How The Haimara Came To Have Such Fine Big Eyes - Guiana Returning on his way home from the bush one afternoon, a hunter met a Konoko-kuyuha making a basket, but though he did not actually recognize it as the Spirit of the Bush, he certainly recognized the uncanny appearance it presented on account of its having the entire face, body, and limbs covered with thick hair. He asked the Spirit what it was doing, but the only word it deigned to answer was bako, the shortened form of bako-ké. At any rate, when he reached home, he related his experiences to his family and friends, and advised them strongly not to go to sleep that night, because It, whatever it was, might pay them a surprise visit after nightfall; all he could tell them was that it was covered with hair, and that it was making an eye-socket basket. But they all laughed at him, and turning into their hammocks as usual, told one another stories, and soon fell off to sleep. The man who had warned them alone kept awake, and, recognizing the low whistle in the distance, tried to arouse his friends by shaking their hammocks; but it was all in vain, and he had only just time enough to clamber up into the roof, when It, which he now recognized to be a Konoko-kuyuha, entered the house. Once in, the hunter was able to watch its movements without being himself seen. He saw the Spirit stealthily approach each hammock and remove both eyes of the snoring occupant without waking him. These eyes it carefully placed in the now completed basket, and then it left the house. Next morning, when all the people awoke, they discovered that they could see nothing, and they wondered what had happened, but he who had previously warned them told them eyerything. They said they were not now fit to live on the land, and that he must take them to some waterside. He thereupon tied them one to the other, and when they reached the stream he tied the last one to a tree: they could not lose their way now, and they knew where they were. He accordingly left them, as he thought, in perfect safety, promising to visit them shortly. After a time he redeemed his word, but he found that all of them had in the meanwhile been under water, and had changed into fish, the one exception being the individual tied to the tree who, being able to get into the water only up to his middle, had turned but halfway into a fish. So the man went away, promising to come again. He was a long time returning, so long, in fact, that the Spirit took pity on the last man, and completed his transformation, giving him back his own two eyes, which "are all very fine and large," so to speak, especially for a haimara fish (Hoplias malabaricus), which was what the Spirit changed him into. And when their old friend did return at last, he cut the rope from the tree, thus allowing the haimara and other fish to play about with perfect freedom in the water, where they have since remained. They were punished for their unbelief. Bush Spirits are excellent hunters, and some of them even know how to employ the rattle, just like a medicine-man. An Inquiry into the Animism and Folk-Lore of the Guiana Indians, Walter E. Roth, from the Thirtieth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1908-1909, pp. 103-386, Washington D.C., 1915, and is now in the public domain.[ British Guiana ][ South America ]