Makunaima (Macuxi recension)
Macuxi · demigod · mythic prehistoric · Recorded classification
Makunaima (Macuxi Makunaimî) is the most widely attested figure of the Carib-speaking peoples of the Guiana Highlands. Among the Macuxi he is remembered as a son of the Sun and brother of Insikiran and Anikê; his deeds include the discovery and felling of the world-tree Wazaká, whose petrified stump is Mount Roraima, the release of cultivated plants, and a long series of trickster episodes in which he transforms people and animals into the rocks of the savanna. Colonial and ethnographic sources note his ambivalence: he brings fire and food plants but also hardship and disease. His name was famously borrowed by Mário de Andrade for the 1928 Brazilian novel Macunaíma.
Parentage
- parent: Wei, the Sun
Domains
- creation
- trickery
Powers
- to transform people, animals and features of the landscape into stone and other forms
- to bring fire and also diseases into the world
Relations
- sibling: AnikêThe old Macuxi songs (erenkon) name Makunaima, Anikê and Insikiran together as the brother heroes of the beginning-time.Nádia Farage, As Muralhas dos Sertões, 1991 (secondary)
- enemy: Piai'mãIn the circum-Roraima cycle Makunaima and his brothers are repeatedly pursued by, and finally destroy, the cannibal giant Piai'mã.Theodor Koch-Grünberg, Vom Roraima zum Orinoco, Bd. II, 1924 (secondary)
Sources
- Makunaima is the trickster-demiurge son of the Sun in the Macuxi and circum-Roraima Carib creation cycle, feller of the world-tree Wazaká and shaper of the landscape.: Theodor Koch-Grünberg, Vom Roraima zum Orinoco, Bd. II: Mythen und Legenden der Taulipang- und Arekuná-Indianern, 1924 (secondary); Everard im Thurn, Among the Indians of Guiana, London: Kegan Paul, 1883 (secondary); Lúcia Sá, Rain Forest Literatures: Amazonian Texts and Latin American Culture, 2004 (secondary)