by Audrey Butt
Reader in Anthropology
In the University of Oxford
' They have a kind of priest called * Pee-ay-man, who is an enchanter. He finds out things lost. He mutters prayers to the evil spirit over them and their children when they are sick. If a fever be in the village the Pee-ay-man goes about all night long howling and making dreadful noises and begs the bad spirit to depart.....' So wrote the naturalist Charles Waterton in 1820, referring to the ' shaman ' found among the American Indian tribes of British Guiana and neighbouring countries in South America.
Dr. Butt's account of shamanist practices in British Guiana is illustrated with recordings made during an expedition to the remote Akawaio tribe in 1957.