Mapuche (Araucania)

(map)

Molina, the source for this story, further related that the Indians of Araucania, whenever a violent earthquake occurs, flee for safety to mountains, fearing that the sea will again deluge the world. In addition to provisions, the people take wooden plates to prevent their heads from being scorched should the mountain be elevated to the sun. When told that earthen plates would be more suitable, as wood might burn, their usual reply was that their ancestors had always done thus before them.

From a great deluge, only a few people were saved, who took refuge upon a high three-pointed mountain called Thegtheg, the thundering, or the sparkling, which had the property of floating upon the water.

J. Ignatius Molina, The Geographical, Natural and Civil History of Chili (Middletown, CN: I. Riley, 1808), 2: 82-83 (chap. 5); see also Frazer, 1919, 262; Vitaliano, 1973, 173.