Yaboaine
Goodenough (Kalauna) · deity · Goodenough (Kalauna) traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Yaboaine, also written Yabowaine, is a principal spirit-being of the northern D'Entrecasteaux, including Goodenough Island, recorded in the early ethnography of Jenness and Ballantyne. Sources associate him with warfare and with the dead and describe offerings made to secure his favour; Methodist missionaries later cast him as the chief heathen god of the region. Accounts differ on his precise character and on how far the cult was shared across the island group, some linking it most strongly with the neighbouring Dobu-speaking peoples to the south.
Domains
- warfare
- the dead
Powers
- receives offerings for success in war and fertility
Sources
- Yaboaine is a principal spirit-being of the northern D'Entrecasteaux, associated with war and the dead and honoured with offerings: Diamond Jenness & Andrew Ballantyne, The Northern D'Entrecasteaux (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1920) (primary)
- Missionary and later scholarship treated Yaboaine as the chief indigenous deity of the region, with sources differing on how widely the cult was shared: G. W. Trompf, Melanesian Religion (Cambridge University Press, 1991) (secondary)