The primordial carved Woman (first ancestress of the Makonde)
Makonde · demigod · Makonde traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
In the Makonde origin narrative a solitary manlike being, wandering the wilderness, carves a figure of wood and sets it against a tree; as the sun rises the figure becomes a living woman and the being himself becomes a man. The couple wash for the first time in the Ruvuma (Rovuma) river, marking their full humanity. She bears a first child by the river, which dies; moved to higher ground a second child also dies; only when they reach the plateau do their children survive, and so the Makonde are established there. As the founding mother of a matrilineal people, the carved Woman occupies the central place that female ancestor-figures hold in Makonde wood-sculpture, where the family tree is conventionally headed by a woman.
Domains
- ancestral fertility
- matrilineal descent
Powers
- to bear the first surviving children and found the matrilineal line
Relations
- spouse: The first man (the lonely carver)She is the carved woman whom the first man brings to life and takes as his partner; together they are the primal couple of the Makonde.Weule, Karl. Native Life in East Africa: The Results of an Ethnological Research Expedition. Translated by Alice Werner. London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1909. (secondary)
Sources
- The primordial carved Woman is the first ancestress of the Makonde, made from wood by the lonely first being, quickened to life by the Ruvuma river, and mother of the founding matrilineal line.: Weule, Karl. Native Life in East Africa: The Results of an Ethnological Research Expedition. Translated by Alice Werner. London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1909. (secondary); Dias, Jorge, and Margot Dias. Os Macondes de Moçambique. 4 vols. Lisboa: Centro de Estudos de Antropologia Cultural / Junta de Investigações do Ultramar, 1964. (secondary)