The Jaguar, Rop, is the original master of fire in Apinayé mythology. In the age before people cooked, the Jaguar alone possessed the hearth, roasted meat and the bow. When a boy is stranded on a rock face after being sent to rob a macaw's nest and abandoned by his brother-in-law, the Jaguar finds him, carries him home on his back, adopts him as a son and feeds him cooked food. From the Jaguar's house the boy and his kinsmen carry off the first fire, so that the great predator, generous to his foster-son but robbed of his treasure, becomes the involuntary benefactor of humankind. The tale is the Apinayé form of the widespread Jê origin-of-fire myth.