The Wooden Woman
Kalapalo · numen · Kalapalo traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
The wooden woman is the mother of the demiurge-twins, a person carved from a tree trunk by the maker Kwatïngï and brought to life to become the wife of the jaguar Nitsuegï. Sent to the jaguar's house, she is murdered while pregnant by her mother-in-law, the old cannibal jaguar-woman; yet from her body the twins Taugi and Aulukumã are taken alive. She is the primordial mother whose death the twins spend their youth avenging, and whose mourning they institute in the first egitsu. Kalapalo tellings dwell on her making and her death more than on any personal name, so that she is known chiefly as the woman of wood.
Parentage
- parent: KwatïngïShe is the daughter carved from wood by Kwatïngï.Ellen B. Basso, A Musical View of the Universe (1985) (secondary)
Children
Domains
- made being
- primordial motherhood
Powers
- Bears the demiurge-twins from her body
Relations
- parent: KwatïngïShe is the daughter carved from wood by Kwatïngï.Ellen B. Basso, A Musical View of the Universe (1985) (secondary)
- spouse: NitsuegïEllen B. Basso, A Musical View of the Universe (1985) (secondary)
- child: TaugiEllen B. Basso, A Musical View of the Universe (1985) (secondary)
- child: AulukumãEllen B. Basso, A Musical View of the Universe (1985) (secondary)
- enemy: The Jaguar's MotherMurdered by the old jaguar-woman, her mother-in-law.Kalapalo twin narrative in Ellen B. Basso, A Musical View of the Universe (1985) (primary)
Sources
- The mother of the twins is a woman carved and animated from wood by Kwatïngï, killed while pregnant, from whose body the twins are born.: Ellen B. Basso, A Musical View of the Universe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985) (secondary)