Chapter IX: The Tropical Forests: the Amazon and Brazil (2)

This Song of the Turtle, of the Paumari tribes, says Steere,[195] reflects their own aimless life, wandering from flat to flat of the ever-shifting river; and it might be taken, too, as the image of the heavenly motions, as these appear to peoples for whom there is no art of counting. Some writers, to be sure, have sought to asterize the greater portion of South American myth, on the general hypothesis that sun-worship dominates the two Americas; but this is fancy, with little warrant in the evidence. Sun, moon, and stars, darkness and day, all find mythic expression; but there is little trace among the wild tribes of anything approaching ritual devoted to these, or of aught save mythopoesy in the thought of them.

The most rudimentary level is doubtless represented by the Botocudo, with whom, says Ehrenreich,[196] _taru_ signifies either sun or moon, but principally the shining vault of heaven, whether illuminated by either of these bodies or by lightning; further, the same word, in suitable phrase, comes to mean both wind and weather, and even night. In contrast with this we have the extraordinary assurance that the highly intelligent Passé tribe believes (presumably by their own induction) that the earth moves and the sun is stationary. The intermediate, and perhaps most truly mythic stage of speculation is represented in the Bakairi tales told by von den Steinen, in which the sun is placed in a pot in the moving heaven; every evening, Evaki, the wife of the bat who is the lord of darkness, claps to the lid, concealing the sun while the heaven returns to its former position. Night and sleep are often personified in South American stones,--as in the tale of the stork who tried to kill sleep,--and here Evaki, the mistress of night, is represented as stealing sleep from the eyes of lizards, and dividing it among all living beings.

A charming allegory of the Amazon and its seasons is recorded by Barboza Rodriguez. Many years ago the Moon would become the bride of the Sun; but when they thought to wed, they found that this would destroy the earth: the burning love of the Sun would consume it, the tears of the Moon would flood it; and fire and water would mutually destroy each other, the one extinguished, the other evaporated. Hence, they separated, going on either side. The Moon wept a day and a night, so that her tears fell to earth and flowed down to the sea. But the sea rose up against them, refusing to mingle the Moon's tears with its waters; and hence it comes that the tears still flow, half a year outward, half a year inward. Myths of the Pleiades are known to the Indians throughout Brazil, who regard the first appearance of this constellation in the firmament as the sign of renewing life, after the dry season,--"Mother of the Thirsty" is one interpretation of its name. One myth tells of an earthly hunter who pierced the sky with arrows and climbed to heaven in quest of his beloved. Being athirst he asked water of the Pleiades. She gave it him, saying: "Now thou hast drunk water, thou shalt see whence I come and whither I go. One month long I disappear and the following month I shine again to the measure of my appointed time. All that beholds me is renewed." Teschauer credits many Brazilian Indians with an extensive knowledge of the stars--their course, ascension, the time of their appearance and disappearance, and the changes of the year that correspond, but this seems somewhat exaggerated in view of the limited amount of the lore cited in its support,--legends of the Pleiades and Canopus already mentioned, and in addition only Orion, Venus, and Sirius. Of course the Milky Way is observed, and as in North America it is regarded as the pathway of souls. So, in the odd Taulipang legend given by Koch-Grünberg, the Moon, banished from its house by a magician, reflects: "Shall I become a tapir, a wild-pig, a beast of the chase, a bird? All these are eaten! I will ascend to the sky! It is better there than here; I will go there, from thence to light my brothers below." So with his two daughters he ascended the skies, and the first daughter he sent to a heaven above the first heaven, and the second to a third heaven; but he himself remained in the first heaven. "I will remain here," he said, "to shine upon my brothers below. But ye shall illuminate the Way for the people who die, that the soul shall not remain in darkness!"

On an analogous theme but in a vein that is indeed grim is the Cherentes star legend reported by de Oliveira.[197] The sun is the supreme object of worship in this tribe, while the moon and the stars, especially the Pleiades, are his cult companions. In the festival of the dead there is a high pole up which the souls of the shamans are supposed to climb to hold intercourse with kinsfolk who are with the heavenly spheres; and it is this pole and the beliefs which attach to it that is, doubtless, the subject of the myth. The tale is of a young man who, as he gazed up at the stars, was attracted by the exceptional beauty of one of them: "What a pity that I cannot shut you up in my gourd to admire you to my heart's content!" he cried; and when sleep came, he dreamed of the star. He awoke suddenly, amazed to find standing beside him a young girl with shining eyes: "I am the bright star you wished to keep in your gourd," she said; and at her insistence he put her into the gourd, whence he could see her beautiful eyes gazing upward. After this the young man had no rest, for he was filled with apprehension because of his supermundane guest; only at night the star would come from her hiding-place and the young man would feast his eyes on her beauty. But one day the star asked the young man to go hunting, and at a palm-tree she required that he climb and gather for her a cluster of fruit; as he did so, she leaped upon the tree and struck it with a wand, and immediately it grew until it touched the sky, whereto she tied it by its thick leaves and they both jumped into the sky-world. The youth found himself in the midst of a desolate field, and the star, commanding him not to stir, went in quest of food. Presently he seemed to hear the sound of festivity, songs and dances, but the star, returning, bade him above all not to go to see the dancing. Nevertheless, when she was gone again, the youth could not repress his curiosity and he went toward the sound.... "What he saw was fearful! It was a new sort of dance of the dead! A crowd of skeletons whirled around, weird and shapeless, their putrid flesh hanging from their bones and their eyes dried up in their sunken orbits. The air was heavy with their foul odour." The young man ran away in horror. On his way he met the star who blamed him for his disobedience and made him take a bath to cleanse him of the pollution. But he could no longer endure the sky-world, but ran to the spot where the leaves were tied to the sky and jumped on to the palm-tree, which immediately began to shrink back toward the earth: "You run away in vain, you shall soon return," the star called after him; and so indeed it was, for he had barely time to tell his kindred of his adventure before he died. And "thus it was known among the Indians that no heaven of delight awaits them above, even though the stars shine and charm us."

The uniting of heaven and earth by a tree or rock which grows from the lower to the upper world is found in many forms, and is usually associated with cosmogonic myths (true creation stories are not common in Brazil). Such a story is the Mundurucu tale, reported by Teschauer,[198] which begins with a chaotic darkness from which came two men, Karusakahiby, and his son, Rairu. Rairu stumbled on a bowl-shaped stone; the father commanded him to carry it; he put it upon his head, and immediately it began to grow. It grew until it formed the heavens, wherein the sun appeared and began to shine. Rairu, recognizing his father as the heaven-maker, knelt before him; but Karu was angry because the son knew more than did he. Rairu was compelled to hide in the earth. The father found him and was about to strike him, but Rairu said: "Strike me not, for in the hollow of the earth I have found people, who will come forth and labour for us." So the First People were allowed to issue forth, and were separated into their tribes and kinds according to colour and beauty. The lazy ones were transformed into birds, bats, pigs, and butterflies. A somewhat similar Kaduveo genesis, narrated by Frič, tells how the various tribes of men were led from the underground world and successively assigned their several possessions; last of all came the Kaduveo, but there were no more possessions to distribute; accordingly to them was assigned the right to war upon the other Indians and to steal their lands, wives, and children.

The Mundurucu genesis opens: "In the beginning the world lay in darkness." In an opposite and indeed very unusual way begins the cosmogonic myth recorded by Couto de Magalhães:[199] "In the beginning there-was no night; the day was unbroken. Night slept at the bottom of the waters. There were no animals, but all things could speak." It is said, proceeds the tale, that at this time the daughter of the Great Serpent married a youth who had three faithful servants. One day he said to these servants: "Begone! My wife desires no longer to lie with me." The servants departed, and the husband called upon his wife to lie with him. She replied: "It is not yet night." He answered: "There is no night; day is without end." She: "My father owns the night. If you wish to lie with me, seek it at the river's source." So he called his three servants, and the wife dispatched them to secure a nut of the tucuma (a palm of bright orange colour, important to the Indians as a food and industrial plant). When they reached the Great Serpent he gave them the nut, tightly sealed: "Take it. Depart. But if you open it, you are lost." They set out in their canoe, but presently heard from within the nut: "_Ten ten ten, ten ten ten_." It was the noise of the insects of the night. "What is this noise? Let us see," said one. The leader answered: "No: we will be lost. Make haste." But the noise continued and finally all drew together in the canoe, and with fire melted the sealing of the fruit. The imprisoned night streamed forth! The leader cried: "We are lost! Our mistress already knows that we have freed the night!" At the same time the mistress, in her house, said to her husband: "They have loosed the night. Let us await the day." Then all things in the forests metamorphosed themselves into animals and birds; all things in the waters became water-fowl and fishes; and even the fisherman in his canoe was transformed into a duck, his head into the duck's head, his paddle into its web feet, his boat into its body. When the daughter of the Great Serpent saw Venus rise, she said: "The dawn is come. I shall divide day from night." Then she unravelled a thread, saying: "Thou shalt be cubuju [a kind of pheasant]; thou shalt sing as dawn breaks." She whitened its head and reddened its feathers, saying: "Thou shalt sing always at dawn of day." Then she unravelled another thread, saying: "Thou shalt be inambu" [a perdrix that sings at certain hours of the night]; and powdering it with cinders: "Thou shalt sing at eve, at midnight, and at early morn." From that time forth the birds sang at the time appropriate to them, in day or night. But when the three servants returned, their mistress said to them: "Ye have been unfaithful. Ye have loosed the night. Ye have caused the loss of all. For this ye shall become monkeys, and swing among the branches for all time."

VI. FIRE, FLOOD, AND TRANSFORMATIONS

Purchas's translation of Cardim begins:[200] "It seemeth that this people had no knowledge of the beginning and creation of the world, but of the deluge it seemeth they have some notice: but as they have no writings nor characters such notice is obscure and confused; for they say that the waters drowned all men, and that one only escaped upon a Janipata with a sister of his that was with child and that from these two they have their beginning and from thence began their multiplying and increase."

This is a fair characterization of the general cosmogonical ideas of the South American wild tribes. There is seldom any notion of creation; there is universally, it would seem, some legend of a cataclysm, or series of them, fire and flood, offering such general analogies to the Noachian story as naturally to suggest to men unacquainted with comparative mythology the inference that the tale of Noah was indeed the source of all. Following the deluge or conflagration there is a series of incidents which might be regarded as dispersal stories,--tales of transformations and migrations by means of which the tribes of animals and men came to assume their present form. Very generally, too, the Transformer-Heroes are the divine pair, sometimes father and son, but commonly twin brothers, who give the animals their lasting forms, instruct men in the arts, and after Herculean labors depart, the one to become lord of the east and the day, the other lord of the west and the night, the one lord of life, the other lord of death and the ghost-world. It is not unnatural to see in this hero pair the sun and the moon, as some authorities do, though it would surely be a mistake to read into the Indian's thought the simple identification which such a statement implies: a tale is first of all a tale, with the primitive man; and if it have an allegorical meaning this is rarely one which his language can express in other terms than the tale itself.

One of the best known of the South American deluge stories is the Caingang legend[201] which the native narrator had heard "from the mother of the mother of his mother, who had heard it in her day from her ancient progenitors." The story is the common one of people fleeing before the flood to a hill and clinging to the branches of a tree while they await the subsidence of the waters,--an incident of a kind which may be common enough in flood seasons, and which might be taken as a mere reflection of ordinary experience but for the fact of the series of transformations which follow the return to dry land; and these include not only the formation of the animal kinds, but the gift of song from a singing gourd and a curious process of divination, taught by the ant-eater, by means of which the sex of children is foretold.

The flood is only one incident in a much more comprehensive cycle of events, assembled variously by various peoples, but having such a family likeness that one may without impropriety regard the group as the tropical American Genesis. Of this cycle the fullest versions are those of the Yuracare, as reported by d'Orbigny, and of the Bakairi, as reported by von den Steinen.[202]

In the Bakairi tale the action begins in the sky-world. A certain hunter encountered Oka, the jaguar, and agreed to make wives for Oka if the latter would spare him. He made two wives out of wood, blowing upon them. One of these wives swallowed two finger-bones, and became with child. Mero, the mother of Oka and of the jaguar kind, slew the woman, but Kuara, the brother of Oka, performed the Caesarian operation and saved the twins, who were within her body. These twins were the heroes, Keri and Kame. To avenge their mother they started a conflagration which destroyed Mero, themselves hiding in a burrow in the earth. Kame came forth too soon and was burned, but Keri blew upon his ashes and restored him to life. Keri in his turn was burned and restored by Kame. First, in their resurrected lives did these two assume human form. Now begins the cycle of their labours. They stole the sun and the moon from the red and the white vultures, and gave order to their way in the heavens, keeping them in pots, coverable, when the light of these bodies should be concealed: sun, moon, and ruddy dawn were all regarded as made of feathers. Next, heaven and earth, which were as yet close together, were separated. Keri said to the heavens: "Thou shalt not remain here. My people are dying. I wish not that my people die." The heavens answered: "I will remain here!" "We shall exchange places," said Keri; whereupon he came to earth and the sky rose to where it now is. The theft of fire from the fox, who kept it in his eye; the stealing of water from the Great Serpent, with the formation of rivers; the swallowing of Kame by a water monster, and his revivescence by Keri; the institution of the arts of house-building, fishery, dancing; and the separation of human kinds;--all these are incidents leading up to the final departure of Keri and Kame, who at the last ascend a hill, and go thence on their separate ways. "Whither are they gone? Who knows? Our ancestors knew not whither they went. Today no one knows where they are."

The Bakairi dwell in the central regions of Brazil; the Yuracare are across the continent, near the base of the Andes. From them d'Orbigny obtained a version of the same cosmogony, but fuller and with more incidents. The world began with sombre forests, inhabited by the Yuracare. Then came Sararuma and burned the whole country. One man only escaped, he having constructed an underground refuge. After the conflagration he was wandering sadly through the ruined world when he met Sararuma. "Although I am the cause of this ill, yet I have pity on you," said the latter, and he gave him a handful of seeds from whose planting sprang, as by magic, a magnificent forest. A wife appeared, as it were _ex nihilo_, and bore sons and a daughter to this man. One day the maiden encountered a beautiful tree with purple flowers, called Ulé. Were it but a man, how she would love it! And she painted and adorned the tree in her devotion, with sighs and hopes,--hopes that were not in vain, for the tree became a beautiful youth. Though at first she had to bind him to keep him from wandering away, the two became happy spouses. But one day Ulé, hunting with his brothers, was slain by a jaguar. His bride, in her grief like Isis, gathered together the morsels of his torn body. Again, her love was rewarded and Ulé was restored to life, but as they journeyed he glanced in a pool, saw a disfigured face, where a bit of flesh had not been recovered, and despite the bride's tears took his departure, telling her not to look behind, no matter what noise she heard. But she was startled into doing this, became lost, and wandered into a jaguar's lair. The mother of the jaguars took pity upon her, but her four sons were for killing her. To test her obedience they commanded her to eat the poisonous ants that infested their bodies; she deceived three of them by substituting seeds for the ants, which she cast to the ground; but the fourth had eyes in the back of his head, detected the ruse and killed her. From her body was torn the child which she was carrying, Tiri, who was raised in secret by the jaguar mother.

When Tiri was grown he one day wounded a paca, which said: "You live in peace with the murderers of your mother, but me, who have done you no harm, you wish to kill." Tiri demanded the meaning of this, and the paca told him the tale. Tiri then lay in wait for the jaguar brothers, slaying the first three with arrows, but the jaguar with eyes in the back of his head, climbed into a tree, calling upon the trees, the sun, stars, and moon to save him. The moon snatched him up, and since that time he can be seen upon her bosom, while all jaguars love the night. Tiri, who was the master of all nature, taught cultivation to his foster-mother, who now had no sons to hunt for her. He longed for a companion, and created Caru, to be his brother, from his own finger-nail; and the two lived in great amity, performing many deeds. Once, invited to a feast, they spilled a vase of liquor which flooded the whole earth and drowned Caru; but when the waters were subsided, Tiri found his brother's bones and revived him. The brothers then married birds, by whom they had children. The son of Caru died and was buried. Tiri then told Caru at the end of a certain time to go seek his son, who would be revived, but to be careful not to eat him. Caru, finding a manioc plant on the grave, ate of it. Immediately a great noise was heard, and Tiri said: "Caru has disobeyed and eaten his son; in punishment he and all men shall be mortal, and subject to all toils and all sufferings."

In following adventures the usual transformations take place, and mankind, in their tribes, are led forth from a great rock, Tiri saying to them: "Ye must divide and people all the earth, and that ye shall do so I create discord and make you enemies of one another." Thus arose the hostility of tribes. Tiri now decided to depart, and he sent birds in the several directions to discover in which the earth extends farthest. Those sent to the east and the north speedily returned, but the bird sent toward the setting sun was gone a long time, and when at last it returned it brought with it beautiful feathers. So Tiri departed into the West, and disappeared.