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RO'l
434 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP.
of imagination helps his recovery. If the patient
dies, the peii attributes it either to the implacable
Yawahoo or to the influence of some inimical peii."
(An Essay on the History of Guayana, by Dr.
Edward Bancroft, 1769, p. 310.)
Lonor before Bancroft's time the use of the
o
maraca and of tobacco by Brazilian payes was
described by Thevet, as follows :
"'
Existimant enim,
cum hunc fructum (quern Maraka et Tamaraka
nuncupant) manibus pertractant, crepitantemque
ob Mayzi grana injecta audiunt, cum suo se Toupan,
id est, Deo sermones conferre atque ab eo quodam
responsa accipere, sic a suis Paygi (divinatorum
genus est, qui suffitu herbae Petun, et quibusdam
obmurmurationibus illorum Tamaraka divinam
facultatem attribuunt tribuere perhibent) persuasi."
The accounts given by the early missionaries of
the doings of the payes are seldom full or reliable.
Those pious men regarded them as the great
obstacle to the reception of the Christian faith by
the natives, and always wrote of them with a
certain impatience and disgust, under the belief (no
doubt sincere) that the payes had direct dealings
with the devil. But the cure of disease by suction
is alluded to by missionaries in every part of South
America. In the Lettres Edifiantes et Curiciises,
consisting of selections from the correspondence of
missionaries in various heathen countries, published
with the sanction of the holy see, there is this
note about the medicine-men of the Moxos Indians:
" L'unique soulagement qu'ils se procurent dans
Tlicvi-Uis, as (|iiiiicil liy Chusius, in Aivniatiii/i ct Siinfliciitin aliquot . . .
Historia. Auctore Garcia ab Horto, Medico Lusitanico. Ed. Ciusio.
Ant\ ri pi
i
, 1579.