A jaguar cub, dismissing his mother’s warning about men, sought to challenge a man’s strength. Encountering a woodcutter, the cub fell into a clever trap when the man tricked him into wedging his paw in a tree. After receiving a harsh beating, the cub’s bruised and bloodied body turned black, explaining the jaguar’s spotted coat in this cautionary tale.
Source
Ethnology of the Mayas of
Southern and Central British Honduras
by John Eric Thompson
Field Museum of Natural History
Anthropological Series, Pub.274, Vol.17.2
Chicago, 1930
► Themes of the story
Origin of Things: The tale explains the jaguar’s spotted appearance as a result of the cub’s encounter with the man.
Trickster: The man employs cunning to trap and defeat the overconfident jaguar cub.
Conflict with Nature: The tale depicts an interaction where human cleverness overcomes animal strength.
► From the same Region or People
Once there was a jaguar cub, and his mother told him to be very careful of men as they were very dangerous. The cub did not believe her and wanted to test his strength against that of man. One day, wandering through the forest, he came to a place where a man was splitting wood. “You are a man, aren’t you?” the young jaguar said to him. “I have come to test my strength against yours.” The man agreed and told the young jaguar to put his paw in the tree trunk where it was wedged open by his axe. The jaguar did so whereupon the man pulled out his axe and the wood coming together imprisoned the cub’s paw in its vise-like grip. Then the man gave the cub a thorough thrashing and let him go. The jaguar cub’s body was covered with black bruises and blood, and since then its skin has always been of this color.
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Dreamtime Whispers 