Made from Bone: Trickster Myths, Music, and History from the Amazon

Overview

Overview In the narratives set in the times called “The World Begins” (Hekuápi Ikéeñuakawa), the trickster-creator uses his skills of trickery to get things from various animal-persons and mythic beings . Made-from-Bone obtains nighttime and sleep from Grandfather Sleep (Dáinali), fire from a spirit being named Yáwali, and peach-palm fruits from an anaconda-person named Malíhwerri. Unlike the life-and-death struggles of Made-from-Bone against Great Sickness and other adversaries during the primordial times, the confrontations between Made-from-Bone and others during “The World Begins” are more like puzzles or games in which the trickster-creator must outsmart his interlocutors in order to take away their goods. Violence and bloodshed are almost entirely absent from these interactions . One way of measuring the qualitative difference in levels of violence between the two mythic periods is by counting the frequency of the verb “kill,” excluding cases where animals or fish are specifically mentioned as objects. In the nine narratives from the primordial times (Úupi Pérri), the verb “kill” is used against Madefrom -Bone or his enemies a total of forty-three times, whereas the same verb appears only five times in the six narratives from “The World Begins.” And the rationale for the trickster-creator’s actions is no longer to inflict violent revenge but is now much more directly focused on the need to create things that are necessary to pave the way for “the new people of the future world.” The theme of “the new people of the future world,” or fully human beings living in the world in present and recent past times, is found in several of the narratives set in the primordial times. However, the theme does not emerge organically as a motivating factor in those narratives as it does in the ones set in “The World Begins.” The status of Made-from-Bone is now a well-established social fact known among powerful mythic beings throughout the cosmos . Grandfather Sleep (Dáinali) greets Made-from-Bone as “my famous grandson who knows everything” and notes that “people speak about you.” Later, Made-from-Bone and Grandfather Sleep blow tobacco smoke together before going to sleep, and Madefrom -Bone impresses Grandfather Sleep again by knowing how to use the special word alíra that allows him to continue on in his quest to get nighttime and sleep. After experiencing his first night of sleeping and dreaming, Made-from-Bone must choose between two kinds of sleep, “sleep of the eyelid” or “sleep of the heel.” As always, Made-from-Bone makes the correct choice, or sleep of the heel, avoiding the fate of Grandfather Sleep, whose eyelids had grown to enormous proportions as he had aged. “Okay, you must know already, my grandson. No one can pull one over on you. The one you want is the better one because the heel has nowhere to grow bigger,” says Grandfather Sleep. Because Made-from-Bone made the right choice, “the new people living in the future world” would have eyelids that stopped growing when they reached adulthood. Bringing the night, or sleep of the heel, back to his village presents Made-from-Bone with additional challenges. The bag containing small pieces chopped from the heels of Grandfather Sleep is so heavy that it takes several people to lift and carry. In spite of Grandfather Sleep’s explicit warnings not to open the bag until reaching their village, Made-from-Bone and his companions decide to open it just enough to peek inside and find out why it is so heavy. A large gallineta bird (wild chicken) flies out of the bag and disappears over the western horizon, taking the sun along with it. They become frightened as night falls because they “don’t even know how morning will come.” When some birds begin singing, they become hopeful that morning is finally coming. Made-from-Bone sends a sloth up a tall tree to look for any sign of light, but the sloth tricks everyone by opening and closing his anus to create light and darkness. Finally the sloth points to where the sun is rising from downstream (that is, the eastern horizon), surprising everyone because they were expecting the sun to come up in the west where they had seen it go down. When they reach their village at Hípana, Made-from-Bone and his family settle into a regular pattern of sleeping...