{"id":1258,"date":"2012-07-19T18:19:01","date_gmt":"2012-07-19T23:19:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/rachel-chapman\/?p=1258"},"modified":"2012-07-20T08:43:38","modified_gmt":"2012-07-20T13:43:38","slug":"an-old-nahuatl-tale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/rachel-chapman\/2012\/07\/19\/an-old-nahuatl-tale\/","title":{"rendered":"An old Nahuatl tale"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few days ago, one of our friends told Katie Moore<\/a> the Nahuatl tale of the first man and woman.\u00a0 It\u2019s a fascinating story that echoes some of the Nahuatl values and points of view.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure you\u2019ll recognize some familiar imagery, as well.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
...there was a boat, like a gourd...<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When the world was lost, it filled with water.\u00a0 Everything was gone.\u00a0 And when that was happening, there was a boat, like the gourds that the ancestors used to plant. A man and his dog put themselves inside.\u00a0 When the water rose, they rose, too.\u00a0 When the water receded, there they stayed on the ground.\u00a0 But the ground was tender, so they didn\u2019t get out; they stayed in the boat for many days.<\/p>\n

They sent a bird\u2014the kind that lives near the water, the kind that is somewhat like a duck, the kind that you can hear making its sounds near the river.\u00a0 They sent this bird out from the boat to feel the ground and see how it was.\u00a0 It\u2019s not heavy and it wouldn\u2019t get stuck; if the ground was still tender, it could fly away.<\/p>\n

The ground was still tender; they could not leave.\u00a0 For more days they stayed there until they knew that the ground began to be seasoned or mature.\u00a0 So they got out.\u00a0 The man got out and took the dog out.\u00a0 And there was their house.\u00a0 There they lived.\u00a0 \u00a0Then he started to work; the man softened the ground and planted.\u00a0 And then he would go to work.\u00a0 He would arrive at home in the afternoon and make his food.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
...the tortillas were already made...<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And so it went for some time.\u00a0 Then he started getting home and tortillas were made.\u00a0 And he wondered what it was.\u00a0\u00a0 He thought a lot about what it was.\u00a0 He would get home and only the dog was there.<\/p>\n

So, he went.\u00a0 One time he went in the morning.\u00a0 But he didn\u2019t go; he stayed there checking close by so that he could figure out what.\u00a0 He saw that a woman came out.\u00a0 She came out from inside and went around the house and was grinding corn.\u00a0 He saw her.\u00a0 Later, the man ran to the house.\u00a0 He saw that at the door was her hair.\u00a0 The dog\u2019s hair.\u00a0 She had taken it off and put on a dress.<\/p>\n

The man quickly grabbed the hair and he put it in the stove so that it would burn (the woman was making tortillas so that\u2019s why the stove was lit).\u00a0 He thought that if he did that, the dog would have to stay as a woman and be his woman.\u00a0 That\u2019s why quickly he burned it so that she couldn\u2019t go back to being a dog.\u00a0 The woman said to him, \u201cDon\u2019t burn it; it\u2019s my shirt.\u201d\u00a0 But he didn\u2019t listen to her.\u00a0 She began to cry.\u00a0 She became sad.<\/p>\n

But the man thought that she should be his woman, because he was tired of being alone.\u00a0 That\u2019s how he saw it. \u00a0She could be his cook and it would be better.\u00a0 The woman couldn\u2019t do anything about it anymore.\u00a0 She was people.\u00a0 They lived together.\u00a0 They had kids\u2014boys and girls.\u00a0 And from them came all the people that are of \u201cthe race\u201d\u2014Huicholes, and Tepehuanes, and Cora and us\u2014lots of people.\u00a0 Who knows where white people came from.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
...he was tired of being alone.... She could be his cook and it would be better...<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So the man worked.\u00a0 And they had many things: goats, cows, chickens\u2014many things.\u00a0 Who knows where those animals came from, but they had them.\u00a0 And that\u2019s how the world is from then until now.\u00a0 Even though it\u2019s a long time since all that happened, the world is still the same.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t change.\u00a0 That\u2019s how it happened.\u00a0 That\u2019s how they say it happened.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
...our mother was a dog...<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That\u2019s why we know now that we women aren\u2019t clean people.\u00a0 Not clean like the men.\u00a0 We have a rib from a dog and a rib from a person.\u00a0 Our mother was a dog and the men\u2019s father was a person.\u00a0 We aren\u2019t like the men.\u00a0 That\u2019s why it\u2019s better to find a wife from far, far away and ask her and see if she\u2019s in agreement with being your wife.\u00a0 It\u2019s better that way.\u00a0 We women don\u2019t remember well and that\u2019s why.\u00a0 Who knows if it\u2019s true or not.\u00a0 It\u2019s a tale.\u00a0 Well, I say a tale because we don\u2019t see it happening right now.<\/p>\n

Please pray for the day when Nahuatl men and women are one in Christ!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few days ago, one of our friends told Katie Moore the Nahuatl tale of the first man and woman.\u00a0 It\u2019s a fascinating story that echoes some of the Nahuatl values and points of view.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure you\u2019ll recognize some familiar imagery, as well. When the world was lost, it filled with water.\u00a0 Everything was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":304,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[424,52],"tags":[426,1094,6654],"class_list":{"0":"post-1258","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-culture-language","7":"category-fun","8":"tag-katie","9":"tag-language-culture-study","10":"tag-legend","11":"entry"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/rachel-chapman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/rachel-chapman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/rachel-chapman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/rachel-chapman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/304"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/rachel-chapman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/rachel-chapman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1258\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/rachel-chapman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/rachel-chapman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/rachel-chapman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}