K'mukamtch

Klamath · deity · Klamath Modoc traditional religion; continuing · deity

K'mukamtch, rendered Gmok'am'c in the Klamath dialect and conflated by the allied Modoc with their own Kumush, is the primordial old-man demiurge of the Klamath Lake people. In Gatschet's mythologic text the world begins with K'mukamtch and his son Aishish, the father resolving that all things and the kinds of fish should come into being. Beyond shaping the land he is the founder of shamanism, a power he is said still to dispense to seekers at particular rocks. He is at the same time a trickster-transformer who, under the name Gmukamps, wanders the basin in the guises of Marten, Mink and other beings; later ethnographers note his ambivalent moral character, by turns creator and self-serving culture-hero.

Children

Aishish

Domains

creation and world ordering
shamanism and spirit power

Powers

to call the land, fish and living things into existence
to institute and grant the powers of the shamans
to take many shapes and names across the tales

Epithets

Gmok'am'c

Sources

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