Chayahuita (Kanpopiyapi)

(map)

Barbasco is a plant (here, the root of Lonchocarpus nicou) used to catch fish by poisoning them.

Some people went fishing with plenty of barbasco. Konpanama also went fishing, but he took only one root of barbasco. As he sat preparing it, a young man approached him, accused him of interfering with the others, and pushed him in the river. After another boy came and pulled him out, Konpanama said, "So, these boys abuse me while I am teaching them how to fish. When you use too much barbasco, the fish will not die. You need to use one root of barbasco and no more."

Because of this incident, Konpanama put an evil spell on the people and made it rain for forty days, which flooded the world. At the same time, the world was darkened. Two brother had climbed a sapota tree to hunt birds with blowguns, and Konpanama saved only them. As the flood rose, the tree grew to stay above it. A hill also grew to stay above the water. Everything else was covered.

All kinds of birds gathered in the tree. There were monkeys and other animals of the forest there, too.

The men lived eating the sapota fruits as they ripened. One of the men threw down a fruit, and it splashed in water. Later, he tried again, and then again later. The third time he threw down the fruit, it thudded on the ground. Dawn came, and the birds started singing. The men were glad and climbed down from the tree. But they were alone.

Then God sent two female parrots to serve them. When the men went to the forest to hunt, the parrots sat where the men slept and began to spin cotton. When the men returned, they flew away. Whenever the men returned from the woods, they found more and more cotton spun, and they wondered greatly who could be doing it.

One day, when the brothers went away to fish, one of them turned back halfway, thinking to discover who was spinning the cotton. He climbed into an attic of the house and hid. After a while, he saw to parrots come; one sat on a branch of an achiote tree, and the other in a guaba tree. One of them said, "Is there anyone in the house?"

"No, nobody. The house is silent."

Then the parrots flew down, turning into women when they landed. They entered the house and began spinning.

The man who was hidden presented himself and said, "Who are you?" Immediately the women turned back into parrots and flew away, leaving him sad and alone.

When his brother returned that evening, he asked, "Why did you return early?"

"I returned because I wanted to," the other answered.

Later, though, he told what had happened. "The cotten was spun by two parrots who turned into women. When I showed myself, they turned into parrots again and flew away."

"Why did you do that? Now we will not have women."

On the following day, they heard a noise coming from a clay pot. "What is making that noise?" they said, "You go see."

The brother who had made the parrots flee went and opened the pot. At that moment a piece of clay fell on his testicles and stuck. Before he could pull it off, his testicles had turned into a vagina. He had turned into a woman.

"Now that you have changed into a woman, what are we going to do?" the other brother asked.

"This is the way we will live." And so they did.

On one of their trips they met God, who said to them, "Listen to what I have to say. I sent you two female parrots so that they could have children with you to multiply across the world. But you did wrong, and the parrots left you. Your brother has turned into a woman. Have sex with her, but not in the days of her menstruation."

Thus God said to them, and they obeyed. But one day the man met the white monkey, who asked him, "Have you had sex with this woman?"

"No, God has prohibited it."

"You will not be able to have children this way. I had better teach you." And the monkey seized the woman and had sex with her. Then he said to the man, "You do it too, and you will see." The man did as the monkey taught.

Later he met God, who said to him, "Why did you believe the monkey and have sex then? From now on people will multiply with suffering. I wanted people to live without sin, but the monkey has cheated you." And saying that, God went away.

Nancy Ochoa Siguas, "El mito del diluvio y la creación de la división sexual entre los Kanpopiyapi de la Amazonía peruana," Journal de la Société des Américanistes 78(2) (1992): 170-180.