The Wings of the Butterfly
A Tale of the Amazon Rainforest One of my friends so kindly let me know that her children are following this blog, so here is an entry for them. This tale is from the Tukuna (or Tucuna, or Tikuna) tribe of South America. It is recorded in Curt Nimuendajú’s The Tukuna . Nimuendajú spent altogether nearly a year with the Tukuna in the early 1940s, and most of what we know about the tribe comes from his excellent study. Here it is... On the banks of the Amazon River, in a clearing in the forest, there once lived a girl named Chimidyue. She dwelt with her family and relatives in a big pavilion-house called a maloca. While the boys of the maloca fished and hunted with the men, Chimidyue and the other girls helped the women with household chores or in the farm plots nearby. Like the other girls, Chimidyue never stepped far into the forest. She knew how full it was of fierce animals and harmful spirits, and how easy it was to get lost in. Still, she would listen wide-eyed when the elder...