Shuar

(map)

Three young men were sent by the old man to hunt. After a day's walk, reaching the foot of a mountain, they made camp. They hunted the next day and brought back many birds, which they smoked on a fire. They hunted again the next day, but when they returned, their previous day's game had disappeared. The third day, they decided that one should stay, while the others hunt, to see what happens. The one who stayed heard a huge hollow tree resound. A snake, the pangui, came out and swallowed all the game. When the others came back, the man told what he had seen. "Well done," said the other two. "Tomorrow we will gather wood to set fire to the tree which holds the pangui, so wee can see what kind of animal we are dealing with."

They spent two days gathering a great deal of wood, which they placed around the base of the tree. On the third day, they set it afire. The pangui fell into the fire and roasted, filling the area with the smell of cooked fish. The one who had remained watching said, "That smells good; I will eat the flesh." The others told him not to, but he ate anyway. But then he became very, very thirsty. He drank and drank. His thirst became so overpowering that he sought out a pond and dived in trying to satisfy it. The other two left him there overnight. When they returned the next day, the pond had turned into a lake and their comrade, now looking like a snake, was at the center. "I need to eat meat," he said to them. "Do not come anymore because I am hungry." A girl of the tribe who went to see him was swallowed.

When the other hunters returned to see him, he told them, "I am going to burst and spill water. Take refuge on high, because the water will flood everything." They went to the summit and climbed to the top of a palm there. The snake-man burst, and water spread everywhere, but it did not reach them. There they waited as the water began to recede. They dropped a palm seed and found that the water was still deep. Later, they dropped another, with the same result. Then they threw a dry leaf, which resounded on solid ground. They descended. Everything was muddy. They did not meet anyone because humans were dead. They went far, I do not know where. It must be from them that we are descended.

Le Marquis de Wavrin, "Folk-Lore du Haut-Amazone", Journal de la Société des Américanistes 24 n.s. (1932), 128-129; Marquis de Wavrin, Moeurs et Coutumes des Indiens Sauvages de L'Amérique de Sud (Paris: Payot, 1937), 623-624.

A hunter heard whistling at a riverbank, and suspecting it was something from the spirit world, went home and used tobacco smoke to induce a dream. In the dream, the daughter of the water spirit Tsunki appeared to him and told him to return to the river. He did so, met the woman, and followed her to her father's underwater home. The woman's mother gave him an aphrodisiac, and he became Tsunki's son-in-law.

When the couple returned to the man's home on earth, his new bride took the form of a snake. In time, she became pregnant, and the man had to go out hunting. While he was out, his two earthly wives discovered the snake and tormented her, and she returned to her father. Tsunki, in a rage, flooded the earth, drowning everyone but the hunter and one of his daughters, who escaped to a mountaintop. These two repopulated the world.

Bierhorst, 1988, 218.

A man, out hunting, chased an agouti, which jumped into the river. As he watched the river for the agouti, he saw the waters move and a beautiful woman emerge. She was called Tsunki.

The man called to her, "I was hunting, and the agouti I was chasing went into the water where you are."

"Ah," replied Tsunki, "by now they have done tsantsa [made a shrunken head] with it in the house of my father."

"Where are you from?"

"I am Tsunki, woman of the water."

"Would you like to come to my house?"

"I cannot. I am already married. But wait, I have a single sister." She disappeared into the water, and some time later another woman, younger and prettier, adorned with dazzling jewelry, came from the river.

"I am Tsunki," she said. "You called for me, and I came. Do you want to come to my house?"

"Yes," the hunter replied, "but my wife and children would cry in sorrow. Better you come to mine."

Tsunki said that she first needed to ask permission. She left for a few minutes, returning to say that her mother did not grant permission, and she persuaded the hunter to go with her.

She told him to hold her hair, and in no time they were under the water in the house of Tsunki. She offered him, as a seat, a senguana [anaconda?], and when she saw that he was afraid to sit on it, she apologized, saying that seat was not worthy of him, and brought him a shukem, another big brightly colored snake. She tapped it on the head with a stick to demonstrate its immobility, and the two of them sat on it to chat.

In that country, panki (boas) were kept in corrals; the people called them their pigs. Rachas (a kind of fish?) were on the walls; Tsunki called them cockroaches. When he slept at night, panki rushed at him in his dreams. He stayed a few days and began to lose his fear, but he remembered his old wife, who must be worrying about him.

He again asked Tsunki to come to his house, and again her mother denied permission, saying that his old wife will abuse her, but the man promised to conceal Tsunki so that nobody would touch her. The mother warned, though, "If they ill-treat my daughter, I will send my gluttons to eat you."

Tsunki and her husband agreed that Tsunki, on leaving the water, should take the form of a tiny snake and hide in a basket among his clothes. They returned to his house in the forest.

The hunter's wife and children were overjoyed to see him. That night, the wife prepared a bed for her husband, but he slept apart, next to the basket holding his new wife. This went on for several days. The first wife got up one night and saw a shining light where her husband slept, but she was afraid to approach.

One day the husband left to hunt, telling the children not to touch a certain potted plant. When he left, the children asked their mother was was in the plant? She took it down and found a small bundle of clothes inside, from which a tiny snake emerged.

"Bring fire," she said, and they began to burn the snake. The snake made a noise like water. The sky darkened, and a heavy rain began to fall.

Tsunki's mother came to the house. "He did not ill-treat me," the man's wife told her, "It was the wife and children who burned me." The mother released the boas to devour those who had harmed her daughter.

Tsunki's husband, seeing the rain come so suddenly, ran back to his house and saw the empty planter. His children told him what had happened, and he immediately picked up his little girl and fled. He climbed a tall palm tree. The water kept rising, with boas roaming through it. The water stopped rising just short of his feet.

Much time passed, and he came down from the tree with his little girl. Everyone else had died. He returned one day to the shore of the river to call Tsunki. She appeared to say that, since the people had abused her, she would not return.

Domingo Barrueco, Mitos y Leyendas Shuar (Suaca, Ecuador: Mundo Shuar, 1985), 72-75.