Tales of Teduray Ancestors

Teduray literature includes myths, legends and animal stories. The myth of the creation centers on a female deity called Minaden who shaped the world and the first creatures in it. She fashioned humans from mud; after doing this, she placed the sun between the earth and the sky, which brought forth light.

The sky world was believed to be divided into eight layers; the topmost was occupied by Tulus or Meketefu, who was Minaden’s brother. The first two human beings created by Minaden began to grow, but after some time they did not beget any offspring. Meketefu came down from the sky world and saw that the male reproductive organ was as small as a tiny red pepper and that of the female was as big as a snail shell. Besides, their noses were created upside down; whenever it rained, their noses caught water and the two humans got sick.

Meketefu decided to create his own clay figures of man and woman. Using an old bolo, he struck the female figure, wounding her where the legs joined together. As he did so, the handle of the bolo flew off and struck the middle part of the male clay figure. He also turned their noses right side up, so they would not take in rainwater. Soon the two creatures were able to bring forth a child. But no food was available to nourish them and the child eventually died.

The father begged Meketefu to give them some soil. Much later, various types of vegetation sprouted from the plot of earth where the child was buried. One part of the plot gave forth plants and lime for chewing. The child’s umbilical cord came out as a rice stalk, the intestines were transformed into sweet potatoes, and the head became the tubers. The hand turned into bananas, the nails to nuts, the teeth to corn, the brains into lime, the bones into cassava and the ears into betel leaf. (Patanne 1977:256 and Wood 1957:15–16)

(Blogger’s note: This post is the fourth part of a nine-part series on the Teduray people. Each part is posted every Monday starting October 6, 2014. The text is copied as it appears in Defending the Land: Lumad and Moro People’s Struggle for Ancestral Domain in Mindanao. The book, published by a consortium of non-government organizations, has an “anti-copyright” notice and may thus be freely reproduced.)