368 ANIMISM AND FOLK-LORE OF GUIANA INDIANS Teth. ANN. 30 



fancy for dropping his dung only in the water (Sect. 162B), and they 

 never find it except in brooks and springs, though it is so large and 

 abundant that it could not be overlooked in the forest. If there is 

 no water to be found, the animal makes a rough basket of leaves and 

 carries it to the nearest stream and there deposits it" (ARW, 154). 

 On the upper Essequibo the men removed the hoofs from a tapir 

 for the purpose of using them, when occasion required, as chaims for 

 bites of snakes, stmgs of ray-fisli, and fits of all kinds: they said that 

 the hoofs are first singed, and then placed in water, which is drunk 

 (Bro, 240). The same belief was current on the Orinoco: tapir hoofs 

 crushed to powder, and one liung on the neck of a patient, constitute 

 an excellent and well-known cure for epilepsy (G, i, 265). The rem- 

 edy is stUl employed, to my own knowledge, by creole residents in 

 Georgetown. 



340. The smaller armadillo (Dasypus lyiUosvs Desm.), the jassi of 

 the Makusis, and other tribes, according to the Indians, is met with 

 only on the savannahs and lives chiefly on carrion. Hence, in certain 

 festival songs of the Wapisiana and Makusi this creature plays an 

 important r61e, in that almost every refrain ends with the words, 

 "And when I am dead, put me in the savannah; the jassi will 

 come and bury me." According to Von Martins a similar song is 

 common among the Indians of the Rio Negro (ScR, ii, 97-9S) . The 

 last joint or bone of the armadillo's tail has been found an effica- 

 cious remedy for earache (G, ii, 263), but whether by Indians 

 or by Spaniards unfortunately is not stated. The real mterest of 

 the connection between the animal and the complaint lies rather in 

 the creature's ears being so distmctive a feature, a fact to which 

 attention has already been drawn in dealing with its bina (Sect. 233) . 

 Explanations have been given as to the bush-master snake (LacTiesis 

 mutus) being always found in armadillo holes (Sect. 7). 



341, Well into the eighteenth century the musk-gland on the 

 dorsum of the bush-hog {Dicotyles) was believed to be its navel by 

 Creoles and Europeans, from the Ormoco to Cayenne, though the 

 idea does not seem to have been shared by the Indians. There is 

 one particular animal, seemingly of a skunk-like nature ( ? Conepa- 

 tus) which thus far has baffled me in the way of identification. 

 Father GumUIa (ii, 272) describes it as follows: 



A little animal, very scarce, and the most detestable of any that I have hitherto seen. 

 Amongst the whites of America it is called mapurito: and the Indians call it mnfutili- 

 qui: it is like one of those very elegant little mongrel curs which ladies breed in their 

 mansions. All its little body is spotted white and black: its tail proportionate, 

 uncommon (hermoso), and much covered with long hair: very active and flighty in its 

 manner of walking, and daring beyond measure. It waits for its enemy, tiger, man 

 or animal, face to face: and so soon as it is approached close enough, it ttims its back. 

 The atmosphere is rendered so pestiferous that the enemy remains stupefied, and 

 requires a long time before he can get away. 



