The translation/adaptation of my English language edition of Amazon creation stories is based on the Italian collection, translated from Spanish and Portuguese sources, Miti e Leggende dell’Amazonia, by Eva Caianello and Lourdes Cam, published by Arcana Editrice, Italy. I have Arcana’s permission to create an English text for publication in North America and am free to adapt the myths to suit such a text. These tales in the Aracana collection are taken from the collections of Mercier, Nosotros Los Naparunas , CETS, Iquitos, l979 and from, Sacha Pacha el Mundo de La Selva by Juan Santos, Ortiz De Villalba .Stories from the oral collections of Francisco de Orellana Puerto and Payamino (Ecuador) done between l974 and l980 are included. My working title is Amazon Myths and Legends.
Here are some sample stories
How the Runas were born
by Isabella Colalillo-Katz
©l998
In the beginning there was only darkness. In the heavens, there was no sun to make sunshine and dawn was like a misty moonlit night. And even in this time of darkness, Yaya was our great father God.
Yaya, our Father, created man, shaping his form out of the earth. In order to give everyone the great gift of life he shaped the mud of the earth into runas--human beings--making them stand upright. Then he blew the divine breath over their heads, and they became heavy. In this way man created by Yaya, our divine father, lived and walked and spoke for the first time.
Also at that time, there was a demon, the Supay, who having seen the creation of the first man tried to mimic Yaya the Creator. He took some mud and began to shape it into a form, but instead of making a runa, the Supay created a wangana, which is a kind of wild boar. Again and again he took fresh mud and tried to imitate the work of Yaya the Creator, but no matter how hard he tried, he never succeeded in creating a runa.
The destruction of the world
by Isabella Colalillo-Katz
©l998
The ancients say that the Creator Yaya holds up this earth in one of his hands, and when he tires, he moves it to his other hand, making the earth tremble. Because of the great sins of the runas, the earth becomes heavier and heavier and when the weight becomes so great that Yaya has to take a little bit of earth and throw it away. Each time he does this, a little bit of the earth disappears somewhere on the planet.
Our ancestors tell us that perhapsYaya
will one day become so annoyed with the weight of the earth caused by the
many sins of the runas, that he will let the earth fall from his hands
and then this planet will disappear.
According to the ancients, if Yaya
turns the earth ball around, the earth will crumble and we will be punished
for our evil.
But, they also say that once our
world disappears, Yaya will create a new one.
And until this happens, we can live
peacefully with Yaya’ s help. The ancients also tell us that during the
time of punishment, when it comes, only young children who are six or less,
will be saved. They alone will be able to rise up to the heavens by growing
wings.
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