e as the _kenaima_, 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 Schomburgk describes a striking instance of
this. A Macusi boy 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."[14] For these Indians believe that each individual man has a
body and a spirit within it, and that sorcerers can despatch their
spirits out of their bodies to harm people at a distance. It is not
always in an invisible form that these spirits of sorcerers are supposed
to roam on their errands of mischief. The wizard can put his spirit into
the shape of an animal, such as a jaguar, a serpent, a sting-ray, a
bird, an insect, or anything else he pleases. Hence when an Indian is
attacked by a wild beast, he thinks that his real foe is not the animal,
but the sorcerer who has transformed himself into it. Curiously enough
they look upon some small harmless birds in the same light. One little
bird, in particular, which flits across the savannahs with a peculiar
shrill whistle at morning and evening, is regarded by the Indians with
especial fear as a transformed sorcerer. They think that for every one
of these birds that they shoot they have an enemy the less, and they
burn its little body, taking great care that not even a single feather
escapes to be blown about by the wind. On a windy day a dozen men and
women have been seen chasing the floating feathers of these birds about
the savannah in order utterly to extinguis