Taugi

Taugi is the foremost of the itseke, the 'powerful beings' of Kalapalo cosmology, and the trickster-demiurge whose cunning shaped the present order of the world. Born with his twin Aulukumã to a woman carved from wood and fathered by the jaguar Nitsuegï, he grew to avenge his murdered mother and to fix the conditions of human life. He is linked to the sun and to daylight, yet Kalapalo narrators celebrate him less for creative might than for eloquent deceit, dwelling on the ingenuity with which he talks other beings out of what they hold. Sources differ on how far his shaping of the world overlaps with the making done by the elder maker Kwatïngï, but Taugi is consistently the being through whose trickery the world took on its enduring features, among them the great mortuary festival, egitsu.

Parentage

• parent: NitsuegïThe jaguar Nitsuegï is the twins' father.Ellen B. Basso, A Musical View of the Universe (1985) (secondary)
• parent: The Wooden WomanThe woman carved from wood is the twins' mother.Ellen B. Basso, A Musical View of the Universe (1985) (secondary)

Domains

• powerful being itseke
• trickery deceit
• celestial sun daylight

Powers

• Deceives beings by persuasive speech
• Changes his own shape at will
• Instituted the mortuary festival for the dead

Epithets

• Taũgi — the DeceiverEllen B. Basso, In Favor of Deceit (1987) (secondary)

Relations

• twin: AulukumãKalapalo twin narrative in Ellen B. Basso, A Musical View of the Universe (1985) (primary)
• parent: NitsuegïThe jaguar Nitsuegï is the twins' father.Ellen B. Basso, A Musical View of the Universe (1985) (secondary)
• parent: The Wooden WomanThe woman carved from wood is the twins' mother.Ellen B. Basso, A Musical View of the Universe (1985) (secondary)
• enemy: The Jaguar's MotherTaugi avenges his mother upon the old jaguar-woman who killed her.Kalapalo twin narrative in Ellen B. Basso, A Musical View of the Universe (1985) (primary)

Sources

• Taugi is the chief of the itseke and the trickster-demiurge of Kalapalo cosmology.: Ellen B. Basso, In Favor of Deceit: A Study of Tricksters in an Amazonian Society (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1987) (secondary); Ellen B. Basso, A Musical View of the Universe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985) (secondary)
• Taugi is one of a pair of twins born of a wooden woman and the jaguar, and is associated with the sun.: Ellen B. Basso, A Musical View of the Universe (1985) (secondary)