is sad.  Then the shamans assemble to consult about her ailment and the means of curing her.  An ox may be killed and tesvino made.  In killing the animal, care is taken not to injure the heart, which is treated with great ceremony.  The people always avoid touching it, and at sacrifices they hang it with the lungs to a stick raised near the cross.  The shamans stand near, with small earthenware dishes containing copal incense; while the oldest cuts with his knife four crosses on four diametrically opposite points of the heart, and from the upper part all but slices off a piece, which is left hanging down beside the main part.  All the blood the heart contained is sacrificed to the four cardinal points with much singing.  Then the shaman asks for an earthen bowl which has never been used before, and in this he places the heart and burns it without adding fat or anything else.  The ashes he rubs between his fingers until reduced to a fine dust, which he mixes with water and some medicinal herbs.  The shamans stand in the middle, and the people around them, and all are unanimous in their prayer that they may see the moon.  Each shaman takes three spoonfuls of medicine, the rest of which is thrown on the cross, and the shamans watch all night.

The Christian Tarahumares even feel called upon to cure the church when those buried in and around it have been noisily dancing and damaging the building to make the people give them tesvino.  The principal shaman heads the procession, carrying a jar of the liquor.  His assistant holds in one hand a bowl containing water mixed with the crushed leaves of the maguey, and in the other some fresh maguey leaves.  The tesvino, as well as the green water, is liberally thrown upon the walls and the floor of the church to lay the perturbed spirits.

How to cure smallpox is beyond the ken of the shamans, but they try to keep off the dread enemy by making fences of thorny branches of different trees across the paths leading to the houses; and snake-skins, the tail of the grey fox, and other powerful protectors or charms, are hung around the doors of their dwellings to frighten the disease away.  The same purpose is accomplished through the pungent smell produced by burning in the house the horns of cows, sheep, and goats.

The shamans also profess to produce springs by sowing water.  They make a hole one yard deep in the rocky ground.  Water is brought in a gourd and poured into it, together with half an almud of salt.  The hole is then covered up with earth, and after three years a spring forms.

High as the shamans stand in the estimation of the people, they are by no means exempt from the instability of mundane conditions, and the higher a man rises the less secure is his position.  The power to see everything, to guard against evil, and to cure illness issues from the light of his heart, which was given him by Tata Dios.  It enables him to see Tata Dios himself, to talk to him, to travel through