Kúwai
Kúwai is the supreme creator-being of Cubeo thought, most fully elaborated among the Hehénewa, who regard him as the maker of the world and address him as a god. In the beginning the cosmos lay as a formless mass within a hole in the rock; seated upon a ceremonial bench and drawing on a tobacco cigar, Kúwai concentrated his thought and so brought into being both the first people and the sacred flutes and trumpets, producing the collective of primordial ancestors known as the Kúwaiwa. He orders the earth, the rivers and the sky. Cubeo tradition understands him as a single person who may divide into three brothers or reunite as one: the elder brother initiates life, the younger completes form and flesh, and a third aspect brings death. He is also the owner of sicknesses, and the coming of illness into the world is tied to his own mythic death, so that the mastery of disease and its cure descends, in weakened measure, to the shamans.
Children
Domains
- creation
- health and sickness
- cosmic order
Powers
- conceive beings through concentrated thought
- divide into three brothers or reunite as one
- hold ownership over sickness and healing
Epithets
- Dios — GodEthnographic synthesis of Cubeo religion: the Hehénewa hold Kúwai to be a supreme deity and even name him 'Dios', reserving other supreme beings to other peoples (secondary)
Relations
- parent: KúwaiwaKúwai brings forth the collective of primordial ancestors.François Correa (comp.), Los Kuwaiwa (Quito: Abya-Yala, 1997): Kúwai concentrates his thought and produces the Kúwaiwa (secondary)
Sources
- Kúwai is the principal creator and culture-hero of Cubeo mythology, conceiving people and the sacred instruments by thought while seated on a bench and smoking tobacco.: François Correa (comp.), Los Kuwaiwa: creadores del universo, la sociedad y la cultura (Quito: Abya-Yala, 1997) (secondary); Irving Goldman, Cubeo Hehénewa Religious Thought (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004) (secondary)
- Kúwai is 'owner of sicknesses' whose death is bound to the origin of illness, and is understood as a triune being able to become three brothers.: Robin M. Wright, 'The Kuwai Religions of Northern Arawak-Speaking Peoples', Boletín de Antropología (Universidad de Antioquia) (secondary)