The world is home to thousands of indigenous communities. They are the original inhabitants of the territories, and guardians of a wonderful ancestral wisdom that they have transmitted through what we now know as indigenous legends.
Indigenous legends are channels through which memory travels: they are brief narratives that preserve the treasures of diverse cultures, and that reflect the ancestral knowledge that centuries of history took to create (and have refused to disappear, despite the brutal colonialist and neocolonialist wars).
Many of these legends were transmitted orally. Now, thanks to the work of hundreds of people collecting them over time, we can access them digitally, and discover that many of their lessons are still as relevant or more relevant than before.
Indigenous legends of the world
Below we present a brief compilation of indigenous legends from Central America (Náhuatl and Mayan), (Aymara, Mapuche, Guaraní) and northern Europe (Inuit), with brief reviews about the meaning that we can collect and treasure from them.
The gardener 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 woman who had a son. When she was born she cried a lot, she didn’t even want to breastfeed, she was just crying. Her mother began to search him looking for what could hurt him and she found nothing. Then he ordered her mother to prepare a white atole. They immediately did it as she had ordered. While they were preparing what the child had to eat to satisfy him, since he cried a lot, the mother was worried. As soon as she cooked the white atole, the maid immediately ran to take it for the child to eat. They started coaxing her to take it and she didn’t want to; They thought she wanted them to sugarcoat it for her. “Let it be sweetened,” and they sweetened it. But she didn’t want to take it either. She said the maid:
—I’ll go make him corn atole.
He prepared it for him and he didn’t want to take it either. And as he cried more and more, she feared that the child would die, so he ordered the maid:
—Go call the healer, let 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 heal the child, who knows what he has that is crying so much. The woman arrived at the healer’s house, greeted her, entered and said:
—I’m already tired. We live very far from here.
—Where do you live?
—I live in the house of a woman called Doña Lagartija and she ordered me to come and beg you to go and cure her son who is sick. If you have to go, certainly do so. You wait for me. We will go together. I only fix what is necessary. She put all the medicinal herbs in her basket and they came out and left. They arrived at Mrs. Lizard’s house and as soon as the healer saw how the sick child was, she asked them:
—What do they give you to drink?
—He doesn’t want to drink anything; she’s just crying. She felt the pit of his stomach; She had it very thin, and then he said:
—Bring a little pulque. He started to give it to her, he was happy. Before he had seen that he had painted on his stomach, with blood, a maguey said:
—Look, lady, this maguey that appears painted on your stomach means that it must be raised with pulque. While he grows, give him what I have told you to take; When he reaches 7 years old, we will change his food. In the meantime we’re going to cure him. She began to heal him. She sucked the blood onto the stomach, incensed it with St. John’s wort, palm, incense and many other medicinal herbs; She smeared rooster’s blood on his stomach, which would erase the maguey that the child had painted on; She smoked him and he stopped crying. Since he cured him he never cried again, he was always calm; Once they gave him pulque there was no need to give it again, he would fall asleep and they would give him something to drink until the next day. He turned 7 years old, again she went to see him that healer and smoked him again with cedar, incense and white incense. When he finished, he let a while pass and then searched again, and on his back he found many little fruits painted, and he said to his mother:
—Look, lady, what appears here; There are many little fruits that indicate that he must support himself with fruit, and here, in his right hand, he has an ear of corn, and in his left hand, see, he has a pumpkin guide with a little pumpkin, which means that he will be a worker when he is ready. big. Now give him only fruit for food; go and cut the best in the ravine, where the winds pass; That’s what you should eat. And that’s how for 9 days she washed his back with that perfume that the air had blessed. As soon as she washed the creature or, rather, the healer bathed it, the little fruits that she had painted on her back were immediately erased, everything disappeared, and they called him “the gardener boy.” There was not a single farm field, not a single plot 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 trees. Blessed man of the air, wherever he went everyone bowed to him.
The Astur wolf (Inuit, Greenland)
A simple lesson in resilience and respect from the cold steppes of .
In the beginning of time, Kaila was the god of the sky above the vast forests and frozen plains. He created Man and Woman. Completely alone and free, the man and 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 take all the animals out of the hole, the last of which was the caribou (elk).
“The caribou will be your best gift. He will feed you and your family, thanks to his 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 Children of the Woman always hunted the strong and fat caribou, they did not want the weak caribou, because they did not have good meat nor were their skins good. Thus the strong and healthy caribou disappeared, increasing the number of weak and sick caribou. Seeing that her children were beginning to go hungry, the Woman began to cry. Kaila saw her tears from heaven.
“I gave you the best of gifts and you wasted it, but since my generosity is great, I will try to help you,” Kaila told the Woman.
Kaila spoke with Amarok, the spirit of wolves, who lived near him in the sky. She asked him to send wolves to the land to eat the weak and sick caribou. From the top of the hill, the men watched the wolves. After gathering in the forest, the wolf pack silently headed towards the calmly chewing caribou. Seeing the wolves, the caribou grouped together, forming a protective circle around the weak and young animals. The wolves launched themselves to break the circle formed by the caribou and drive away the strongest ones. Since that day the spirit of Amarok reigns in the Great North.
The Inuit let the wolves hunt in peace, because they know that the caribou nourishes the wolf, but the wolf maintains the good health of the caribou.
The nahuel and the lost man (Mapuche, Chile)
Animals and humans are brothers between whom empathy can flow and solidarity arise.
–I met a man who came from the south and who told me that his grandfather’s grandfather was friends with a tiger.
–Friend of a tiger? How did he do it, grandma?
–His grandfather’s friend was a Mapuche warrior. Once at the end of a battle against white soldiers he remained on the enemy’s side. For several days he was hidden in the grass without making a single sound. 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 it and at night he was still in a strange land. He suddenly saw two small lights. He thought: “It must be people who have set fires” and he was happy. But he immediately realized that they were the yellow eyes of a tiger and his eyes were getting closer. Then he felt afraid and so much so that he started crying. 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 “brother tiger” 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 in the hole of a pehuén while he stood guard among the branches. The tiger hunted for the man and they ate sharing the food. They ran races and rolled 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 was carrying the smoke from his people’s campfires. That night they slept as they had done all the way, but in the morning the tiger was gone. And although the man looked for it, he couldn’t find it. “Thank you Peñí Nahuel!” He shouted at the wind that carried his words to the tiger’s ears. Then the man walked and went to meet his family.
–What are we going to do when the rain stops, right, grandmother?
Legend of yerba mate (guaraní, Paraguay)
Because in the simple act of sharing a drink, community can be consolidated.
It is said that before Yací came down, the men were so busy with their own chores that they barely looked at each other or talked a little. I lay there was immense, refulgent, powerful. She was magic and light. Because I was the moon, and planted above the firmament, it illuminated the tops of the trees and the roads every night, it painted the course of the rivers in silver and revealed the secretive and terrifying creatures that hid in the shadows of the jungle. . One morning Yací descended to earth, accompanied by the Araí cloud. Transformed into girls, they walked along the remote paths of the village, among the labyrinth of willows, lapachos, cedars and palm trees. And then, suddenly, a jaguar appeared. The calm and defiant look. The slow and determined step. The claws ready to be stuck and the jaws ready to attack. But an arrow pierced the heart of the beast like light. Yací 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 around and left in silence. That night, while he slept in his hammock under the moonlight, the old hunter had an eye-opener. He saw the crouching jaguar again and the fragility of the two young women that he had saved that afternoon, who this time spoke to him:
─We are Yací and Araí, and we want to reward you for what you have done. Tomorrow when you wake up you will find a new plant at the door of your house. His name is Caá, and he has the property of bringing men’s hearts closer together. To do this, you must toast and grind…