Nambweapa'w

Nambweapa'w is the cosmic Cassowary-Mother of the Ilahita Arapesh, primordial ancestress of all human beings. In the myth she comes with other cassowaries to bathe, shedding her feathered skin to take the form of a woman; a man watching in hiding steals the skin and so keeps her as his wife. She bears him many children of alternating sex, from whom the various peoples and languages of the earth descend, the Arapesh among them holding a place of mythic seniority. In time her youngest son reveals to her where the skin has been hidden; recovering it she resumes her cassowary nature, kills the husband who had entrapped her, and departs, leading her children away. Tuzin reads the story as the counterweight to the men's tambaran cult, a charter of the female power that men appropriate and fear, and identifies Nambweapa'w with the great female figure carved on the facade of the spirit house. He argues that the tale is a Sepik reworking of the widely travelled Swan-Maiden story, the cassowary standing where other traditions place a swan.

Domains

• origins of humanity
• femininity and fertility

Powers

• shed and don her cassowary skin
• bring forth the peoples of the earth
• avenge her captivity upon her captor

Epithets

• the Cassowary-Mother of all humanityTuzin 1997, The Cassowary's Revenge, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (primary)

Relations

• spouse: BaingapBound to the man who stole her skin and made her his wife.Tuzin 1997, The Cassowary's Revenge, Nambweapa'w myth. (primary)
• enemy: BaingapSlays him once her cassowary skin is recovered.Tuzin 1997, The Cassowary's Revenge, on the killing of the captor. (primary)

Sources

• Nambweapa'w is the primordial Cassowary-Woman and ancestress of all humanity in Ilahita Arapesh myth, captured by a man who hid her skin, mother of the many children who became the peoples of the world.: Tuzin, Donald F. 1997. The Cassowary's Revenge: The Life and Death of Masculinity in a New Guinea Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (primary)
• The myth is an Arapesh local form of the widespread Swan-Maiden tale, with a cassowary in place of the swan, and grounds the Arapesh sense of themselves and their mythic priority over a wider humanity.: Tuzin 1997, The Cassowary's Revenge, analysis of the Nambweapa'w narrative. (primary)