Yingarna (also Yingana) is the senior, female Rainbow Serpent of the Kunwinjku of western Arnhem Land, the original ancestral mother from whom the people descend. In Kuninjku and Kunwinjku accounts she is the 'biggest' and first of the Rainbow Serpents. She came out of the sea bearing woven dilly-bags filled with spirit-children and the first yams; travelling across the land she set down the people at different places, planted the yams, and gave each group its own language and its own country, so accounting for the linguistic diversity of the region. She is the mother of Ngalyod, the transforming Rainbow Serpent who succeeds her as the active serpent of the waters. Her image, often a large maternal serpent disgorging or carrying the first people, is a major subject of escarpment rock art and of bark painting recorded and analysed by Luke Taylor and by the Berndts.