Sun

The Sun, Kiowa Pái, is the supreme power of Kiowa cosmology, the life-force permeating the universe and the protector of the people; the band-name Pái-dome-gú, 'Under-the-Sun People', preserves the word. Kracht emphasizes that the most potent war-power (dáu-dáu) flowed from the Sun. In the central origin narrative recorded by Mooney and Parsons, a Kiowa girl climbs a tall tree or shaft into the sky, becomes a grown woman, and marries the Sun; their son is the boy whose later splitting produces the twin culture-heroes and ultimately the Ten Medicines. The Sun's power is also embodied and mediated on earth by the Taime effigy of the Sun Dance.

Children

• Sun Boy

Domains

• sun and light
• war power

Powers

• to sustain the life-force of the universe
• to beget the boy who becomes the people's medicine

Epithets

• PáiBenjamin R. Kracht, 'Kiowa Belief and Ritual' (University of Nebraska Press, 2017) (secondary)

Relations

• creator of: Sun BoyThe Sun is the father of Sun Boy, begotten on the Kiowa woman who climbed into the sky and became his wife.Elsie Clews Parsons, 'Kiowa Tales', Memoirs of the American Folk-Lore Society, vol. 22 (G. E. Stechert, 1929) (secondary)

Sources

• The Sun (Pái) is the supreme Kiowa deity and life-force of the universe, husband of the sky-climbing Kiowa woman and father of the medicine-hero Sun Boy.: James Mooney, 'Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians', Seventeenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology (Smithsonian Institution, 1898) (secondary); Benjamin R. Kracht, 'Kiowa Belief and Ritual' (University of Nebraska Press, 2017) (secondary)