Puti is the great ancestral being who gives the Abelam their staple food and the power to prosper, enshrined as the central image within the ceremonial house and identified with the culture-hero of the yam-origin story. That story, the tale of Wabiken (Wapiken), tells of a boy born of, or turned into, a long yam who took his name from a quarrel over a broken taro-yam, and through whom yam gardening and its magic first came to the land; the narrative survives in recorded oral tellings from the Glawe and Kumun clans of the Maprik district. At the great old korambo of Apangai, Puti's masks are carved at the roof-apex and painted across the facade, set at the heart of the sacred chamber and guarded by carved 'sons' and painted 'daughters'. Sources differ on how many beings his names denote: field accounts equate Puti with the nggwalndu and with the names Nggwal and Dendwin, treating the provider-god, the paramount clan spirit and the yam-hero as a single figure, while the ordering of masks on the Apangai facade distinguishes Dendwin from Puti.