Page:Amazonian Tortoise Myths.djvu/10

— 2 — of their great value, I set myself to work to collect them.

For a long time I was baffled, for the whites, as a general rule, were unacquainted with the Indian folk-lore, and neither by coaxing, nor by offers of money, could I persuade an Indian to relate a myth. The story-teller of the locality was always represented to be an old woman, who could make one split his sides with laughter at odd stories about the Kurupira and the Yuruparí, and all sorts of animals, that used to talk and play pranks on one another, in the olden time when speech was not the exclusive possession of man. But quite invariably, this old woman was absent, or inaccessible. Once only, at Ereré, did I find an ancient squaw, said to be a wonderful repository of lendas, but nothing could I obtain from her.

One night, while wearily paddling up the parand-mirím of the Itukí, near Santarem, my faithful steersman, Maciel, began to talk to the Indian boatmen in Tupí to keep them from going to sleep. I listened with all my ears, and, to my great delight, found him recounting a story of the Kurupíra. I followed him as best I could, jotting down in my note-book the leading points in the story, meanwhile joining heartily in the laughter of the men to encourage the narrator. The next day, I took the first opportunity to tell Maciel how much I had enjoyed his story, and to beg