White Painted Woman
Apache · deity · myth age / first people time · Recorded classification
Creator-mother goddess classed 'deity'. Apache Isdzánátł'éshn ('White-Painted Woman'); 'Changing Woman' is the renewal-aspect title (cf. Navajo Asdzą́ą́ Nádleehé). Esdzanadehe is a common English-source spelling.
Children
Domains
- fertility
- renewal
Powers
- grow old and become young again
- bear the monster-slaying twins
- give the girls' Sunrise Ceremony
- Survives the world-flood sealed in an abalone shell
Epithets
- White Painted Woman The mother of the people, honoured in the girls’ Sunrise Ceremony; bearer of the monster-slaying twinsMorris Opler, An Apache Life-Way (secondary)
- 'Isdzánátł'éshn White-Painted WomanMorris E. Opler, An Apache Life-Way (1941) (secondary)
Relations
- companion: Life-GiverReciprocal of apache_ussen.companion — Supreme creator (Life-Giver) whose female counterpart is the creator-mother White Painted Woman.M.E. Opler, An Apache Life-Way (1941); Ussen (Life-Giver) and his female counterpart White Painted Woman in Chiricahua/Mescalero cosmology (secondary)
- ancestor of: Child of the WaterCreator-mother (Changing Woman).M.E. Opler, Myths and Tales of the Chiricahua Apache Indians (1942); White Painted Woman as mother of the monster-slaying twins by the Sun (secondary)
Sources
- White Painted Woman / Changing Woman (Isdzánátł'éshn, popular Esdzanadehe) is the chief female deity of the Apache, mother of the monster-slaying twins and giver of the girls' puberty ceremony, who renews her youth perpetually.: Morris E. Opler, 'An Apache Life-Way' (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1941). (ethnography); Morris E. Opler, 'Myths and Tales of the Chiricahua Apache Indians,' Memoirs of the American Folk-Lore Society 37 (1942). (ethnography)