The Indian of the Bolivian plateau is still only a half-civilized man and less than half a Christian. He retains his primeval Nature worship, which groups together the spirits that dwell in mountains, rivers, and rocks with the spirits of his ancestors, revering and propitiating all as _Achachilas_. In the same ceremony his medicine man invokes the Christian “_Dios_” to favor the building of a house, or whatever he undertakes, and simultaneously invokes the _Achachilas_, propitiating them also by offerings, the gift made to the Earth Spirit being buried in the soil. Similarly he retains the ceremonial dances of heathendom, and has secret dancing guilds, of whose mysteries the white man can l…
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