Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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They Call The Good Principle Cachimana; It Is
The Manitou, The Great Spirit, That Regulates The Seasons, And Favours
The Harvests.
Along with Cachimana there is an evil principle,
Iolokiamo, less powerful, but more artful, and in particular more
active.
The Indians of the forest, when they occasionally visit the
missions, conceive with difficulty the idea of a temple or an image.
"These good people," said the missionary, "like only processions in
the open air. When I last celebrated the festival of San Antonio, the
patron of my village, the Indians of Inirida were present at mass.
'Your God,' said they to me, 'keeps himself shut up in a house, as if
he were old and infirm; ours is in the forest, in the fields, and on
the mountains of Sipapu, whence the rains come.'" Among the more
numerous, and on this account less barbarous tribes, religious
societies of a singular kind are formed. Some old Indians pretend to
be better instructed than others on points regarding divinity; and to
them is confided the famous botuto, of which I have spoken, and which
is sounded under the palm-trees that they may bear abundance of fruit.
On the banks of the Orinoco there exists no idol, as among all the
nations who have remained faithful to the first worship of nature, but
the botuto, the sacred trumpet, is an object of veneration. To be
initiated into the mysteries of the botuto, it is requisite to be of
pure morals, and to have lived single.
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