Cosmogony—The Sun is a man and the Moon is his wife. In the evening the Sun enters a river which he follows until he rises again. An
eclipse of the Sun or of the Moon is caused by the attack of a “purple” or “yellow” jaguar. Everybody then makes as much noise as possible to frighten off the celestial feline.
The appearance of the Pleiades, which the Chiriguano call “a swarm of bees,” announces the harvest season. Their yearly course serves also to reckon time. The Chiriguano identify Scorpio with a fenced field, in the center of which is the miraculous spade of Aguara-tunpa. In the black skies near the Milky Way (the road of the rhea), they see a
celestial ostrich (rhea), the head of which is the Southern Cross. The
Magellanic Clouds are the ashes of a fire built by a couple who went to
the sky. (See Lehmann-Nitsche)