FETISH MURDER.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7923, 30 January 1904, Page 4

FETISH MURDER.

"MEDICINE MAN" ON TRIAL IN BRITISH GUIANA. Savagery is certainly more primitively rampant in British Guiana than anywhere else in the British Empire. This was illustrated by a ghastly case of double murder which was heard by the local magistrate at Georgetown recently. Christie, a middle-aged Wapisiana Indiam, of the Rupununi district, wae charged with the murder of an infant, the child of an Indian woman named Kaliwa. About two years ago, or, as the Indiawitnesses put it, aboufc " two heavy rains " ibatek, the wife of a " buck" gave birth to twins. One of the children died, and some time afterwards the mother and the surviving child became ill. Christie, a " marinow " or a "paimah," was called inland asked to give his advice as a " medicine man," and after holding an incantation he decided that the child's father was not the woman's husband, Turuma, but an evil spirit. The child, he explained, was not a naitural being, and therefore ought not to be permitted to die a natural death, and, as regarded tbe mother, he held that she was unfit to be a wife any longer. He urged the husband to take them behind a mountain two miles away from tbe village and burn them ; but the man, who seemed devoted to his wife, delayed to carry out the "medioine man's" order for about three months. The "marinow," to show his displeasure at this neglect, burned down his own house and left the immediate neighbourhood ; but on several occasions he sent a few of his wives to urge the husband to burn tbe sick woman and her child, lest the evil spirit who was the infant's father should destroy the entire village. At length one day the distressed husband placed his wife in a basket ; took her into the forest, and after he bad put her into a hammock, kindled a large fire under ber. Returning later he buried the bones, and Borne time later took to the forest, and during his absence some women in whose' care the infant was left carried their little charge into the bush and burned- it on a wood pile, in consequence of 'messages sent by the "medicine man."