The story of Mani

... when her father found out about this, he was very sad because his greatest wish, to see his only daughter as the wife of a strong and admired warrior of his tribe, was no longer to be fulfilled.
Instead, she had given preference to a stranger - and although she swore in the name of all the gods that she had never been with a man, no one could ignore her swollen belly.

In a dream, a white man appeared to the chief and explained to him that there was no reason to be sad because his daughter was telling the truth, that no man had impregnated her, but that the fruit of her womb was from the gods. The father was relieved, regained his zest for life and treated his daughter with affection again.

After a few months, the young woman gave birth to a little girl. She had white, very sensitive skin and she called her Mani. The small, light-skinned child proved to be intelligent and always cheerful. She soon became the favorite of the entire tribe.

But the unexpected family happiness was short-lived. One sunny morning, the horrified mother found her beloved girl lifeless in her hammock. The medicine man was called, but he too could no longer help - Mani had died.

Amid tears and lamentations from all the tribe members, Mani's little body was buried inside the maloca, right next to her mother's hammock; she had decreed this. Every day, the young mother's longing tears wet the small burial mound. One morning, she noticed the delicate tips of a plant stretching out of the earth like small green fingers. Under their careful care, the green shoots quickly developed into a stately plant, but no one in the village knew its name or use – even the wise medicine man had never seen a similar plant.

One day, the earth above the roots of the plant cracked. Mani's mother immediately imagined that her beloved little daughter might want to return to life and, in desperate hope, began to dig with her bare hands.

Instead of her child, she found brown roots as thick as her arm. Mani's mother called the medicine man, who was the first to carefully taste the milky-white root flesh, after which the whole village community wanted to eat it. And because they liked it, they planted a few shoots of the unknown plant in the ground around their village, which all grew splendidly and gave the people many thick, tasty roots. They called the plant, which became the main food of all forest Indians, Mandioca - "Mani's house".

The legend of cassava comes from Brazilian folklore and the traditions of indigenous peoples.