Kuemoi

Kuemoi is the water-demiurge of Piaroa cosmology, lord of the aquatic world and of the anaconda, and the counterpart and adversary of Wahari, to whom he stands as mother's brother and as father-in-law. From his frenzied, insatiable creativity issue the implements of culture: fire, cultivated plants, the blowgun poison curare and the arts of sorcery. Yet his making is disordered and cannibalistic, so that everything he brings forth arrives charged with danger, and his devouring appetite becomes in Piaroa moral teaching the image of the uncontrolled self that the living must learn to master. Through his long contest with Wahari the powers of culture are wrested from water to land. Sources differ on the precise turns of the myth and on his ultimate fate, but he endures as the peril of the rivers and deep waters.

Children

• Cheheru

Domains

• water and serpents
• poison and sorcery
• night and darkness

Powers

• compound curare and the arts of poison
• invent the tools and cultivated crafts
• hunger and devour like a cannibal

Epithets

• ahe ruwang
• the mad creator

Relations

• sibling: Ofoda'e
• child: Cheheru
• rival: Wahari

Sources

• Overing Kaplan, J. (1975). The Piaroa, a People of the Orinoco Basin. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Overing, J. (1986). 'Images of Cannibalism, Death and Domination in a Non-Violent Society.' In D. Riches (ed.), The Anthropology of Violence, pp. 86-102. Oxford: Blackwell.
• Overing, J. (1985). 'There Is No End of Evil.' In D. Parkin (ed.), The Anthropology of Evil, pp. 244-278. Oxford: Blackwell.