The wapinyan, whose name means 'children of the yams', are the carved beings ranged within the Abelam ceremonial house among its painted images and disclosed to initiates in the deeper stages of the cult. Reckoned the sons of the enthroned ancestor Puti, they guard his sacred chamber and carry into the display the generative power of the long yam itself, binding the fertility of the gardens to the ancestral order of the clan. They are named and honoured collectively rather than as separate individuals, each a child of the yam and of the great provider-spirit.