Yucatan Maya (Yucatec)

(map)

This version was collected in Dzitas, Yucatan in 1933.

Once there were people called puzob, or dwarfs. Hearing there was going to be a terrible flood, they put stones in a tank of water and sat on them. A terrible storm came; it rained for a week and covered all the earth, and the dwarfs were all killed. Then Jesu Cristo sent his blessing, and the rain stopped.

Jesu Cristo sent down four angels to see what was happening on earth. They saw that the land was still largely covered with water, so they removed their clothes and bathed, whereupon they became doves. When they did not return, Jesu Cristo sent other angels. They found many dead people, and they took some mouthfuls of them. When they returned, Jesu Cristo cursed them and turned them into buzzards.

Margaret Park Redfield, "The Folk Literature of a Yucatecan Town," Contributions to American Archaeology vol. 3, no. 13 (Carnegie Institution of Washington publication no. 456, 1937; reprint, New York: Johnson Reprint Corp., 1970), 24-25; see also Horcasitas, 1953, 194.

In the first period of the world lived the Saiyamkoob, "the Adjusters," a dwarf race which built cities now in ruins. They worked in darkness, as the sun had not yet appeared. When it did, they turned to stone, and their images can be found in the ruins. Food for the workers was lowered by rope from the sky, but the rope was cut, the blood ran out of it, and the earth and sky separated. This period ended with water over the earth. The Tsolob, "the Offenders," lived in the second period. These, too were destroyed by a flood. The Maya reigned during the third period, but their period was also ended by flood. The fourth and present age is peopled by a mixture of all previous races.

Alexander, Hartley Burr, Latin-America, Gray, 1920, v. XI, 153.

After people were created, the sky fell upon the earth, and the waters followed them. The world was destroyed. The four Bacab gods managed to escape and now hold up the four corners of the sky.

Horcasitas, 1953, 191.

Two floods had destroyed humanity. Three people escaped a third and final flood in a canoe.

Horcasitas, 1953, 191.