Kahausibware

Kahausibware is the creator-serpent of Ulawa, one of the figona (in the Sa'a dialect hi'ona) – the class of powerful beings held never to have been human. In the form of a great snake she brought into being the sea, the land, pigs, coconut palms and other fruit-bearing trees, and the first human beings, and while she lived humankind did not die. A woman she had made left her infant crying while she went to her garden; Kahausibware coiled about the child to quiet it, and the child died. Returning, the mother hacked the snake to pieces with her axe, but the severed parts drew together again and the creature was made whole; only when the tip of her tail was cut away could she not reunite, and she went down into the sea. With her passing death entered the world. Sources differ on whether the child was crushed or frightened and on the exact manner of the snake's end, but agree that mortality is traced to her death.

Domains

• creation
• mortality and death
• serpents and snakes
• cultivation and food plants

Powers

• brings living things into being
• rejoins her own severed body

Sources

• R. H. Codrington, The Melanesians (1891), section on the figona of the Solomon Islands; W. G. Ivens, Melanesians of the South-East Solomon Islands (1927).
• R. H. Codrington, The Melanesians (1891); W. G. Ivens, Dictionary and Grammar of the Language of Sa'a and Ulawa (Washington: Carnegie Institution, 1918).