Chapter XVIII 

 KANAIMA; THE INVISIBLE OR BROKEN ARROW 



Expression of the Law of Retaliation: Kanaima may appear as a human being or 

 Spirit (.S;?0), and perhaps can be satisfactorily explained {320 A), or as an animal {3S1). 

 Kanaima's handiwork, when fatal, can be recognized as such only by the piai (S22). 

 Discovery of the individual under whose influence Kanaima has acted (323); search 

 for this individual by one of deceased's relatives, or by a hireling (324); avenger 

 proceeds to get into touch with his victim (325); mutilates him with poison, club, or 

 arrow (326), but only to such extent that death will not ensue until third day after 

 (327-328), when he will complete the mutilation of the corpse, and so obtain his own 

 purification (329). 



The Invisible or Broken Arrow {330-331); the Misson of the Arrow (331 A). 



330. An individual becomes exceedingly Ul. All the ordiaary 

 everyday remedies have been resorted to, the piai has invoked his 

 Familiar Spirit, yet the patient dies; or he may sometimes expire 

 without warnmg. The very fact of the medicine-man's inability 

 to effect a cure serves only to confu-m the belief held in certain 

 tribes — Akawaios, Makusis, Arekunas, for example — that the vic- 

 tim's condition is the work of some human agency more or less 

 disguised, modified, or influenced by a peculiarly terrible Spirit 

 known as Kanaima (Sect. 307). The word itself is said to be 

 Akawaio; the Arawak term is Mahui, which thus comes to be 

 applied by this people to all Akawaios in general. According to 

 inquiry made of the Arawaks, who, like the Caribs and Warraus, 

 do not appear to know very much about the subject, and that only at 

 second-hand, Kanaima is said to be the name of a certain tree growing 

 in the savannahs, of which the sap has remarkable properties. After 

 rubbing himself with it a man will go mad and become changed into 

 some animal, as a tiger or a snake, and do people harm. The sap can 

 also be thrown over other folk with similar results. But the word 

 mentioned has really a very extended meaning; it is the expression of 

 the law of retaliation, which is sacredly observed among the Indians 

 of Guiana (Da, 16), at least, certainly among the Makusis, Akawais, 

 Wapisianas, and Arekunas. Though applied to the man who has 

 devoted himself to perform a deed of blood, it seems more properly 

 to belong to the miu"derous Spirit under the iiifluence of which he 

 acts, and which is supposed to possess him (Br, 373); it indicates also 

 the person whose rights have been injured (ScR, i, 322-3) as well as 

 the whole mode of procedure, including the means, poison, etc., 

 employed. Thus, the audacity of the Akawais "in these predatorj' 

 excursions is astonishing. If a party can muster eight or ten stand 

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