Tatapuifüta’s household, Kurüwal’a’s Menoco

Overview

Juan Manuel Kurüwal’a of Panguipulli tells Menoco in Augusta’s 1910 collection. Two impoverished shepherds enter a menoko in turn and emerge with richly equipped horses, then marry two women who hide the horses because they fear their father. The editors say the narrator explained menoko as a kind of well, while acknowledging that they had not found it in their dictionaries. That historical lexical uncertainty is not a reason to make the place a named monster. The father, Tatapuifüta, dreams that he has sons-in-law and sends his son, Fox, to investigate. Fox quarrels with his two sisters and reports their husbands to him.

Tatapuifüta demands labour from the new husbands, intending to kill them. Their wives warn that his tree is pure fire. The men call down rain and southern snow, then obtain a pillañ axe and cut the extinguished tree. A huge burning stone is similarly soaked, undermined and overturned. The third task concerns the old man’s guanaco, which threatens to devour them. One man approaches holding a knife and is swallowed whole; he cuts the animal’s heart from inside. His companion opens its body and releases him alive. The guanaco is explicitly man-eating here, without converting ordinary guanacos into a dangerous species.

Returning with the meat, the husbands find their wives seated dead. They later explicitly blame Tatapuifüta for killing them, though the account does not show the killing itself. Their grief produces a curse of ten days of night, later extended to ten years. Birds and other animals offer daughters in an effort to satisfy them, with Fox first among the unsuccessful parents. The young men reject the proposed brides for their calls, size, smell or other perceived failings. These judgments belong to the grieving characters’ speeches, not to a ranking endorsed by the profile. The long sequence includes a near acceptance of Gull’s daughter, undone when she calls out, and a partridge daughter who flies away.

The men ultimately seek their wives beyond the sea, where they have heard the dead live. A boatman agrees to carry them for a fee to be paid if they find their wives. On arrival, they learn that other men have married the women. The boatman waives payment because they have not recovered them, and the two remain there without wives and accept their situation. Neither the wives’ return to life nor a renewed marriage is supplied. The story also leaves the fate of Tatapuifüta and the eventual end of the imposed darkness unstated. Its movement from successful tasks to an unsuccessful recovery should not be replaced with a conventional victory ending.

Origins & earliest records

Lecturas Araucanas (Valdivia, 1910), Augusta’s collected tales III.6, expressly credits Juan Manuel Kurüwal’a of Panguipulli. The preface describes collecting there in January 1909 and later work, but this item supplies no exact interview date. The historical title and missionary editorial framing are distinguished from the named narrator’s account.

Records & interpretation

Complete printed pp.104–118, all numbered sections and notes, read through the next tale boundary. Original p104 narrator heading and p118 final outcome inspected. The printed numbering jumps from44 to47; no missing episode is invented. Spanish translation used; no independent Mapudungun collation claimed.

Selected bibliography

Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.

1. 01

   Lecturas Araucanas

   Juan Manuel Kurüwal’a, narrator; Félix José de Augusta, collector and editor · 1910

   III.6 Menoco, printed pp.104–118, complete story and footnotes; collection preface I–II. Original narrator heading and ending checked.

Family & connections

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References

Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.

1. PrimaryAugusta 1910, Menoco, Juan Manuel Kurüwal’aResearch access: 2026-10-05

Image credits

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