Tale
Mapuche and Tehuelche Narratives of Patagonia
Relatos mapuche y tehuelche
Anonymous · 1998
Synopsis
In a Tehuelche tale, a swan brings Elal, very small, from an island; according to the Museo de la Patagonia, Elal carries the animals to Patagonia, reveals the secret of fire to men, invents the bow and teaches hunting, and a Patagonian blog adds that he creates the first men from the mud left by the waters. A Mapuche myth pits two serpents against each other, the one of the earth, Trentren, and the one of the sea, Caicai, whose anger causes a great flood, according to a Chilean school resource.
Context
The myth of the two serpents is a Mapuche account of the flood, with a Huilliche variant on Chiloé, and thirty-six places in Chile and Argentina bear the name of one or the other. The Tehuelche language had twenty-nine speakers in 1983-1984 and two in 2012; its last speaker, Dora Manchado, died in 2019, and Aonikenk groups have since been taking it up again on the basis of what was documented with her. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the anthropologist Roberto Lehmann-Nitsche had recorded a vocabulary of it.
Who it is for
Short narratives of creation and flood, to be read separately, for those interested in the peoples of the south of the continent.
Prizes and reception
Narratives that today nourish the revival of Tehuelche by Aonikenk groups.
Sources for this page 4
The pages consulted to check this page.