believed 

 to be endowed with such power over their own spirits as to render 

 themselves invisible. At a Makusi village on the Karakarang River, 

 a branch of the Cotinga, Barrington Brown (Bro, 1 19) was told that 

 many of their people had gone to Rorahna to see an Indian sorcerer 

 there who had the power of making himself in^^sible at will. At Mora 

 Anllage, on the upp(>r Rupununi, the same traveler (Bro, 139) explains 

 how the piai's absence for the night was unavoidable, owing to his 

 having to go up among the mountains to roam about for the night, 

 while his good spirit remained in one of the houses to cure a sick man. 



Not only could the medicine-man invoke Spirits generally, as well 

 as those of particular birds and beasts, but he could also play tricks 

 with his own and other Indians' Spirits. Thus, im Thurn (339): 

 "He is able to call to him and question the spirit of any sleeping 

 Indian of his own tribe, so that if an Indian wishes to know what an 

 absent friend is doing, he has only to employ the ])iai-man to summon 

 and question the spirit of the far-awa}' Indian. Or the piai-man may 

 send his own spirit, his body remaining present, to get the required 

 information." 



300. The piai's reputation as an interpreter of dreams was second to 

 none: he was both dreamer and seer (Sect. 298), but this is only what> 



