In a cosmogony where the creators bring forth an essentially male world and where the very idea of the female is held to threaten male status, Yurédo is almost the only feminine presence. She is the supernatural midwife, glimpsed also as the shadowy Single-Breasted Woman, who attends the births of the mythic age. Her role resolves a tension at the heart of Hehénewa metaphysics: reproduction must occur, yet the male order must be preserved, and it is through her shadowy mediation that generation is permitted without dissolving the principles on which the world was made. She stands apart from the genealogies of the other beings, an isolated figure whose function is defined not by kinship but by office.