Zatimare and his wife Kokotero had two children: a boy, Zokooye, and a girl, Athiolo. The father loved the boy and did not notice the girl at all. If she called to him, he answered her only by whistling. He never said a single word to her.
In desperation, Atiolo began to ask her mother to bury her alive: this way, they say, it would be better for everyone. For a long time, Kokotero did not agree to fulfill her daughter’s strange wish, but finally gave in to her pleas. She buried her daughter in the meadow, behind the fence, but Atiolo immediately asked to dig her up because, she said, it was too hot here. And she began to beg to be buried in an open field. The mother fulfilled this request of her daughter, but Atiolo did not want to stay in the open field. And she asked her mother to dig a hole in the dense forest. The mother obeyed again, dug a hole and moved her daughter there: Atiolo decided to stay there. And she told her mother to leave, and advised her not to turn around if she heard a scream.
Cocotero walked for a long time, and everything around was quiet. But suddenly she heard her daughter scream. Kokotero couldn’t resist and quickly turned around. And she saw: in the place where she buried her daughter, a tall green bush grew. She turned and walked back, but as soon as she got closer, the bush immediately went half into the ground and turned into a small, weak plant. Cocotero weeded the grass on her daughter's grave. The small plant became more and more magnificent before our eyes. After some time, Kokotero dug up a bush: it turned out to have a thick root, to which Kokotero and her husband gave the name Ozhakore, and the Paresi tribe subsequently began to call it Kete. It was cassava, which since then has always been eaten by the people of the Paresi tribe and other Indian tribes.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru