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| He carried them off to his
house in a sack, where he prepared crowns from the
feathers of various birds. First he made a red crown from
the feathers of the scarlet macaw, but when he put the
crown on the little "sun" and lifted him into
the sky, the sun burned too brightly, scorching the earth
and burning the roofs of houses. So the shaman replaced
it with a crown from the feathers of a green headed
parrot, but this proved to be too cool. Finally he
achieved the proper mixture of yellow feathers from the
blue-and-yellow macaw with a few red ones from the
scarlet macaw, and the sun was just the right
temperature. He fixed both the suns in the heavens, one below the sky and the other in the celestial realm beyond the sky. The one which was below, intended to light up the world, escaped from its bondage and hence wanders in its daily path across the sky, disappearing to rest at night. The other sun, the one beyond the sky which we cannot see except in dreams and hallucinations, is constantly lit and never rests. |
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Mokavirentsi: The Fire Sticks
In ancient times, people had no fire, and could only cook food and warm themselves in sunlight, or by using phosphorescent mushrooms (Mycena) of the forest. In the Machiguenga version of the Prometheus myth, a group of men decided to steal fire from the Jaineroite, a cannibalistic, all-female tribe, the so-called Amazons. These women used a powerful, intoxicating beer made of ground peanuts to lull male victims into a stupor before seducing, killing and eating them. They would thus reproduce their female ranks, consuming any male babies born. The intrepid group of men gulped down tobacco quid and ayahuasca, and magically flew to the land of the Jaineroite. One would-be Prometheus tried to steal the fire sticks, but held the sticks too close to his face and singed off all his hair, and was thus turned into the white-fronted capuchin monkey, known in Machiguenga as koshiri, "the thief". |
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