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CHAPTER XVI.

KENAIMAS AND PEAIMEN.

Relation of Kenaimas and Peaimen-The Kenaima-The Vendetta System -Real and Imaginary Powers of Kenaimas-The Kenaima's Method of Work-The Peaiman-His Education and Powers-His Method of Cure-Wide Extension of the Peai System.

KENAIMAS and peaimen,' the most marked and influential characters in everyday Indian life, stand to each other in the relation of evil and its cure. From the kenaimas come nearly all injuries; and these the peaiman cures. It is only by studying them in this inter-relation that the enormous power exercised by these two characters can be understood. Very nearly all bodily evil that befals an Indian is, he thinks, the work of a kenaima, known or unknown; and his only hope of guarding against such evil, or of curing such as has come upon him, is by the help of the peaiman. The latter is therefore the doctor of Indian societies. But he is more than this, for as evil of all sorts is believed to be the work of beings, men or other, with the power of working evil either with their bodies or with their spirits, and as the peaiman has therefore to contend with foes not merely physical but half-physical half-spiritual, he is not simply the doctor, but also, in some sense, the priest or magician.

It will be convenient to notice the kenaima first. In a future chapter, in describing that which is as religion to the

1 As regards these two names, the word kenaima is a genuine Indian word of the Carib languages, and possibly (for such words generally have a wide extension) of other languages; the word peaiman, on the other hand, is an Anglicised form of the genuine Indian words puyai or peartzantwo different forms of the same word belonging to different dialects of the Carib language, and occurring in several other, but by no means in all, languages of South America.

NATURE OF THE KENAIMA.

329 Indians, I shall have to enter somewhat in detail into the nature of the conception formed by these people of the whole spirit world; but it is absolutely necessary here to premise that all tangible objects, animate (including man) and inanimate alike, consist each of two separable parts-a body and a spirit; and that these are not only always readily separable involuntarily, as in death, and daily in sleep, but are also, in certain individuals, always voluntarily separable. A kenaima is one who uses this last-mentioned power for the purpose of inflicting vengeance. He is a man who, having devoted himself to slaying some other man, has this power of separating his spiritual from his bodily substance. He is, as has been said, the real or supposed cause of almost every evil, and especially of every death. Other sources of evil believed in by the Indians are certain beings, such as rocks, stones, and tree-trunks, and monstrous crabs, eagles, jaguars, or other animals, also and alike consisting of body and spirit; but these will be more properly described as part of the whole system of religion, or rather animism, of the Indians.

Travellers are apt to suppose that the motive of the kenaima is merely that of an ordinary murderer. But though there are probably murderers of this sort, for Indians, gentle as they are, do sometimes commit murder-that is, homicide prompted by a personal feeling of anger-yet such cases are probably far from common. Such murderers, however, also pass as kenaimas; but they are not so in any strict sense. It is necessary, therefore, to distinguish the true nature of kenaimas, and to add to this some knowledge of the belief in their uncanny powers.

In the first place, as probably the original conception, must be noticed the kenaima as the slayer-he must not be called a murderer-who is bound to slay by a fixed and, in a certain stage of society, undoubtedly salutary custom. Indians have a high sense of the imperative duty of retaliation; and this fully suffices to keep crime in check amongst them. He against whose nearest relative a wrong has been done, either intentionally or unintentionally, by any other

Indian, devotes himself to follow and kill the wrong-doer, or, if he cannot be found, some one of his relatives. Richard Schomburgk mentions a striking case in which a Warrau boy of twelve years old took upon himself, and boldly executed, the duties of a kenaima, as a matter of course and with the full approval of his tribe. In all primitive societies where there are no written laws and no supreme authority to enforce justice, such vengeance has been held as a sacred duty; for, in the absence of laws enforced by society, the fear of this vengeance to be inflicted by the injured individual, or by those nearest of kin to him, alone deters individuals from crime. Outside America, at various times in the history of the world, a custom in every way similar to this Indian kenaima system has prevailed. The best known instances are the vendetta, the Israelitish law of retaliation which gave rise to the cities of refuge,' and the Saxon system which resulted in the law of blood-money or were-gild, which was money paid to buy off just vengeance. This custom of recognised retaliation yet exists among the Indian tribes of Guiana, and must continue to exist until some system for the administration of justice is established in the districts inhabited by them. The kenaima, in the original and true sense of the word, is one who is thus compelled to retaliate.

Kenaimas of this kind are realities. But beside these there are other kenaimas, the imaginary nature of which we can recognise, but who to the fanciful Indian are equally real. Every death, every illness, is regarded not as the result of natural law, but as the work of a kenaima. Often indeed the survivors or the relatives of the invalid do not know to whom to attribute the deed, which therefore perforce remains unpunished; but often, again, there is real or fancied reason to fix on some one as the kenaiina, and then the nearest relative of the injured individual devotes himself to retaliate. Strange ceremonies are sometimes observed in order to discover the secret kenaima. Richard Schomburgk2 describes a striking instance of this. A Macusi boy 1 Reisen in Britisch Guiana, vol. i. p. 158. 2 Ibid. p. 325.

KENAIMAS AT WORK.

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had died a natural death, and his relatives endeavoured to discover the quarter to which the kenaima who was supposed to have slain him belonged. Raising a terrible and monotonous dirge, they carried the body to an open piece of ground, and there formed a circle round it, while the father, cutting from the corpse both the thumbs and little fingers, both the great and the little toes, and a piece of each heel, threw these pieces into a new pot, which had been filled with water. A fire was kindled, and on this the pot was placed. When the water began to boil, according to the side on which one of the pieces was first thrown out from the pot by the bubbling of the water, in that direction would the kenaima be. In thus looking round to see who did the deed, the Indian thinks it by no means necessary to fix on anyone who has been with or near the injured man. The kenaima is supposed to have done the deed, not necessarily in person, but probably in spirit.

As regards the kenaima's method of doing his work, there is a way in which the real kenaima really does his, and other ways in which the imaginary kenaima is supposed to do his.

The real kenaima, wherever his intended victim goes, follows until he finds an opportunity of killing him, either with the club of hardwood which he carries, or with an arrow, or, more frequently, as the Indians say, by poison, which he finds an opportunity of administering, and which slowly destroys his victim. An Indian, if he thinks that he is being followed by a kenaima, tries never for a moment to be without friendly companions; but if ever-probably on some occasion when with others he is on his way home from making a field or from hunting-he lingers for a minute or two behind the others, and some thicket or a turn in the path hides him from their view, or if he is caught asleep by his enemy, in that minute he is lost. The kenaima who, though hardly ever seen, has followed him like a shadow for days, or weeks, or even months, strikes him down. According to the Indians, the kenaima, after he has struck down his victim, sometimes binds him while yet alive and rubs a burning

and deadly poison into his flesh, or hopelessly dislocates his limbs; and in this state, alive, though with the certainty of speedy death, the poor wretch is found by his companions, if they return to look for him. This latter part of the process is really probably seldom, if ever, practised; but it is at least certain that Indians have a considerable knowledge of the use of vegetable poisons.

The method of the imaginary kenaima differs in that he works invisibly. It will presently be shown that Indians believe that each individual man has a body and a spirit within that body; and they think that kenaimas use their power of separating spirits and bodies and of sending these spirits to obey their orders, to whatever place they please, and of directing the actions of these spirits. It is, therefore, in the imaginary cases, not the kenaima in the body, but his spirit, which kills or injures.

The belief is probably partly based on the fact that the commonest forms of death among Indians are consumption, dysentery, and a horrible disease known as 'buck-sickness,' all of which diseases kill their victims by a slow, wasting process, not unlike the effects of poison; and poison is supposed to be in an especial degree a weapon of the kenaima. Whenever, therefore, an Indian dies in such illness, it is said that the spirit of the kenaima came and administered poison.

Nor is it only in his own proper body or as an invisible spirit that the kenaima is supposed to be able to approach his unsuspecting victim. He has the power of putting his spirit into the body of any animal he pleases—a jaguar, a serpent, a sting-ray, a bird, an insect, or anything else. It is not to be wondered at that an Indian, when attacked by a beast of prey, by a serpent, or other harmful animal, should regard it as a kenaima. But it is more remarkable that he regards certain small harmless birds in the same light. One small bird which in the early morning and in the evening flits, with a peculiar and shrill whistle, over the savannahs and sometimes approaches the Indian settlements, is looked upon with especial distrust. with especial distrust. When one of these is