Dò Kamissa

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.

Domains

• shapeshifting
• vengeance

Powers

• transforms into a marauding buffalo
• reveals the secret of her own death and destiny

Epithets

• Dɔ Kamisa, sigi muso — Kamissa of Dò, the buffalo-womanConrad, David C. (2004). Sunjata: A West African Epic of the Mande Peoples. Indianapolis: Hackett. (primary)

Relations

• companion: Sogolon CondéSogolon is presented as the buffalo-woman's kinswoman and living double, or wraith; sources cast the tie variously as aunt and niece or as elder and younger sister.Conrad, David C. (2004). Sunjata: A West African Epic of the Mande Peoples. Indianapolis: Hackett, pp. 22-38. (primary)

Sources

• Dò Kamissa is the shapeshifting buffalo-woman of the land of Dò whose death is bound to the birth of Sunjata's mother in the Sunjata epic.: Conrad, David C. (2004). Sunjata: A West African Epic of the Mande Peoples. Indianapolis: Hackett, pp. 22-38. (primary); Niane, D. T. (1965). Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali. London: Longman, pp. 5-11. (primary)