Charles Frederick Hartt

“ The tortoise, or sun, has a trial of strength with the jaguar or tapir, the moon, and vanquishes by substituting another in his place, in which case, we have simply a different form of the myth of the Tortoise and Deer. ”

“ I want to see who can run the faster." Now I am going to cheat that deer. Do you scatter yourselves along the edge of the campo, in the forest, keeping not very far from one another, and see that you keep perfectly still, each in his place! To-morrow, when we begin the race, the deer will run in the campo, but I will remain quietly in my place. When he calls out to me, if you are ahead of him, answer, but take care not to respond if he has passed you."
So, early the next morning, the deer went out to meet the tortoise. ”

“ First the whale, swimming vigorously, dragged the tapir backward to the sea, but the latter, resisting with all his might, finally gained a firm foothold, and began to get the better of the whale, drawing him in toward the shore. Then the whale made another effort, and, in this manner, they kept tugging against one another, each thinking the tortoise at the other end of the sipó, until at last, both gave up the struggle from sheer exhaustion.
The tortoise went down to the shore to see the whale, who said: "Well! you are strong, jabutí; I am very tired." ”

“ After one has obtained his first myth, and has learned to recite it accurately and spiritedly, the rest is easy. I may here remark, in passing, that one must be on his guard on the Amazonas, and elsewhere, for that matter, among savages or people of low culture, not to ask a leading question, for an Indian will always unconciously acquiesce with the interrogator, who is thus likely to be misled. ”

“ In this myth the jabutí is still the sun, who conquers and kills the jaguar moon. The taking of one of the bones of the latter, for a fife, naturally suggests itself to the Indian, who is accustomed to make whistles of the bones of his enemies. Another jaguar, or another moon, gives chase to the jabutí, who, entering his burrow by one hole, escapes by another, as the sun, descending into the earth in the west, comes up out of the east. ”

“ So, the myth collector will usually go empty away, if he attempts to gather a harvest simply by asking. The only way is to seek for, and create occasions when story-telling would be natural, and, if necessary, to set the ball rolling by recounting some native myth, with which those present are known to be well acquainted, taking care not to show too much curiosity in the stories it elicits. ”

“ But quite invariably, this old woman was absent, or inaccessible. Once only, at Ereré, did I find an ancient squaw, said to be a wonderful repository of lendas, but nothing could I obtain from her.
One night, while wearily paddling up the parand-mirím of the Itukí, near Santarem, my faithful steersman, Maciel, began to talk to the Indian boatmen in Tupí to keep them from going to sleep. I listened with all my ears, and, to my great delight, found him recounting a story of the Kurupíra. ”

“ Meanwhile, the tortoise had hidden himself in a thicket, in a burrow having two openings. While the man was looking in at one hole, the jabutí would appear at the other, and then when the man came to this opening, he would quickly go to the first; so that we have here, once more repeated, the story of the race between the slow tortoise or sun, and the swift moon or man. We have already seen the tortoise escape from the jaguar by going into a burrow by one opening and retiring by another, just as the sun appears to go into its burrow in the west, and come out in the east. ”

“ It has, however, suggested itself to me that the tortoise, in this myth, might perhaps be the sun or moon, provoking the everlasting tidal contest between the sea and the land. [24] It is worth noting that Brazil is so situated geographically, that the sun and moon are rarely seen to set in the sea. On the Amazonas, however, the sight of their disappearance behind a water horizon is a familiar one to the Indian. If this myth is really of native growth, it would be interesting to discover whether it originated on the Amazonas, or on the coast. ”

“ The moon, or jaguar, follows his example safely, but on repeating the experiment is destroyed, the extinction of the old moon probably appearing to the Indiana destruction, the new moon being another moon, or a second onça.
That the tortoise should enter into, be imprisoned in, and issue unharmed from the forest, is a most natural form for the myth; for, in a forest-clothed country like the Amazonas, the sun ordinarily seems to set among, and rise out of the trees. The sun also has the power of splitting the trunks of trees ”

“ According to Gubernatis, [33] the elephant is the sun who goes down to drink at the lake of the moon: "the hare warns the elephant that, if he does not retire, if he continues to crush the hares on the shores of the lake, the moon will take back his cold beams, and then the elephants will die of hunger."
In the African Kanurí tale, an elephant sits down upon a cock, and the latter, in revenge, picks out one of the elephant's eyes.
The Amazonian story seems susceptible of the following interpretation:—The tapir is the sun, the tortoise the moon. ”

“ If the myth collector wishes to obtain the myth in its purity, and prevent his own personality entering into it, he must, above all, avoid asking of his pundit a leading question, either in writing out the myth for the first time, or in its after revision.
The Indian myths are, so far as my experience goes, rarely ever heard in Portuguese, those of the Tupi speaking population being quite invariably related in the Lingua Geral. Their form is a stereotyped one, and the same myth may be found, with but little variation, from near the mouth of the Amazonas, to Tabatfnga, on the frontier of Peru. ”

“ The hare, mistaking one for the other, acknowledges himself beaten. In Northamptonshire [13] the fox is substituted for the hare, but, in other details, the myth is identical with the German.
Sometimes, in Old World mythology, it is a hare that runs a race with a tortoise [14] but who, confiding in his swiftness, goes to sleep, while the tortoise, persevering slowly, first reaches the goal.
In Siam the myth takes the following form:— [15]
"The bird Kruth, no doubt a limited and particular form of Garudas, wishes to eat a tortoise (here perhaps the moon) which lies upon the shores of a lake. ”

“ All my attempts to obtain myths from the negroes on the Amazonas proved failures. Dr. Couto de Magalhães, who has recently followed me in these researches, has had the same experience. The probability, therefore, seems to be that the myths are indigenous, but I do not yet consider the case proven. Whether of native or foreign origin, they exist and are current among the Indian population, and they deserve careful collection and critical study. ”

“ The tortoise laughed in turn, and answered:—"Ya! You will never marry the deer's daughter." "Why not?" asked the tapir. "Because she will run away from you," replied the jabutí. "Well," said the tapir "I also can run. I break down the branches before me as I go."
Besides the jabutí stories, there are others found on the Amazonas that seem to me to be solar myths, but the limits of this article will not allow me to do much more than refer to them.
In one of these stories, the kingfisher marries the daughter of the mukúra, and with his wife goes out fishing. ”

“ The rising sun extinguishes the old moon, and buries her, but after a time, the new moon appears and begins the pursuit of the sun. The fact that the race continues day after day, and that the scent grows constantly stronger suggests, however, that the pursuer may, after all, be the sun. May not the story, perhaps, have become confused through an interchange of characters?
THE TORTOISE KILLS THE OPOSSUM BY INDUCING HIM TO BURY HIMSELF.
A jabutí made a bet with a mukúra, or Amazonian opossum, to see which could the longer stay buried. ”

“ The story-teller of the locality was always represented to be an old woman, who could make one split his sides with laughter at odd stories about the Kurupira and the Yuruparí, and all sorts of animals, that used to talk and play pranks on one another, in the olden time when speech was not the exclusive possession of man. ”

“ The two stars that form the shoulders of Orion are said to be an old man and a boy in a canoe, chasing a peixe boi, by which name is designated a dark spot in the sky near the above constellation. The Indians say that originally the old man, the large star, was in the bow, the boy, the small star, being in the stern, steering. ”

“ Barbosa has reported from the Jamundá a myth, in which the moon is represented as a maiden who fell in love with her brother and visited him at night, but who was finally betrayed by his passing his blackened hand over her face.
↑ Urubú is the name of the common Brazilian vulture. ↑ I have published a little paper in Portuguese, on the Kurupira entitled "O Mytho do Kurupira," "Aurora Brazileira," Ithaca, N. Y. Vol. I. ↑ "Testudo terrestris, tabulata, Schoeff. Emys faveolata, Mik., depressa, Merr." v. Martius, Woertersammlung etc. S. 455, sub voce Jabotí. ↑ Yes! ”