Old Time Indians. 71 
any other cause is but the work of some spirit perpetrated either judicially or 
of mere malice, as some affirm, or through the importunity of a votary. An 
evil spirit, one who causes an evil, might send an animal to bite and sting a 
person, or cause a tree to fall on him, his axe to cut him, water to drown him, 
or he might send the mysterious Yawahu-shimara or spirit’s arrow which has 
the quality of inflicting any of all the ills that flesh is heir to. Some of the 
Indians in addition ascribed damage to their fields and the cause of their strifes 
and disputes to these evil spirits. All Indians understood somewhat the appli- 
cation of the means of combating disease, ete.—fasting, bleeding, water-baths, 
mud-baths, sweating, decoctions of various plants. I myself in the Pomeroon 
District have met with certain surgical appliances, of undoubted Indian origin 
and excellent value. It was only in the more serious cases that they called in 
the medicine man, to exorcise these spirits. As doctors, augurs, rain-makers, 
spell-binders, leaders of secret societies and depositories of the tribal traditions 
and wisdom, the influence of the medicine man throughout the Western Hemi- 
sphere was generally powerful. Of course it was adverse to the Europeans, 
especially the missionaries, and also of course it was generally directed to their 
own interest or to that of their class. But this is true of priestly power wherever 
it gains the ascendency, and the injurious effect of the Indian piaimen on their 
nations was not greater than has been, in many instances, that of the Christian 
priesthood on European communities. 
The apprenticeship of the piai-man in the olden days was very far from being 
the proverbial bed of roses. Amongst other tests, he had for many months 
to practise self-denial, and submit under a stinted diet to the prohibition of 
what were to him accustomed luxuries. He had to satisfy his elders in his 
knowledge of the instincts and habits of animals, in the properties of plants, 
and the seasons for flowering and bearing, for the piai-man was often consulted 
as to when and where game was to be found, and he was more than often correct 
in his advice. He also had to know of the grouping of the stars into constella- 
tions, and the legends not only connected with them but with his own tribe. 
Finally he had to submit to a chance of death by drinking a decoction of tobacco 
in repeated and increasing doses; in the French Guianas, amongst the Rou- 
couyennes—a Carib tribe—mixed with this decoction were the drippings from 
a dead body. Tobacco smoke was believed to have a peculiar attraction 
for the evil spirits, and hence so commonly employed in their invocation. The 
peculiar feathered rattle of the piai-man had an esoteric symbolism, the history 
of which has been well traced, but of this, as well as of the subject of sickmen and 
medicine generally, I cannot speak here. It is a curious fact that so many people 
in British Guiana as distinguished from those in Surinam and Cayenne regard 
the business of the piai-man with such unkindly feelings. To know the tradi- 
tions of his tribe to have the requisite skill in the tracking and capture of game. 
and to cure disease by means of the many medicinal plants to which 
he has free access, can surely be no crime ; even if he makes use of a procedure 
of exorcism, we can find his methods paralleled in the Mother Country by the 
Church but a little more than a century ago, and by certain of the peasantry 
even inthe present day. Is not, after all, Mr.Stead’s present relations with 
Julia’s spooks but another instance of a “ tribute to the modern babbling ”’ ? 
