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British Guiana - Bá-Mu [Bahmoo] And The Frog
To account for the division of mankind into races, the following little story is given by Brett it is not Arawak.
Bamu came to visit some friends who were about to go frog-hunting—hunting for none of your small-sized frogs but for frogs as large as bush-hogs. They told Bamu to take a cudgel and come with them, but he, being a braggart, said that he did not want any weapons, but would jump on the back of the first frog he met and twist its neck around. The Chief of the Frogs heard him boast, and purposely squatted close to the river just in front of the path along which Bamu was coming. Bamu made a jump and so did the Frog, right into the water, the latter taking him over to the opposite bank, where he jerked him off. When his friends first saw Bamu on the Frog's back in the water, they started laughing, and when they saw him on the other side, they continued chaffing, telling him to twist the Frog's neck and bring the dead animal over to them. Having finished their frog-hunt, his friends again called on him to come over and join them, but he was too much ashamed to swim back and be laughed at again. So it came to pass that Bamu remained on that side, begat children, and became separated from us.
An Inquiry into the Animism and Folk-Lore of the Guiana Indians, Walter E. Roth, from the Thirtieth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1908-1909, pp. 103-386, Washington D.C., 1915, and is now in the public domain.[ British Guiana ][ South America ]
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