Yuri E.Berezkin
AMERINDIAN MYTHOLOGY with parallels in the Old World
Classification and Areal Distribution of Motifs. The Analytical Catalogue
61. Endocannibal, F1035. .19.39.-.49.56.61.62.64.66.67.72.
Person eats his or her own flesh or tears his or her flesh to pieces in other way.
Australia.
Kujani: Sieber 1910: 47 in Waterman 1987, no.4765(1) [1) a father whose incestuous advances were refused, pierced his scrotum and dug a grave; when pain became stronger he used the bone to pull out his liver, ribs, leg and foot bones and placed them in a pile; tore out his heart and lungs; threw his eyes far away and fell into his grave; 2) when a daughter rejected ger father's sexual advances, he pierced his scrotum with a bone; although his wife wished to nurse him, he wanted only the daughter; when the women left he dug a grave and, heating the bone again and again pierced himself; finally, he lay in the grave, tore out his eyes and threw them away; the eyes became two white stone hills, the man, cliffs]: 130.
NE Asia.
Koryak [Eme'mkut marries Grass-Woman; she sees how he splits her father Root-Man, eats him; Big-Raven tells Grass-Woman to give
E. their small son; he devours him; Big-Raven tells
E. to eat himself; he begins from his toes, only the neck and head remain; E.('s spirit?) revives with his son]: Bogoras 1917, no.9: 53-58.
Arctic.
Polar Eskimo [while her husband is hunting at breathing-holes, his wife stuffs her jacket with grass, puts on gher sleeping platform, hides in a cave besides house passage; man comes, tries to stab his wife, discovers it is a dummy; boils his own thigh to eat; dies]: Holtved 1951b, no.51: 87.
Subarctic.
Kutchin [Jateaquoint throws his parka into Big Mosquito's snare; Mosquito first thinks it is
J. himself, then discovers the truth; cuts flesh off his thighs, cooks and eats it, loses strength;
J. cuts his head off; now mosquitoes have thin legs]: McKennan 1965: 115
;
Kaska [Beaver suggests cannibal giant to make a trap to catch him; puts heavy stump into the trap; giant pulls, stump gives way, strikes him on the forehead; he licks his blood, thinks what part of his body he eats; rejects ears, nose, etc. because they are needed; at last gets to his privates, thinks they are of no use, eats them; dies]: Teit 1917a, no.1: 432; Tahltan [Giant Cannibal has another pair of eyes on the back of his head; man inserts roots into his trap; Giant pulls, roots strike his head; he remains hungry, tries all his body members but every part has feeling; he decides that testicles do not; cuts the off and cooks; dies]: Teit 1919-1921, no.70: 349-350.
NW Coast.
Eyak [cannibal Tree Man's snare opens and shuts all by itself; eight brothers are caught and killed; their sister pulls the ninth brother back before he gets into the snare; they put a wooden dummy instead; Tree Man first tries to eat rotten wood, then cuts off a muscle from his lower leg, cooks and eats it; they kill him and his wife]: Birket-Smith, Laguna 1938, no.20: 308-310.
Coast-Plateau.
Besides Cowlitz: cannibal devours his brother; his wife tells him that she goes to wash their child (alive or dead) before he eats him, runs away. Cowlitz: Adamson 1934: 252-251 [Xwani tells the old woman he has four brothers, asks food for them, eats all himself; she puts hornetss in her basket under the food; he eats it in a hollow stump, tells it to close; hornets bite him, stump does not open anymore; he eats up his flesh and his eyes; Woodpecker and then all the birds peck the stump, make a hole; he inserts blossoms for eyes; paints the birds for helping him, they are happy; exchange his eyes with a (bird?) boy; first the boy sees well, then his blossom eyes wilt], 254-255 [Xwani enters a hollow stump, tells it to close; stump does not open anymore;
X. eats up his flesh, his testicles; Woodpecker and then all the birds peck the stump, make a hole;
X. paints the birds for helping him]; Wasco [man makes an arrow, cuts his finger, sucks blood, likes it, eats up his flesh; it remains only on his back; eats people, cannot be killed; pursues his wife and her baby boy; she comes to the old man who lives on tobacco smoke alone; he pierces skeleton's heart with an arrow, skeleton turns into a heap of bones; boy grows up, shoots off from the cliff the bags with tobaccoe smoke like the tobaccoe people do; old man gives him his daughter in marriage; the boy shoot arrow up reviving the perished people]: Curtin 1909b, no.3: 246-248; Kutenai: Boas 1918, no.51 [two brothers go out hunting; the elder one shoots a bighorn sheep; starts a fire, dries the meat over the fire; roasts a piece of the meat, does not like the taste; cuts a piece of flesh from his body, roasts it, likes the taste; eats himself entirely; the younger brother goes out to search after him; sees a fire, hears his brother saying, I love my brother, and it will take me two days to eat him; the transformed brother pursues him, strikes him with his intestines, kills him; the elder brother's wife goes out to search for her husband; puts sharp stones on her clothing; the man strikes her with his intestines, tears them; she runs home, tells the people what has happened; they move camp; the man's wife and his son alone remain; Crane stays near by; the transformed man comes; takes the child and tears it in two; the woman offers to wash it, goes out, and runs away; tells the people what has happened; Crane hides in a hole near a steep bank; when the man pursues his wife, he passes this place, and Crane kicks him into the water, where he is drowned], 76 [young man goes hunting sheep, dries the meat; sees two slices of meat, which he eats and which he likes; feels a pain, sees that he has eaten of his own flesh; cuts one piece after another from his body until only bones and intestines remain; after three days one of his elder brothers goes to look for him; the transformed brother says that he loves him, but kills and eats him; thus he kills all his brothers; the youngest one is warned by his guardian spirit; makes his escape, tells the people to leave; the hunter's wife stays behind with her son; when the man arrives, he holds his son tightly and makes him dance; the woman pretends that she wants to wash the child, runs away; people make a hole next to a cliff, one of them kicks the cannibal into the water, where he is drowned]: 83-85, 273-279; Nez Perce [the older of five brothers goes to hunt, cuts himself, tastes the blood, eats himself; lassoes his three brothers with the rope of his intestines, eats them up; the fifth brother steps on a lark, cures his leg, lark instructs him to tie flints to his leg that would cut the lasso; wife escapes with alive child; Crane kicks]: Aoki 1979, no.5: 36-38.
Midwest.
Timagami Ojibwa [Lynx promises to kill his wives Rabbit and Marten if they not bring a beaver; wives hide in a hole; Lynx strips naked, dances, his testicle swing; Marten laughs, he devours her; Rabbit does not laugh, is not found; he pulls out, roasts and eats his intestines; eats his heart, dies]: Speck 1915d, no.14: 67-68; Ojibwa [Skunk was wife to a Lynx who wished to eat her; she wrapped wood in a blanket to represent herself asleep, hid; he tried to make betray her place of hiding by doing things to make her laugh; failing in this, began to slice his ham and belly; fell into fire; his wife resced and deserted him]: Jones 1916, no.1: 368; Fox [youth asks a girl to be his wife, she agrees, he takes her to his lodge, goes after another girl; this way takes in marriage dozens of the young women; one is his main wife, the other hunt and make all sort of work for him; they travel from place to place, taking with them more and more women; no woman or woman's parent is able to act against his will; hunter kills deer; the youth sends his wives after the meat; the hunter does not give it; has more magic power than the youth; takes a louse, says, His navel; the youth tells his wives to scratch him; copulates with all of them; scratches himself till his skin and flesh are torn off; dies cutting his heart; women go to their homes]: Jones 1907, no.2: 41-69.
The Northeast.
Montagnais [Lynx marries a woman; fails to kill her; cuts off, cooks and eats first piece of flesh from his leg, then other body parts; dies when his heart is cooked; his wife laughs, returns to the people]: Desbarats 1969: 53-54; Naskapi [Lynx marries women in succession, kills and eats them; the last wife (she had porcupine face and a lot of lice) runs away; Lynx becomes to eat himself, eats up his heart, dies]: Millman 1993: 66; Seneca: Curtin, Hewitt 1918, no.46 [woman does not feed her husband's dogs; cutting meat, cuts her finger; cuts off and eats her own flesh; devours her baby daughter; chases the dogs, devours people, chases her husband; he escapes to the raft; she jumps from the shore, falls into water, drowns; see motif K27], 100 [spark burns woman's finger; she puts it into her mouth, tastes her own blood, eats all flesh from her limbs; tells her dog to tell its master and other people to escape; man transforms his dog into punk, puts into hollow tree; comes to the river; gives fish and groundnuts to an old man; he puts his neck across the river, husband crosses it, comes to his aunts; wife eats her marrow, inserts stones into her bones instead, they rattle when she pursue her husband; scolds the ferriman crossing the river; he jerks his neck, she falls into river, is devoured by water creatures; her stomach floats, her husband's aunts chop it to pieces killing her]: 231-233, 464-466.
Plains.
See motif L9 (Crow [two boys return from the war, spend night in a hut; one cooks and eats flesh from his calve, sharpens his shinbone to kill and eat his companion; chases him; compalion hides in a tree; Sharp Leg breaks it, companion jumps to another; sparrows advice to hide in a tree with hard wood; Sharp Leg's bone sticks in it, he dies]; Arapaho [lad hunts, is hungry at night, cuts off his calf, cooks and eats it; sharpens his foot; people escape putting logs in their beds; he kills many, is killed by an arrow, his corpse is burned]); see motif L3 (Wichita [at night wife hears how her husband cuts flesh from his legs, eats it; Sparrow in human form advices her to escape; gives her stick and double-ball to fly on them; gives deer's hair, bark of dogwood tree, red stones to throw behind her; objects turn into deers (husband hunts them), thicket, red plants (he picks them up); they come to her father; he tells her story all night; at dawn husband falls dead]); Kiowa-Apache [a part of men go on a raid; two are lost, turn back to home; have no food; one suggests to cut off some flesh from the leg, break the bone, eat meat and marrow; another pretends to go to see about the fire, lets his moccasin to answer, runs away; a tree takes him up, he sits in its fork; the monster comes, tries to break the trunk with his broken leg; the tree closes on the leg when the monster charges; the man kills him with an arrow; comes home]: McAlister 1949, no.37: 105-108.
The Southeast.
Cherokee [as in Seneca; bites her finger; husband pushes her from the raft]: Kilpatrick, Kilpatrick 1966, no.4: 418-420.
California.
After licking his or her blood person eats his or her flesh; devours people; perishes. Wailaki [(text is difficult for understanding; girl has her (first?) menses, (breaks food tabu?), dreams that she eats her own flesh; she does, devours her kin; a bird tells her to throw herself into the ocean; she turns into killer-whale]: Goddard 1923, no.13: 110-111; Wintu: DuBois, Demetracopoulou 1931, no.38 [couple have two sons and two daughters; the adolescent younger brother remains home; the younger sister has her first menses, remains in seclusion hut, comes to her younger brother to make love to him; he rejects her, reports elder sister; younger sister climbs maple to peel bark for apron, cuts her finger, tastes blood, devours herself, only head remains, it rolls around the world eating people; her relatives climb to the sky; she pulls them down, her younger brother falls between her thighs, she devours him, hands his heart at her neck; others reach the sky; every evening she comes to a lake; Hummingbird tells elder sister to make cooking basket, boil water; small boy shoots younger sister, elder sister takes brother's heart, puts into hot water; brother revives but dies soon], 39 [girl has to spend her first menses in seclusion hit but accompanies others to peel maple bark; cuts her finger, tastes blood, devours herself, only head remains, devours people, her sister is devoured the last; man makes a bridge across river; when Head reaches its middle, he jerks it, she falls, is swallowed by pike]: 360-362, 362-364; Nomlaki [woman who eats meat when menstruationg begins to chew her tongue, then gets to bite and eat herself; doctors claim they cannot cure a woman who is crazy this way]: Goldschmidt 1951: 376; Maidu: Curtis 1976(14) [girl has her first menses; instead of going into the grass hut, goes with her husband to gather pine cones; man climbs the pine, throws her cones; to test if they are ripe, she strikes one with a stone, injures her finger, likes taste of blood; devours her whole body up to the waist; man leaps down on the other side, runs away leaving his voice to answer for him; she strikes the tree with a thunder, then rolls after the man, strikes him; he is thrown into the air, falls dead; they go into the sky, become the thunder; when mosquitoes get their stomachs full of blood, they take it to her but do not tell that obtain it from people lest she strike and kill people for their blood; they tell her it comes from oaks, so she strikes trees]: 176; Dixon 1902, no.14 [man dreams that he eats himself; he is scratched with a nut thrown by his son; head with shoulders]: 97-98; 1912, ¹ 11 [deer hunter answers owl's song, becomes crazy, dances and sings owl's song himself; in the morning becomes to devour himself, only his head remains]: 189-191; Mono [person eats all of his own flesh except on his shoulder blade; turns into ogre(ss)]: Gifford 1923, no.6 [Wolf and Coyote kill and burn him], 8 [woman turn into ogress]: 312-313, 318.
Great Basin.
Western Shoshoni: Smith 1993: 69 [after sucking blood from his wounded hand, the elder of five Elk brothers eats flesh from his calf, his tongue, other flesh; turns into cannibal], 95 and 118 [Coyote becomes blind, falls from a cliff, breaks his legs, eats his marrow].
Llanos.
Cuiva [man hides in a tree; cannibal waits under the tree; man cast a spell; cannibal cuts the inside of his own thigh, cooks and eats it; man clubs him to death]: WS 1991b, no.138: 206.
Western Amazonia.
Secoya [after eating bats, man eats his own flesh (from the legs?) up; he is going to kill his wife but falls down, wife kills him]: Cipolletti 1988, no.46: 211-212]; Aguaruna [hunter finds an egg in the forest, eats it, becomes hungry, greedily eats bananas, then cuts off and devours his own flesh]: Guallart 1958: 65; Shuar [a man comes to a house, brings a small bird, asks women to cook it; they do it and serve him vegetable food as well; he asks ever more; they are surprised because the bird meat was not enough for a good proportion with vergetable food; see him cut off and eat his own flesh]: Rueda 1987, no.66: 271.
NW Amazonia.
Tucuna [cannibal father-in-law is unable to kill son-in-law; he cuts and eats pieces of his own meat beginning from the legs; bamboo grows from his remains; enemies (Omagua) emerge from bamboo]: Nimuendaju 1952: 145.
Eastern Amazonia.
Tenetehara [husband whose cannibalism is exposed eats up the flesh from his legs]: Wagley, Galvao 1949, no.22: 148.
Montana.
Ashaninca (River Campa): Anderson 1985: 175 [man comes to a woman; she says she has no meat; he impales and fries himself, suggests his flesh to a woman; later turns into bird]; Piro [wife escapes in a tree from her cannibal husband; he cuts off, fries and eats his own leg; wife descends, kills him; her father burns the corpse, bambus grows on this place]: Matteson 1951, no.7: 66-67; Shipibo [man eats his sons-in-law; a youth marries his daughter; goes to hunt with his father-in-law; they spend night in a hut, son-in-law does not sleep; on the following day remains at the camp; old man tells him where to gather the firewood, warns not to go to certain direction; young man fonds their a heap of human skulls; at night puts a bag with his clothes under his mosquito net; old man comes back bringing monkeys, throws a heavy stone on the place where the young man's head must be; understands that he is duped; cuts off, roasts and eats flesh from his calves; son-in-law tells him that he has seen everything; he asks him to burn him, to caome on the place after three days; his daughter comes; ashes turned into mosquitoes; shes puts them into a pot, hides under her mosquito bag, feeds, lets them free]: Garcia 1985: 124-125; Sharanahua [youth copulates with his sister at night, without her knowing of his identity; she paints half of his face with genipa; in the morning, sees that her brother is painted; says, May a foregner kill you! Foreigners attack people, cut off the youth's head; head puts fire beetles dung on him to shine in the dark; his older brother puts the head in the basket; head asks to get him drink but the water drips out of his neck; the older brother with other people escape to the other side of the river, make the water rise; people hide in the the head's mother's house; the head tells them that an armadillo is on the trail; when they come out, he makes love to all the women; they begin to menstruate; he asks his mother for a black and for a white balls of thread; goes up the thread to the sky, turns into moon; all women bleed]: Siskind 1973: 47-48; Yaminahua [as in Sharanahua; youth copulates with his sister at night; she paints half of his face with genipa; later his head is cut off in a battle by outsiders; after various adventures, he copulates by trickery with all of the Yora females, thus initiating menstruation for the first time; climbs the thread into the sky, becomes the moon]: MacQuarrie 1992, no.1: 216; Sharanahua [after eating up his wife, shaman cuts off and eats flesh from his own thigh]: Siskind 1973: 167.
Bolivia-Guapore.
Tacana: HH 1961, no.62 [wicked father-in-law loses his way, becomes hungry, eats flesh from his left leg; son-in-law transforms him into anteater], 64 [wife does not give enough food to her cannibal husband, he has eaten his left leg; master of the forest transforms him into anteater], 274 [several versions; man marries girls, feeds them to make them fat, devours; the last girl escapes; he becomes hungry, eats meat from his own legs, turns into big anteater]: 167, 176, 413-416; Nordenskiold 1924: 287-288 [bush spirit marries a girl; throws a nut from the palm killing her; eat s her; marries and kills the same way her sister; the third wife finds her sisters' bones, runs away; he cuts and eats flesh from his ankles and thighs; wife clubs him to death], 294-295 [older brother climbs to the palm to get leaves; cuts off and throws down his leg, bowels, liver and other body members and parts; every time cries to his younger brother that this is a certain leaf; head falls the last, asks to carry it in a basket; kills tapir for his brother; kills people in village, turns into meteor]; Ottaviano 1980 [man marries women in succession, feeds them to make them fat, devours, heads put in a tree; the sixth woman finds the skulls of the victims, runs away, climbs a tree; man cannoy get her, eats his own calf, turns into anteater, predicts that she comes back to him in three days; woman gets to his mother, dies on the third day]: 39-43; Chacobo [man marries a girl, takes her to the forest, kills, roasts, devours with manioc; marries again; brothers of his new wife surprise him when he is going to kill her; they kill him, burn his corpse, sparcs turn into wasps; in other versions of this myth, man asks his wife to bring firewood; coming back, she sees him eating his own foot]: Bossert, Villar 2002: 372.
Chaco.
See motif L9A [after eating flesh from his burned leg, man turns into cannibal]. (Chamacoco; Chorote; Nivakle).