The world houses thousands of indigenous communities. They are the original inhabitants of the territories, and guardians of a portentous ancestral wisdom that they have transmitted through what we now know as indigenous legends.
The indigenous legends They are channels through which memory travels: they are brief narratives that preserve the treasures of different cultures, and that reflect the ancestral knowledge that centuries of history took to create (and have refused to disappear, despite the brutal colonialist wars and neocolonialists).
Many of these indigenous legends were transmitted orally. Now, thanks to the compilation work of hundreds of people over time, we can access them digitallyand discover that many of its lessons are still the same or more valid than before.
indigenous legends of the world
Here is a brief compilation of indigenous legends of Central America (Nahuatl and Mayan), South America (aymara, mapuche, guaraní) and northern europe (Inuit), with brief reviews about the meaning that we can collect and treasure from them.
The horticulturist boy (Nahuatl, Mexico)
A legend about the importance of the field and how we should value those who cultivate it to the point of sacredness.
It is said that this was a lady who had a son. When she was born she cried a lot, she didn’t even want to nurse, she was just crying. Her mother began to search for what could hurt her and she found nothing. Then he ordered her mother to prepare a white atole for him. Immediately they did it to her as she had ordered. While they were preparing what the child was to drink to content him, since he cried a lot, the mother was restless. As soon as she cooked the white atole, the maid immediately ran to take it away for the child to drink. They started pampering her to take it and she didn’t want to; they thought she wanted to be sugarcoated. «Let it be sweetened» [ordenaron], and they sweetened it. But he didn’t want to take it either. The maid said:
«I’ll go make corn atole.»
He made it for him and he didn’t want to take it either. And as she cried more and more, she feared [la madre] that the child could die, [y] ordered the maid:
«Go call the healer, have her come see the child who cries so much and doesn’t want to eat.» The woman went out in search of the healer so that she could go see or cure the child, who knows what it is that is crying so much. The woman arrived at the healer’s house, greeted her, entered, and said:
– I’m tired. We live very far from here.
—Where do you live?
—I live in the house of a lady named Doña Lagartija and she ordered me to come and beg you to go and cure your sick son. If you have to go, let it be of course. wait for me We will go together. Nothing more fix what is necessary. She put all the medicinal herbs in her basket and they went out and left. They arrived at the house of Mrs. Lagartija and as soon as the healer saw how the sick child was, she asked them:
«What do you give him to drink?»
—He doesn’t want to drink anything; she’s just crying. She felt the pit of his stomach; she had it very skinny, and then he said:
—Bring a little pulque. [Y en cuanto] he started to give it to him, he was happy [el niño]. Before she had seen that she had painted on her stomach, with blood, a maguey [y] said:
—Look, maguey, this maguey that appears painted on your stomach means that it should be raised with pulque. While he grows up, give him what I have told you to drink; when arrive [a la edad de] 7 years, we will change his food. In the meantime, let’s cure him. She began to heal him. He sucked the blood on the stomach, smoked it with St. John’s Wort, palm, incense and many other medicinal herbs; he smeared rooster’s blood on his stomach, which would erase the maguey that the child had painted; he smoked it [luego] and not anymore [volvería] to cry. Since he healed him he never cried again, he was always calm; once they gave him pulque, they didn’t have to give it again, he fell asleep and they gave him drink until the next day. [Cuando] He turned 7 years old, that healer went to see him again and smoked him again with cedar, incense and white incense. When she finished, she let it pass for a while and then registered [su cuerpo] again, and on her back she found many little fruits painted, and she said to her mother:
—Look, madam, what appears here; there are a lot of little fruits that indicate that he should maintain himself with fruit, and here, in his right hand, he has an ear, and in his left hand, you see, he has a pumpkin guide with a little pumpkin, which means that he will be a worker when he is great. Now give him only fruit for food; go cut the best in the ravine, where the air passes; that’s the one you should eat. And so it was that during the 9 days she washed his back with that perfumed water that the air had blessed. As soon as he washed the creature, or rather, the healer bathed her, immediately the little fruits that she had painted on her back were erased, everything disappeared, and [desde entonces] they called him «the horticulturist boy». There was not a single farm field, not a single plot of land that did not have fruit trees, and it is said that it was he who planted them everywhere, that without him there would be no fruit tree. The blessed man of the air, wherever he passed everyone bowed to him.
The Asturian wolf (inuit, Greenland)
A simple lesson in resilience and respect from the cold steppes of Greenlanda.
Jensine Eckwall
In the beginning of time, Kaila was the god of the sky above vast forests and frozen plains. He created Man and Woman. Completely alone and free, the man and the woman observed the world around them. The woman asked Kaila to populate the earth. Kaila told the Woman to make a hole in the ice, and to get all the animals out of the hole, the last of which was the caribou (moose).
«The caribou will be your best gift. It will feed you and your family, thanks to its skins you will make clothes and tents to keep you warm,» Kaila told the Woman.
The Woman ordered the caribou to multiply and inhabit the immense forests and frozen plains. That’s how it went. The caribou multiplied and so did the Children of the Woman. The Sons of Women always hunted the strong and fat caribou, they did not want the weak caribou, because these did not have good meat nor were their skins good. Thus the strong and healthy caribou were disappearing, increasing the number of weak and sick caribou. Seeing that her children were beginning to go hungry, the Woman began to cry. Kaila from heaven saw her tears.
«I gave you the best of gifts and you wasted it, but since my generosity is great, I will try to help you,» Kaila said to the Woman.
Kaila talked to Amarok, the spirit of wolves, who lived near him in the sky. She asked him to send wolves to earth so that they would eat the weak and sick caribou. From the top of the hill, the men watched the wolves. After assembling in the forest, the wolf pack made its way quietly towards the caribou that were quietly chewing the cud. Seeing the wolves, the caribou huddled together, forming a protective circle around the weak, young animals. The wolves lunged to break the circle formed by the caribou and drive away the strongest. Since that day the spirit of Amarok reigns in the Great North.
The Inuit let the wolves hunt alone, because they know that the caribou nourishes the wolf, but the wolf keeps the caribou healthy.
The Nahuel and the lost man (mapuche, Chile)
Animals and humans are brothers between whom empathy can flow and solidarity arise.
Encounter Channel
–I have met a man who has come from the south and who has told me that his grandfather’s grandfather was a friend of a tiger.
«Friend of a tiger?» How did he do it, Grandma?
–Your grandfather’s friend was a Mapuche warrior. Once at the end of a battle against the white soldiers he sided with the enemy. Several days he was hidden in the grass without making a single noise. One afternoon he looked everywhere and saw neither Mapuche soldiers nor white warriors: he had been saved, but he was very far from his people. He walked all day through the desert and at night he continued in a strange land. He suddenly he saw two small lights. He thought: «It must be people who have set fire» and he was glad. But he immediately realized that they were the yellow eyes of a tiger and his eyes were getting closer. Then he felt fear and so much loneliness that he began to cry. But the tiger stopped and the man remembered the stories his grandmother had told him about when people and animals were friends.
–Peñí Nahuel –he told him (which is “tiger brother” in Mapuche)– don’t hurt me.
The tiger stared at him and then made a gesture that meant «Follow me» and the man followed him.
They walked all night and when it was light they continued walking. At night the tiger sought refuge for him in the hole of a pehuén while he stood guard among the branches. The tiger hunted for the man and they ate by sharing the food. They ran races and wallowed in the sand on the riverbanks. The tiger even allowed himself to be petted. One afternoon they approached the mountain range. The man felt that the wind brought smoke from the people’s campfires to him. That night they slept as they had done all the way, but in the morning the tiger was gone. And though the man searched for him he could not find him. «Thank you Peñí Nahuel!». He yelled at the wind that carried his words to the tiger’s ears. Then the man walked and went to meet his family.
–How are we going to do when the rain stops, right, grandmother?
Legend of yerba mate (gUarani, Paraguay)
Because in the simple act of sharing a drink the community can be consolidated.
angela mercedes corti
It is said that before Yací came down, the men were so busy with their own chores that they hardly looked at each other or talked a little. I lay was immense, refulgent, powerful. She was magic and light. Because Yací was the moon, and planted on the firmament, it illuminated the tops of the trees and the paths every night, painted the course of the rivers in a silver color and revealed the sounds, which stealthy and terrifying, were hidden in the darkness of the night. jungle. One morning Yací came down to earth, accompanied by the Araí cloud. Turned into girls, they walked along the secluded paths of the village, among the labyrinth of willows, lapachos, cedars, and palm trees. And then, suddenly, a jaguar appeared. The calm and challenging look. The slow and determined step. The claws ready to be nailed and the jaws ready to attack. But an arrow pierced the heart of the beast like light. I lay down and Araí did not quite understand what had happened when they saw an old hunter who from the other end of the jungle greeted them with a friendly gesture. The man turned and left quietly. That night, while he slept in his hammock under the moonlight, the old hunter…