252 
Death Due to Kanaima. 
disastrous in their effects. It is prepared out of the bulb or tuber of a 
plant which, in spite of my efforts, 1 never got acquainted with, because 
all requests, all promises of a rich reward for a specimen, remained fruit- 
less: the Indians maintained that if they once betrayed the plant to the 
Paranaghieris the latter would immediately find its antidote. They cut 
the tuber into thin slices, dry it in the sun, and then pound it with the 
greatest precautions into the finest powder which has quite the appear- 
ance of arsenic. If revenge drives the Indian to become kanaima, he 
follows the victim like a snake which, continually winding its way 
amongst the leaves never lets him out of sight, ready at any moment to 
make the fatal spring— until he finally succeeds in surprising him asleep. 
He now sprinkles a small quantity of the powder over the sleeper’s lips 
or under his nose so that lie may inhale it. An intense burning in the 
intestines, wasting fever, tantalising thirst that cannot be stilled by any 
means whatever, are symptoms of the poisoning which gives the victim 
the terrible knowledge that his days, yea even his hours, are numbered.* 
Within four weeks the sick man is reduced to a skeleton, and dies in the 
most frightful agony. If the kanaima does not succeed in satisfying his 
revenge in that way he alters his plans, drops all idea of ambush or 
waiting on the chance of catching his victim innocently asleep, and tries 
to gratify the one desire that night and day haunts his soul, by cultivating 
a Pharisaical friendship. But if even by this method, by dissimulation, or 
hypocrisy, 1ns would-be victim’s mistrust and fear of revenge cannot be 
dispelled— then the kanaima suddenly disappears from out of the village 
and no one knows where he is to be found. Without rest, without 
repose, and goaded on by the one burning desire for revenge that ever 
more and more inflames his breast, he strides through the forest up hill 
and down dale, and does not return until he has killed his man or wounded 
him with a poisoned arrow. Often for six months at a time, even longer, 
will he search and watch, and during the whole period avoid every inter- 
course with other Indians: forest trees and mountain hollows are his 
nightly camps, the fruits alone are his food. But from the time that he 
leaves the village he is considered as much an outlaw by the other Indians 
as the victim whom he pursues is to him. While the kanaima thus casts 
aside all the bonds that tie him to his family and tribal relatives, he 
becomes the bugbear, the demon of the neighbourhood, an outcast whose 
life is at any moment forfeit, because from now on it is the duty of every 
Indian to kill him whenever met with in the forest. When following the 
first two methods mentioned of satisfying his revenge, no outward sign 
betrays his inward emotion, his criminal intent, but now this is made 
patent. His body is painted in a peculiar fashion and an animal’s pelt 
is worn. If he finally meets his victim alone and deems himself the 
superior in physical strength, he starts the fight, wounds him with his 
poisoned arrow, and transfixes his tongue with the fangs of the 
most poisonous of snakes. The victim, with his tongue swollen to an 
ungainly mass, is thus entirely robbed of speech for the now measured 

* The description of the symptoms is too vague to permit of accurate identification. Any 
high fever would cause the tantalizing thirst. It would seem probable that the description is 
of Malarial Fever with gastro-intestinal localization. (F.G.R ) 
