Wiyot
Wiyot is the dying god of Luiseno and Acjachemen tradition, the eldest son of Sky and Earth and the first captain over the primordial people. In his old age his rule grew burdensome, and his own people, wearied of him, plotted his death; the Frog, whom he had looked upon with contempt or desire, bewitched him with poison spat into the water, and he sickened and died. His was the first death, and the mourning that followed established the pattern of human funerals. On the pyre where his body was burned, Coyote leapt over the heads of the mourners and seized his heart, devouring it. From his death Wiyot rose again as the moon, called Moyla, whose monthly waning and renewal repeat his dying and return; his reappearance is marked by ceremony. Boscana names him Ouiot and makes his death the prelude to the coming of Chungichnish. Sources differ on whether the being who succeeded him, Chungichnish, is wholly separate or a further manifestation of Wiyot himself.
Parentage
- parent: TukmitConstance Goddard DuBois, 'The Religion of the Luiseno Indians,' UC-AAE 8:3 (1908). (secondary)
- parent: TomaiyowitConstance Goddard DuBois, 'The Religion of the Luiseno Indians,' UC-AAE 8:3 (1908). (secondary)
Domains
- death
- chieftainship
- celestial order
Powers
- brings death into the world by dying
- returns from death as the waxing moon
Epithets
- Moyla — the MoonA. L. Kroeber, 'Handbook of the Indians of California,' BAE Bulletin 78 (1925). (secondary)
Relations
- parent: TukmitConstance Goddard DuBois, 'The Religion of the Luiseno Indians,' UC-AAE 8:3 (1908). (secondary)
- parent: TomaiyowitConstance Goddard DuBois, 'The Religion of the Luiseno Indians,' UC-AAE 8:3 (1908). (secondary)
Sources
- Wiyot is the first-born of Earth, the first captain of the people, and the first being to die, poisoned by Frog and cremated on the first funeral pyre.: Geronimo Boscana, 'Chinigchinich' (c. 1822), annotated ed. Harrington (1934). (primary); Constance Goddard DuBois, 'The Religion of the Luiseno Indians of Southern California,' UC-AAE 8:3 (1908). (secondary)
- After death he rose again as the moon (Moyla), and his return is celebrated in the moon ceremonies.: A. L. Kroeber, 'Handbook of the Indians of California,' BAE Bulletin 78 (1925), ch. 49. (secondary)