Eduard Conzemius'
Ethnographical Survey of the Miskito and Sumu Indians of Honduras
and Nicaragua (1932), which was referred to in the previous post on Central American water tigers, includes descriptions of
other folkloric animals or possible cryptids given to him by the
Miskito and Mayangna people of Nicaragua. Conzemius describes them as
fictitious beings. I've only included the ones which are described as
animals; the list also includes purely fantastic beings such as
witches and sirens, which perhaps doesn't say much for the reality of the
creatures mentioned below. On the other hand, the water tiger is
definitely described as a real animal, which the Indians claimed to
have seen and shot at, and another being on the list seems to be
identical to the sisemité, a genuine cryptid.
Perhaps the most
interesting of these monsters is a beast which does not appear to
have any native names, because Conzemius describes it simply as a
cyclops. Its characteristics are in agreement with the most
bare-bones description of the South American mapinguari:
In
the bush lives also a curious being, shaped somewhat like a giant
human being, but having a head similar to that of a dog. It has only
one eye, while its large mouth is at the navel.
There
are a number of brief references online to a Miskito cyclops, "El
Cíclope de la Selva Misquita," but the significant
mouth-in-the-navel only appears to be mentioned by Conzemius (who
does not state if his cyclops is a Miskito or Mayangna belief, or
both).
Another
monster, which Conzemius connects with the more well-known cadejo, is
the waiwan, which has two different, conflicting descriptions:
[...]
a black, doglike bush animal, with a nose shaped like that
of the large anteater and with fiery eyes similar to balls of fire.
It corresponds approximately to the "cadejo" of the
Ladinos. Its claws rattle on the ground as it runs along with great
swiftness. It spits fire and does not do any harm if left unmolested,
but will throw down on the ground any one trying to stop it. There is
also said to exist a white variety. Bell describes it as a terrible
monster, like a horse, but with "jaws fenced round with horrid
teeth," whose native place is the sea, whence it issues from
time to time to its summer residence on the hills, and at night roams
about the forest in search of human and other prey.
Finally,
there is a gigantic, water-dwelling boa constrictor with horns like a
deer, called by the Mayangna wdùla:
A
very large waula or boa constrictor with two horns on the head like a
deer is said to inhabit certain large lagoons in thé pine ridges,
far away from the nearest Indian village. It is claimed that the
common waula or boa tums into such a monster when it reaches old age,
and that it then retreats into deep lagoons. Man has no power to kill
such a boa constrictor, as bullets have no enect on it; it can be
destroyed only by a stroke of lightning.
The
creeks leading to the lagoons inhabited by the monster are generally
rich in all sorts of game, for no one dares to ascend them. It is
claimed that in case anyone should be foolhardy enough to paddle up
such a creek, presently a rumbling of thunder is heard; then the
water reverses its course, flowing at a tremendous speed back to the
lagoon directly into thé mouth of the boa constrictor, which
swallows the canoe with the intruder.
Conzemius
also gives account of the ulak or yoho, "a tailless
anthropoid ape reminding of the gorilla, orang-outang, or chimpanzee
of the Old World," which is apparently the same thing as the
sisemité. However, this information has already been covered in
cryptozoological sources, including Eberhart's Mysterious
Creatures (2002) and Coleman & Clark's Cryptozoology A to
Z (1999).
Sources
- Conzemius, Eduard (1932) Ethnographical Survey of the Miskito and Sumu Indians of Honduras and Nicaragua, Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin
No comments:
Post a Comment