How to cure smallpox is beyond the ken of the shamans, but they try to keep off the dread enemy by making fences of thorny branches of different trees across the paths leading to the houses; and snake-skins, the tail of the grey fox, and other powerful protectors or charms, are hung around the doors of their dwellings to frighten the disease away. The same purpose is accomplished through the pungent smell produced by burning in the house the horns of cows, sheep, and goats.
The shamans also profess to produce springs by sowing water. They make a hole one yard deep in the rocky ground. Water is brought in a gourd and poured into it, together with half an almud of salt. The hole is then covered up with earth, and after three years a spring forms.
High as the shamans stand in the estimation of the people, they are by no means exempt from the instability of mundane conditions, and the higher a man rises the less secure is his position. The power to see everything, to guard against evil, and to cure illness issues from the light of his heart, which was given him by Tata Dios. It enables him to see Tata Dios himself, to talk to him, to travel through space at will, for the shamans are as bright as the sun. But all this supposed great power to do good may at any moment be turned to evil purposes. There are indeed some shamans whose kindly, sweet-tempered manners and gentle ways enable them to retain their good reputation to the end; but few go through life who can keep themselves always above suspicion, especially when they grow older; and innocent persons have on this account been cruelly persecuted. Such a fate is all the more liable to befall them on account of the recognised ability of a shaman to both cure and produce disease.
No doubt the great quantity of stimulants taken by shamans in the course of their career causes them to go periodically through a state of excitement, which, combined with the enthusiasm which they work themselves up to, gradually gives to these men, who frequently are richly endowed with animal magnetism, a supernatural appearance. Advancing years have their share in making such a man look odd and uncanny, not only on account of his grey hair, wrinkled face, and shaggy eyebrows, but still more by his reserved bearing and distinctive personality. Women shamans, too, may turn bad and become witches.
Much as in cases of heresy among Christian ministers, the other shamans hold a consultation regarding a suspected colleague, and may decide that the light of his heart has failed him and that he is no longer one of them. From that time on, good people avoid him; they no longer give him food, and do not tolerate him about their homes; they are afraid of him; and the better a shaman he was before, the more terrible a sorcerer he is now supposed to have become. Soon every accident that happens in the locality is laid at the accused man’s door.
Rubio, the Shaman, Examining a man accused of Sorcery.
There are, on the other hand, many evil-minded persons who pretend to possess supernatural powers to do harm, and accept payment for services of that kind; in short, who make it a business to be sorcerers. The power of the sorcerer to do evil is as great as the ability of the good shaman to cure it. The sorcerer may rasp on his notched stick, and sing death and destruction to a person or to attain his ends he may use hikuli, smooth stones, the corpse or the foreleg of some highly venerated animal and powerful rain-maker, as the toad, which is never killed except by bad persons. A terrible thing in the hands of a sorcerer is a humming-bird stripped of its feathers, dried, and wrapped in pochote wool. To the Tarahumares the brilliant little bird, often mentioned in their songs, is a good and mighty hero-god, but the sorcerer perverts his great power to his own evil purposes. The sorcerer is feared by all; pregnant women, especially, go out of his way, as he may hinder them from giving birth to their children. When Tarahumares see a shooting star they think it is a dead sorcerer coming to kill a man who did him harm in life, and they huddle together and scream with terror. When the star has passed, they know that somewhere a man has been killed, and that now the sorcerer is taking out his heart.
If a man does any harm to a powerful sorcerer, the latter, after death, enters into a mountain lion or jaguar or bear, and watches by the wayside until the offender comes, when he kills him.
Sorcerers are also believed to prevent rain from falling, and therefore the people were once much pleased when they saw me photographing a sorcerer. The camera was considered a powerful rain-maker, and was thought to make the bad man clean. The people may chastise a man suspected of sorcery, to frighten him from doing further mischief. A sick person also is supposed to improve when the sorcerer who made him ill is punished; but if accidents and misfortune continue to happen, the accused man may be killed. Such extreme measures have been resorted to even in recent years, though rarely.