Dò Kamissa, the Buffalo Woman of Dò ni Kiri, is a shapeshifting figure whose episode opens the Sunjata epic. Wronged by her brother the king of Dò, who deprived her of her inheritance, she takes vengeance by turning nightly into an invulnerable buffalo that slaughters the land's hunters and lays waste its fields, while by day she lives as a bent and aged woman. When two hunters treat her with unexpected kindness she relents, reveals the single means by which the buffalo can be slain, and instructs them to demand as their prize the ugliest, most hunchbacked girl of Dò, the maiden Sogolon, in whom her own power lives on. Her death and Sogolon's departure together set in motion the destiny that will produce Sunjata Keita. Sources differ on the precise kinship binding the buffalo-woman to Sogolon, describing her as aunt, elder sister, or spiritual original of the girl who becomes Sunjata's mother.