One of the old people had said that the strange sun of the last few days was a bad omen. He did nothing more than say out loud, with his voice of authority, what we were all fearing in silence. Other older people contradicted him but, to nearly all of us, it was obvious that they were only doing this in order to calm us and not because they truly believed that the no longer shining orange ball was not a bad sign sent by the Gods.
The winter that had come to an end had been particularly mild. Only the very highest summits of the mountains had been covered in snow and in the west, no child had died of the cold and the freezing southern wind had hardly blown. For all this we celebrated and each night we thanked the Gods by singing and dancing around the campfires that we had made bigger and more numerous than was the custom.
However, despite the fact that we were all praying to the Gods in this way, there were many of us who, for various days, had been feeling unsettled and afraid without knowing why. That strange image of the sun only sharpened our fears.
The subject has never been documented in history. Apparently this is not due to lack of interest of the first European visitors who arrived in America in order to study the ancient cultures, but to the Tehuelches who considered it a supreme (and misterious) order to not reveal the legend to foreigners.
All this suggests that the myth had a strong oral tradition amongst them but that, because of the fear that it instilled in them, they avoided as much as possible any discussion on the subject.
I heard word of it for the first time along time ago on a cold night of my childhood. I can´t remember well why I was spending a few nights in the house of my greatgrandfather Tomás but I think I remember that it had something to do with the big wedding celebrations that were taking place there in the middle of the Patagonian plain. Everyone, down to the most distant relatives of the bride, who I believe was the third cousin of by father, had been invited to the celebrations. What is certain is that one night- the night before the wedding- a very old indian looking man (he seemed much older than my great-grandfather who was then 90 years old) spoke about ´the Red Men´. The father of my paternal grandfather was angrily adament that it was not a true story.