Tupi-Guarani Creation Legends

   This group of Brazilian tribes have a series of Creation Legends presumably arising from a common original, but which now differ considerably in detail. In one of these Monan, being vexed with mankind, determined to destroy the world by fire, which was extinguished by a great rainfall caused by Irin Mage. Another version of the story tells how the Deluge arose through a quarrel between Arikute and Tawenduare in which the latter stamped his foot so hard on the ground that a flood gushed forth, from which the brothers and their families only escaped by taking refuge in the tops of high trees. Yet another version, first reported in 1550, tells how Maire endeavoured to destroy the world by a flood which which the three brothers Coem, Hermitten, and Krimen escaped by climbing trees or by seeking refuge in caves. The southern tribes speak of four brothers instead of three, and name two of them as Tupan, or Tupi, and Guarani respectively.

   Toruguenket, the moon, figures largely as the power of evil which periodically falls on the earth and destroys it, and whose baleful influence is only slightly offset by Torushompek, the sun, the principle of good. An alternative rendering makes Guaracy the sun, Jacy the moon, and Peruda the god of generation, the three creator gods.

   The Chaco Indians, a Guarani tribe, believe that a beetle constructed the universe and also a man and woman, the ancestors of the human race. When evil beings came from the hole in the ground scraped by the beetle, it protected the humans against them. This is presumably an account of a tribal war between people who had sought refuge in caves and those who had escaped on tree or mountains tops.

   The Mundruku tribe have a myth that the god Raini formed the world by placing it in the shape of a flat stone on the head of another god, and that the mountains were formed by Karu by blowing feathers about. The Uapes Indians tell that Temioua was the mother of Pinon and his sister, the constellation Orion and the Pleiades respectively. They also have a purely male god named Jurupari. Others of the tribes believe the Southern Cross to be the footprint of an ostrich and the Pleiades to be a swarm of bees.