ed the attraction of favorable aspects, denoted by white, with
the rejection of the malefic, indicated by red; in contextual
terms, however, the two colors complemented each other
through their shared protective nature. Gradin’s hypothesis
reaffirms the sequence of colors used in therapeutic and fu-
nerary rites, where red accompanies the segregative phase,
staving off the dangers entailed by impurity, and white ac-
companies the reincorporative phase, capturing the virtues
to which a renewed condition allows one to aspire.
PANTHEON. The Aónikenk deities’ spheres of activity and
their relationships of complementarity and exclusion present
a confusing panorama, which I will attempt to clarify. Else-
where, I have noted processes of superimposition and trans-
position of attributes from the high god to other deities (Sif-
fredi, 1969–1970, p. 247): for example, Elal possesses
omnipotence and creativity as well as characteristics of a cul-
ture hero, while atmospheric phenomena are assigned to
Karuten (“thunder”), a being of the atmospheric sky who is
subordinated to Elal. The role of judge of the dead is as-
signed to the dyadic deity High God/Seecho; the high god
judges how well the ethical ideal has been realized by the de-
ceased, while Seecho, the “old woman” goddess, seconds his
judgment. She admits to the afterworld—the eastern celestial
sky—those among the dead who have tattoos on their left
forearms (formerly such tattoos were the mark of initiates)
and throws into the ocean those who lack tattoos. The belief
that the dead were reunited with Elal and the high god in
the eastern celestial sky, a land that knows neither penury nor
illness, was well established. Elal moved definitively there
after finishing his acts on earth, mounted on the swan god-
dess Kukn, the young goddess who assists Elal in many of
the cycle’s most important events.
The dyad Elal/Kukn displays a similar structure to that
of the dyad High God/Seecho. The connection and hierar-
chical relationship between both dyads appears in the fact
that the genesis and permanence of Elal’s and Kukn’s powers
are ascribed to the high god. The secondary role and the spa-
tial liminality of both feminine deities—expressed by their
placement in the atmospheric sky—symbolically confirms
the social dominance of men. The resulting tetrad, articulat-
ed along the criteria of age and sex (Old God/Old Goddess-
Young God/Young Goddess), suggestively resembles the
composition of Araucanian divine tetrads.
A similar coincidence between Tehuelche and Araucani-
an belief can be seen in a dualism that goes back to the pri-
mary confrontation between high, portrayed by the high
god, and low, represented either by darkness (tons) or by the
deep sea (xóno); high and low are the foundations of Order
and Chaos. This dialectic extends over a vast semantic field
in which roles, states, orientations, luminosity, numerical
properties, zoological and color classifications, and behavior-
al and cognative qualities converge. One pole links the celes-
tial deities, life, healing, shamans, the masculine, east, day,
evenness, water birds, herbivores, white, red, temperance,
and wisdom—all of which contrast with the chthonic beings,
death, illness, witches, the feminine, west, night, oddness,
carrion birds, carnivores, animals that live in dens, fish and
sea mammals, black, intemperance, and ignorance.
MYTHOLOGY. The southern Tehuelche anthropogony in-
cludes motifs that relate to the differentiation of the human
species and to the origin of copulation, marriage, and death.
The beginning of Aónikenk people is accounted for in two
ways. One is that Elal modeled male and female genitals out
of clay into which he then blew the breath of life; another
is that a role reversal between sea and land animals converted
the former into the Aónikenk. Since land creatures were
turned into marine fauna, the Aónikenk attribute the taboo
on eating fish to this second mythical account.
The cosmogony recounts that the high god abandons
his typical inactivity to begin the work of creation, which re-
sults from acts that are not always deliberate or conscious.
One version of Aónikenk cosmogony contrasts the high god
with xóno, the aquatic chaos that covered almost all primor-
dial space except for a small piece of land in the valley of the
Senguer River, in which the high god, little by little, grew
larger. This region, the true “cosmic center,” contains the
palpable signs of divine action (i.e., certain topographical fea-
tures) and is also the setting for the fabulous birth of Elal and
for his acts on earth.
Manuel Llaras Samitier’s versions of Aónikenk cosmog-
ony (in Wilbert, 1984, pp. 17–18) contrast Kooch with tons,
ubiquitous darkness. Saddened by his overwhelming soli-
tude, Kooch’s tears generate the “bitter sea” and his breath
creates the wind that dispels darkness. The creation of Sun
and Moon also plays a part in the darkness’s attenuation.
The amorous coupling and uncoupling of Sun and Moon
evoke the rhythmic succession of darkness and light. Such
images express the establishment of a temporal ordering by
means of the alteration of day and night and of spatial order-
ing through the regulation of the cosmic elements: light,
wind, and clouds.
THE CYCLE OF ELAL. Elal is the fruit of the union of anti-
nomial conditions: his father, one of the chthonic monsters
engendered by tons, devours his pregnant mother, one of the
clouds created by Kooch. Elal’s maternal grandmother res-
cues and raises the newborn Elal. Two testimonies enlivened
the Aónikenk’s memories: a bottomless spring, risen from
the corpse of the Cloud, Elal’s mother, marks the spot where
Elal was born, appropriately called Beautiful Water. The red
dawns observed from high vantage points reaffirmed for the
Aónikenk this primordial shedding of blood.
Elal symbolically represents a mediation between heav-
enly and chthonic, the mythical and the present era, nature
and culture. His quasi-earthly condition is in harmony with
the formation of a world on a human scale. His mediation
of the chthonic realm, for purposes of giving it order, is evi-
dent in the battles against cannibalistic giants, whose pecu-
liarity lay in the vulnerability of their heels, a complementary
and converse trait to that shown by the solar people, whose
mouths operate as anuses. Elal’s slaying of the ogres, begin-9030 TEHUELCHE RELIGION