A second part of the tale tells how Sigu was persecuted by two wicked brothers who beat him to death, burned him to ashes, and buried him. Nevertheless, each time he rose again to life and finally ascended a high hill which grew upward as he mounted until he disappeared in the sky.
Probably the most far-known mythic hero of this region is Amalivaca, a Carib demiurge, concerning whom Humboldt reports various beliefs of the Tamanac (a Cariban tribe). According to Humboldt,[166] "the name Amalivaca is spread over a region of more than five thousand square leagues; he is found designated as 'the father of mankind,'or 'our great-grandfather' as far as the Caribbee nations"; and he likens him to the Aztec Quetzalcoatl. It is in connexion with the petroglyphs of their territory (similar rock-carvings are found far into the Antilles, the "painted cave" in which the Earth Goddess was worshipped in Haiti being, no doubt, an example) that the Tamanac give motive to their tale. Amalivaca, father of the Tamanac, arrived in a canoe in the time of the deluge, and he engraved images, still to be seen, of the sun and the moon and the animals high upon the rocks of Encaramada. From this deluge one man and one woman were saved on a mountain called Tamancu—the Tamanac Ararat—and "casting behind them, over their heads, the fruits of the mauritia palm-tree, they saw the seeds contained in those fruits produce men and women, who repeopled the earth." After many deeds, in which Amalivaca regulated the world in true heroic fashion, he departed to the shores beyond the seas, whence he came and where he is supposed still to dwell.
Another myth, of the Cariban stock,[167] tells how Makonaima, having created heaven and earth, sat on a silk-cotton-tree by a river, and cutting off pieces of its bark, cast them about, those which touched the water becoming fish, and others flying in the air as birds, while from those that fell on land arose animals and men. Boddam-Whetham gives a later addition, accounting for the races of men: "The Great Spirit Makanaima made a large mould, and out of this fresh, clean clay the white man stepped. After it got a little dirty the Indian was formed, and the Spirit being called away on business for a long period the mould became black and unclean, and out of it walked the negro." As in case of other demiurges, there are many stories of the transformations wrought by Makonaima.
It is from the Warau that Brett obtains a story of a descent from the sky-world—a tale which has many replications in other parts of America, and of which there are other Orinoco variants. Long ago, when the Warau lived in the happy hunting-grounds above the sky, Okonorote, a young hunter, shot an arrow which missed its mark and was lost; searching for it, he found a hole through which it had fallen; and looking down, he beheld the earth beneath, with game-filled forests and savannahs. By means of a cotton rope he visited the lands below, and upon his return his reports were such as to induce the whole Warau tribe to follow him thither; but one unlucky dame, too stout to squeeze through, was stuck in the hole, and the Warau were thus prevented from ever returning to the sky-world. Since the lower world was exceedingly arid, the great Spirit created a small lake of delicious water, but forbade the people to bathe in it—this to test their obedience. A certain family, consisting of four brothers—Kororoma, Kororomana, Kororomatu, and Kororomatítu—and two sisters—Korobona and Korobonáko—dwelt beside this mere; the men obeyed the injunction as to bathing, but the two sisters entered the water, and one of them swimming to the centre of the lake, touched a pole which was planted there. The spirit of the pool, who had been bound by the pole, was immediately released; and seizing the maiden, he bore her to his sub-aquatic den, whence she returned home pregnant; but the child, when born, was normal and was allowed to live. Again she visited the water demon and once more brought forth a child, but this one was only partly human, the lower portion of the body being that of a serpent. The brothers slew the monster with arrows; but after Korobona had nursed it to life in the concealment of the forest, the brothers, having discovered the secret, again killed the serpent-being, this time cutting it in pieces. Korobona carefully collected and buried all the fragments of her offspring's body, covering them with leaves and vegetable mould; and she guarded the grave assiduously until finally from it arose a terrible warrior, brilliant red in colour, armed for battle, this warrior being the first Carib, who forthwith drove from their ancient hunting-grounds the whole Warau tribe.
This myth contains a number of interesting features. It is obviously invented in part to explain why the Warau (who are execrated by whites and natives alike for their dirtiness) do not bathe; and it no doubt reflects their actual yielding before the invading Carib tribes. The Kororomana of the story can scarcely be other in origin that the Kururumany whom Schomburgk states to be the Arawak creator; while the whole group of four brothers are plausibly continental forms of the Haitian Caracarols, the shell-people who brought about the flood. The incident of the corpulent or pregnant woman (im Thurn gives the latter version) stopping the egress of the primitive people from their first home appears in Kiowa, Mandan, and Pueblo tales in North America; while the pole rising from the lake has analogues in the Californian and North-West Coast regions. Im Thurn states that the Carib have a variant of this same story, in which they assign as the reason for the descent of their forefathers from Paradise their desire to cleanse the dirty and disordered world below—an amusing complement to the Warau notion!
The Warau have also their national hero, Aboré, who has something of the character of a true culture hero. Wowta, the evil Frog-Woman, made Aboré her slave while he was yet a boy, and when he grew up, she wished to marry him; but he cleverly trapped her by luring her into a hollow tree filled with honey, of which she was desperately fond, and there wedging her fast. He then made a canoe and paddled to sea to appear no more, though the Warau believe that he reached the land of the white men and taught them the arts of life; Wowta escaped from the tree only by taking the form of a frog, and her dismal croaking is still heard in the woods.
From the tribes of this region come various other myths, belonging, apparently, to the cosmogonic and demiurgic cycles. The Arawak tell of two destructions of the earth, once by flame and once by fire, each because men disobeyed the will of the Dweller-on-High, Aiomun Kondi; and they also have a Noachian hero, Marérewána, who saved himself and his family during the deluge by tying his canoe with a rope of great length to a large tree. Another Arawak tale begins with the incident which opens the story of Maconaura. The Sun built a dam to retain the fish in a certain place; but since, during his absence, it was broken, so that the fish escaped, he set the Woodpecker to watch, and, summoned by the bird's loud tapping, arrived in time to slay the alligator that was destroying his preserves, the reptile's scales being marks made by the club wielded by the Sun. Another tale, of which there are both Arawak and Carib versions, tells how a young man married a vulture and lived in the sky-land, revisiting his own people by means of a rope which the spiders spun for him; but as the vultures would thereafter have nothing to do with him, with the aid of other birds he made war upon them and burned their settlement. In this combat the various birds, by injury or guile, received the marks which they yet bear; the owl found a package which he greedily kept to himself; opening it, the darkness came out, and has been his ever since. In the Surinam version, given by van Coll,[168] the hero of the tale is a peaiman, Maconaholo, and the story contains some of the incidents of the Maconaura tale. Two other traditions given by the same author are of special interest from the comparative point of view. One is the legend of an anchorite who had a wonderfully faithful dog. Wandering in the forest, the hermit discovered a finely cultivated field, with cassava and other food plants, and thinking, "Who has prepared all this for me?" he concealed himself in order to discover who might be his benefactor, when behold! his faithful dog appeared, transformed herself into a human being, laid aside her dog's skin, busied herself with the toil of cultivation, and, the task accomplished, again resumed her canine form. The native, carefully preparing, concealed himself anew, and when the dog came once more, he slyly stole the skin, carried it away in a courou-courou (a woman's harvesting basket), and burned it, after which the cultivator, compelled to retain woman's form, became his faithful wife and the mother of a large family. It would appear that, from an aboriginal point of view, both dog and woman are complimented by this tale.
The second tale of special interest is a Surinam equivalent of the story of Cain and Abel. Of three brothers, Halwanli, the eldest, was lord of all things inanimate and irrational; Ourwanama, the second, was a tiller of fields, a brewer of liquors, and the husband of two wives; Hiwanama, the youngest, was a huntsman. One day Hiwanama, chancing upon the territory of Ourwanama, met one of his brother's wives, who first intoxicated him and then seduced him, while in revenge for this injury Ourwanama banished his brother, lying to his mother when she demanded the lost son. Afterward Ourwanama's wives were transformed, the one into a bird, the other into a fish; he himself, seized by the sea, was dragged to its depth; and the desolate mother bemoaned her lost children till finally Halwanli, going in search of Hiwanama, whom he found among the serpents and other reptiles of the lower world, brought him back to become the greatest of peaimen.
V. NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE
A missionary whom Humboldt quotes declares that a native said to him:[169] "Your God keeps himself shut up in a house, as if he were old and infirm; ours is in the forest, in the fields, and on the mountains of Sipapu, whence the rains come"; and Humboldt remarks in comment that the Indians conceive with difficulty the idea of a temple or an image: "on the banks of the Orinoco there exists no idol, as among all the nations who have remained faithful to the first worship of nature."