A sourced illustration has not yet been added. This gap is included in the coverage record.

Overview

The Madeira telling begins with youths arranging a fishing trip after midnight. Yurupari perhaps overhears them—the narration leaves this conjectural—and arrives first to take the young women away. At daylight they see his ugly appearance and hollow belly; he declares himself their husband. His home is a cave. While he is absent, the speaking bird Carão agrees to carry them home, one at a time. Yurupari returns to an empty dwelling. No killing or pursuit follows in this version.

The appended Kanumã variant is attributed to a Munduruku woman. An old man has arranged for his daughters’ uncle to collect miriti fruit with them. Yurupari kills the uncle and takes his appearance. At dawn one sister recognizes the impostor from his feet, although the main narration does not describe their exact shape. In the cave he leaves a parrot to guard them. On successive nights he summons the older sisters to bring fire to his hammock and sucks them like a bat; afterward the youngest finds their bones. This simile is not an explicit transformation into a bat.

Carão appears as a young man to help the surviving sister. She collects her sisters’ bones, salt, ashes and Yurupari’s milonga. A note identifies his talisman as a muyrakytã kept inside a snail shell. The parrot raises the alarm and Yurupari pursues, demanding the object. Burning the carried materials produces smoke, a thorn barrier and finally a great river that he cannot cross.

The ending says the mother rejoices to see her daughters, although no separate resurrection of the two dead sisters is narrated. That plural wording is retained as a textual difficulty, not converted into an invented restoration scene. Rodrigues’s note says this version confuses Yurupari with Korupira, assigning the uncrossable river and turned feet to the latter; this is an editorial comparison rather than proof that the two names are always interchangeable.

Impersonates expected companionsCave captivityBatlike predation only in Kanumã variantTalisman theft prompts pursuitRiver stops pursuit in one version
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Origins & earliest records

Rodrigues1890, O Yurupari e as moças,pp.129–132. The first account is labelled Rio Madeira; the appended Rio Kanumã variant is expressly credited to a Munduruku woman whose personal name is not given.

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Records & interpretation

Complete129–132 inspected visually, including interlinear Portuguese glosses, full Portuguese narrative, complete Kanumã variant and all notes. No independently named teller is invented.

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

    O Yurupari e as moças: complete129–132, including Rio Kanumã variant attributed to an unnamed Munduruku woman.

Family & connections

A source-supported family tree or inspiration record has not yet been compiled for this profile. Related reading below indicates a connection in subject matter, not a proven lineage or creative influence.

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

A sourced illustration has not yet been added. This gap is included in the coverage record.

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