Nokomis
Menominee · numen · Menominee traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Nokomis, 'Grandmother,' is the primordial earth-grandmother of Menominee myth, the aged woman who dwelt upon the earth before the culture-hero and who reared the infant Manabus after his mother died at his birth. She is at once a kinswoman of the hero and an embodiment of the nurturing earth, keeper of the lodge to which Manabus returns between his wanderings and the source of much of the practical and ritual knowledge he carries to humankind. In the tales she counsels, warns, and occasionally suffers from her grandson's recklessness, and her lodge is the fixed point around which the episodic hero-cycle turns.
Domains
- earth
- ancestry household
Powers
- rears and counsels the culture-hero
Relations
- companion: ManabusAs the grandmother who reared Manabus, she is his constant guardian and the fixed point of the hero-cycle.Skinner, A. & Satterlee, J. V. (1915). Folklore of the Menomini Indians. AP-AMNH 13(3). (primary)
Sources
- Nokomis is the primordial earth-grandmother who reared the culture-hero Manabus.: Hoffman, W. J. (1896). The Menomini Indians. 14th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, p. 113. (secondary); Skinner, A. & Satterlee, J. V. (1915). Folklore of the Menomini Indians. AP-AMNH 13(3). (primary)