[Note: The naae—soul—was, according to the Tukuna shaman Calixto, “what we think” (or thought). This type of soul is given the fetus while it is still within the womb; if Ta-e is careless, the child is born spiritually defective. Dreams are adventures of the soul, and in them the soul of a wicked sorcerer may commit his crimes in far-off places. The soul, not the body, is responsible for our acts. Its abandonment of the body causes death, after which the soul normally returns to heaven. Theoretically quite different from naae is a man’s second soul, the nachii, although the Indians do not always distinguish the two clearly. The nachii is the shade of the dead. It “is of no importance,” the Tukuna said; it remains on earth near the place where the individual died. At abandoned house sites the nachii congregate, preferably assuming the forms of nocturnal swallows, bacurhos (Caprimulgus sp.), but also sometimes those of toads or other creatures. Most of the time, however, a man’s nachii appears in the exact form he had in life, only betraying its nature by certain whimsical habits. The nachii are moderately dangerous, owing to their mania for sucking the blood, flesh, and bones out of living people so as to leave only the empty skin. In the Tukuna idiom this was called “to put the genipapo on someone,” because of the black color of the marks left by the sucking.]
An Indian named Due went out to hunt deep in the jungle; he saw that he was near a house he recognized, in which he thought to spend the night. Dusk was falling when he reached it and found it deserted. The ground inside the house was already covered with mould. The inhabitants had gone fishing on Lake Curana where the Omagua attacked them, killing everyone. Due climbed up under the roof of the house to spend the night there, but just as it turned completely dark be heard on the path the cries of many swallows, which began to talk among themselves in the human language. They were the shades of the murdered people of the house, which had returned home. “Daughter,” he heard a woman say, “go up to the loft and fetch a little maize so that we may prepare mingau.” Soon the girl, in the form of a swallow, came up by the notched-log ladder to the platform where Due lay prone. He seized her and commenced to tear out her feathers.
“Come quickly, my daughter!” said the mother. “I cannot,” answered the girl swallow. “This man here is plucking out my feathers!” Then Due threw her down from the platform to the floor, where she died; then he pulled the ladder up beside him. The shades gathered round the dead swallow. “We shall put the genipapo marks on this fellow!” they cried. They searched all around the house for all the lumps of clay and piled them on top of each other in front of the loft, so that they could mount the pile, but when it was almost high enough, Due knocked it down with his blowgun. “A snake! a snake!” shrieked the nachii, scattering, full of fear. Then they tried to make a new pile, but Due knocked it down again with his blowgun. Thus they tried all night. When day was dawning, Due took his blowgun and quiver and started to climb down from the loft. The shades, taking the blowgun for a snake and the quiver for a hornets’ nest fled, terrified, in the form of newts, opossums, and toads.