The Yamurikumã are the women of myth who withdrew from the society of men and were transformed into fierce, autonomous spirit-women. Their story belongs to the same complex as the myth of the flutes, in which women once held the ritual powers now monopolized by men, and it inverts the ordinary order of the village: the women take up song, dance, and ceremony for themselves. The Mehinaku, like their Xingu neighbors, keep the memory of these spirit-women in a women's festival of the same name, in which the participants enact the mythic reversal. The tradition gives voice to the tension Gregor found at the center of Mehinaku life, between the men's guarded dominance and the women's remembered priority.