Nunusomikeeqonem
Nuxalk (Bella Coola) · numen · Nuxalk (Bella Coola) traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Nunusomikeeqonem is the cannibal sky-being who is named as the mother of the creator Alhkuntam. She was a devourer of the living, described as thrusting her long snout into a sleeper's ear to draw out the brain. In the end she was transformed into the mosquito, whose stinging proboscis carries on her old appetite in diminished form. Her presence in the genealogy of the supreme deity is characteristic of the Nuxalk mythos, in which the ordered household of the upper world is bound to the monstrous and predatory beings of the first age.
Children
Domains
- cannibalism
- transformation
Powers
- drains the brains of the living
Relations
- child: AlhkuntamBoas, Franz. 1898. The Mythology of the Bella Coola Indians. New York: G.E. Stechert. (primary)
Sources
- Nunusomikeeqonem, mother of Alhkuntam, was a cannibal who sucked out the brains of the living through their ears and was finally transformed into the mosquito.: Boas, Franz. 1898. The Mythology of the Bella Coola Indians. Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History 2(2). New York: G.E. Stechert. (primary)