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Benjamin N. and Lore M. Colby 
Anthropos 69. 1974 
deities. Thus a Chajul man did long ago, but it was long ago. We only 
heard the story. 
Well, it is said that a wild pig came to his maizefield. He had 
maize in the mountains. Well, the wild pig visited his maizefield. After 
wards, the man went to inspect his field. There was more or less a cuerda 
of maize that the animal had already eaten. It had already finished it; 
the maize was all trampled down. It had completely eaten the maize 
of the field. The man became angry, “Ah, I’m going to wait and see if 
it will return again soon. What a quantity of maize it has destroyed. 
And it is bound to return to do the same again. But wait! I shall see 
how much it is that the animal ruined and then I’ll cut the maize stalks 
to see if he comes again”, so he said 2 . Well, then, he began to cut the 
cane. He began to cut the stalks that the animal had trampled down. 
He began cutting. 
Well, there were shepherds of the animals - shepherds or keepers 
of the animals. “How could it have happened? It is a sin that the ani 
mal, the miscreant, entered the maizefield of that man, and taking 
its companions with it too! What a lot of maize it has already destroyed. 
But, never mind, what shall we do? We must count his maize, deter 
mine how much it comes to. Then we will return it to him in order to 
remedy the loss. His face is sad, poor man,” they said. The angels, 
the animal keepers, had agreed among themselves, when the man took 
out his machete and began to cut the cane into sections. However, he 
obviously couldn’t see them because they are like gods. So he cut the 
cane, they say. That was his wrongdoing, having cut the cane. Well, 
there were the angels (earth deities). They were counting the maize but 
following along behind was the man, cutting the stalks, “He is chasing 
us”. But he didn’t notice anything while cutting pieces of the cane. 
Then he finished cutting them. Then it is said that the animal came 
again at night. Well, it kept returning at night. So the man came run 
ning again. He went to chase the animal at night, since he was watching 
the maizefield. After he finished cutting pieces of the cane, he returned 
to his house: “Well, our maizefield has been destroyed. A great amount 
of our maize has that animal destroyed. The wild pig came to our maize 
field. You must hurry to make some tortillas for me because I must 
go soon to watch the field”, he said. “All right”, said his wife. Well, 
she began to prepare his food. Since he had his little hut at the maize 
field, he went to sleep by his maizefield. The same thing happened- 
The animal came again at night and he came out running. It ran into 
his maizefield again. He went chasing after the animal in order to find 
its hiding place. Instead, he awoke and found himself in a beautiful 
house. The foundation of the house in which he was was of pure metal- 
2 A closer translation of the Ixil would be, "it is said that he said”. This construction 
is so frequent in the text that we have shortened it as in this sentence or have left it 
out entirely.