Jaguar (Rop)

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.

Domains

• fire hearth
• culture gift

Powers

• possesses the only fire
• adopts the stranded boy and gives him fire

Epithets

• rop — the Jaguar, owner of fireCurt Nimuendajú, The Apinayé (1939). (primary)

Relations

• spouse: The Jaguar's WifeHusband of the hostile Jaguar's wife, whose enmity endangers the boy.Curt Nimuendajú, The Apinayé (1939), origin-of-fire myth. (primary)
• ally: The Fire-BringerFoster-father and benefactor of the stranded boy.Curt Nimuendajú, The Apinayé (1939), origin-of-fire myth. (primary)

Sources

• In Apinayé myth the Jaguar was the original owner of fire and of cooked food, and it was from him that humankind obtained fire through the boy he fostered.: Curt Nimuendajú, The Apinayé (1939), origin-of-fire myth. (primary); Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Raw and the Cooked: Mythologiques I (1969), Apinayé version M9 of the bird-nester and the jaguar's fire. (secondary)