Blue Corn Woman
Tewa Pueblos · deity · Tewa Pueblos traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Blue Corn Woman, called 'near to Summer,' is one of the two primordial Corn Mothers who existed with the people in the underworld at Sipofene beneath Sandy Place Lake before the emergence. She is the mother of the Summer moiety, the warm half of the dual Tewa social and cosmological order, and stands opposite White Corn Maiden, mother of the Winter people. From her descend the Summer chief and the Summer division of the pueblo, and her presence is carried in the feathered mother-corn ear that is central to Tewa ritual. Sources describe the two mothers together as the origin of all Tewa, without a recorded father, expressing the matrilineal generative principle at the root of the moiety system.
Children
Domains
- agriculture
- fertility
- origins
Powers
- mothers the Summer moiety
- ripens corn and warm-season crops
Epithets
- Blue Corn Woman, near to Summer — the Summer MotherOrtiz, Alfonso. 1969. The Tewa World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 13. (secondary)
Relations
- companion: White Corn MaidenThe two paired First Mothers of the Tewa, Summer and Winter.Ortiz, Alfonso. 1969. The Tewa World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 13-16. (secondary)
- child: Towa eCo-mother of the Towa e, the war-spirit brothers set on the surrounding hills.Ortiz, Alfonso. 1969. The Tewa World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 16-18. (secondary)
Sources
- Blue Corn Woman, near to Summer, is one of the two Corn Mothers from whom the Tewa descend and is the mother of the Summer moiety.: Ortiz, Alfonso. 1969. The Tewa World: Space, Time, Being, and Becoming in a Pueblo Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 13-18. (secondary)