72 Timehr. 
It is only ignorance that identifies the Kanaima business, 7.e., blood-revenge, 
with that of the medicine man. A medicine man may have cause to practise 
Kanaima, but every person who practises Kanaima need not be a medicine man. 
The distinction was patent to the first Europeans who visited the Guianas. 
In a general way. the Island Indians, like all primitive peoples, recognized 
the existence of a power inherent in all things, and, in order to influence that 
power so far as they needed its aid, they personated it in symbols. Being 
agriculturists, the most powerful gods to them were naturally those earth deities 
and sky deities that watered their fields and made their crops grow. Every 
Cacique relied on supernatural beings called zemis. In Cuba, Columbus tells 
us that in each village there is a house apart in which there is nothing except 
some wooden images carved in relief which are called Cemis ; nor is there 
anything done in such a house for any other subject or service except for these 
Cemis by means of a kind of ceremony and prayer which they go to make just: 
as we go to churches. It is an interesting fact that at the present time the 
B. G. Arawaks speak both of the medicine men and of their Kick-shaws by the 
same name as zemi-tchichi. 
Amongst the Warraus there was the Aru-hoho festival held at the time of the 
ripening ‘of the cassava, as a thank-offering to the good-spirits for what they had 
given, and as a douceur to prevent the evil ones from doing them harm. From 
the description of Warraus I have been able to reproduce. an almost complete 
picture of such a festival and dance. In the same way that many Christian 
Church festivals have supplanted respective Pagan ones, so has that of the 
present St. John’s Day replaced that of the ripening of the cassava. 
Every foot-print in the human path along which Indian life trod, was made 
the occasion of a festival, and dance. Births, deaths, and the various physiologi- 
eal stages through which men and women passed, the building of a house, the 
call to arms, a successful slave raid, or hunting expedition, the initiation of a 
captain, the installation of a Cacique, the arrival of distinguished visitors, were all 
thus celebrated. 
Even at the present time in the Pomeroon District with the building of a house 
or rather at its completion a party is given, and when all the uests are arrived, 
some of the cassiri, before its distribution among the guests, is thrown by the 
house mistress on to the uprights, who also places pieces of cassava at the four 
corners under the eaves. This ceremony is but a development of the same idea 
which underlies the mind of the New Guinea savage, when he sacrifices a victim 
under the first post of his new house, and that of the civilised dignitary who 
buries certain coins with an effigy of the King’s head within the foundation 
stone. 
The initiation of a captain, outside of the drinking and the dancing, was a 
pretty serious concern. 
The candidate had first of all to gather round him all his kinsfolk and then 
othe’s, either attracted by his valour or else influenced by him, his relatives, and 
friends. When he had, say, 100 men in his tetinue, he provided drink, and invit- 
ing the Caciques and other captains of his nation, told them of his brave deeds, 
and sought admission into the ranks of captains. The judges being convened, 
