Compiled by B. Alan Walton
#1 — Page 119 of Harold Osborne’s book “SOUTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY”, tells of one of the legends of the Tupari Indians, who live up the Rio Branco (or Parima) river. This river eventually merges with the Rio Negro and is to be found in the upper Mato Grosso region of Brazil. A young Swiss ethnologist, Franz Casper, learned of the following Tuparian tradition when he visited the tribe in 1948:
“…Long ago there were no Tupari or other men. Our ancestors lived under the ground where the sun never shines… Then the men began to stream out in great hordes… Many men remained inside the earth. They are called ‘Kinno‘ and still live there.
“One day, when (most of) the people of the earth have died, the Kinno will come out of the ground here. But the men whom Aroteh had let out of the earth did not find room in the same place. We Tupari remained here, the others wondered far away in all directions. They are our neighbors: the Arikapu, Yabuti, Makurap, Arua, and all other tribes.”
Similar legends can be found on pages 265-266 of Daniel G. Brinton’s book, “MYTHS OF THE NEW WORLD”:
“…This cavern, which thus lingered in the memories of nations, frequently expanded to a nether world, imagined to underlie this of ours, and still inhabited by beings of our kind, who have never been lucky enough to discover its exit.
“According to a myth extensively disseminated among the Caribs, Arawaks, Warraus, Carayas, and other South American tribes, in the beginning of things sky and earth were as one, and man abode within the earth in a joyous realm, where death and disease were unknown, and even the trees never rotted but lived on forever.
“One day the ruler of that happy realm walking forth discovered the surface of the world as we know it, but returning warned his people that though sunlight was there, so also were decay and death. Some, however, went thither, and the present unhappy race of men are their descendants, while others dwell in gladness far below…”