As soon as he falls, a number of young men, who have been waiting close to the hut, leap on their horses, and dash at full speed round the house, yelling defiantly, waving lighted torches over their heads, and brandishing their long lances by way of frightening the evil spirit, and warning him not to come near the place again. Like the Machi, they are all nearly naked, and painted in the most hideous fashion, so as to strike terror, not only into the spirit that has possession of the man, but into those who are hovering round the house, and trying to gain admission. In the first [engraving] on the next page the artist has furnished a strange, weird scene, illustrating the Mapuché mode of healing the sick.
After a while the Machi recovers from his trance, and then announces the seat and immediate cause of the malady. For the latter he carefully searches the patient, and after a time produces it in the shape of a spider, a toad, a stone, an arrow head, or similar object. Were he to do more than this, no harm would accrue, and if the patient should recover no harm is done.
But, should he die, the Machi is forced by public opinion to declare that the evil spirit has been sent to the dead man by means of witchcraft.
The body is opened, the gall removed, and placed in the wooden bowl of the magic drum, where it undergoes a series of incantations. After they are over, it is put into a closely covered pot and placed on the fire until it is dried up. The sign of witchcraft is a stone found at the bottom of the pot, and it is needless to say that such a stone is never wanting. By means of this proof of witchcraft, the Machi again throws himself into a trance, in the course of which he designates the culprit who has caused the illness of the deceased.
No one ever disbelieves a Machi, and the relatives of the dead man seek out the accused and murder him. It naturally follows that the Machis are too prone to abuse this terrible power of their position by accusing persons against whom they have enmity, or whom they have been bribed to condemn. No counter proof is admitted in the face of a Machi’s accusation; and if the alleged culprit should be in another district, the cacique is requested to deliver him up to justice. The unfortunate wretch is sure to suffer torture for the sake of extracting a confession of his guilt, and, whether he confess or not, he is sure to be killed; so that a wise man admits his guilt at once, and thereby escapes the tortures which he would otherwise have suffered.
Sometimes, though rarely, the Machi is a woman. In this case she assumes the male dress, mimics as far as she can the masculine tone of voice and mode of walking, and is always a very disagreeable individual, being mostly crabbed, ill-tempered, petulant, and irritable.
As the Machi always operates at night, the scene is most wild and picturesque, as may be seen from the account of Mr. E. R. Smith, who witnessed (at a distance) the operations of a female Machi.
“One of the neighbors was dangerously ill, and during the night there was a grand machilun performed by the grand exorcist, the medicine woman of Boroa herself. I wished to be present, but Sancho would not listen to the proposal, insisting that we might expose ourselves to violence by appearing to interfere with this witch, whose hatred of the whites and influence over the natives were alike unbounded.
“The night was black and threatening, well suited to her machinations. We could plainly hear the monotonous tap of the Indian drum, and the discordant song occasionally rising with the frenzy of the moment into a shrill scream, then sinking to a low, guttural cadence, while all else was hushed for very dread of the unhallowed rites. Suddenly the singing stopped, and there was a long silence, broken by the eruption of a troop of naked savages rushing round the house on horse and afoot, brandishing fiercely lance, and sword, and burning fagot and blazing torch, and making night hideous with their demoniac cries. The frightened dogs howled in dismal concert, and again all was still. The evil spirit had been cast out and driven away. It only remained for the sick man to recover or die.”
The witch who presided over this extraordinary scene was a mestizo, i. e. a half-breed between the negro and the native. She was a singularly unprepossessing personage, hideously ugly, and turning her ugliness of features to account by her shrewdness of intellect. Ugliness is not, however, a necessary accompaniment of this particular caste. There is now before me a photograph of a young mestizo woman, whose features, although they partake somewhat of the negro character, are good and intelligent, her color is comparatively pale, and her hair retains the length and thickness of the Araucanian, together with a crispness which has been inherited from the negro race.