[Note: The Tukuna commonly give the title of Ta-nati (“Our Father”) to the twin culture heroes, a title justified by the fact that these are the creators of humanity, or at least the greater part of it, especially of the Tukuna.
Helena Valero reported to Ettore Biòcca in the famous book Yanoáma that the several tribes with whom she lived in the Orinocco Basin also knew of a pair of creator-brothers, one constructive (Omawe) and the other destructive (Yoawe), among a variety of other allodynes including tribes of tiny little men who live underground (Amahini), tutelary spirits (Hekura) which were the primitives of various animal species including anaconda, wild pig, great anteater, several kinds of spider, monkeys, great and small armadillo, etc., each of which might have a controlling power over something non-animal, such as sauva ant for maize, crocodile for fire, hummingbird for cotton; the Hekura were furthermore said to have daughters such as the hirsute daemon Kumareme who were spirits of the wilderness dangerous specially to human males. Tales were told as to how each of the various Hekura became the first of its animal kind; so, for example, Heheriwe, Hekura of the bat, loved his mother-in-law and for that reason became a bat. Such stories thus provided aetia not only of animal species but also of such prominent human customs as the mother-in-law tabu.
In the old days the most bloodthirsty enemy of the demons was the culture hero Dyai, the personage of major luster in Tukuna religion. He is the creator of humanity, the originator of all tribal laws and customs, and the one who invented or acquired the most important elements of material culture. At times hard and cruel, he is however never a rascally deceiver of humanity. Even with his shameless brother, Epi—a fool, a meddler, and a liar—he is indulgent and helpful, and only once exacts punishment.
The Tukuna do not like to call him Dyai, but give him the title of Ta-nati (“Our Father”), Baia or Bui, when they do not call him “He of the right knee” (in contrast to “He of the left knee,” the name by which they refer to Dyai’s brother Epi).]
Nutapa grew angry with his wife from time to time. Finally, he tied her to a tree. The hornets stung her genitals. A cancan above her cried “ka,-ka-ka!” Mapana said: “Oh, if you were a man, O cancan, you would untie me!” The cancan transformed himself into a man because of her. He untied her. He rolled the hornets’ nest between his palms [to diminish its size]. Then he gave her the hornets’ nest. “With this you will be revenged!” said the cancan.
Nutapa recognized her at once; he played on the Panpipes for her: “Who does not recognize this Mapana standing on the point of land!” She tried in vain to surprise him. She crouched at the foot of a sapopema, hiding, but Nutapa recognized her at once.
Finally she lost her judgment and ran after him; Mapana threw the hornets’ nest at his back. The hornets stung Nutapa all over his body; he swelled up. Later the swelling from the hornets’ stings subsided; only his knees did not reduce in size, and finally he had a fever. Then Nutapa sat outside in the sun and called his children. “Dear ones, look at what is hurting me so!” he said. They looked. “Papa, it is only a man in your right knee who is planing his blowgun,” said Nutapa’s children, “and another person sewing her purse net!” Then they looked at his left knee: “Papa, it is only a man in your other knee who is scraping his spear, and another person weaving her burden basket!”
Then Dyai [in the right knee] had finished: “Let us go! I must fish [with the purse net]!” he said. Answered Epi [in the left knee]: “Let us got, I must spear pigs!” he said. Answered Aikina, Epi’s sister: “Let us go! I must dig manioc!” she said.
The four siblings when they emerged from Nutapa’s knees were the size of children five years old, and they immediately began to walk. Nutapa recovered slowly. After some time he went out alone to fish with timbo, when a jaguar attacked and devoured him. The four brothers and sisters remained in the care of Tapetine, Nutapa’s mother, who never left off bewailing the death of her son, but when the children asked why he had been killed, she would answer: “It was ashes that killed him.” Then the children filled a burden basket with ashes, spilling it over themselves, but they did not die. They again asked the grandmother and she replied: “An ambe leaf fell on him.” The children waited beneath an ambe plant until a leaf fell on them, but it killed no one. Only when they were fully grown did Tapetine tell them the truth. Then Dyai and Epi made a high corral of acapu trunks and on top of it a platform three times as high as a man, on which they lay down.
Dyai plucked out one of Aikina’s long hairs and interlaced the ends so as to form a circle, which he slowly drew together. Soon, beginning at the north, the earth grew smaller, forcing all the animals to run south into the corral, where they had to pass by the brothers’ platform. One jaguar after another passed, and they asked each one: “By any chance was it you who devoured Nutapa?” But all replied: “No, the one who did it is still behind me!”
Finally the slayer of Nutapa arrived. She had made a horn from the victim’s stomach and was playing on it; but seeing the two brothers on the platform, she quickly swallowed the stomach and began to weep and lament: “Oh, my grandchildren! Such a toothache!” Then Dyai brought a chain [sic] and, showing it to the jaguar, said: “Look at your necklace, grandmother!”
The jaguar permitted them to place the chain round her neck, and so she was a prisoner. “Let’s see your teeth!” said Dyai, and struck her on the nose with a stone; the jaguar fell senseless, but she clenched her jaws. With difficulty Dyai managed to pry them open at last with a billet of acapu wood. And there in the jaguar’s gullet appeared the tip of Nutapa’s stomach. Epi tried to get it out with the end of a pole, but proceeded with such ineptitude as to make it rebound, flying far away in a great curve.
It fell into the water, where a gigantic caiman swallowed it. The brothers killed the jaguar, breaking all her bones. Then they tried to reach the caiman, throwing ants’ nests into the water until a dry surface was formed, with the exception of a pool wherein the creature lay. They made a loop of the chain and, hanging it from the tip of a pole, passed it over the caiman’s head. They throttled him, bringing him ashore; but his jaws had locked, and it cost them a tremendous amount of labor to open them.
When finally they had succeeded, the bumbling Epi again exerted such force that Nutapa’s stomach sprang suddenly from the caiman’s gullet to some distance away, and was gulped down by a forest lizard, Taa. In vain the two brothers strove to open grandmother’s mouth; she stubbornly refused to give up the prize.
Dyai was obliged to hunt for a live coal and apply it to the lizard’s throat, and this is why it has a red mark to this day in the corresponding place. Nutapa’s stomach appeared in “granny’s” mouth, but again Epi made it spring out suddenly with the tip of his pole, the stomach coming to rest between the wings of a big, blue butterfly. The butterfly closed its wings and would not give up the stomach for any price. They had to burn a hole in its wings. This time Dyai did not permit Epi to meddle. He himself took out the stomach and, with it and the flesh and bones found in the jaguar’s belly, recomposed Nutapa’s body. He stamped his foot on the ground, whereupon Nutapa sprang up, saying: “My son, you have frightened me!”
In early times a permanent darkness reigned on earth. A sumahuma tree covered the entire sky with its foliage, permitting no light to pass through. The nocturnal monkey used to pass by every day. He had eaten nanene-cane fruits and, because of this, each time he let his excrements fall one would see a glow. Dyai observed him and, following him secretly, found the fruit tree. He gathered a quantity of hulls from the ground and invented the hurling-fork. With it he threw hull after hull against the leafy cover. The projectiles pierced it, and through each hole a small light appeared. Thus the stars were formed.
Having verified in this way that light existed above the foliage, he, together with his brother Epi and aided by ants and termites, began to fell the tree. Cutting the trunk, they severed it completely, but the tree did not fall. They thought that some liana was holding it above, and Dyai promised Aikina, Epi’s sister, in marriage to anyone who would climb up and loosen the tree. A number of suitors appeared, but none succeeded in reaching the top. The big squirrel tried, but climbed only as high as a house roof and soon returned. When the little squirrel also presented himself, everyone thought that the result would be even worse. He, however, climbed to the topmost branches and saw that it was not a liana but a two-toed sloth [Bradypus didactylus] that was holding the tree up. The squirrel returned, collected many fire ants, placed them on his flattened tail, and climbed up again. Coming up to the sloth, he threw the ants into its eyes, then quickly descended, since the sloth immediately let go of the tree and began to fall. The squirrel had not yet reached the ground when the tree crashed, and from the force of the rebound his tail was bent over his back. He married Aikina.
The only one who possessed sleep in the old days was Peta, who belonged to a generation much older than Nutapa. He slept like a dead man, but Dyai and his kinfolk could not sleep. Dyai went to see Peta and asked him to give him a little of his sleep. Peta grasped the hair on top of his own head with one hand and then, placing the hand on Dyai’s head, said: “Take the sleep!” But it was a lie; he gave nothing to Dyai, who as before was unable to sleep. So he waited until Peta was asleep and then sneaked up to him. With both bands he lifted off the sleep from Peta and placed it on himself, but only over his chest and face so that he would not fall into too deep slumber. Peta’s domestic animal was the toad Vaa. Seeing what Dyai was doing, she cried out: “Wake up, master! Someone’s trying to steal your sleep!” Peta, who had been dreaming, awoke in a rage at the disturbance and seized his lance, but Vaa quickly set a pot containing urucu dye on her head. Peta thrust his lance into the pot and, examining the tip, mistook the red urucu for blood, and lay down again satisfied, but he could not sleep.
After some time Vaa again shouted: “Wake up! Here comes a wild beast!” and again quickly set the urucu pot on her head. Again Peta aimed the lance at her, which struck the pot instead, so that examining the lance head he still thought it was blood. Only after the third time did he realize that he had been fooled.
Dyai and Epi set out to kill a royal hawk whose nest was in a tall and enormously thick tree. They tied poles together as a ladder and climbed up. Arriving at the top, Epi looked down and said: “Dear brother, I think the ladder is falling!” And immediately the ladder came apart, the pieces falling to the ground. The two could no longer climb down, and so they remained sqautting in the nest until they both were half dead from thirst. Suddenly Dyai saw an aicha bird flying past and said: “Oh, if you were only a man and could bring us water!” The bird assumed human form and brought them a small gourd filled with pama-fruit juice. Epi drank first and, as Dyai remained silent, drank excessively, but he still did not empty the gourd; then Dyai also drank. Presently Epi wished to urinate, but Dyai yelled at him: “Restrain yourself, my brother!” Epi squeezed his penis, but the urine oozed out from between his fingers and became transformed into the spiny-barked cipo ambe.
Finally, the last drops fell upon a branch, but one very far below, and there the cipo became attached. Then Dyai urinated straight down. His urine became transformed into the smooth-barked cipo ambe, and as the last drop fell on the branch where they were, the plant attached itself. They killed the royal hawk with a blowgun when he returned to the nest, and he fell to the earth. Then Dyai transformed himself into a nocturnal monkey and Epi into an opossum, in which shapes they both clambered down the liana.
Dyai and Epi carried the dead royal hawk home, but when they divided the kill among themselves, Epi insisted absolutely that he should receive the right half. Dyai, however, thought that his brother should get the left half, since Dyai had emerged from Nutapa’s right knee and Epi from the left. Epi continued to wheedle, but Dyai remained firm, giving the right half to Mavacha, insisting that she exchange the halves. Mavacha hid her half between her knees and, when Epi sought to snatch it away, he touched his sister’s privates. At once she was transformed into a collared peccary and ran along the bank of the Igarape, where she began to eat swamp snails. There the demon Machi of the Jaguar clan found her and, realizing that she had been dishonored by her brother, shot her with one of his hornet-shaped darts. Mavacha ran back to the house, where she fell dead.
Dyai examined her carefully, forbidding Epi to approach, but the latter, promising to cover his eyes with his hands, kept inching forward and peeping through his fingers, and thus saw Dyai eventually discover the hornet’s sting in Mavacha’s sexual parts and remove it. After some time she began to stir, and by afternoon she was well once again.
Dyai and Epi made a fish weir in the igarape, but every day the paturi [a small duck] opened the enclosure in order to swim through. Finally Dyai grew angry and threatened to kill her. She heard the threat and replied: “Grandson, why do you wish to kill me instead of your enemy who sings your names [derogatively]! Really, your hearing is quite bad. Come here and rest your head on my lap.” She plucked a feather from her wing and with it removed a quantity of royal-hawk plumage from the two brothers’ ears, so that at once they heard the jaguar demon Machi singing and mocking them because of their sister Mavacha’s dishonor.
The duck gave them the form of two pigeon fledgelings. In a torrential downpour she arrived with them at Machi’s house, asking for a place near the fire for herself and her little grandchildren, and her request was granted.
Machi was seated by his mortar. He called ambauva leaves to come so he could pound them up in the mortar and eat the resulting paste, but the leaves did not come as before. At length Machi arose to fetch them himself. On the way he stopped, glanced back, and caught sight of a ripe fruit on the trunk of an abiu tree hardly a handbreadth above the ground. Hurrying back, he tried to pick it, but as he approached, the fruit rose higher and was soon out of reach.
Seeing this, he again set off after the ambauva leaves, but, turning his head, he saw once more the abiu fruit quite close to the ground. He ran back as fast as he could, but the fruit again rose beyond his grasp. Then he gave up and went to search for ambauva leaves, but did not find any.
He returned to the house in a rage and, brandishing a club, dashed toward the little pigeons. “Is it perchance Dyai who is doing this to me?” But the duck held her wings over the two in protection, pleading for her grandchildren’s lives.
Machi again set out to hunt for ambauva leaves. The scene with the elusive fruit was repeated and again he did not find what he sought. At last Dyai cried: “Abiu, do not flee!” And when Machi came by, the fruit remained within reach. Promptly he seized it with both hands, but it turned into a wasps’ nest, the inmates of which attacked him without mercy. He ran to the house and cried: “Mortar, help me!”
But the mortar turned into a tarantula, which bit him. “Help me, club!” he screamed, but the club turned into a snake and also bit him. Thereupon Dyai and Epi resumed human form and attacked him with clubs, killing him. A jaguar, passing by and seeing what occurred, cried out: “Don’t crush his skull! I want to make a horn for myself!” The duck asked for the wrist bones, and the brothers kept the thigh bones for themselves in order to make flutes from them. The soul of Machi is now in the upper world. There it attacks the souls of the incestuous when they arrive. Then one hears on earth the muted humming of Machi’s hornets.