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Overview
The Yaui or Tariana account begins before Izi’s birth. Women fear their community will disappear because their elderly male companions cannot father children. A ritual specialist sends them to bathe, then says a great snake has made them pregnant. Their children are born together. The youngest woman’s beautiful daughter later eats Uaku fruit supplied by monkeys and becomes pregnant; she says she knows no father for her child. This second generation is Izi’s mother, distinct from the women in the opening episode.
Her baby disappears at night. Near the Uaku trunk she hears him cry but cannot see him; each morning her emptied breasts show that he has nursed during the night. His sounds later change to invisible play. He finally appears grown, emitting fire from his hands and head, and returns home with her. Elders name him Izi and people choose him as chief. He initially refuses because he lacks the nanacy stone kept at the moon’s hooked mountain.
The sun has given him a bag of enchanted objects. From heated pitch in little pots come bats and different birds; a great hawk carries him to the moon. The moon gives him the stone and instructions for governing, fasting and punishing disobedience. Izi returns, releases the hawk and tells elders the instructions secretly. Women obtain the information from the elders and claim leadership, leading to a conflict also involving men’s claims.
Izi burns one elder whose scattered ashes become centipedes and other poisonous life; he changes others into a toad and snake. He orders fasting, lashes men and women, and kills a woman who divulged the secret after intercourse with her. He then restricts his feast and instruction, allowing selected elders to teach youths but not children. Women who listen die and become stones, including his mother, for whom he weeps. He celebrates his authority and goes to the sky, sometimes travelling through the forest.
The following episode concerns a separately identified companion of Izi who swallows disobedient boys, is burned, and escapes upward as a soul through a palm. That companion’s destruction is not Izi’s death. Rodrigues presents the entire telling as abbreviated; its coercive laws and gender exclusions belong to this attributed narrative, rather than a blanket description of contemporary Tariana life or a continuation automatically imposed on his separately printed Dacé/Tukano birth account.
Origins & earliest records
Rodrigues1890, Izy ou Yurupari, labelled Yaui or Tariana, Uaupés. The collector explicitly calls his text an abridgment and says other associated accounts were kept secret; no individual teller is named.
Records & interpretation
Complete Portuguese rendering114–118 plus title105 and its abridgment note read on original scans; selected interlinear pages113–114 also inspected. Preceding comparative essay93–100 read separately.
Selected bibliography
Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.
- 01
Poranduba amazonense, ou Kochiyma-uara porandub
TaleII Izy ou Yurupari: complete Portuguese rendering114–118, title/abridgment note105; edition1890. Other interlinear pages not independently analyzed.
Family, evolution & connections
Izi’s two maternal generations — Yaui/Tariana witness
Portuguese rendering pp. 114–118; maternal sequence on p. 115.
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- Youngest woman of the opening generation
- Her daughter, Izi’s unnamed mother
The expressly narrated woman→daughter→son succession, with paternal claims excluded. The two women are unnamed. The opening specialist attributes the earlier pregnancies to a great snake; Izi’s own mother identifies no father after eating fruit. The sun’s my-son address is not adopted as paternity. This witness is not merged with the separately printed Dacé/Tukano account or presented as contemporary community genealogy.
Unnamed mother of Izi in the Yaui/Tariana account
The young woman bears and nurses Izi after eating Uaku fruit. She expressly says she does not know what made her pregnant; neither the fruit nor the sun’s later my-son address supplies a stated biological father.
Youngest woman of the opening generation
Page 115 says the youngest woman bears the beautiful daughter who later grows up, eats Uaku fruit and bears Izi. The opening ritual specialist’s snake-pregnancy explanation concerns this earlier generation, not Izi’s own conception.
References
Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.
- Primary textUFPE: Barbosa Rodrigues1890 original scanResearch access: 2026-10-05
Image credits
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