The Origin of Fire

Over one thousand years ago, there was a tribe in Chile called the Mapuche. The people of this tribe lived in long, winding caves hollowed out by great floods. They didn’t know what fire was yet and lived mainly on fruit they could find growing in the wilderness.

Whenever they killed an animal, they would eat its meat raw, because without fire they had no means to roast it or cook it. It was chewy and stringy and not tasty at all! That’s why they preferred eating fruit like wild berries or small nuts or plants. None of them took so long to eat.

They always got up at the first light of the morning to have enough time to do all of the day’s work before nightfall. Without fire, the sun was their only source of light. They always spent the nights hidden in the safety of their caves until morning. Any sounds outside were frightening because they couldn’t see what made them, not to mention how some nights it got quite cold.

One clear and crisp night, though, a young hunter named Caleu stayed outside, because he couldn’t fall asleep. He’d tossed and turned, but he was just not tired. Suddenly, he saw a shooting star falling from the skies followed by a long tail of sparks.

The star fell into a nearby valley and the valley immediately lit up with a blinding light. Caleu was really scared, because he had never seen anything like it in his entire life! He quickly ran back to his cave and sat hiding there until dawn, shaking like a leaf in his blanket wrap.

When the next day came, he didn’t say a word about it to anyone. He didn’t want to scare the whole tribe. He didn’t know…