Creation myth is a recurring element of indigenous cultures around the world. While we of course can’t possibly have a record of all the versions created by different populations in history, the stories we manage to preserve into today have striking similarities in their motivations, contents, and style.
A through line in creation myths is of course, Creation. Indigenous cultures structured the reasoning for the existence of landforms, animals, and humans around divine interventions. Long before science (in the way we know it now) indigenous cultures celebrated nature and creation in district ways which hopefully we will get to appreciate the remnants of in our course.
The Huarochiri Manuscript is described as “a unique seventeenth-century collection of indigenous and colonial mythology”. In it, a woman “Huaca” is impregnated via a fruit and the existence of animals as well as their public perceptions are explained. This manuscript was sponsored by priest Francisco de Avila to prove the “Indians” were idolators, whose religion he eventually made all efforts possible to erase.
The parallels to both the Bible and the Popol Vuh were interesting to me. As mentioned above, there is of course the virgin birth story and the portrayal of the “mother” as a pristine madonna figure. Virginity is celebrated which is surely indicative of the priests influence on the text. Similar influence can be noted in the Maya K’iche’ creation text Popol Vuh. Although the stories existed orally for many years before being recorded by Francisco Ximenez, it’s not possible to know what was Cristian influence and what was representative of indigenous theology. Yet again, an issue of representation. In “making” indigeneity as these 2 friars claimed to be doing, there is an effective unmaking through the intentional or unintentional translation bias.
The Popol Vuh doesn’t focus on virgin birth, instead telling of how the gods made man first from mud, then from wood, and finally (and successfully) from corn so that he could work and importantly, worship (read: idolatry). The environment, the plants and animals are all explained by divine creation. women do come up though as the gods give the first humans wives to make them content. For me this screams Cristian influence. In the Bible, Eve was made from the rib of Adam to populate the earth and please him. Lastly, a great flood is used by the gods to wipe out their imperfect creations in the Popol, a scene which is ever so familiar to Bible caracters.
The intertwining of these 3 stories as well as the obvious influence of translator bias made me think more about how any text can be considered as a “true” or “primary” source for the study of indigenous cultures. Is it even possible to get to the unbiased and non-christianized version? Who can we really trust and which representations are “good enough”?
7 replies on “Conception and misconceptions in Creation”
Hi Morgan! You present some very interesting questions in your post and I really enjoyed reading your analysis of the texts. While there is certainly translator bias I think it is difficult to determine what is a “true” or “primary” account of Indigenous cultures. However, being exposed to multiple viewpoints is essential and valuable in its own right as there are numerous perspectives to every situation. I think that is why studying history and culture is so fascinating because it is difficult to reconcile what the “truth” is and we are always working toward increasing our knowledge and thinking about new ways to view the topics.
Well said! Thanks for your insights Emily
Hey Morgan.
Loved hearing your thoughts! I also made the connection to the popol vuh when reading the excerpt from the Huarochiri Manuscript. I was actually a little taken aback at the commonalites re: the virgin birth narratives in the two stories. In both cases the children are conceived through a natural symbolic source of life and reewal, the calabash tree in the popol vuh, and the fruit in the Manuscript….among other similarities. I do for the most part agree with the notion that to some degree we are dealing with christianized versions of these texts. I do find the idea of christianization through translation puzzling in the specific case of the Manuscript. Given that the purpose of the manuscript was to isolate these indigenous religions and portray those who practice said religion as idolators, would it not be a goal, even if subconscious, of these translators to portray these religions as “other”, presumably wanting to separate these religions from Christianity as much as possible? or perhaps it is the other way around, in which the story has been christianized to have it read moreso as a bastardized version of Christian scripture? would like to hear your thoughts, I think I lean towards the latter but it is still something I am thinking about.
edit: I also wonder to what extent this Christianization is deliberate and how much of it can be attributed to subconscious bias?
I think subconscious bias plays a big role in the case of the Huarochiri manuscript, where as conscious bias is more potent with the Popol Vuh.
Hey Morgan your point about how these stories have been influenced and now have become biased which jeaporizes their status as primary sources was really interesting. A translation always changes the meaning of the text as languages don’t translate perfectly. But I think that it is possible to get a decently unbiased translation but it is hard. It takes a lot work and awareness on the translator’s part to not put their own biases into their work.
“The intertwining of these 3 stories as well as the obvious influence of translator bias made me think more about how any text can be considered as a “true” or “primary” source for the study of indigenous cultures.” We could ask the same question even with contemporary texts such as that of Gregorio Condori and Asunta Quispe, for example. We cannot get rid of our suspicions. In any case, each theoretical formulation of an anthropologist or sociologist is a translation into the language of the “sciences”… which pride themselves on being objective and based on the “Real”. In this case, as he said, it is always advisable to distrust.