FETISH MURDER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 12478, 23 January 1904, Page 2 (Supplement)

FETISH MURDER.

" MEDICINE MAN" ON TRIAL IN BRITISH GUIANA. Savagery is certainly more primitively H®' pant in British Guiana than anywhi!r6 fls< in the British Empire. This was 'IhistfiM by a ghastly ease of double miirdei". whicS was heard by the local magistrate at Gleorgetown recently, Christie, a middle-aged YVapisiana In* dian, of the Rupunutii district, was char?® with the murder of an infant, the child 0 an Indian woman named Kaliwa. About two years ago, or, as tHfc 4 witnesses put it, about "two heart -* lB ? back, the wile, of a " buck" garC Dirt®*, twins. One of the children died, si" time afterwards the mother and the surri ; ing child became ill. Christie, a " or a " paiaian," was called in and ~ RR[ [ give his advice as a " medicine -aiMi. '.t after holding an incantation he decided the child's father nap not the WOinStiS band, Tuiuma, but an evil spirit. , ir j I'lse child, he explained, was not M . being, and therefore ought not t6 M ' r% mitted to die a natural death, ain' a 8 re 8. Ed the mother he he'd that she was un . , be a wife any longer. He urged trie. iu -. to take them behind a mountain two ~ away from the village and bum i"*? >r. the man. who seemed devoted to his delayed to carry out the " medicine i order '•?' about three mouths. i o a»nrt The " manuow, to show his di'F musl j at this ne»!ect, burned down his ofl and left the immediate neighbourly. 0 of b? oil several occasions he sent a ' e il, $ici wives to urge the husband to burn woman ad her child, lest the evil SP. [jj» was the infant's father should de- . . entire village. , t,,„bani At length one day the distress^ j ß t« placed iiis wife in a basket, w°" t the forest, and after he had f u L t,ai hammock, kindled a large five " , pi Returning later lie buried tke a #il dilf* some time later took to the fores CJ jt in his absence some women m . eharK* 1 the infant was left carried then H B J pit* into the bush and burned it ott 11 th® lin consequence of Messages " ,„ ' |" medicine man."