Primal Myths

by Barbara C. Sproul

  They built canoes and launched them with song. They were very beautiful, carved with trees and waves, and painted with black and white and red. The son of stone fixed ribs on the outside of his canoe; the son of bamboo put ribs on the inside of his. When the canoe of the son of bamboo was pushed into the sea, it broke. When the canoe of the son of stone entered the sea, it leaked. “That’s bad,” he said. Quickly he looked for something to plug the leaks and chose the fiber of the kulau tree. When the leaks were stopped, “Mended,” he said. And the people use this fiber today to plug a leak.

  Thus the people learned to make canoes and become fishermen. Every year during the season of flying-fish, they hold their Flying-fish Festival. At this time no one will offend the wonderful fish by spitting in the sea or throwing stones in the water. They fish at night by torchlight with torches in the end of each canoe. They perform the sacred fish-calling ceremony, and sing this song:

  From Ipaptok, the place of the outbursting of man,

  The first one descended to the plain of the sea.

  He performed the fish-calling rite;

  The torch was lighted: and the fish

  Were dazzled by the flames.

  —Maria Leach. The Beginning. New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1956, pp. 159–161.—Based on Arundel Del Re. Creation Myths of the Formosan Natives. Tokyo: 1951.

  NEGRITOS

  Dreaming People The Negritos are Far Eastern pygmies, living in isolated areas of the Malay peninsula, who maintain themselves through primitive methods of food gathering, hunting, and fishing. Their creation myth envisages a chaotic, watery beginning brought to order by the dung-beetle, who formed land out of mud. The divine couple Pedn and Manoid then descended to earth and created children by a kind of mental generative formation: Manoid dreamed of a child, and from a tree (phallus) Pedn picked a fruit (seed) that turned into the very infant she requested.

  AT FIRST only Pedn and Manoid his wife existed. The sun was already there, but not the earth. Then Tahobn, the dung-beetle, made the earth by pulling it out of the mud. The sun dried it and made it firm. When Pedn and Manoid saw the earth they descended to it. When the earth came into being trees grew out of it, but there were no animals or birds. Pedn and Manoid got two children in the following way. Manoid dreamt of a child and begged Pedn for one. Pedn went out to get some fruit and spread out a cloth for the fruit to fall on it, and, when the fruit fell, it became a child which began to scream. It was a boy. Manoid dreamt again, this time about a female child and begged her husband for it, so Pedn did as before and the fruit which fell into the cloth became a girl. The boy was Capai (identified…as the kakuh-bird) and the girl was called Pa’ig (identified…with baul, the tortoise). Both were Cenoi-halek. As there were no people, they married each other and had children. Two of these were Encogen and Kadjegn, both “grandchildren” of Ta Pedn. When Encogen came to a rock he heard the rushing of water. He shot an arrow into the rock so that water gushed forth. He became famous through this deed.

  —Ivor N. Evans. The Negritos of Malaya. London: Cambridge University Press, 1937, pp. 159–160.

  WEST CERAM

  The Myth of Hainuwele The wondrous generative power of the first beings is emphasized in this myth of Hainuwele, one of the three great goddesses of West Ceram in Eastern Indonesia. Like the vegetation from which she is born, Hainuwele (“Frond of the Cocopalm”) produces life out of her own death; even her excrement is rich and valuable. Although the jealousy of men destroys her form, the life force that she embodied continues in new shapes as plants are born from buried parts of her corpse.

  Enraged over the murder, her sister-goddess Satene (equally virginal, vegetal, and earth-born) forces people through a test of morality in which some are revealed to be the animals like which they have acted and others are confirmed as humans. The rite of passage also divides people and animals into appropriate social groups.

  Having ordered the world in this fashion, Satene leaves for the land of the dead, further separating herself from all but those who can pass the most rigorous trials to reach her.

  NINE FAMILIES of mankind came forth in the beginning from Mount Nunusaku, where the people had emerged from clusters of bananas. And these families stopped in West Ceram, at a place known as the “Nine Dance Grounds,” which is in the jungle between Ahiolo and Varoloin.

  Now there was a man among them whose name was Ameta, meaning “Dark,” “Black,” or “Night”; and neither was he married nor had he children. He went off, one day, hunting with his dog. And after a little, the dog smelt a wild pig, which it traced to a pond into which the animal took flight; but the dog remained on the shore. And the pig, swimming, grew tired and drowned, but the man, who had arrived meanwhile, retrieved it. And he found a coconut on its tusk, though at that time there were no cocopalms in the world.

  Returning to his hut, Ameta placed the nut on a stand and covered it with a cloth bearing a snake design, then lay down to sleep. And in the night there appeared to him the figure of a man, who said: “The coconut that you placed upon the stand and covered with a cloth you must plant in the earth; otherwise it won’t grow.” So Ameta planted the coconut the next morning, and in three days the palm was tall. Again three days and it was bearing blossoms. He climbed the tree to cut the blossoms, from which he wished to prepare himself a drink, but as he cut he slashed his finger and the blood fell on a leaf. He returned home to bandage his finger and in three days came back to the palm to find that where the blood on the leaf had mingled with the sap of the cut blossom the face of someone had appeared. Three days later, the trunk of the person was there, and when he returned again in three days he found that a little girl had developed from his drop of blood. That night the same figure of a man appeared to him in dream. “Take your cloth with the snake design,” he said, “wrap the girl of the cocoplam in the cloth carefully, and carry her home.”

  So the next morning Ameta went with his cloth to the cocopalm, climbed the tree, and carefully wrapped up the little girl. He descended cautiously, took her home, and named her Hainuwele. She grew quickly and in three days was a nubile maiden. But she was not like an ordinary person; for when she would answer the call of nature her excrement consisted of all sorts of valuable articles, such as Chinese dishes and gongs, so that her father became very rich.

  And about that time there was to be celebrated in the place of the Nine Dance Grounds a great Maro Dance, which was to last nine full nights, and the nine families of mankind were to participate. Now when the people dance the Maro, the women sit in the center and from there reach betel nut to the men, who form, in dancing, a large ninefold spiral. Hainuwele stood in the center at this Maro festival, passing out betel nut to the men. And at dawn, when the performance ended, all went home to sleep.

  The second night, the nine families of mankind assembled on the second ground; for when the Maro is celebrated it must be performed each night in a different place. And once again, it was Hainuwele who was placed in the center to reach betel nut to the dancers; but when they asked for it she gave them coral instead, which they all found very nice. The dancers and the others, too, then began pressing in to ask for betel and she gave them coral. And so the performance continued until dawn, when they all went home to sleep.

  The next night the dance was resumed on a third ground, with Hainuwele again in the center; but this time she gave beautiful Chinese porcelain dishes, and everyone present received such a dish. The fourth night she gave bigger porcelain dishes and the fifth, great bush knives; the sixth, beautifully worked betel boxes of copper; the seventh, golden earrings; and the eighth, glorious gongs. The value of the articles increased, that way, from night to night, and the people thought this thing mysterious. They came together and discussed the matter.

  They were all extremely jealous that Hainuwele could distribute such wealth and decided to kill her. The ninth night, therefore, when the girl was again placed in the center of the dance ground, to pass out betel nut, the men dug a deep hole in the area.
In the innermost circle of the great ninefold spiral the men of the Lesiela family were dancing, and in the course of the slowly cycling movement of their spiral they pressed the maiden Hainuwele toward the hole and threw her in. A loud, three voiced Maro Song drowned out her cries. They covered her quickly with earth, and the dancers trampled this down firmly with their steps. They danced on till dawn, when the festival ended and the people returned to their huts.

  But when the Maro festival ended and Hainuwele failed to return, her father knew that she had been killed. He took nine branches of a certain bushlike plant whose wood is used in the casting of oracles and with these reconstructed in his home the nine circles of the Maro Dancers. Then he knew that Hainuwele had been killed in the Dancing Ground. He took nine fibers of the cocopalm leaf and went with these to the dance place, stuck them one after the other into the earth, and with the ninth came to what had been the innermost circle. When he stuck the ninth fiber into the earth and drew it forth, on it were some of the hairs and blood of Hainuwele. He dug up the corpse and cut it into many pieces, which he buried in the whole area about the Dancing Ground—except for the two arms, which he carried to the maiden Satene: the second of the supreme Dema-virgins of West Ceram. At the time of the coming into being of mankind Satene had emered from an unripe banana, whereas the rest had come from ripe bananas; and she now was the ruler of them all. But the buried portions of Hainuwele, meanwhile, were already turning into things that up to that time had never existed anywhere on earth—above all, certain tuberous plants that have been the principal food of the people ever since.

  Ameta cursed mankind and the maiden Satene was furious at the people for having killed. So she built on one of the dance grounds a great gate, consisting of a ninefold spiral, like the one formed by the men in the dance; and she stood on a great log inside this gate, holding in her two hands the two arms of Hainuwele. Then, summoning the people, she said to them: “Because you have killed, I refuse to live here any more: today I shall leave. And so now you must all try to come to me through this gate. Those who succeed will remain people, but to those who fail something else will happen.”

  They tried to come through the spiral gate, but not all succeeded, and everyone who failed was turned into either an animal or a spirit. That is how it came about that pigs, deer, birds, fish, and many spirits inhabit the earth. Before that time there had been only people. Those, however, who came through walked to Satene; some to the right of the log on which she was standing, others to the left; and as each passed she struck him with one of Hainuwele’s arms. Those going left had to jump across five sticks of bamboo, those to the right, across nine, and from these two groups, respectively, were derived the tribes known as the Fivers and the Niners. Satene said to them: “I am departing today and you will see me no more on earth. Only when you die will you again see me. Yet even then you shall have to accomplish a very difficult journey before you attain me.”

  And with that, she disappeared from the earth. She now dwells on the mountain of the dead, in the southern part of West Ceram, and whoever desires to go to her must die. But the way to her mountain leads over eight other mountains. And ever since that day there have been not only men but spirits and animals on earth, while the tribes of men have been divided into the Fivers and the Niners.

  —Adolf E. Jensen. “Die mythische Welt betrachtung der alten Pflanzer-Volker.” Eranos Jahrbuch 1949. Zurich: Rhein-Verlag, 1950, pp. 34–38.—Quoted in Joseph Campbell. The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology. New York: Viking Press, 1959, pp. 173–176.

  MELANESIA

  Four Creation Myths Stretching over 4,000 miles in the western Pacific, from New Guinea to Fiji, Melanesia encompasses the Solomon, New Hebrides, New Caledonia, and Admiralty Islands among many others. Although Melanesian cultures have been drastically and similarly altered by the rabid exploitation they suffered at the hands of colonizing Europeans (all too frequently abetted by Christian missionaries), they were originally quite diverse. They did share, however, a general lack of interest in radical cosmology, questioning the origin of their social groups and land but rarely dealing with the creation of the world as such, much less Being-Itself.

  In the four creation myths outlined here, several common themes are sounded: emergence (here from a plant, not the womb of the earth), the competition of culture heroes who are brothers (often a mythic echo of tribal conquest and eventual merger where the god of the victor assumes a proper role over the god of the vanquished), and, where a high god is present at all, a sleeping deity who causes light and darkness and thus establishes the first ordering of chaos but who leaves the rest of creation to his more immanent and active son.

  I The Papuan Keraki people of southwestern New Guinea say that the first people came out of a palm tree. Gainji was the Great Creator. He heard a babble of voices inside the palm and liberated the babblers in groups that spoke the same language. This explains the existence of different languages in the world.

  II In the New Hebrides…the people tell about two Tagaros, twin culture heroes, one very wise, one foolish. Tagaro, the wise, created foods and useful artifacts for man; the other Tagaro created useless things and hindered or spoiled his brother’s work to such an extent that he had to be tricked out of this world.

  III The people of San Cristobal have Agunua, who made the sea and the land, caused storms, and created men and one woman. Agunua caused the rains to fall in order to quench his own thirst. He too had a brother companion to whom he gave a yam. He told the brother to plant it, and from this primeval yam grew all the banana and almond trees, coconuts, and other fruits. But one time the brother burnt up a mess of yams, thus causing some plants to be inedible forever.

  IV In the Fiji Islands the people say that in the beginning there was no land—no land but the land of the gods. There was only the sea and the sea was everywhere. The sky which was over the sea touched nothing but the edge of the sea. There was no bright day, no night. A dim twilight lay upon the water.

  The land of the gods was an island, as it is now. No one knows where it is for sure, but the old people say it floats in the sea on the edge of the world at the very point of sunrise. The people of Kandavu say they have seen it on the horizon lighted by the sun, but when they head their canoes toward it, it disappears before they can arrive.

  Ndengei was the Great God of Fiji, the serpent-shaped creator, who made all things and taught the Fijians how to build canoes. He was chief of the Kalou-Vu, the “root-gods” of Fiji. They are called the root-gods because they were there first, the truly Fijian gods, rooted in Fiji before there was any Polynesian or European influence.

  At night Ndengei went into a cave on the hill of Kauvandra to sleep. This is a hill in Great Fiji. When he closed his eyes it was dark over the islands and people called it “Night.” If he turned over in his sleep, the people said “Earthquake.” And when Ndengei opened his eyes again, it was day, and the people said “Work,” and built their canoes.

  Ndengei now pays no attention to the people, but because of his great hunger he accepts offerings of fruits of all kinds, vegetables, and pigs, and turtles. The people pray to him for good harvests.

  His son Rokomautu created the land. He scooped it up out of the bottom of the ocean in great handfuls and piled it up in piles here and there. These are the Fiji Islands.

  —Maria Leach. The Beginning. New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1956, pp. 175–177.—Retold from and based on material in R. B. Dixon. Oceanic Mythology, in The Mythology of All Races, Vol. 9. Boston: 1916; L. Fison. Tales from Old Fiji. London: 1904; and “Melanesian Mythology” and “Kalou-Va” in the Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend.

  BANKS ISLANDS

  The Myth of Qat In this rewritten myth from the Banks Islands, north of the New Hebrides in Melanesia, Qat and his eleven brothers (one for each month of the year, equating these heroes’ being with time itself) are born from a stone (a huge world seed). The vegetation metaphor is perpetuated when Qat formed men out of trees
and inspirited them with his sacred drumming. Presumably people would have been as continuous in their generations as plants had Qat’s stupid brother not bungled his imitation, buried the newly formed creatures, and thus brought about death. The duality of such culture heroes, their mixture of wisdom and stupidity, not only reflects the ambiguity of all sacred power, whose source is prior to distinctions of good and evil, but may also indicate social struggles wherein one group triumphed over another and their heroes did likewise.

  The myth is particularly interesting for its depiction of the beginning as filled with unrelieved and homogeneous light, as much without internal distinction as endless darkness. Rather than having to create day, as is common in creation myths, Qat’s problem concerns the establishment of night; having purchased it from neighbors or obtained it from the horizon (the limit of creation), he completes the world with darkness.

  WHEN the Melanesian people in the Banks Islands see the shadow of a cloud moving swiftly over the face of the sea, they say “There flies Qat.” Qat created men and pigs and food, they say, and if a pig runs into the house, they drive it out with the words “Qat says stay outside.”

  Qat himself was born on Vanna Lava (one of the Banks Islands), the very center of the world, and of what happened before that there is no tale.

  Qat was born from the bursting of a stone. His mother was a great stone that split in two and Qat came forth and named himself. He had no father; but he had eleven brothers. They all lived together in the village of Alo Sepere. And there the mother, Qatgoro, can still be seen, the huge stone that gave birth to Qat.