358 ANIMISM AND FOLK-LORE OF GUIANA INDIANS [Kill. ANN. 30 



for years, publicly avowing hif5 purpose, which he will reliu(iuish 

 only with life (HiC, 231). He has to abstam from meat and live on 

 what the forest supplies, a fact which will account for his usually 

 emaciated appearance. As for ornament, he is credited with wearing 

 a curiously wrought cap (Be, 57), but it is the bodily decoration 

 which gives him his distinctive features. He paints bright red spots 

 on his skin, to show that, changing into a jaguar at night, he can 

 thus slay his victims. A set of jaguar's claws hung up in a sorcerer's 

 hut have the same threatening signification (BrB, 154). In describ- 

 ing two such Kanaimas, Dance says that their emaciated bodies 

 were painted in hues: they were tigers or [boa]-constrictors (Da, 276). 

 Schomburgk tallis of the avenger being painted in a pecuUar manner, 

 and clothed with an animal skin (ScR, i, 324). 



336. The longed-for opportunity arrives at last ; the Kanaima finds 

 his victim alone, and slays him by poison, the arrow, or the club. 

 Among the Akawaios especially, but also among the Makusis, Wapi- 

 sianas, and Arekunas, a frightful poison Imown as wassi is brought into 

 requisition. This is extracted from the bulb or tuber of a plant which 

 the Indians refused to show liim, says Schomburgk, in spite of entreaty 

 and rich reward, on the score that if the Paranaghieris [Europeans] 

 knew it, they would immediately discover its antidote. They cut the 

 bulb into thin shavings, dry in the sun, and then crush to the finest 

 powder, which has quite the appearance of arsenic. Should the alleged 

 delinquent be caught asleep, some of this powder is strewn upon his 

 Hps or under his nose, so that it is inhaled. A sharp burning sensa- 

 tion in the bowels, a raging fever, and a tantahzmg thirst, with no 

 means of obtaining reUef , are the symptoms of the poison, and convince 

 the victim that his days, even his hours, are numbered. Within four 

 weeks he becomes reduced to a skeleton and dies m fearful torment. 

 (ScR, I, 323.) Thus, among the Makusis at Mora on the Rupu- 

 nuni River, was met an unfortunate woman whose attenuated body 

 was a most shockmg sight: she was a living skeleton, being nothing 

 but skin and bones, with the exception of the face, which was not 

 reduced in proportion with that of the rest of the body: they told me, 

 says BrowTi, that this woman had come to them from the Ireng River 

 district, where she had been poisoned by Kanaimas, and that this 

 accounted for her wasted condition (Bro, 258). Another account 

 I am able to quote, from the Mazaruni River, where a white powder 

 is employed by inunction. It appeared that the murdered man had 

 been induced to join a fishmg party, and then had been set upon by 

 a number of men, who had forced his Umbs out of joint, rubbed his 

 body over with a white powder made from a species of wild tan- 

 nier, and then pulled them mto their sockets again: he managed to 

 reach home with great difficulty and take to his hammock, where 

 .he was seized with vomiting and died in a few hours (Bro, 55). 



