Latin American Folktales (34 page)

106. The Dead Wife

A Mískito named Nakili had lost his wife, whom he loved very much. He went to her grave, and there, suddenly, he found himself in the presence of her
isiñni
[disembodied soul]. The soul, which was only about two feet high, announced that she was now starting on her journey to Mother Scorpion [the spirit of the hereafter].

The man wanted to go with her, but she told him that such a thing was out of the question, because he was still alive. But he insisted and would not be persuaded to stay behind. So they started out together, and as she led the way, she turned off onto a very narrow trail that he had never seen before.

They arrived at a place where there were many moths flying about. She was afraid of them and did not dare to proceed. But he chased them off, and they continued on their way.

After a while the trail led between two low pine trees, so close together that the wife could barely pass. The husband, being his normal size, was unable to squeeze through. Instead, he walked around the two pine trees.

Continuing on, they came to a gorge spanned by a bridge the width of a human hair. Below was a huge pot of boiling water attended by
sikla
birds. The wife, small and light as she was, was able to walk over this narrow bridge. But Nakili did not find the distance across very great, and so he jumped it.

Then they arrived at a very large river, where there was a canoe paddled by a dog. This river was swarming with
bilim
[a tiny fish], which the soul thought were sharks. On the opposite shore they could see the country of Mother Scorpion, and everyone there appeared to be happy.

When the souls of those who had not led a righteous life tried to cross the river, the canoe would overturn, and the souls would be eaten by the
bilim.
The wife was ferried across safely by the dog, while the husband managed to swim alongside.

On the far shore they were received by Mother Scorpion, a very tall, stout woman with many breasts, to whom the inhabitants of the place came occasionally to suck like babies. She appeared to be angry at Nakili for having come, and she ordered him to go back to earth. He begged her to let him stay, because he loved his wife very much and did not wish to be separated from her. She agreed finally that he could remain.

In this country no one had to work. There was plenty of excellent food and drink and no lack of amusements. But after staying for some time, Nakili longed to go back to earth in order to see his children again. Mother Scorpion allowed him to leave on condition that he would not return to the hereafter until he died. Then she put him in a huge bamboo rod, which she placed on the river. After a while he noticed high waves and realized that he was on the ocean, and finally a gigantic breaker threw him ashore, just in front of his own hut.

Mískito
(Nicaragua)

107. Romi Kumu Makes the World

In the beginning the world was made entirely of rock and there was no life. Romi Kumu [Woman Shaman] took some clay and made a cassava griddle. She made three pot-supports and rested the griddle upon them. The supports were mountains holding up the griddle, the sky. She lived on top of the griddle.

She lit a fire under the griddle. The heat from the fire was so intense that the supports cracked and the griddle fell down on the earth below, displacing it downward so that it became the underworld; the griddle became this earth. She then made another griddle which is the layer above this earth, the sky.

She made a door in the edge of the earth, the Water Door, in the east. There was lots of water outside, and when she opened the door the waters came in and flooded the earth.

The waters rose inside the house. All the possessions in the house became alive. The manioc-beer trough and the long tube for sieving coca became anacondas; the post on which resin is put to light the house became a cayman and the potsherds and other flat objects became piranha fish. These animals began to eat the people.

The people made canoes to escape the flood but only those in a canoe made from the
kahu
tree survived. Everyone else and all the animals were drowned.

The survivors landed on top of the mountain called Ruriho near the Pirá-paraná. There they began to eat each other as there was no food, and the animals that survived ate each other too.

Then the rains and floods stopped and it was summer. The sun stayed high in the sky, and it became hotter and hotter and drier and drier. This went on till the earth itself caught fire. The earth burned furiously and everything was consumed. The fire was so hot that the supports of the layer above cracked, and it came crashing down.

Barasana
(Colombia)

108. She Was Thought and Memory

The sea existed first. Everything was dark. There was no sun, no moon. There were no people, no animals, no plants, only the sea, everywhere. The sea was the Mother. She was water, water everywhere. She was river, lake, stream, and sea, existing in all places. And so, in the beginning there was only the Mother. She was called Gaulchováng.

The Mother was not a person, not anything, nothing at all. She was
alúna
[soul, life, or desire]. She was the spirit of what would come, and she was thought and memory. The Mother existed only as
alúna
in the lowest world, the lowest depth, alone.

When the Mother existed in this manner, the earths, the worlds, were formed above her, up to where our world exists today.

Kogi
(Colombia)

109. Was It Not an Illusion?

Was it not an illusion?

The Father touched an illusory image. He touched a mystery. Nothing was there. The Father, Who-Has-an-Illusion, seized it and, dreaming, began to think.

Had he no staff? Then with a dream-thread he held the illusion. Breathing, he held it, the void, the illusion, and felt for its earth. There was nothing to feel: “I shall gather the void.” He felt, but there was nothing.

Now the Father thought the word. “Earth.” He felt of the void, the illusion, and took it into his hands. The Father then gathered the void with dream-thread and pressed it together with gum. With the dream-gum
iseike
he held it fast.

He seized the illusion, the illusory earth, and he trampled and trampled it, seizing it, flattening it. Then as he seized it and held it, he stood himself on it, on this that he’d dreamed, on this that he’d flattened.

As he held the illusion, he salivated, salivated, and salivated, and the water flowed from his mouth. Upon this, the illusion, this, as he held it, he settled the sky roof. This, the illusion, he seized, entirely, and peeled off the blue sky, the white sky.

Now in the underworld, thinking and thinking, the maker of myths permitted this story to come into being. This is the story we brought with us when we emerged.

Witoto
(Colombia)
/
Rosendo
(no
surname)

110. The Beginning Life of the Hummingbird

Our First Father, the absolute, grew from within the original darkness.

The sacred soles of his feet and his small round standing-place, these he created as he grew from within the original darkness.

The reflection of his sacred thoughts, his all-hearing, the sacred palm of his hand with its staff of authority, the sacred palms of his branched hands tipped with flowers, these were created by Ñamanduí as he grew from within the original darkness.

Upon his sacred high head with its headdress of feathers were flowers like drops of dew. Among the flowers of the sacred headdress hovered the first bird, the Hummingbird.

As he grew, creating his sacred body, our First Father lived in the primal winds. Before he had thought of his future earth-dwelling, before he had thought of his future sky—his future world as it came to be in the beginning—Hummingbird came and refreshed his mouth. It was Hummingbird who nourished Ñamanduí with the fruits of paradise.

As he was growing, before he had created his future paradise, he himself, Our Ñamandu Father, the First Being, did not see darkness, though the sun did not yet exist. He was lit by the reflection of his own inner self. The thoughts within his sacred being, these were his sun.

The true Ñamandu Father, the First Being, lived in the primal winds. He brought the screech owl to rest and made darkness. He made the cradle of darkness.

As he grew, the true Ñamandu Father, the First Being, created his future paradise. He created the earth. But at first he lived in the primal winds. The primal wind in which our Father lived returns with the yearly return of the primal time-space, with the yearly recurrence of the time-space that was. As soon as the season that was has ended, the trumpet-vine tree bears flowers. The winds move on to the following time-space. New winds and a new space in time come into being. Comes the resurrection of space and time.

Mbyá
Guaraní
(Paraguay)

111. Ibis Story

Once in the old days, as spring was drawing near, a man looked out of his lodge and saw an ibis flying overhead. Joyously he cried out to the other lodges, “An ibis has just flown over my lodge. Come see!” The people heard him and came rushing out, crying, “Spring has returned! The ibises are flying!” They leaped for joy and talked loudly.

But the ibis is a delicate and sensitive woman. She must be treated with respect. When she heard the commotion made by those men, women, and children, shouting on and on so raucously, she became angry. Deeply offended, she called forth a thick snowstorm with bitter frost and much ice. Snow fell and kept falling for whole months. Snow fell incessantly, the entire earth was covered with ice, and it was agonizingly cold. The water froze in all the waterways. Many, many people died. They couldn’t board their canoes or travel to get food. They couldn’t even leave their dwelling places to gather firewood. Heavy snow lay everywhere. More and more people died.

After a long time the snow stopped falling. Soon the sun came out and shone so brightly that all the ice and snow melted. The earth had been covered with it, even up over the mountaintops. But now there was much water flowing into the channels and into the open sea. The sun grew so hot that the mountaintops were scorched—and remain bare to this day. The ice in both the broad and the narrow waterways melted. Then at last the people could get down to the beach and board their canoes and go find food. But on the high mountain slopes and in the deep valleys the ice held fast—and still does. The sun was not hot enough to melt it. It can yet be seen, extending even out into the sea, so thick was the ice sheet that once lay over the earth. The bitterest of frosts and a dreadful snowfall: all of it was brought about by the ibis. Indeed, she is a delicate and sensitive woman.

Since then the Yamana have treated the ibis with great reverence. When she approaches their lodges, the people keep still. They make no noise. They hush up the little children to keep them from shouting.

Yamana
(Chile)

112. The Condor Seeks a Wife

A condor fell in love with a young woman tending her flock of sheep. He changed himself into a young man and came and stood beside her where her flock was grazing.

“What do you do here?” he asked.

“I graze my flock,” she answered, “and with my slingshot I chase away the fox who comes to eat my lambs and the condor who tries to catch me in his talons.”

“Would you like me to stay with you and help you chase the fox and scare away the condor?”

“Oh no,” she replied, “for then I would lose my freedom. I love my sheep and I love to be free. I do not wish to marry.”

“Then I will go. But you have not seen the last of me.”

The next day the condor returned, again disguised as a young man. “We can talk, can’t we?” he asked.

“Yes, we can talk,” she said. “Tell me, where do you come from?”

“I come from the high mountaintops, close to the thunder. I see the first light of dawn and the last light of evening. Won’t you go there with me?”

“No, I do not care for your mountaintops. I prefer my pasture and my sheep. And I love my mother. She would cry for me if I were gone.”

“I will say no more,” he said. “But do me a favor. I have a burning itch behind my shoulder. Lend me the long pin from your shawl so I can scratch it.” She lent him the pin, and when he had finished using it he went away.

The next day he returned. “You have bewitched me,” he said. “I cannot live without you. Come away with me now.”

“No, I must not. My sheep would miss me. My mother would cry.”

“Ah,” he said suddenly, “I have the same burning itch behind my shoulder. If only you would rub it for me with your smooth fingers, you would cure me forever.”

As he bent over, she climbed onto his back, and the moment he felt her resting on his shoulders he became a condor and flew into the sky. After a long voyage they reached a cave near the summit of a mountain. In the cave lived the condor’s mother, an ancient lady with faded plumage. And in other caves on the same peak were other condors. A great multitude.

The condors greeted the young woman’s arrival with shouts of joy and noisy flappings of their wings. The old mother was delighted to see her son’s bride and anxiously cradled her in her huge wings, for she was shivering in the cold air.

At first the girl was happy with her young condor. He was affectionate. But he brought her nothing to eat.

Finally she said to him, “Your tender caresses make my heart happy. But I am growing weak with hunger. Don’t forget that I must eat and drink. I need fire. I need meat. I need the good things that grow in the earth.”

The condor took flight. Discovering an untended kitchen, he stole some hot coals from the hearth and carried them home. With his beak he opened a spring in the mountainside and brought back water. From the fields and pathways far below he collected bits of flesh from dead animals. He dug up gardens and brought home potatoes.

The meat was foul-smelling. The potatoes had gone soft. Nevertheless, the young woman was overcome with hunger and devoured this unpleasant food. She wished for bread, but the condor was unable to provide it.

After a while she began to feel homesick. She wearied of the bad food and the constant embraces of the amorous condor. She began to be thin and her body grew feathers. She laid eggs. She hatched her chicks.

Meanwhile the young woman’s mother was weeping in her empty house. Pitying her, a parrot who lived in the neighborhood came and spoke to her, “Do not weep, dear woman. Your daughter is alive in the high mountains. She is the wife of the great condor. But if you will give me the corn in your garden and enough room in your trees to perch and nest, I will bring her back to you.”

The mother accepted this offer. She gave the parrot her corn patch and room to nest in her trees.

The parrot flew to the mountaintop. He chose a moment when the condors were off guard and picked up the young woman and carried her back to her mother’s side. She was thin and ill-smelling from the poor food she had eaten. The glossy feathers that hung about her gave her the appearance of an outcast human dressed up like a bird. But her mother received her gladly. She washed her body with the tears from her eyes. She dressed her in the finest clothes she had. Then she held her in her lap and gazed at her with complete satisfaction.

Angry over the loss he had suffered, the condor set out in search of the parrot. He found him in the garden, stuffed with corn, flitting from tree to tree.

He swooped down on the parrot and devoured him whole. But the parrot went straight through the condor’s body and came out the other end. The condor swallowed him again, and again he came out. Furious, the condor seized the parrot, tore him to pieces with his talons, and swallowed him piece by piece. But for each piece he swallowed, a little parrot came out the other end. And this, they say, is the origin of the parrots we know today.

Quechua
(Bolivia)