If anything, there seems to be a clearer magical association in rites and games connected with plants than with those that mimic animals. Especially is this true of the manioc, or cassava, which is important not only as a food-giving plant, but as the source of a liquor, and, again, is dangerous for its poison,--which, as Teschauer remarks, must have caused the death of many during the long period in which the use of the plant was developed. Père Tastevin describes men and women gathering about a trough filled with manioc roots, each with a grater, and as they grate rapidly and altogether, a woman strikes up the song: "A spider has bitten me! A spider has bitten me! From under the leaf of the _kará_ a spider has bitten me!" The one opposite answers: "A spider has bitten me! Bring the cure! Quick, make haste! A spider has bitten me!" And all break in with _Yandú se suú_, by which is understood nothing more than just the rhythmic tom-tom on the grater. Similar is the song of the _sudarari_--a plant whose root resembles the manioc, which multiplies with wonderful rapidity, and the presence of which in a manioc field is regarded as insuring large manioc roots: "Permit, O patroness, that we sing during this beautiful night!" with the refrain, "_Sudarari!_" This, says Père Tastevin, is the true symbol of the fertility of fields, shared in a lesser way by certain other roots.
It is small wonder that the spirit or genius of the manioc figures in myth, nor is it surprising to find that the predominant myth is based on the motive of the North American Mondamin story. Whiffen remarks, of the north-western Amazonians:[182] "What I cannot but consider the most important of their stories are the many myths that deal with the essential and now familiar details of everyday life in connexion with the _manihot utilissima_ and other fruits"; and he goes on to tell a typical story: The Good Spirit came to earth, showed the manioc to the Indians, and taught them to extract its evils; but he failed to teach them how the plant might be reproduced. Long afterward a virgin of the tribe, wandering in the woods, was seduced by a beautiful young hunter, who was none other than the manioc metamorphosed. A daughter born of this union led the tribe to a fine plantation of manioc, and taught them how to reproduce it from bits of the stalk. Since then the people have had bread. The more elaborate version of Couto de Magalhães tells how a chief who was about to kill his daughter when he found her to be with child, was warned in a dream by a white man not to do so, for his daughter was truly innocent and a virgin. A beautiful white boy was born to the maiden, and received the name Mani; but at the end of a year, with no apparent sign of ailing, he died. A strange plant grew upon his grave, whose fruit intoxicated the birds; the Indians then opened the grave, and in place of the body of Mani discovered the manioc root, which is thence called _Mani-oka_, "House of Mani." Teschauer gives another version in which Mani lived many years and taught his people many things, and at the last, when about to die told them that after his death they should find, when a year had passed, the greatest treasure of all, the bread-yielding root.