Old Man's Fall: the story behind the name Kaieteur
Kaieteur is usually translated as "old man's fall". But which old man? Two very different stories have been told since 1870, and the Patamona people of the area have their own view of which one matters.
Video "How Kaieteur Falls got its name" by JUMP&KISSDESIGNS, shown with YouTube's player. Watch on YouTube.
Every visitor hears a version of the legend of Kai. Fewer hear that there is more than one version, or where the name actually comes from.
The name
Kaieteur comes from the language of the Patamona, the Indigenous people whose land includes the falls. Their name for the falls is usually translated as "Old Man's Fall". When the British geologist Charles Barrington Brown reached the falls in 1870, he wrote the name down as "Kaieteur", and it is generally believed that his spelling is a mangled version of the Patamona words. Elders from the area have pointed out that this is not the name they use.
Brown is often called the man who "discovered" Kaieteur. He was the first European on record to see it. The Patamona had known it for a very long time before that.
The legend most visitors hear
The version told in Guyanese schools and on most tours is about a Patamona chief named Kai. To save his people (from an enemy in some tellings, from hardship in others), Kai paddled his canoe over the edge of the falls as a sacrifice to Makonaima, the great spirit. His people were saved, and the falls carry his name.
This version was popularised in the 20th century, including in a poem by the Guyanese poet A. J. Seymour.
The version Brown was told
The story Brown wrote down in 1870 is much less heroic. According to what Indigenous guides told him on the night he reached the falls, the "old man" was a difficult elder whose relatives put him in a boat and pushed it towards the edge. The current carried him over, and the falls were named after him.
Whose story is it?
Brown's account also describes a Patamona village on the Kaieteur plateau, and the people of Chenapau, the nearest Patamona village, have long said that it's their original story, with its cultural and spiritual meaning, that should be told. Whichever version you hear on your trip, it's worth remembering that Kaieteur is a sacred place to the people who have lived around it for generations.
Kaieteur National Park
The park around the falls was created in 1929, making it Guyana's first national park and one of the earliest protected areas in South America. Its boundaries have changed over the years, but the falls and the plateau around them remain protected.
The short video above, from JUMP&KISSDESIGNS, tells the naming story in under a minute.
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