Frog Woman
Frog Woman is a powerful female personage of Pomo tradition, generally portrayed as the clever and capable wife of Coyote and, in some tellings, the mother of Obsidian Man. The storytellers whose myths Cora Clark and Texa Bowen Williams recorded explained that Frog Woman stands for water in the nature symbolism of the tales (Clark and Williams 1954). Her dwelling is the volcanic monolith in the Russian River canyon of Mendocino County: John Hudson's Pomo linguistic manuscript of about 1892 records that people avoided the rock because Bi-tsin' ma-ca lived there, and in Central Pomo the crag is called kawao maatha qhabe, 'Frog Woman Rock,' a name formally restored to the California landmark in 2011 in place of the older settler name. Later settler storytelling recast her as a man-devouring seductress, a distortion of the older Pomo figure.
Children
Domains
- fresh water
Powers
- to outwit other beings through cleverness
- to make her rock dwelling feared and avoided
Relations
- consort of: Coyote
- mother of: Obsidian Man
Sources
- Clark, Cora, and Texa Bowen Williams (1954). Pomo Indian Myths and Some of Their Sacred Meanings. New York: Vantage Press.
- California Office of Historic Preservation (2011). California Historical Landmark No. 549, 'Frog Woman Rock,' Mendocino County: updated designation documentation, citing John W. Hudson, Pomo Linguistic Manuscript (c. 1892), Grace Hudson Museum, Ukiah.
- The Press Democrat (Santa Rosa, Calif.). 'Settlers Changed Stories behind Frog Woman Rock' (feature on Pomo traditions of Frog Woman Rock).