Qamaits

Qamaits is the formidable female sky-being of the highest heaven, a treeless prairie above the abode of the other deities. Bynamed 'Our Woman' and 'Afraid-of-Nothing,' she is a warrior who in the first age battled the giants that infested the mountains and, defeating them, transformed them into the peaks of the present world. She is dreaded rather than worshipped: her infrequent descents to earth were held to loose earthquakes, forest fires, and epidemics upon humankind, so that she governs both the ordering of the land and the calamities that afflict it. Sources record a number of alternate names for her, and accounts differ on the precise station she holds relative to the Sun's household below.

Domains

• war
• disease
• earth

Powers

• unleashes earthquake, fire, and plague
• battles and transforms the mountain giants

Epithets

• Our WomanBoas, Franz. 1898. The Mythology of the Bella Coola Indians. New York: G.E. Stechert. (primary)
• Afraid-of-NothingBoas, Franz. 1898. The Mythology of the Bella Coola Indians. New York: G.E. Stechert. (primary)

Sources

• Qamaits is a female warrior deity of the highest heaven whose rare visits to earth cause earthquakes, forest fires, and epidemics, and who in primordial time defeated the mountain giants.: 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); McIlwraith, T.F. 1948. The Bella Coola Indians. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. (primary)
• She is called 'Our Woman' and 'Afraid-of-Nothing' and dwells in the treeless upper heaven.: Boas, Franz. 1898. The Mythology of the Bella Coola Indians. New York: G.E. Stechert. (primary)