The following case was witnessed by Regina Müller: on returning from an abundant turtle hunt, Boaiwa announced in the village that he had seen five Tiwá (jaguar spirits). Momuma commented on this sign: when one sees Tiwá, a war with enemies is approaching. And he continued: wild Indians are coming to fight. Tiwá is the jaguar, inambu, jacu, mutum. It is all the whites, who have white beards. The pajés, who are Tiwá, eat deer meat as do jaguars. These conversations preceded the preparations for the great ritual turtle banquet and the shamanic ritual to invoke the spirit of the Jaguar, which lasted from 21 to 25 February, 1981. Boaiwa was the principal figure in these events. As a warrior (mboakara), he offered food to everyone in the group so that the dead of the enemy would not “cause any evil”.

At the beginning of March, Boaiwa’s health worsened. He was coughing a lot and, when an outbreak of flu spread through the whole village, he began to throw up blood. The community mobilized around a shamanic ritual (of the Karowara spirit). Boaiwa, meanwhile, did not assume the position of patient to receive the spiritual treatment of the shaman. To the contrary, he sat in the circle of shamans and participated with them in the ritual meal and cigar-smoking.

The Asurini said that Boaiwa was not sick, but was turning into a shaman (pazé opotara). Thus, he could not take more injections, since the medication hindered his contact with the Tiwá. It was necessary for him to learn how to dominate the contact, which would only happen when he “got” ka´a (the spirit substance that enters into the body of the pajé). At the moment of the initial contacts of the Tiwá with the pajés, Boaiwa struggled, threw himself onto the ground, walked and twitched like a jaguar. The women stayed close to the houseposts, warding Boaiwa off so that he would not hurt them. The experienced pajés controlled the spirit. Their bodies became inert with their loss of consciousness.

Boaiwa was only beginning his apprenticeship. He would have to smoke many cigars, dance, fast, and “get” Tiwá. Various shamanic rituals then followed so that the new shaman could practice. In this context, at the request of the shamans, the medication that the FUNAI nurse was giving to him was suspended. The Asurini asked me to explain to the nursing attendant why Boaiwa could not take any more injections, causing a misunderstanding between me and the local FUNAI agents.

The maraká of the Tiwá continued intense, medication was suspended, with Boaiwa vomiting blood. They would only stop when he succeeded in controlling the agressivity of the spirit, who was shooting arrows against his body. Despite the care that his family gave him, Boaiwa, after several days, showed signs of exhaustion and wounds on his body, the result of his having thrown himself on the ground and against the houseposts. The blood that came out of his mouth was attributed by the Asurini to the carnivorous habits of the Tiwá.

On March 6, I went into the house where the rituals were being realized and found Boaiwa alone, in his hammock, trying to stop the blood that came from his mouth. With his eyes wide open, he asked to be taken to Altamira because he was going to die. In these circumstances, the shamans, grouped around Boaiwa’s hammock, ended up agreeing to the application of anti-hemorrhage medication. Just one injection. Two days later, Dr. Frederico Ribeiro, a doctor sent by the FUNAI headquarters in Brasília, arrived in the village to stay two months in the village of the Asurini, “Indians threatened with extinction".

Boaiwa’s health improved and the blood stopped coming out of his mouth. The "exercises" to transform him into a pajé continued intensely, for more than a month, even against the recommendations of the nurse attendant and the doctor. For a long time, Boaiwa was the youngest pajé of the Asurini of the Xingu. Today, however, his grandsons Imudi´i (11 years old) and Parajuá (15 ) are the most recently initiated.