Nerejao is an ancestress of the Senufo people of northern Côte d'Ivoire, Mali, and Burkina Faso, revered as the true head of the Poro society, the men's initiation institution through which histories, genealogies, and religious knowledge are transmitted. Senior Poro elders are understood to instruct initiates under her authority, and the society's arduous cycle of training and masquerade performance is carried out in the sacred grove as service both to her lineage and to the Ancient Mother, the protective female aspect of the Senufo supreme deity. Her veneration illustrates the strongly matrilineal cast of Senufo religious authority, in which even the male-dominated Poro traces its legitimacy to a founding woman.