Nunkui is the earth-dwelling female power from whom the Achuar derive every cultivated plant. In the origin narrative a starving woman meets Nunkui, or a child of hers, and receives the first manioc, plantain and groundnut, together with the knowledge of how to sow, weed and harvest them; when the child is mistreated Nunkui withdraws and the abundance she had conjured shrinks back into the ground. She remains present beneath the garden, and Achuar women cultivate through a personal relationship with her, singing anent to her as to a kinswoman and secretly tending the reddish nantar stones understood as her offspring. She is likewise the patron of clay and of the potter's craft. Her sphere, the tamed and planted ground, is the female counterpart to the male labour of clearing the high forest presided over by Shakaim.