(14)
Magic
An extremely old Tukuna woman chastised some young girls who had denied her food. During the night she tore the bones out of their legs and devoured the marrow, so the girls could never walk again.
In her infancy, soon after birth, the old woman had received from a frog the powers of healing and vengeance. The frog had taught her to cure and kill, to hear unhearable voices and see unseeable colors. She learned to defend herself before she learned to talk. Before she could walk she already knew how to be where she wasn’t, because the shafts of love and hate instantly pierce the densest jungles and deepest rivers.
When the Tukunas cut off her head, the old woman collected her own blood in her hands and blew it toward the sun.
“My soul enters you, too!” she shouted.
Since then anyone who kills receives in his body, without wanting or knowing it, the soul of his victim.
(112)
Laughter
The bat, hanging from a branch by his feet, noticed a Kayapó warrior leaning over the stream.
He wanted to be his friend.
He dropped on the warrior and embraced him. As he didn’t know the Kayapó language, he talked to him with his hands. The bat’s caresses drew from the man the first laugh. The more he laughed, the weaker he felt. He laughed so much that finally he lost all his strength and fell in a faint.
When the villagers learned about it, they were furious. The warriors burned a heap of dry leaves in the bats’ cave and blocked up the entrance.
Afterward they had a discussion. The warriors resolved that laughter should be used only by women and children.
(111)
Fear
These incredible bodies called to them, but the Nivakle men dared not enter. They had seen the women eat: they swallowed the flesh of fish with the upper mouth, but chewed it first with the lower mouth. Between their legs they had teeth.
So the men lit bonfires, called to the women, and sang and danced for them.
The women sat around in a circle with their legs crossed.
The men danced all through the night. They undulated, turned, and flew like smoke and birds. When dawn came they fell fainting to the ground. The women gently lifted them and gave them water to drink.
Where they had been sitting, the ground was all littered with teeth.
(192)
Authority
In remote times women sat in the bow of the canoe and men in the stern. It was the women who hunted and fished. They left the villages and returned when they could or wanted. The men built the huts, prepared the meals, kept the fires burning against the cold, minded the children, and tanned skins for clothes.
Such was life for the Ona and Yagan Indians in Tierra del Fuego, until one day the men killed all the women and put on the masks that the women had invented to scare them.
Only newly born girls were spared extermination. While they grew up, the murderers kept repeating to them that serving men was their destiny. They believed it. Their daughters believed it, too, likewise the daughters of their daughters.
(91 and 178)
Power
In the lands where the Juruá River is born, Old Meanie was lord of the corn. He gave out the grains roasted, so that no one could plant them.
The lizard succeeded in stealing a raw grain from him. Old Meanie caught her and ripped off her jaw and fingers and toes; but she had managed to conceal the grain behind her back molar. The lizard afterward spat out the raw grain on the common land. Her jaw was too big and her fingers and toes too long to be completely torn off.
Old Meanie was also lord of the fire. The parrot sneaked up close to it and started screeching her lungs out. Old Meanie threw at her everything that was handy, and the little parrot dodged the projectiles until she saw a lighted stick flying her way. Then she picked it up with her beak, which was an enormous as a toucan’s, and fled. A trail of sparks followed her. The embers, fanned by the wind, burned her beak, but she had already reached the trees when Old Meanie beat his drum and let loose a rainstorm.
The parrot managed to leave the burning stick in the hollow of a tree under the care of the other birds and flew back into the downpour. The water relieved her burns, but her beak, shortened and curved, still shows a white scar from the fire.
The birds protected the stolen fire with their bodies.
(59)
War
At dawn, the trumpet call announced from the mountain that it was time for crossbows and blowguns.
At nightfall, nothing remained of the village except smoke.
A man lay among the dead without moving. He smeared his body with blood and waited. He was the only survivor of the Palawiyang people.
When the enemy moved off, that man got up. He contemplated his destroyed world. He walked among the people who had shared hunger and food with him. He sought in vain some person or thing that hadn’t been wiped out. The terrifying silence dazed him. The smell of fire and blood sickened him. He felt disgusted to be alive, and he threw himself back down among his own.
With the first light came the vultures. There was nothing left in that man except fog and a yearning to sleep and let himself be devoured.
But the condor’s daughter opened a path through the circling birds of prey. She beat her wings hard and dived. He grabbed onto her feet, and the condor’s daughter took him far away.
(54)
Parties
An Inuit, bow in hand, was out hunting reindeer when an eagle unexpectedly appeared behind him.
“I killed your two brothers,” said the eagle. “If you want to save yourself you must give a party in your village so everyone can sing and dance.”
“A party? Sing, what’s that? What’s dance?”
“Come with me.”
The eagle showed him a party. There was a lot of good food and drink. The drum beat as hard as the heart of the eagle’s old mother, its rhythm guiding her children from her house across the vast expanses of ice and mountain. Wolves, foxes, and other guests danced and sang until sunup.
The hunter returned to his village.
A long time afterward he learned that the eagle’s old mother and all the oldsters of the eagle world were strong and handsome and swift. Human beings had finally learned to sing and dance, and had sent them, from afar, from their own parties, gaieties that warmed the blood.
(174)
Conscience
When the waters of the Orinoco lowered, canoes brought the Caribs with their battle-axes.
No one had a chance against the sons of the jaguar. They leveled villages and made flutes from their victims’ bones. They feared nobody. The only thing that struck panic into them was a phantom born in their own hearts.
The phantom lay in wait for them behind the trees. He broke their bridges and placed in their paths tangled lianas. He traveled by night. To throw them off the track, he walked backward. He was on the slope from which rocks broke off, in the mud that sank beneath their feet, in the leaf of the poisonous plant, in the touch of the spider. He knocked them down with a breath, injected fever through their ears, and robbed them of shade.
He was not pain, but he hurt. He was not death, but he killed. His name was Kanaima, and he was born among the conquerors to avenge the conquered.
(54)’
The Sacred City
Wiracocha, who had fled from the darkness, ordered the sun to send a daughter and a son to earth to light the way for the blind.
The sun’s children arrived on the banks of Lake Titicaca and set out through the Andean ravines. They carried a golden staff. Wherever it sank in at the first blow, they would there found a new kingdom. From the throne they would act like their father, who gives light, clarity, and warmth, sheds rain and dew, promotes harvests, multiplies flocks, and never lets a day pass without visiting the world.
They tried everywhere to stick in the golden staff, but the earth bounced it back. They scaled heights and crossed cataracts and plateaus. Whatever their
feet touched was transformed; arid ground became fertile, swamps dried, and rivers returned to their beds. At dawn, wild geese escorted them; in the evening, condors.
Finally, beside Mount Wanakauri, the sun’s children stuck in the staff. When the earth swallowed it, a rainbow rose in the sky.
Then the first of the Incas said to his sister and wife:
“Let us call the people together.”
Between the mountains and the prairie, the valley was covered with scrub. No one had a house. The people lived in holes or in the shelter of rocks, eating roots, and didn’t know how to weave cotton or wool to keep out the cold.
Everyone followed the sun’s children. Everyone believed in them. Everyone knew, by the brilliance of their words and eyes, that the sun’s children were not lying, and accompanied them to the place where the great city of Cuzco, still unborn, awaited them.
(76)
Pilgrims
The Maya-Quichés came from the east.
When they first reached the new lands, carrying their gods on their backs, they were scared that there would be no dawn. They had left happiness back in Tulán and arrived out of breath after a long and painful trek. They waited at the edge of the Izmachí forest, silent, huddled together, without anybody sitting down or stretching out to rest. But time passed and it went on being dark.
At last the morning star appeared in the sky.
The Quichés hugged each other and danced; and afterward, says the sacred book, the sun rose like a man.
Since then the Quichés gather at the end of each night to greet the morning star and watch the birth of the sun. When the sun is first about to peep out, they say:
“That’s where we come from.”
(188)
The Promised Land
Sleepless, naked, and battered, they journeyed night and day for more than two centuries. They went in search of the place where the land extends between canes and sedges.
Several times they got lost, scattered, and joined up again. They were buffeted by the winds and dragged themselves ahead lashed together, bumping and pushing each other. They fell from hunger and got up and fell again and got up again. In the volcanic region where no grass grows, they ate snake meat.
They carried the banner and the cloak of the god who had spoken to the priests in sleep and promised a kingdom of gold and quetzal feathers. You shall subject all the peoples and cities from sea to sea, the god had announced, and not by witchcraft but by valor of the heart and strength of the arm.
When they approached the luminous lake under the noonday sun, for the first time the Aztecs wept. There was the little island of clay: on the nopal cactus, higher than the rushes and wild grasses, the eagle spread his wings.
Seeing them come, the eagle lowered his head. These outcasts, massed on the edge of the lake, filthy, trembling, were the chosen, those who in remote times had been born out of the mouths of the gods.
Huitzilopochtli welcomed them. “This is the place of our rest and our greatness,” his voice resounded. “I order that the city which will be queen of all others be called Tenochtitlán. This is Mexico!”
(60 and 210)
Dangers
He who made the sun and the moon warned the Taínos to watch out for the dead.
In the daytime the dead hid themselves and ate guavas, but at night they went out for a stroll and challenged the living. Dead men offered duels and dead women, love. In the duels they vanished at will; and at the climax of love the lover found himself with nothing in his arms. Before accepting a duel with a man or lying down with a woman, one should feel the belly with one’s hand, because the dead have no navels.
The lord of the sky also warned the Taínos to watch out even more for people with clothes on.
Chief Cáicihu fasted for a week and was worthy of his words. Brief shall be the enjoyment of life, announced the invisible one, he who has a mother but no beginning. Men wearing clothes shall come, dominate, and kill.
(168)
The Spider Web
Waterdrinker, priest of the Sioux, dreamed that outlandish creatures were weaving a huge spider web around his people. He awoke knowing that was how it was going to be and said to his people, When this happens, you shall live in square gray houses, in a barren land, and beside those square gray houses you shall starve.
(152)
The Prophet
Stretched out on his mat, the priest-jaguar of Yucatan listened to the gods’ message. They spoke to him through the roof, sitting astride of his house, in a language that no one else knew.
Chilam Balam, he who was the mouth of the gods, remembered what had not yet happened:
“Scattered through the world shall be the women who sing and the men who sing and all who sing … No one will escape, no one will be saved … There will be much misery in the years of the rule of greed. Men will turn into slaves. Sad will be the face of the sun … The world will be depopulated, it will become small and humiliated …”
(25)
OLD NEW WORLD
1492: The Ocean Sea
The Sun Route to the Indies
The breezes are sweet and soft, as in spring in Seville, and the sea is like a Guadalquivir river, but the swell no sooner rises than they get seasick and vomit, jammed into their fo’c’sles, the men who in three patched-up little ships cleave the unknown sea, the sea without a frame. Men, little drops in the wind. And if the sea doesn’t love them? Night falls on the caravels. Whither will the wind toss them? A dorado, chasing a flying fish, jumps on board and the panic grows. The crew don’t appreciate the savory aroma of the slightly choppy sea, nor do they listen to the din of the sea gulls and gannets that come from the west. That horizon: does the abyss begin there? Does the sea end?
Feverish eyes of mariners weatherbeaten in a thousand voyages, burning eyes of jailbirds yanked from Andalusian prisons and embarked by force: these eyes see no prophetic reflections of gold and silver in the foam of the waves, nor in the country and river birds that keep flying over the ships, nor in the green rushes and branches thick with shells that drift in the sargassos. The bottom of the abyss—is that where hell starts to burn? Into what kind of jaws will the trade winds hurl these little men? They gaze at the stars, seeking God, but the sky is as inscrutable as this never-navigated sea. They hear its roar, mother sea, the hoarse voice answering the wind with phrases of eternal condemnation, mysterious drums resounding in the depths. They cross themselves and want to pray and stammer: “Tonight we’ll fall off the world, tonight we’ll fall off the world.”
(52)
1492: Guanahaní
Columbus
He falls on his knees, weeps, kisses the earth. He steps forward, staggering because for more than a month he has hardly slept, and beheads some shrubs with his sword.
Then he raises the flag. On one knee, eyes lifted to heaven, he pronounces three times the names of Isabella and Ferdinand. Beside him the scribe Rodrigo de Escobedo, a man slow of pen, draws up the document.
From today, everything belongs to those remote monarchs: the coral sea, the beaches, the rocks all green with moss, the woods, the parrots, and these laurel-skinned people who don’t yet know about clothes, sin, or money and gaze dazedly at the scene.
Luis de Torres translates Christopher Columbus’s questions into Hebrew: “Do you know the kingdom of the Great Khan? Where does the gold you have in your noses and ears come from?”
The naked men stare at him with open mouths, and the interpreter tries out his small stock of Chaldean: “Gold? Temples? Palaces? King of kings? Gold?”
Then he tries his Arabic, the little he knows of it: “Japan? China? Gold?”
The interpreter apologizes to Columbus in the language of Castile. Columbus curses in Genovese and throws to the ground his credentials, written in Latin and addressed to the Great Khan. The naked men watch the anger of the intruder with red hair and coarse skin, who wears a velvet cape and very shiny clothes.
Soon the word will run through the islan
ds:
“Come and see the men who arrived from the sky! Bring them food and drink!”
(52)
1493: Barcelona
Day of Glory
The heralds announce him with their trumpets. The bells peal and the drums beat out festive rhythms. The admiral, newly returned from the Indies, mounts the stone steps and advances on the crimson carpet amid the silken dazzle of the applauding royal court. The man who has made the saints’ and sages’ prophecies come true reaches the platform, kneels, and kisses the hands of the queen and the king.
From the rear come the trophies; gleaming on trays, the bits of gold that Columbus had exchanged for little mirrors and red caps in the remote gardens newly burst from the sea. On branches and dead leaves are paraded the skins of lizards and snakes; and behind them, trembling and weeping, enter the beings never before seen. They are the few who have survived the colds, the measles, and the disgust for the Christians’ food and bad smell. Not naked, as they were when they approached the three caravels and were captured, they have been covered up with trousers, shirts, and a few parrots that have been put in their hands and on their heads and shoulders. The parrots, robbed of their feathers by the foul winds of the voyage, look as moribund as the men. Of the captured women and children, none has survived.
Hostile murmurs are heard in the salon. The gold is minimal, and there is not a trace of black pepper, or nutmeg, or cloves, or ginger; and Columbus has not brought in any bearded sirens or men with tails, or the ones with only one eye or foot—and that foot big enough when raised to be protection from the fierce sun.
(44)
1493: Rome
The Testament of Adam