, 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.

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