The Taino myth of the cursed creator Bill Keegan
Before the world of humans began,
there was the world of the gods,
made of fields, plains and gardens.
Four brothers wandered this
celestial realm.
They had no family other
than each other—
they didn’t even know who
their parents were.
One of the brothers, Deminan,
looked different from the others.
His skin was covered in painful scabs,
and he wondered why he alone had
been marked with this affliction.
One day, while the supreme spirit
Yaya was out in his gardens,
Deminan and his brothers snuck
into Yaya’s house.
After feasting and exploring, they spotted
a giant gourd hanging in the corner.
But as they tried to look inside
the gourd, they dropped it.
The gourd broke apart, releasing a deluge
that swept the brothers away,
separating them from the
celestial lands forever.
The waters from the gourd
formed a new world.
This realm was covered in seas,
which didn’t exist in the gods’ world.
The waters were full of fish
and other creatures,
and dotted with islands and caves.
This world of seas was also cut off
completely from the celestial realm,
and the brothers wandered aimlessly,
even more lost than they had been before.
One day, three of the brothers
stumbled upon a house.
In the house lived an elder named
Bayamanacao, and he invited them in.
When Deminan caught up slightly later,
he followed them into the house.
Bayamanacao told the brothers
he was their grandfather
and gave them a gift of special
cassava bread.
He revealed their family lineage to them:
their mother had been the Earth Mother
Goddess Itibi Cahubaba
and had died when they were born.
The brothers were grateful for his
hospitality and insight into their past.
But then Bayamanacao turned on Deminan,
blowing tobacco spittle from his nose
onto Deminan’s back.
The spot where the spittle landed
immediately began to swell and sting.
Soon Deminan was delirious
and his back was so swollen his
brothers feared he would die.
Not knowing what else to do,
they cut open the welt.
A turtle emerged from the
wound and swam away,
alternating easily between sea
and land as she went.
When Deminan recovered from his delirium,
he finally understood what the
curse of his disease meant:
he was a caracaracol,
able to communicate with the gods.
He was the link between the celestial
realm and the earthly realm.
Deminan was the first in a long
lineage of caracaracols.
The world of seas he and his brothers
had created when they dropped the gourd
became the world of humans,
where the caracaracols who followed
Deminan maintained the delicate balance
between people and gods.
But their unique power came at a price:
Deminan and all the caracaracols
who followed him
continued to suffer from the illness that
had first marked Deminan as special.
Represented in Taino carvings
and figurines
with a swollen back and emaciated arms,
the caracaracol is both cursed and blessed
to be a conduit between worlds.