Yeba, whose name means Earth, is the ancestral man of the Barasana and appears in myth in the shape of a jaguar. Portrayed at first as an ignorant, wild being of the forest, he is civilised through his marriage to Yawira, the daughter of Fish Anaconda, and through the cultivated crops that his wife and father-in-law provide. This union establishes the primordial alliance that structures Barasana society, joining the Barasana as earth people to their affines the Bará as water people. As the earthly counterpart to the sky-creatress Romi Kumu, Yeba anchors the human descent groups to the land and to the practice of agriculture.