Elal

Elal is the great culture-hero of the Tehuelche, sometimes compared to a figure combining Heracles and Prometheus. Son of the cannibal giant Nóshtex and the cloud-maiden Teo, he was torn unborn from his mother when his father, warned by Kóoch that the child would surpass him, sought to kill him; rescued by a tuco-tuco and later carried across the sea on a swan, he reached the Patagonian mainland at the mountain now called Chaltén. There he shaped the land, mastered fire and invented the bow, fashioned the first Tehuelches (the Chónek) and instructed them in hunting, ritual and moral conduct. To win a wife he underwent the deadly trials set by the Sun and Moon and took their daughter, ancestress of the Tehuelches. When his work was done he gathered the people to take his leave and departed eastward over the sea on his swan, shooting arrows that raised islands as resting places along the way. He presides over the third of the four mythic ages.

Parentage

• Nóshtex
• Teo, the cloud-maiden

Domains

• culture heroism
• fire
• hunting and the chase
• creation of humankind

Powers

• to shape the surface of the earth and divide undifferentiated reality into ordered, differentiated forms
• to fashion the first Tehuelches and endow them with the arts of life
• to bring fire to humankind and to invent the bow and arrow for the hunt
• to raise islands from the water with his arrows as resting-places on his sea journey

Epithets

• Elal

Relations

• enemy: Nóshtex
• slayer of: Nóshtex
• enemy: Máip
• subordinate to: Xaleshen, the Sun

Sources

• Bórmida, Marcelo & Alejandra Siffredi. "Mitología de los tehuelches meridionales." RUNA: Archivo para las Ciencias del Hombre 12 (1969-70): 199-245.
• Wilbert, Johannes & Karin Simoneau, eds. Folk Literature of the Tehuelche Indians. UCLA Latin American Center Publications. Los Angeles: University of California, 1984.
• "Tehuelche Religion." Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd ed. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005 (Encyclopedia.com).