Amalivaca (mythical explorer)
Amalivaca is a mythical young explorer central to the folklore of the Carib-speaking Tamanac people of the Orinoco River basin. In the legend, he emerges after a great flood has reshaped the world, symbolizing renewal and the potential for communal prosperity. Amalivaca is depicted as a wise patriarch who documents his travels through timehri, intricate carvings that capture his observations of the environment and humanity. His interactions with local tribesmen highlight themes of peace and shared knowledge; he teaches them farming and shipbuilding techniques, emphasizing that wisdom should benefit all.
The legend also attributes to Amalivaca the creation of music and musical instruments, underscoring the cultural significance of drumming in indigenous ceremonies. Notably, Amalivaca's inability to make the river flow in two directions symbolizes a rare fallibility in his character, suggesting that even revered figures have limitations. The story of Amalivaca serves not only as a creation myth but also as a reflection of the Tamanac people's aspirations for harmony and cooperation within their communities. Through his journey, Amalivaca’s legacy of wisdom and skill continues to resonate, illustrating the deep connection between culture, nature, and communal life.
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Amalivaca (mythical explorer)
Author: Traditional Tamanac
Time Period: 1001 CE–1500 CE; 1701 CE–1850 CE
Country or Culture: South America
Genre: Myth
PLOT SUMMARY
Amalivaca is a mythical young explorer who settles near the mouth of the Essesquibo River. The legend casts Amalivaca as a patriarch who appears after concluding a lengthy journey on which he has surveyed the remains of the earth in the aftermath of a massive deluge that has flooded the entire planet. Amalivaca illustrates people, animals, and shapes, describing what he has encountered on his travels in timehri, carvings etched with a giant diamond on numerous rocks and rock formations in and around the Essesquibo’s banks.
When Amalivaca encounters a contingent of tribesmen utilizing the land to harvest cane reeds with which to make weapons, specifically arrow shafts, he disparages their violent intentions, insisting that the earth is intended to harvest mutual prosperity among all people. Impressed by both his wisdom and the quality construction of Amalivaca’s fire-hollowed canoe, the farmers invite the mysterious young traveler to settle with their tribe so that he may offer them instruction in both farming and shipbuilding. He agrees, showcasing both his knowledge of industry and several magical powers.
Before his departure from the tribe, Amalivaca insists that the purpose of the wisdom he has bestowed on their tribe is communal and that the true intention of knowledge is for it to be shared among all people. As a testament of gratitude and admiration, the tribe shares their new skills throughout the region. Amalivaca’s travels continue while legend of his teachings and powers continues to grow.
Eventually known throughout the land for his wisdom and wizardry, Amalivaca encounters another group and its members urge him to make the Essesquibo’s current travel in both directions. The tribe describes the difficulty it has paddling against the strong current, believing that two directions of travel on the river would make the waterway easier to use in travel and trade. Though he is unable to use his powers to make the river travel in both directions simultaneously, Amalivaca is successful in creating ocean tides, which force the currents at the river’s mouth to alternate directions during different times of the day, an alteration for which the people express profound gratitude.
After several more years of travel and instruction, Amalivaca retires to the Maita Plains, where legend has it that he carved out a giant rock formation for use as a drum and that Amalivaca’s stone drum is still visible to this day. The legend concludes with a regional farewell to Amalivaca on the banks of the Essesquibo, where the traveler, now an old man, takes to the Atlantic Ocean by canoe to spread his wisdom throughout the world.
SIGNIFICANCE
Amalivaca is a creation myth that, in similar fashion to creation myths from throughout history, casts the Carib-speaking Tamanac people of the Orinoco River basin as the root of all humankind. It is one of the region’s earliest to illustrate the transposition of a natural world to the commune of humankind. Many creation myths introduce humanity at the end of several years of chaos—in this case a great flood—in the natural world.
There is scholarly agreement on the likelihood that the legend has root in the indigenous Guyanese discovery of and intended explanation of timehri, primitive rock carvings are still visible today near the mouth of the Essequibo River.
In other iterations, extensions, and adaptations of the Amalivaca legend, Amalivaca is additionally credited with the creation of the world’s first music and the first musical instrument, the rattle, which would play a key part in indigenous ceremonies. The legend also exhibits the importance of drums and other percussion instruments in the lives of indigenous tribes. Some versions even credit the floodwaters abating to Amalivaca’s drumming.
Amalivaca presents an uncommon exception from many of the creation myths of several other cultures and epochs. The variant recounted by Odeen Ishmael is particularly in its optimistic supposition that shared knowledge is intended to be one of the mainstays of a peaceful existence among humankind. Amalivaca’s inability to wholly convert the river’s flow into two different currents is also a rare instance of fallibility in a godlike creator character. According to a version recorded by Alexander von Humbolt around 1800, Amalivaca was aided in this endeavor to by a brother named Vochi but neither demigod was successful.
Another key variance of the Tamanac legend of Amalivaca as compared to other creation myths is that its creator-protagonist is not an invisible divine being, the worship of whom rises from an attempt to describe the origins of nature and society, but a personification of humanity’s potential for industry, technical aptitude, and communal prosperity.
Von Humbolt’s version also alludes to the formation and ordering of society; in it, Amalivaca’s daughters are filled with wanderlust, so he breaks their legs to force them to populate the immediate area, producing the Tamanac people Anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss postulates that this bizarre episode, along with the river current episode, represents a regulation of women’s sexual activity and the establishment of tribal marriage rules to prevent both incest and distant liaisons.
The existence of stories related to Amalivaca throughout the Orinoco River basin and even as far as the Caribbean was a testament to the myth’s power—particularly in its personification and explanation of common events in the natural world and its basis in the belief that its authoring people had distant, if not specifically divine, instructions and purpose for prosperity and survival.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
De Goeje, C. H. “The Loss of Everlasting Life.” Philosophy, Initiation and Myths of the Indians of Guiana and Adjacent Countries. Leiden: Brill, 1943. 116–17. Print.
Ishmael, Odeen. “Amalivaca.” Guyana Legends: Folk Tales of the Indigenous Amerindians. Bloomington: Xlibris, 2011. 200–204. Print.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. “M415. Tamanac. ‘The Girls Who Were Forced to Marry.’” The Origin of Table Manners. Trans. John Weightman and Doreen Weightman. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1990. 159–61. Print. Mythologiques 3.
Rowbotham, J. F. “Musical Myths.” Chambers’s Journal of Popular Literature, Science and Art 3.394 ser. 5 (1891): 449–51.
Von Humbolt, Alexander, and Aimé Bonpland. “Native Legends of a Deluge.” Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, during the Years 1799–1804. Vol. 2. Trans. and ed. Thomasina Ross. London: Bell, 1889. 473. Print.