Identifier: annualreportofbu30smit (find matches)
Title: Annual report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution
Year: 1895 (1890s)
Authors: Smithsonian Institution. Bureau of American Ethnology
Subjects: Smithsonian Institution. Bureau of American Ethnology Ethnology Indians
Publisher: Washington : U. S. Govt. Print. Off.
Contributing Library: Boston Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Kahle/Austin Foundation and Omidyar Network

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up, to tlie foot of ahigh fall, at which there is a large sand-beaeh, marked with mysterious footprintsresembling those made by the human foot. The sand also is thrown up as if childrenhad been playing there. If the Indians who visit the spot trample down these heaps,and go away for a short time, on their retiirn they find them there again as before.The Indians believe that wild men live near the spot, but have never succeeded inseeing them. (Bro, 385.) The torrential streams which so sudflenly gush down from theheights of Roraima are but the sorrowful tears of the Mother of Piaand Makonaima—she who had been left behind on top of this moun-tain by the former (Da, 342). At least that is what the Makusisafhrm. Some people say that over the tops of Roraima and Kukenamare spread seas filld mth all kmds of fish, especially dolphins, andcontmually circlsd by gigantic white eagles, which act as perpetualwatchmen (ScR, ii, 26.5). BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY THIRTIETH ANNUAL REPORT PLATE 4
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THE KAIETEUR FALL(From a jjhotograph by W. 11. McTurk) BOTH) THE SPIRITS OF THE MOUNTAIN 237 172. Another example of this sci-ies of cases is the legend i-elativeto the cslcbrated Kaieteur Fall (pi. 4), vrhich I give here in the wordsof Barrington Brown (Bro, 214), the discoverer of this wonder-spot: Once upon a time there was a large \illage above the fall, situated on the littlesavanna, amongst the inliabitants of whicli was an old Indian, who had arrived atthat period of human existence, when his life had become a liurden to himself and atrouble to liis relatives. Amongst other duties, there devolved upon his near rela-tions the tedious one of extracting the jiggers from his toes which there accumulatedday by day. These duties becoming irksome at last, it was arranged that the oldman should be assisted on his way to his long home, that spirit land lying two-daysjourney beyond the setting sun. He was accordingly transferred, with his pegall ofworldly goods, from his house to a woods

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