Tomaiyowit

Tomaiyowit, the Earth, is the female half of the primordial pair of the Luiseno creation. Sister and consort of Tukmit the Sky, she was brought forth from the primal emptiness and lay with him in the first darkness. Through their long naming-dialogue the world took form, and from her the substance of the land and its creatures issued. She is named as the mother of Wiyot, the first-born captain, and stands as the primordial mother of the whole ordered cosmos. In the ethnographic texts she and Tukmit are treated as much as the elemental earth and sky as personal figures, their brother-sister union expressing the joining of the two great halves of the world.

Parentage

• parent: Kivish AtakvishConstance Goddard DuBois, 'The Religion of the Luiseno Indians,' UC-AAE 8:3 (1908). (secondary)

Children

• Wiyot

Domains

• earth
• fertility

Powers

• gives birth to the ordered world

Relations

• sibling: TukmitConstance Goddard DuBois, 'The Religion of the Luiseno Indians,' UC-AAE 8:3 (1908). (secondary)
• spouse: TukmitConstance Goddard DuBois, 'The Religion of the Luiseno Indians,' UC-AAE 8:3 (1908). (secondary)
• parent: Kivish AtakvishConstance Goddard DuBois, 'The Religion of the Luiseno Indians,' UC-AAE 8:3 (1908). (secondary)
• child: WiyotConstance Goddard DuBois, 'The Religion of the Luiseno Indians,' UC-AAE 8:3 (1908). (secondary)

Sources

• Tomaiyowit is the Earth, the female member of the primordial pair, mother of Wiyot and of all things.: Constance Goddard DuBois, 'The Religion of the Luiseno Indians of Southern California,' UC-AAE 8:3 (1908). (secondary)