WHOLE VOL. ARAUCANIAN CHILD LIFE — HILGER I4I 



could speak no Spanish and he knew nothing- of any Christian religion ; 

 but if I did not obey him, he would say, 'Nanemapun will punish you 

 for that.' " A man, an assistant to the cacique who led a qillatun in 

 Alepue area, found, upon his return home from the r|illatun, that 

 cows had eaten his garden. "He was very angry about this. When, 

 later in the season, the lack of rain and intense heat caused a potato 

 failure, people said that it was because that man had been so angry 

 immediately after the qillatun." 



No informant had given much thought to the appearance of the 

 Supreme Being. "I do not know what chau looks like. Prophets 

 [leaders in the qillatun] sometimes in dreams hear a voice like that 

 of a man ; sometimes they see a figure like a man ; they say the voice 

 is that of chau, and the figure is chau. Other prophets have told us 

 that chau cannot be seen. The people do not known what he looks 

 like." 



All informants were agreed that the Supreme Being had with Him- 

 self a woman, spoken of as wenumapu nuke (wenumapu meaning 

 heaven or regions above, and fiuke, mother). In relationship to her 

 the Supreme Being is spoken of as wenumapu chau. Cooper's sources 

 agree with this statement, and state also that these two had sons and 

 daughters ( 1946, p. 742) , something with which not all my informants 

 agreed. An old Panguipulli informant had not heard of such children ; 

 "but we know that chau has with him a woman to whom we pray as 

 if she were our mother : we ask her to ask chau to give us what we 

 want. She is chau's seiiora or mujer [wife or woman]." Alepue in- 

 formants, however, spoke of children. Quoting them: "In heaven 

 there is God father, God mother, and their sons and daughters." "I 

 remember my grandmother going to the brook each morning and say- 

 ing prayers, they were prayers addressed to God father, to the mother 

 in heaven, and to their sons and daughters." The interpreter then 

 questioned : "Already in the early days the Mapuche had the belief in 

 the Blessed Virgin, the Mother of God?" To which the informant 

 replied, "No, not like that; it is not the same — it is a family. We 

 always thought of the people in heaven as being a family." 



God is prayed to not only directly but also through intercessors, 

 "such as the woman I just told about, and the deceased prophets." 

 When an old Panguipulli man was asked who of these ranked first, 

 he answered, "God is first and all the rest are equal. We can pray 

 directly to God, but I usually address myself to the deceased prophets 

 — they say that the deceased prophets are in the pillafi — and I ask 

 them to intercede for us." 



The location of the abode of the Supreme Being is not known; it is 



