Etsa
Shuar · deity · Shuar traditional religion; continuing · deity
Etsa is the Sun of the Shuar and Achuar and the archetypal hunter culture-hero. In the best-known myth-cycle the cannibal ogre Iwia ate Etsa's parents and reared the boy as a captive, sending him out each day to shoot birds for the ogre's table until the forest was nearly emptied of game. A surviving dove revealed the truth of his parentage and taught him to blow the kept feathers from his blowgun, whereupon the birds returned to life and refilled the forest. Etsa then turned on Iwia and destroyed him, and so became the protector of the game animals and the divine model of the skilled, life-restoring hunter. As the Sun he is also a celestial being; the Shuar speak of themselves as kin to the sun and the moon.
Domains
- sun and daylight
- hunting and game animals
- land animals and birds
Powers
- to restore birds and game animals to the forest from their feathers and bones
- to hunt unfailingly with the blowgun
Relations
Sources
- Rafael Karsten, The Head-Hunters of Western Amazonas: The Life and Culture of the Jíbaro Indians of Eastern Ecuador and Peru (Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum VII.1, 1935).
- Siro M. Pellizzaro, Etsa: defensor de la vida, Mundo Shuar serie F (Sucúa: Centro de Documentación, Investigación y Publicaciones, 1977).