Totonac

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A man, warned by God, survived the flood in a tree he had hollowed out. After the deluge, he was hungry and built a fire. God smelled the smoke and sent buzzard down to investigate, but buzzard stayed to eat the dead animals, and God condemned him to eat only rotten flesh thereafter. God told Saint Michael the Archangel to go down, and Saint Michael reversed the man's face and hind parts and turned him into a monkey.

Horcasitas, 1953, 197.

A flood destroyed mankind. The children became flowers when they jumped up to where the star is. A man was sent a large dog. He went every day to clear the fields and found, on returning home, that food had been prepared for him. He resolved to discover the cook. [The story fragment ends there, but see below, and see related myth of Huichol.]

Horcasitas, 1953, 205.

God told a man to make an ark. After the deluge had subsided, the man sent forth a dove, which came back. Later, he sent it out again; it returned with muddy feet, and the man left the ark. He happened upon a house and decided to live there. Ants brought him corn. When he returned every day, he found food prepared for him. He watched his dog and one day found her, skinless, preparing corn. He threw her skin in the fire, and she began to weep. The couple lived together and had a baby. One day, the man told his wife to make tamales out of the "tender one," and the wife, misunderstanding, cooked their child. When the man found out, he scolded his wife and ate the tamales anyway.

Horcasitas, 1953, 205-206.

The Totonac god of thunder and water, Aktsini', has been linked with Saint Jean-Baptiste. He is commonly known as San Juan and is depicted with the personality of a lazy drunkard. This tale tells of a flood avoided.

One of the peaks around Chicontepec was once a tall column rising to heaven. Snakes would regularly descend from there and eat small children. The people implored the Thunders to help, but they replied, "We do not have the strength to break the peak, but Juan does."

This Juan, San Juan, was a big drinker. People avoided him because he often laughed and shouted so loudly that those nearby became deaf or died. But they needed the peak broken, so they sent for him.

"You want me to break the peak?" Juan said. "Impossible."

"If you can, we will give you a big bottle of refino."

"Okay, then." He drank the refino, and when drunk rushed at the peak, threw himself at it, and toppled it. But the people arranged to enclose the peak in clouds, and they told him that the peak was still standing, that he would have to try again.

He rushed at the peak again, but as there was nothing to stop him, his momentum carried him to fall in the middle of the sea, face down. People raced to nail down his hands and feet so he could no longer move, keeping them safe from his shouting.

It is Juan whom we hear roaring when the rains come in June. He wants to be invited to the Feast of St. John. But the people know that if they say, "Today is your birthday," it will rain to cause a large deluge. They always tell him, "No, it is not yet. We'll let you know when the day comes," and they show him that the Mexican avocados have not yet ripened, but instead of avocados, they show him small fruits of laurel.

Two or three weeks after the Feast of St. John, they tell him that the time of his Feast has passed. Then Juan makes just a small party, bringing rain and swelling the rivers.

Alain Ichon, La Religion des Totonaques de la Sierra, Éditions de Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique 15 (Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1969), 112-114.