He Anaconda

The He Anaconda is the primal ancestral serpent, the living canoe in whose belly the founders of the descent groups travelled up the Vaupés from the eastern water door. Born of Romi Kumu when the Woman Shaman went downriver, it retraced its own journey and set the ancestors down at the waterfalls and rocks that became their homelands. The He, the domain of the sacred and ancestral to which the serpent belongs, is made present in ritual through the He instruments, the sacred palm-wood flutes and trumpets that are understood as the ancestor's bones and that carry his breath and song. Shown to novices in the great initiation known as the He House, these instruments make the anaconda's body and the origin of humanity tangible, so that the emergence of the clans is re-enacted in every generation.

Parentage

• parent: Romi Kumu

Domains

• ancestry
• initiation

Powers

• carries the ancestors upriver as a living canoe

Epithets

• He Hino — the ancestral He AnacondaStephen Hugh-Jones, The Palm and the Pleiades (Cambridge University Press, 1979) (secondary)

Relations

• child: Romi KumuBorn of the Woman Shaman when she went downriver.Instituto Socioambiental, 'Barasana,' Povos Indígenas no Brasil, pib.socioambiental.org (tertiary)
• kin: Manioc-stick AnacondaOne of the ancestral He anacondas.Stephen Hugh-Jones, The Palm and the Pleiades (Cambridge University Press, 1979) (secondary)
• kin: RimahinóNamed among the primal beings of the He world.Stephen Hugh-Jones, The Palm and the Pleiades (Cambridge University Press, 1979) (secondary)
• associate: AyawaShares the ancestral river journey and the He instruments.Christine Hugh-Jones, From the Milk River (Cambridge University Press, 1979) (secondary)

Sources

• The Barasana came up the Vaupés in canoes dragged by, or in the belly of, the sacred anaconda, which disgorged the descent groups onto the river banks; the He instruments are the ancestor's bones and voice.: Instituto Socioambiental, 'Barasana,' Povos Indígenas no Brasil, pib.socioambiental.org (tertiary); Stephen Hugh-Jones, The Palm and the Pleiades (Cambridge University Press, 1979) (secondary)