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NARCOTICS AND STIMULANTS 437
are ever used in conjunction, except as an occasional
stimulant, and in small quantity.
On Spirits or Demons among the Indians
I have never heard any mention among the
native races with whom I have sojourned of a
Spirit or Demon the paye was supposed to invoke,
but there has been so much testimony to that effect,
that it can hardly fail to be true. This demon-
the Maboya of the Antilles, the Yawahoo of
Guayana (according to Bancroft and Stedman) is
surely the Yamadu of the Casiquiari
and Alto
Orinoco. But when I made inquiry about the
latter, I was always assured that it had a bodily,
and not merely a ghostly existence. It is, in fact,
a Wild Man of the Woods or Forest Devil the
Curupira or Diabo do mato of the Amazon, the
Munyia of the eastern foot of the Equatorial Andes
-a little hairy man, not more than four to five feet
hi^h, but so strong and wiry that no single Indian
can cope with him. His great peculiarity is that,
although his tracks are often met with, no one can
tell which way he has gone. Either, as on some
parts of the Amazon, he has a perfectly human foot,
but set on the contrary ; way or else, as on the
Casiquiari, Uaupes, Napo, etc., he has two heels on
each foot and never a toe. This little devil plays
many pranks, of which the most
carrying off women who venture
serious is
alone into
his
the
forest but he ; never attacks two people together,
so that in some parts a man or woman will take a
little child into the forest rather than go alone. If
an Indian loses his wav in the forest, he blames the