Sun Boy

Sun Boy (Son of the Sun) is the central supernatural hero of Kiowa mythology, born of the Sun and the Kiowa woman who climbed into the sky. After his mother's death he is raised on earth by Spider Old Woman. Carrying the ring or gaming-wheel his mother brought down, he disobeys his grandmother's warning never to throw it skyward; the ring falls on his head and splits him into two identical Half Boys (the Zaidethali). In this sense Sun Boy is at once a single hero and the source of the celebrated Kiowa twins. His ultimate gift to the people is the most sacred of their medicines: when one of his split selves transforms into ten parts, the Kiowa receive the Ten Medicine bundles (Talyi-da-i).

Parentage

• paternal: Sun

Children

• Split Boys

Domains

• medicine and blessing
• solar descent

Powers

• to split into the two Half Boys
• to give the Kiowa their most sacred medicine

Relations

• creator of: Split BoysSun Boy is the single being who, struck by his ring, divides into the two Half Boys (Zaidethali); they are his split selves.Elsie Clews Parsons, 'Kiowa Tales', Memoirs of the American Folk-Lore Society, vol. 22 (G. E. Stechert, 1929) (secondary)

Sources

• Sun Boy, son of the Sun and a Kiowa woman, is the great supernatural hero of Kiowa myth whose division yields the twin Half Boys and whose legacy is the Ten Medicines.: James Mooney, 'Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians', Seventeenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology (Smithsonian Institution, 1898) (secondary); Elsie Clews Parsons, 'Kiowa Tales', Memoirs of the American Folk-Lore Society, vol. 22 (G. E. Stechert, 1929) (secondary)