It is said that men from the Tariana tribe of the Arawak family gathered every evening in the upper reaches of the Papuri River, played musical instruments and danced the Jurupari dance. And so the women decided one day to steal these instruments.
Every morning the women went into the forest and looked for the place where the men hid these tools. And so several years passed. One day the women stayed overnight near the Zhurupari dance house to see what these instruments were like. Each of the women held a torch.
The men began to dance and danced until midnight. Then some took away their tools to hide them in the river, while others went into the forest and put their tools in a hollow tree. The women saw everything and, when the men turned back to the village, they rushed to get their tools. They lit their way with torches, but the instruments ran away from them in the light of the fire. Finally the women managed to surround the tree. The tools had nowhere to run, and the women grabbed them. The delighted women hid the tools in another place, far, far away. The next morning they gathered together, and the eldest of the women said:
- Well, now we also have our own tools. And so that the men don’t guess who did this, today we will go to Huarakapa Falls and pick umari stalks for food.
And so they did.
In the evening, the men went to the Zhurupari dance house, but when they began to look for their instruments, they found nothing in the hollow. They only had those that were hidden in the river. The men began to search everywhere, but all in vain. They did not suspect the women, since they had gone to Huarakapa Falls in the morning. None of the men knew how to tell fortunes, and they did not know who had taken the tools.
That's why they didn't ask the women anything when they returned.
A day later, the women gathered to dance the Zhurupari dance. Arriving at the Tui Igarapa River, they took the instruments and began to blow on them, but the instruments did not make a single sound. The women turned them over, blew again, but still nothing happened. Then one of the women said:
– We can seduce men. Let's get the young men to teach us how to play instruments.
The women returned home, painted themselves red with the sap of the carajuru plant, and began flirting with the men. And since the weak heads of the young men could not resist women’s tricks at that time, they agreed to teach women to play the Zhurupari instruments. Therefore, that same evening they went to the shore of Tui-Igarape and there began to play the instruments of Jurupari in the presence of women. But the old people in the village heard the sounds of instruments and began to ask each other in fear:
– Who is playing our instruments? Listen!
At midnight the music stopped, but the women already knew all the secrets of Zhurupari.
And then women began to order men to work instead of them. And the men were sad, for they now had to dig up cassava to make flour, weed the grass to clear the sown field, and pump children, as the women used to do.
One of the men was almost a sorcerer. Every night he wondered to find out who had done them such harm.
His shadow left him to look for the culprits and could not catch their shadows. But thanks to his shadow, he learned who in their tribe was too soft-hearted. Then he gathered the old people and said:
“Our hair has already turned grey, and none of us knows who told the women our secret.” Since it was, of course, none of us, we must now seduce the women, and they will tell us who revealed to them the secret of Zhurupari.
The men did just that. They seduced the women, and one day they said to them:
– When you dance the Zhurupari dance in front of us, we will tell you who revealed the secret of Zhurupari to us.
The men agreed and asked for the sacred instruments to be returned to them so that they could play them during the dance. The women brought them instruments, and that evening the men went to the Jurupari dance house and began to play and dance. In the midst of the dance, the women entered. And suddenly they saw with horror that all the men now had the same faces. It seemed that they were all the same person. The women became numb from fear and immediately lost their minds. Then the old man, who was almost a sorcerer, came out into the middle of the house and said:
“All those with gray hair are from the Zhurupari clan.” And the young men will no longer play the Zhurupari instruments, so as not to bring us misfortune. Look at our hands, see how hard they are from the work we had to do because the boys taught the women to play the Jurupari instruments!
And since then, the secret of Zhurupari has again passed on to men.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru