The Creation Account of the Uitoto of Colombia, South America

  South American

1

In the beginning, the word gave origin to the Father. A phantasm, nothing else existed in the beginning; the Father touched an illusion, he grasped something mysterious. Nothing existed. Through the agency of a dream our Father Naimuena [he who is or has a phantasm] kept the mirage to his body, and he pondered long and thought deeply.

2

Nothing existed, not even a stick to support the vision: our Father attached the illusion to the thread of a dream and kept it by the aid of his breath. He sounded to reach the bottom of the appearance, but there was nothing. Nothing existed indeed.

3

Then the Father again investigated the bottom of the mystery. He tied the empty illusion to the dream thread and pressed the magical substance upon it. Thus by the aid of his dream he held it like a wisp of raw cotton.

4

Then he seized the mirage bottom and stamped upon it repeatedly, sitting down at last on his dreamed earth.

5

The earth-phantasm was now his, and he spat out saliva repeatedly so that the forests might grow. Then he lay down upon his earth and covered it with the roof of heaven. As he was the owner of the earth he placed above it the blue and the white sky.

6

Thereupon, Rafuema, "the man who has the narratives," sitting at the base of the heavens, pondered, and he created this story so that we might listen to it here upon earth.

[From Literature of the American Indian : Abridged Edition, ed. Thomas E. Sanders and Walter W. Peek, Glencoe Press, 1976, p. 28; no further source given]

  South American