580 ARTS AND CRAFTS OF GUIANA INDIANS [WrH, ANN. 38 
provides a big feast, and when all are drunk he gives his causes for 
complaint against the nation which he proposes to attack. As soon 
as the guests approve, they stain their whole bodies with genipa, deco- 
rate themselves with parrots’ red feathers, of which they make 
crowns and waist belts, and in this war costume betake themselves to 
a place where, one after another, they make their war dances before 
going to fight. It is there where they sing their ancestors’ and their 
own praises. They boast beforehand of the grand deeds they are 
going to perform and of the wrongs which their enemies have com- 
mitted on them. and finally they yell out that they are forced to 
avenge themselves (FE, 88). The object of the war dance was that 
each warrior sought to kindle in his breast the Kaikutyi-yumu or 
Tiger (Jaguar) Spirit. Indeed, the Indian reasoned thus: “ In cold 
blood I am shocked and find it impossible to kill a man, let alone to 
split the skull of an innocent fellow. But were I to do so, then it 
can not be out of my own impulse, but I must be forced into it by 
fury and lust of blood, which can not be anything else but the Tiger 
Spirit. To arouse this spirit in me, I must dance the Jaguar dance, 
imitate all his movements. I growl, I hiss, I swing the club just like 
he does when he crushes his prey with one blow of his terrible claws. 
And when I have once killed my enemy, I must likewise drink his 
blood and taste the flesh with a view to satisfying the spirit that 
impels me to the deed.” Every man, animal, or other living form, 
however kindly disposed, can rouse in himself the Tiger Spirit 
which compels him to perpetrate deeds over which he subsequently 
feels remorse. He accordingly asks himself then, “How could I 
possibly have behaved so badly? ” and the answer runs, “ When the 
Tiger is in the man, then the man becomes like the Tiger.” But this 
particular spirit by itself is not sufficient to decide upon offering 
battle, because Tiger can be decoyed into a trap. The warriors 
therefore danced the Snake or Charm dance, which aroused in them 
the spirit which inaudibly and invisibly draws near, strangles, and 
ties them up just like the snake at first bewitches its victim through 
fright, then chokes and afterwards swallows it. And since the boa 
constrictor [camudi] not alone possesses the spirit of enchantment 
but also swallows all kinds of animals, even including the tiger and 
the cayman, its spirit has to be specially invoked. At the same time 
the warriors drank of the war drink, which consisted of paiwarri 
wherein was a powder or liniment of worms from the putrid brains, 
heart, and liver of the jaguar, camudi, as well as from the most 
courageous and crafty of the enemies previously killed by them. 
The brains were supposed to awake cunning, the liver courage, and 
the heart put life into them. They likewise smeared their arms and 
clubs with a powder or salve made from the worms arising from 
