III 
There is a drum upon the plains of Maita
Outside the cavern where he lived – a stone
Hollowed to beat the mutter of the thunder
Moving within the deep Brazilian sky.
There is a season when the wind will blow
Until the branches sway like grass-skirt dancers
And the trunks tremble to a low ground music
The rush of waters swollen by the rains.
Often at evening when the winds are gone
And sky was once again a baby blue
They heard Amalivaca beating rhythms
First haltingly and then with surer power
To capture sound the forest had made before.
Moving its way up through the hollow stone.
This was the orchestration of the storm
When all the forest world is weeping tears
On earth from leaves, from branches and from sky,
And to the families in the neighbouring tents
Caught by the echoing, crisp and darkening air,
It seemed the tears flowed down the forest face
Again, etching the streams to random rivers,
Giant for the sea.
A J Seymour, from “Amalivaca”
Selected Poems (1965)
The legend of Amalivaca, told in poetry by A J Seymour, in prose narrative by Jan Carew and in a picture poem by Mark McWatt, is but one small sample of the vast store of literature that speaks to the country’s indigenous heritage. As this month, September, is set aside to celebrate that heritage, it is highly rewarding to revisit the rich literature.
The range, variety, and even the very existence of this literature is hardly acknowledged, and perhaps too little known. It is rarely heard of although it represents an important factor in Guyanese literature. Oral indigenous literature has probably the greatest reservoir of all the oral literature in the nation; there are myths, folk tales, prayers, and chants. There is also literary work, some by writers who are not Amerindian, but who delve into the folklore or the ethos. There is poetry in the written tradition, of the epic or heroic type which are often narratives of the legends. Then there is modern, contemporary verse by poets influenced and inspired by the interior, the landscape, and the environment, some of which is metaphysical. And there is fiction of the highest order which draw on or reflect the most complex matrix of mythology, beliefs, and the spiritual quality of the Amerindian cosmos. While the ancient theatre is almost entirely lost, there are relics of it yet, in the theatrics of the practices of shamanism or the piaiman, and a very small number of modern plays.
Modern writers of other ethnicities have been inspired by this literature; most of them by the mythology. Some years ago we received a picture poem, one of a series of new creations by McWatt, which quoted a section of Seymour’s epic, heroic poem “Amalivaca”. McWatt was possessed by the visual impact of the interior landscape and remembered Seymour, one of those modern poets who put Amerindian legend into verse. The lines from “Amalivaca” above, are a revisit of McWatt’s engagement. While McWatt was captivated by the intoxicating interior environment, Seymour was interested in the heroic tradition in many Amerindian legends. That same interest drove his epic “The Legend of Kaieteur”.
Carew was another with a similar interest in these creation myths taken from the Guyanese oral literature. He wrote two novelettes published by the Guyana Book Foundation. One is Children of the Sun, the story of the alter-egos, twin brothers who represent good and healing as against diabolic malevolence. The other is The Coming of Amalivaca, the heroic tale of the demi-god who appears in Carib creation myths.
There are myths of origin among the Carib corpus that tell of the creation of the world, and its first people – the Caribs. Following its creation, the world was flooded and in disorder because of a long tale of disobedience and greed. Out of the floods came Amalivaca, a benevolent demi-god who taught the almost lost people many skills of sustainable life, including sailing a canoe, and agriculture – “How to win food from soil” as Seymour’s poem puts it. The following is the tale of Amalivaca from the oral literature of the Caribs:
And while the waters were returning from the earth, Amalivaca came from a distant land in his large canoe. And from time to time he stopped to carve figures and mystical signs upon the rocks, which are still to be seen, though no man can interpret them.
Now when dry land was to be seen, it was found to be very rough, so Amalivaca made the sides of many hills smooth, and also the land at the foot thereof. And Amalivaca said, ‘men must have communication one with another, let each man make a clearing by the bank of the rivers, and the rivers shall bear you one to another.’ And Amalivaca taught them to make canoes. But certain men said to Amalivaca, ‘It is too hard a thing to paddle against the current, make the current to flow upwards on one side of the river.’
Now Amalivaca toiled mightily, but for all of his skill he could not do this thing. Then Amalivaca thought about the sea, and he caused the tide to flow up the river many miles, as it does to this day. But the rivers said, ‘Should the tide go higher, all will be covered.’ So Amalivaca ceased from his labours and departed from the land of the Caribs.
Other sources of this story narrate that Amalivaca did help by causing the tides in the river to flow upstream on one side and downstream on the next. In another version, they flowed inwards at one time of the day and outwards at another, much like the tides as known today.
The legend of the demi-god’s visit and the long time spent living with the people is told as if it were history. Monuments, which currently actually exist, are named as places where he lived and where he had travelled. These things are held up as proof of his existence and that at one time he lived among the people. They include the petroglyphs or timehri – the rock drawings, paintings, and motifs on sides of rocks that are some of the wonders of Guyana. According to legend, he transformed a harsh environment to make it habitable and taught men how to use canoes and navigate the rivers. In that way his tale is a myth of origin or a creation myth explaining how things came to be and the veritable development of mankind.
This tale exemplifies what exists in the rich store of oral literature. Other works, such as those of Seymour and Carew, demonstrate other forms of Guyana’s Amerindian literature in which narrative verse written by non-Amerindians tell stories taken from the mythology. It also embellishes the heroic tradition that exists in the oral literature, as well as in the published poetry, such as the work of Seymour. “The Legend of Kaieteur” is a tale of heroism and immortality about Kaie after whom the Kaieteur Falls was named. This, however, is in conflict with the version of the tale that exists in oral literature as narrated by explorer Charles Barrington Brown, who cites his source as a story told by the people of the Kaieteur area. Brown is known as the leader of a British expedition that mapped the New River Triangle disputed by Suriname, and whose identification of rivers and tributaries help to establish the triangle as Guyana’s territory.
The famous waterfall has sacred and spiritual attributes as are brought out in a number of folk tales in the oral literature. Stories have arisen around some fairly mysterious qualities of the falls. These include the several birds that surround it and are said to fly in and out of the sheet of falling water to and from a cave that is hidden behind it.
Such beliefs and myths are contributors to the creation of literature. There are several sources and a variety of types of oral literature. The legend of demi-god and hero Amalivaca, recorded in literature as a historical figure, is only one example. Many others exist in detailed volumes and chronicles through, in particular, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including those by Brown, Walter Roth, Robert Schomburgk, Everard im Thurn, William Henry Brett, Audrey Butt-Colson, Odeen Ishmael, Sister Mary Noel Menezes and Dorothy Bland-St Aubyn.
