The Apostle St. Thomas in America: A native myth with European origins?

In my previous post about Quetzalcoatl, the civilizing god that visited Mexico, and then departed eastwards across the Atlantic Ocean, returning to his homeland, I mentioned the myth about the Apostle Saint Thomas visited America.

Thomas Didymus (from the Greek word for twins, Thomas means precisely that in Aramaic), was also known as Doubting Thomas, after the description given in the Bible (see John 20:24-29) describes as "Thomas, called Didymus, one of the Twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples said to him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nailmarks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” Now a week later his disciples were again inside and Thomas was with them. Jesus came, although the doors were locked, and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.” Thomas answered and said to him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.”"

Tradition says he visited India (and possibly China and Indonesia) spreading the gospel, and died, as a martir in India at St. Thomas Mount in Chennai (December 21st 72 AD),

St. Thomas in America

There is a very interesting article by Carlos Page, in Spanish, with the revealing title: El Apóstol Santo Tomás en América según los relatos de los antiguos jesuitas del Brasil y Paraguay (The Apostle Saint Thomas in America according to the accounts of the ancient Jesuits of Brazil and Paraguay). It's abstract in English summarizes the paper: "The history of Saint Thomas the Apostle preaching in America was debated from the time it became a widely discussed topic of conversation during the sixteenth century. Although there is reliable evidence that the story began with the arrival of Columbus to the supposed “Indies”, where the apostle did preach, the Jesuits are attributed for its invention. Undoubtedly, religious leaders arriving in 1549 embraced the story to justify and validate their evangelizing project, taking storytelling to the extreme. Even though Christian hagiographies had ruled it out, by the end of the eighteenth century the story was still being written about..."

Page also mentions Peru where Calancha likened the Inca god Tunupa in that region, where another apostle, St. Bartholomew was said to have preached according to Guaman Poma de Ayala (1615). In Colección de libros y documentos referentes a la historia del Peru. (1918), (see p. 153) the myth of the civilizing god Viracocha is discussed, and it mentions the theory put forward by Joan de Santacruz Pachacuti Yamqui, in his Relación de Antigüedades deste Reyno del Pirú suggesting that Viracocha was Saint Thomas.

Pachacuti wrote: "A bearded man of medium build arrived in these provinces and kingdoms of Tahuantinsuyo. He had long hair and wore somewhat long tunics; he was described as a man past his youth, showing signs of graying hair, and thin of frame. He traveled with a staff and taught the natives with great love, calling them all his sons and daughters. Although the natives paid him little heed, he performed many visible miracles as he journeyed through the provinces, healing the sick simply by touching them. He sought no material gain and carried no possessions; it is said he spoke all the local languages better than the natives themselves. He was known by names such as Tonapa, Tarapaca, Viracochanpachayachicachan, Pacchacan, Bicchhaycaniayoc, and Cunacuycamayoc. Since this man was called Tonapa Viracochampacachan, could he not be the glorious Apostle Saint Thomas?"

Brazil and Patagonia

But going back to Brazil, the first mention of St. Thomas there dates back to 1515 where a German text called Copia de Newen Zeytung Auss Peszilg Landt, stated that the local natives "also cherish a memory of Saint Thomas on the rocky coast or within the land; they also tell the Portuguese that he is said to have gone inland. And when they speak of Saint Thomas, they say he is a lesser deity, yet there is another god who is greater. It is quite credible that they hold a memory of Saint Thomas, for it is well known that Saint Thomas lies buried at Meliapur on the Coromandel Coast, in the Gulf of Ceylon. In the land, they even name their children Thomas."

Strangely the author comments about Brazilian natives and associates the memory with the Coast of Coromandel in Southwesterb India! The idea of a journey from there to Eastern South America didn't seem to bother him.

At that time, in 1507, German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller (1470-1520), published his map of the New World, naming it America, and included in Patagonia a Serra de S Thome, Serra = "sierra" or range of hills or mountains named for St. Thomas. See it in this Source (zoomable) from which I made the following image:

1507 map "Universalis cosmographia secundum Ptholomaei traditionem et Americi Vespucii alioru[m]que lustrationes". Waldseemüller, Martin, 1470-1519

The Guaraní people's myth

Del Barco Centenera (1535-c.1605), a Spanish friar who lived in Paraguay, recorded the myth in his ode Argentina, published in 1602. In it, he mentions an encounter that an old native chief had with a holy Christian man who gave him a cross before the Spanish arrived in America (p. 340): "A man stepped before me, Of handsome bearing and countenance... [God] will remember you in the final hour. Saying this, he extended his right hand, and gave me this cross, which I believe, is the gift of my rest and my desire. " the footnote that del Barco Centenera included for this comment reads (p, 386): "A very common story among the Guaraní concerns a holy man who once went among them preaching; known today as Pa'i Sumé, or Saint Thomas. I have seen with my own eyes a stone, measuring some nine feet in length and four in widthm bearing the marks and traces of human footprints. These are not Indian footprints, for the marks left by their feet are easily recognized and quite distinct from those of a Christian, even when both are barefoot: Indians have splayed toes, whereas Christians have theirs close together, a trait also observed in Black Africans."

The missionaries who visited the region in the early 1500s recorded the belief in a Pay Zumé (pai in Portuguese means Father or Priest, and Zumé is a deformation of Tomé = Thomas). De Angelis in his history of Argentina, published in 1836, cites fathers Lozano and Cataldino who tell about the route taken by St. Thomas among the Indians, as he trekked inland from the coast of Brazil, also mentioning the footprints in the rock, and a trail he used, that still exists; he names it Peabirú. See my post on this ancient native trail.

Finally, there is as cholarly paper published in 2016, written by Marcela Pezzuto, Desde el Titicaca hasta el Guayrá: el gran viaje de Santo Tomás según dos cronistas (From Titicaca to Guayra: Saint Thomas's great journey according two chroniclers), that looks into the texts written by Ruíz de Montoya and Guaman Poma de Ayala and suggests that Montoya did so to promote the power of Christianity in the New World, while de Ayala's goal was to paint the Native American Inca realm as an utopian place in contrast to the ruthless Spanish conquest.

Those interested in an English language reference can read Daniel Garrison Brinton who mentions Pai Zumé and the other demigods (like Quetzalcoatl and Viracocha) in his book "American Hero-myths A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent" published in 1892.

Comments

Of course, St Thomas didn't visit America. The Jesuits believed that an angel had transported him to the New World, it is most likely that the idea was implanted in the natives by now-unknown priests who visited the region during the first period that followed the discovery of America.

The myth probably reflects the visit of mariners from Europe in pre-Columbian times, not necessarily Christians, possibly Carthaginians or Phoenicians.

As part of the myths describing civilizing gods, Pai Zumé / St. Thomas is on par with Quetzalcoatl, Amalivaca, and Viracocha. An intreresting common legend among the natives of South America.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Peabirú the ancient transcontinental trail

Peabirú trail is quite controversial. It is mentioned by different non-scholarly sources as a mythical trail that linked the Andes with the Atlantic Ocean, cutting across Southeastern Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Brazil. The age and direction of the trail are unclear, but there are some historical records about it. Today's post will look into this mysterious trail and its links to an early peopling of America.

For instance this article published by Pulso, a Canadian-Latinamerican journal, calls it the "Sacred Road of the Gods", and says its name means "the round trip road" in Guarani language (Note: this may not be true, because a formal paper by Beatriz Sacagni, 2021 (O Traço do Peabiru - rastros desvelados em paisagens paulistanas) says it means "trail of trodden grass"].

Pulso, cites two Brazilian historians, Hernani Donato y Luiz Galdino and states that the Incas built the road between 1215 and 1450 AD. Another historian Rosana Bond says it was built by the Guarani of Paraguay when they moved towards the Atlantic coast c.1000-1300 AD. Then comes the fantasy: a white god-like man, Viracocha of the Incas built it after civilizing the Guarani, he was known by them as Zumé or Pay Sumé (See this website or this one for more on the mystical side of the trail).

An article in BBC says it is 3500 to 4000 km long (2,100 to 2,500 mi), and some parts of it are up to 10,000 years old, which is very ancient, and piqued my interest. Another online site said it could be linked to 25,000-year-old the Santa Elina site.

Alejo García The first European to use it in 1524

The first account of this trail was published by Díaz de Guzmán in his work "La Argentina Manuscrita", written in 1612. Chapter V (in Spanish) tells about an "entry" (expedition) "which four Portuguese from Brazil made by land, to the borders of Peru".

He describes the journey of four Portuguese men who had been cast away onto the shores of San Vicente, Brazil by a Portuguese officer named Martín Alonso de Sosa in 1526. The leader was a man called Alexo or Alejo García. He spoke a Guarani native dialect and with his companions walked inland, across the jungle to the Paraná River, crossed it, and continued across Guarani territory to the Paraguay River and with a large group of them went west, to "discover and recognize those lands, from where they would bring back many valuable clothes, and metal objects, both for use in war and for peace." Over two thousand natives marched west with Garcí. They stopped at a place now called San Fernando on a high cliff over the Paraguay River, others say they moved along a river called Paray. On their trek they came across other natives, in the Paraguayan Chaco region, and fought with them. Finally, after many days the reached the mountain ranges of Peru and crossed "the border of that kingdom between the distance now called Mizque, and the boundary of Tomina; and finding some settlements of Indian vassals of the Mighty Inca King of that entire kingdom, they attacked them, and robbing and killing all they found, they went on for more than forty leagues to near the towns of Presto and Tarabuco, where a great multitude of Charcas Indians came out to meet them; therefore they turned back... For this reason the Incas ordered all those borders to be fortified, both with good forts and with strong garrisons, as can be seen today, which remain along that mountain range, which they call the Cuzco Toro, which is the main one that runs through this kingdom for more than two thousand leagues." García sent two of his men ahead, to reach the coast and tell them about his expedition's outcome. But he and the other man were killed. His son with an Indian woman was spared, and it was this son who told Guzmán about the expedition.

There are some inconsistencies in Guzmán's sources, but it is an interesting story. The facts are that Alejo García, a Portuguese mariner formed part of Juan Díaz de Solís expedition along the coast of South America. He was sent by the King of Spain to find a southern passage into the Pacific Ocean, in 1516 (4 years before Magellan's voyage). Solís discovered the River Plate which wasn't the strait he was looking for, he was killed by the natives on the Uruguayan coast and the survivors returned to Spain. One of the ships sunk by Santa Catarina Island in Southern Brazil. The castaways lived with the Guarani natives there until Alejo set out in 1524-25 on his inland trek.

In 1526, the Spaniards had not yet discovered Peru (Pizarro's expedition reached Peru six years later, in 1532). A second expedition left San Vicente with 70 men under the command of José Sedeño, to obtain more gold from Peru. They went westwards along the Añembí river to the Paraná and from there to the Paraguay River where they fought against the natives who had killed Alejo Garcí. Sedeño was killed and his men massacred. The natives then united and marched west to attack the Inca realm. They fought against the Indians that lived on the frontier, took their wives and their offspring became the Chiriguanos. No more expeditions trekked the trails from the sea to the Andes.

Shortly after, Sebastian Cabot a Venetian navigator, commissioned by the King of Spain to follow Magellan's route to the Spice Islands along Patagonia, heard the story of Alejo Garcís expedition from the castaways on the Brazilian coast, and deviated his course into the River Plate, and went upstream along the Paraná River, establishing the first settlement at the confluence of the Carcaraña and Paraná Rivers, he named it Holy Spirit (Sancti Spiritu) the first Spanish settlement in Southern South America, and in what would become Argentina (I wrote about this in another post) he sailed north, reached the Paraguay River and was shown gold, copper, and silver from Alejo Garcís trek. A group set out by foot from Sancti Spiritu in search of Peru they brought back some gold trinkets from the natives that lived in the Northeastern Argentine Andean foothills, and originated the myth of the City of Caesars inhabited by white people in Patagonia (I've never written a detailed post about this myth, I will do so shortly).

Prehistoric Migrations of the Guaraní Natives

French naturalist Alcides D'Orbigny, wrote in the 1830s about the Guarani-Inca interactios. In his work L'homme américain (see Vol II, p. 339), he mentions the Chiriguanos as a Guarani tribe established in the Andean foothills in Bolivia. The Incas ruled by Inca Yupanqui attempted to subdue them and conquer the territory in 1430. He then cites the Inca Garcilaso's version of this military campaign (see Chap. XIV p. 271) in his Comentarios Reales. Garcilaso tells how the Inca Emperor led his men in rafts down the river into Moxos (or land of the Musus) two hundred leagues or 1,000 km - 620 mi. from Cusco, they navigated a river which flows into the Paraguay River far to the east. After many battles the Chunchu natives were reduced to being vassals of the Incas and paid tribute until the death of the last Inca at the hands of the Spaniards. However, the Musus were not subdued. They did not become vassals but, instead, allowed the Incas to settle in their territory. This probably took place around 1470 AD. In another post, I mentioned Yupanqui's voyage to Polynesia.

The migration that didn't happen. The Musus were associated and confederates of the Incas, living in peace and friendship until the time of Huayna Capac (1524) when the Inca expatriates living in Moxos decided to return to Cusco with their families as their work with the Moxos, civilizing them, was complete. But when they were ready to head back, they learned that the Spaniards had defeated the Incas and killed their emperor. So, they opted to remain with the Musus.

Nordenskjöd in his book The Guarani Invasion of the Inca Empire in the Sixteenth Century: An Historical Indian Migration" tells about all of these events (Alejo Garcí and the wars). His book includes the following map which shows Asunció (lower right) on the Paraguay River, Corumba (right, 20° Lat) and the area visited by Alejo Garcí It also shows some Inca fortifications along the border between the highlands and the Amazonian jungle.

Nordenskjöd concludes that "(1) That at the beginning of the sixteenth century numerous Guarani Indians emigrated from the Eio Parana and the Eio Paraguay to Guarayos and to the outermost valleys of the Andes towards the Gran Chaco. (2) That the districts in which these Indians settled were not previously inhabited by Guarani Indians, but chiefly by Arawaks. (3) That Alejo Garcia, the Portuguese, was in the Inca Empire before Pizarro."

Other early Reports of the Trail

The Spaniards continued the work of the Incas, and advanced into the Bolivian lowlands in wars with the Guarani people there during the 1500s and 1600s. But let's return to the expedition that followed Alejo García. After founding the city of Buenos Aires in 1536, the leader of the enterprise, Pedro de Mendoza, very ill from syphilis had returned to Spain, dying at sea. The fledgling town lacked food and the natives attacked it constantly. The settlers decided to look for a better spot upstream, along the Paraná River. A group led by Juan de Ayolas sailed along the Paraná and Paraguay Rivers, like Cabot had done ten years earlier. Ayolas reached the area where Aunción, capital of Paraguay is now located, and after defeating the Guarani there, learned about the Incas and the Payagua natives further upstream. Pedro de Lozano in his History of the Rio de la Plata Vol II p. 120 tells us that Ayolas sailed upstream to to the Port of Candelaria (21° 5' Lat S) and set out in 1537 westwards with 300 natives and gave orders for his men to wait for him for 6 months. He vanished in the Chaco jungle and was never heard of again. His men founded Asunción and moved the settlers from Buenos Aires to the new city.

Ulrich Schmidl, one of the members of Mendoza's expedition also described Ayolas' expedition from Candelaria, by the San Fernando Hill on the Paraguay River, known as Ytapucú-guazú by the Guarani.

The account of Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca written in 1542 suggests that around 1515, a group of Guarani people marched west to loot the Inca empire. A prisoner he interviewed (see chapter LX, p. 299), from Itatí told him that when he was young his Guarani "people made a great calling and gathered Indians from the whole land, and went to the land, the land that was inland, and he went with his father and relatives to make war to those living there and they took and robbed the gold and silver plates and jewels they owned; and having reached the first settlements, they immediately began to wage war and kill many Indians, and many towns were depopulated and they fled to gather in the towns further inland; and then the nations of all that land gathered together and came against them [the Guarani people]... and they routed and killed many of them... and... followed them and took the passes and killed all... and that among those who escaped this Indian was saved, and that the majority remained in those mountains through which they had passed."

But the "trail" does not seem to be a well trodden one: "He was asked if he knew well the road by which he and those of his nation went to the inland settlements. He said that it had been a long time since he had traveled that road, and when his people passed through, they were clearing the way, cutting down trees, and clearing the land, which was very rugged, and that it seemed to him that those roads would soon be overgrown with scrub and weeds, because he never saw them again, nor traveled them; but he thought that once he started to go along the road he would be able to follow it, and that the road begins from a high, round mountain, which is within sight of this port of the Kings." Puerto de Reyes (Port of Kings) was close to modern Cáceres Bay, in Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil (see map in Google Maps). It can also be seen in the map further up, at 18° Lat. S, upper right side of the image.

Historian Hernani Donato in his 1971 publication Pearibú describes it during the early days of Portuguese occupation and colonization of Brazil, and says it had traffic along it, linking Spanish Paraguay and Guaira with the Portuguese settlements in Sao Paulo. However in 1553 the Portuguese authorities closed it to prevent the Jesuits going inland to pacify and convert the natives, and the Spaniards (Castellanos) coming down to the coast and threaten the Portuguese settlements. Later in the 1600s, the Portuguese slavers, who raided the Guarani villages in Paraguay to enslave their inhabitants, expeditions known as "Bandeiras", used the trail to carry invade, and to bring back slaves to the coast. Donato suggests the trail was built by the Incas, who were great engineers and road builders (the Chapaq Ñan was a vast road system spanned their empire and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Argentina) they also embodied the civilizing white man, Sumé. Luiz Galdino in his book Os Incas No Brasil also proposed an Inca origin for the trail.

Serious research like the paper by Colavite, A. P., & Barros, M. V. F. (2017) (Geoprocessamento aplicado a estudos do caminho de Pearibu. Revista Da ANPEGE, 5(05), 86–105. https://doi.org/10.5418/RA2009.0505.0007) includes a survey of the trail, and several maps showing its course, as well as its current state of preservation.

I am still unconvinced about its great antiquity. It was probably a trade trail linking the Andes with the sea, but it was not frictionless, warring tribes, disease, floods and jungle must have been serious obstacles along the way.

Further reading

Rocha A., Caminos de Pearibu Historia e Memoria

Caminhos de Pearibu, Parana State official webpage (Portuguese).

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Patagonian mtDNA is quite unique!

A paper published in 2017 (Diferenciación regional de poblaciones nativas de América a partir del análisis de los linajes maternos, Intersecciones en Antropología 18: 271-282. 2017. ISSN 1666-2105. Josefina María Brenda Motti, Marisol Elisabeth Schwab, Julieta Beltramo, Laura Smeldy Jurado-Medina, Marina Muzzio, Virgina Ramallo, Graciela Bailliet, Claudio Marcelo Bravi), looks into the maternal genetic component of the Native American people of South America, analyzing their mtDNA.

Their data show that Patagonian natives have a unique set of haplotypes not found in the rest of South America. Table 1 in the paper is shown below, with the haplotypes found in Chilean and Argentine Patagonia (it has no data from the Province of Neuquén).

Haplogroup frequencies (%). Table 1 in Motti et al. (2017)

The authors point out the high frequency of certain variants in Argentina's Patagonia, namely, B2i2, D1g, D4h3a5 y C1b13. It suggests that the "notable unity" in Patagonia, both in Chile and Argentina with the preponderance of these haplotypes suggests that south of Latitude 40°S, as the Andes are lower in elevation, there could have been west-to-east mobility of migrating groups.

The authors also note that "these lineages are practically exclusive to Patagonia, as they are found at low frequencies in central Argentina, Uruguay, and northern Chile, and are absent from the rest of the continent. The homogeneity on both sides of the Andes Mountains is indicative of common ancestry."

They suggest that D4h3a5 reached the region along the Pacific, while the presence of B2i1 in the Amazon people like the Kayapó, a sister clade to Patagonia's B2i2 suggests the arrival of people along the Atlantic coast of South America.

mtDNA D1g is Ancient

Since D1g is around 18,000 year old, its age could hint that it was among the first to reach the area, followed by younger haplogroups B2i2 y C1b13, aged 10,800 BP and 12,000 BP, respectively. B2i2 is absent in the Island of Tierra del Fuego suggesting that it differentiated later.

Michelle de Saint Pierre (2017) suggested that D1g as well as D4h3a are ancient, and must have been present in the first wave of people to reach America, later overlaid by more recent arrivals. (de Saint Pierre, Antiquity of mtDNA lineage D1g from the southern cone of South America supports pre-Clovis migration. Quaternary International, Vol 444, Part B, 2017, p.19-25, ISSN 1040-6182, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2017.05.054.). de Saint Pierre wrote:

"The age calculated for D1g, between 25,000 and 19,000 cal yr BP is extremely old for a South American mitochondrial subhaplogroup. The anomalous age of this haplogroup does not fit the currently accepted framework for the other mtDNA haplogroups in the Americas...
Of the exclusively Amerindian haplogroups, D4h3a has an age of 17.6 kyr. This is a good candidate to date the early peopling, since considerable evidence has shown it to be an ancestral haplogroup. D4h3a has been recovered from the late Pleistocene (12,707e12,556 cal yr BP) Anzick child (Rasmussen et al., 2014) and from a skeleton of an early Holocene individual from Alaska (Kemp et al., 2007), which is empirical evidence of the presence of this lineage in Paleoamericans. Also, D4h3a has a wide geographic distribution, being found low frequencies in populations across the continent, including the most southern native populations, the Patagonians"

See my post on D1g here, and the post on D4h3a here.

The Amazonian origin of the Mapuches

Back in 2012 (de Saint Pierre M, Gandini F, Perego UA, Bodner M, Gómez-Carballa A, Corach D, et al. (2012) Arrival of Paleo-Indians to the Southern Cone of South America: New Clues from Mitogenomes. PLoS ONE 7(12): e51311. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0051311) had found that the sub-haplogroups B2i2 and C1b13 were exclusive to the southern tip of South America and noticed that B2i2 was found at high frequencies among the Mapuche people and related groups like the Pehuenche and Huilliche (26 to 39% frequencies) while admixture led to lower levels among the Tehuelches (14%). It was absent in northern Chile and also among the canoe people of Tierra del Fuego and Southern Chile (who rarely admixed with the Mapuches). Saint Pierre not only found th B2i group among the Amazonian Kayapó, they "identified only two additional mtDNAs, one from Brazil and one from northern Uruguay (both bearing the B2 control-region haplotype plus the B2i diagnostic transitions at np 430 and 485), thus preliminarily suggesting a geographic distribution of B2i1 limited to the northern and eastern part of South America/i>." This is interesting, and it is in line with the notion that the Mapuche originated in the Amazonian region and moved on, later into Chile.

I have posted about a common origin for Mapuche and the Amazonian Guaraní people (and again here), and that the Mapuche were late arrivals in the Patagoian region, so I welcome additional evidence that supports this theory.

Variant C1b13, on the other hand, is found beyond Patagonia, among people like the Atacameño of NW Chile's Atacama desert region, and the Alakaluf and Yamana canoe people, and surely spread to these people from the Mapuche homeland in Central Chile, and is of recent origin there, from an older C1 root.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

Mapuche natives and their possible link to the Guarani

 
A comment by John Scanlon (Here), led me to expand on something that I had already mentioned in a previous post. In that post, I had remarked that the Mapuche’s Quetronamun dwarf, which has one foot, turned backwards, was remarkably similar to the Guaraní Corupira which is a dwarf the size of a child having only one deformed foot.

In fact, while writing my book, I was surprised to notice that all of the “southern” Patagonian natives: Aonikenk, Tehuleche, Selk’nam, Yagan, Chono and Alakaluf (more on the native tribes Here) were quite different from the rest of South American natives; this has been revealed by a study of their mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA).

This type of DNA is maternally inherited and allows researchers to trace the maternal lineage back in time and to establish connections between groups of people based on differences in their mtDNA.

mtDNA taken from skeletons of the now extinct Yagan, Selk’nam and Alakaluf populations as well as Aonikenk Tehuelche show that they, from a genetic viewpoint, were different from all other American natives (including the Mapuche in northern Patagonia).[1]

It made me wonder why.

Then, as I began to study the native myths, I kept coming across common myths shared by both the Mapuche people and the Guaraní people of the subtropical area of southern South America.

Besides Quetronamun and Corupira, I have found other “paired” myths:

- The black water dwarf Sompalhué among the Mapuche is replicated in a similar myth among the Paraguayan Guaraní people who have their own water blacks, the Y-Porá.

- Not surprisingly the Guaraní natives also have a lewd rapist dwarfish creature resembling the Mapuche Trauco: the short and sturdy Pombero, a dark creature with hairy hands and feet that likes to seduce women.

- The Mapuche water tiger hclosely resembles the Guaraní Yaguarú.

- The Cuero myth may be based on freshwater stingrays. But they do not live in Patagonia. The closest specimens are found in the Paraná River basin, homeland to the Guaraní people.

- The snake myths of the Guaraní and the Mapuche Culebrón.

- An ancient Mapuche fable, “uncle nahuel and his cousin the fox” indicates some kind of link between the Guaraní and Mapuche people. The fable involves nahuel a jaguar, an animal that does not live, and never did, in Chile. So how did they know about it? (it is quite common in the subtropical and temperate regions of eastern South America - and also, where the Guaraní people lived). I have posted about Patagonian jaguars Here.

This fact was first noticed by German-Chilean linguist and philologist Rodolfo Lenz (1863-1938): it is identical to the Guaraní story of the “vixen and the jaguar”. Lenz believed that it was proof of direct contact between both ethnic groups.

These cultural peculiarities plus the fact that the Mapuche are not related genetically to the other southern Patagonian natives may imply (in my opinion) that they were late arrivals in the region.

The origin of the Mapuche.

Chilean ethnologist and archaeologist Ricardo E. Latcham (1903-1965) suggested that they originated in the Amazon basin and later migrated into Chile.[2]

However this theory is less popular nowadays and the current belief is that the primitive hunter-gatherers that inhabited what is now Chile evolved locally into the Mapuche culture about 2,500 years BP.

The Mapuche people are adamant on this issue, politics are involved too: the Mapuche are actively demanding that the Chilean government “restore” part of the land taken from them during the wars that raged between Mapuche and Spaniards (later Chileans) between 1540 and 1830.[3]

They do not want anyone implying that they don’t have rights to their ancestral lands because they were “latecomers to Chile”.

Nevertheless, a recent study that analyzed the “dialectal prospection” among the Mapuche people showed that some dialectal groupings coincide with Latcham’s theory of Mapuche historical migrations.[4] For now there are no definitive conclusions on this issue.

The Guaraní

Before the arrival of the Spaniards and the Portuguese (1500s) they were farmers that lived in the subtropical jungles of Paraguay, south eastern Bolivia, southern Brazil and north eastern Argentina. They were assimilated into the Colonial system between 1540 and 1810. There are about 1.5 million Guaraní people and their language is still spoken by about 5 million people and is the official Paraguayan language.

If the Mapuche had come from the Amazon, they could have been in direct contact with jaguars, freshwater stingrays, Guaraní natives and giant otters, thus incorporating these animals into their traditions, fables and family lineages as well as assimilating the other natives myths into their own.

Alternatively, they could have encountered these animals while crossing central Argentina towards their final homeland in Chile or even in northern Patagonia after settling in that area in the mid 1600s.

Bibliography.

[1] Lalueza, C. et al., (1997). Lack of founding Amerindian mitochondrial DNA lineages in extinct Aborigines from Tierra del Fuego-Patagonia. Human Molecular Genetics. v. 6, N° 1:41-46.
[2] Latcham, R., (1924). Op. Cit. pp. 228.
[3] Prensa Nacional. 22.08.2009. Conflicto estatal chileno y las legítimas reclamaciones por tierras ancestrales.
[4] Croese Mijesen, R. (1980). Estudio Dialectológico del Mapuche por Localización. Estudios filológicos. Nº 15, pp. 7-38.



Copyright 2009 by Austin Whittall ©

Patagonian Monsters