Yacurutu and his sister (Rio Purus account)

Overview

Rodrigues’s plantation-origin tale describes Yacurutu and his unnamed sister as giants. Mura chiefs and ritual specialists seek his destruction because he eats their children. They bring a turtle figure onto the beach. Yacurutu steps on it and one foot sticks; pressing down with the other traps that foot as well. As the turtle moves toward the river, he calls his sister to bring a piece of wood so he can brace himself and pull free. She takes hold of the wood and becomes trapped too.

The turtle carries both toward the river. A closing speech, delivered as death approaches, calls on descendants to take revenge and promises plants from the speaker’s body: wood for bows and arrow shafts, fibres for cords, nuts providing oil and bamboo for arrow points. After that announcement the speaker disappears. The text does not separately narrate the sister’s final fate or assign two distinct sets of bodily transformations. Its movement from an attack on children to future weapon materials gives the origin episode a retaliatory setting.

The Portuguese rendering calls the turtle an avô da tartaruga, while the interlinear Portuguese repeatedly uses avó. The account does not explain a literal pedigree linking it with Yacurutu. Rodrigues also glosses Yacurutu as an owl name, but the tale presents a giant and does not describe a transformation into an owl. His hostile ethnographic footnote about the Mura is excluded as a judgment on that people.

Origins & earliest records

Rodrigues1890, XVI Moytyma uipurungaua, A origem da plantação,267–269, labelled Rio Purus. No individual narrator is named; complete interlinear glosses, Portuguese rendering and footnotes inspected.

Records & interpretation

Complete Rodrigues263–271 and associated footnotes visually read;272blank. The two plant-origin accounts267–269 and270–271 are explicitly regionally separated. Their kinship titles and references to material transformations are not converted into zoological or medical claims.

Selected bibliography

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

1. 01

   Poranduba amazonense, ou Kochiyma-uara porandub

   João Barbosa Rodrigues · 1890

   Rodrigues1890, XVI Moytyma uipurungaua, A origem da plantação,267–269, labelled Rio Purus. No individual narrator is named; complete interlinear glosses, Portuguese rendering and footnotes inspected.

Family & connections

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References

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

1. Primary textUFPE: Barbosa Rodrigues1890 original scanResearch access: 2026-10-05

Image credits

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