The Vengeful Heroes, Forty Years Later

Abstract

The motive of heroes’ revenge for the death of one of their parents is one of the most popular in the New World. Narratives based on it are absent only in the Arctic (among most of the Eskimos) and in the Subarctic (among the Athapaskans). In the rest of North and South America, the variants with revenge for the death of the father and the death of the mother are approximately equally widespread. In most of narratives recorded in the New World, the heroes are twin brothers, which is especially typical for stories that describe the death of the heroes’ mother and most of all for the South American variants. In the Old World, texts with the motive of revenge for the death of the father are quite rare but distributed fairly evenly; the son-avenger is most often alone. “Revenge for the death of a mother” in Eurasia is found only in Tibet and in eastern Indonesia in the variant that I called “The Doe and She-Bear”. The South American version of “The Vengeful Heroes”, with its complex plot, is absent north of Guatemala and emerged after the peopling of the New World. The two main North American versions have separate parallels in the Old World. For the western United States, “The Doe and She-Bear” is typical with its closest parallels in eastern Indonesia. East of the Rockies, “Lodge-boy and Thrown-away” is common, with parallels in Siberia and Eastern Europe. These two versions were brought to the New World by different groups of migrants. The predominance of the female version of “The Vengeful Heroes” and twin brothers as its protagonists, characteristic of America, must reflect the distinctive features of Eurasian oral traditions at the time of the peopling of the New World. Though the Amerindian avenger narratives can be called “myths” while most of the Eurasian ones are fairy tales, both are adventure stories and share many similar episodes. Since such episodes are not scattered in the New World randomly but are recorded first of all on the Plains, their independent origin in America is unlikely. It means that ca. 15,000 cal. B.P. the adventure stories in the Old World already existed.