Sũwõ'

Sũwõ' is the name the Bribri of Talamanca, in what is now Costa Rica, give to the oral traditions that make up their shamanic religion. At its centre is Sibö, the creator and culture hero, a luminous trickster who, according to the tales, defeated the devils called the Sòrburu and planted the sacred seeds at Suràyum, from which the Bribri grew.

The awápa, shamans, link the human and spirit worlds. They receive magic stones from Sibö in a ritual at a river. The spirit world is the human one turned upside down: the owner of fish takes the fish for yucca, since to him water is earth.

The Spanish Franciscan missions of the seventeenth century failed to hold the mountains. In 1709 the leader Pablo Presbere led a rising that burned fourteen mission churches.