The Man-Eating Lizard

The Man-Eating Lizard

(A Legend from Kosrae)

This story is about the big lizard who lived in a cave near Okat Harbor. This lizard was a flesh-eater, and this lizard was very big. Also because she was a flesh-eater, she killed the interest of the people on the other side of Kusaie* from going there. Besides that, she lived right at the mouth of a passage leading from the land down into this harbor, Okat Harbor. And whenever she saw people coming, she counted the number of people in certain canoes or boats that were coming by. She figured out the number of people there were coming; then she would say, “I’ll eat three and leave three go.” This was how she was doing this business. And she kept doing this, eating the people, especially those people in Tafunsak, because it was Tafunsak where she was staying.

Kosrae 1899

Finally one day a group of men from all Kusaie Island called a meeting and decided they should kill this big lizard, instead of letting her keep growing and growing, killing the people of Kusaie and cutting the population of the place at that time. So the rest of the people agreed with this meeting and it was agreed that there would be some men to represent all four villages in Kusaie to go kill that big lizard. Then all those who were expert in making boats or canoes got together and decided on the very best type of design for the canoe that could go fast enough in the water that the lizard couldn't get the people in the canoe, those people that would represent the whole Kusaiean people in going to kill the lizard. There would be eight people in the canoe, two men to represent each village to go in this canoe. It was made according to the number of people that would represent the Kusaiean people to go kill this big lizard. And the canoe was made with the best design that the canoe experts knew that could go faster in the water than that lizard would.

When the day came for these people to go kill this lizard, the people were putting on some kind of traditional costumes, some kind of special clothes, different than the ordinary clothes that people wore every day during their daily activities. When this canoe shoved off from the land, there was music; all different kinds of old cultural things, or whatever you might say, were done by the people who remained on the land watching this canoe as it shoved off from the land and started on this trip to go kill the big lizard.     

Finally, when this monster lizard caught sight of this canoe coming up, she counted the number of people and there were eight people coming. So that monster lizard said, "Okay, I’ll take four and leave four free." When those people in the canoe came close to that big cave where the monster lizard was staying, the canoe went faster than when it was first shoved down into the water. The closer it came, the faster it went, because it was getting closer to the place where the monster lizard was living.

When the canoe reached the place where that cave was, they were shouting and trying to do something to attract the lizard to come after them. Then that monster lizard got into the water, started swimming after this canoe. These people kept paddling and paddling until they went over into the ocean. They went beyond the reef. They had already gone out from the harbor. And this lizard kept following them. The canoe went very fast because these people were the expert paddlers among the Kusaieans. They could paddle stronger and faster than anybody else could.

When they were about halfway into the ocean, that lizard, monster lizard, went slower and slower, and finally she was drowned. When these people came back, they cut some part of this lizard out and took it back to where the villagers were waiting, Tafunsak, where those people were staying, making a traditional feast, waiting for them to see if they were going to kill it. At the time they took one part of this big monster lizard, the blood of the lizard spread over the place where she was drowned and attracted all the fish in that part where she was thrown. The fish started fighting over her body.

And this story names some of the fish that were called in. We are still using some of those names today for those fish that participated in eating the body of this big lizard. And the people of Kusaie were just more than happy with those eight experts who killed this lizard.

* Former name of Kosrae

Source

Micronesian Folktales

Roger E. Mitchell

1973

Pages: 51-52