Mowatcha
Tikuna · numen · Tikuna traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Mowatcha is one of the two primordial sisters of the Tikuna origin myth, born from the right knee of Ngutapa alongside the elder hero Yoi. In the account of the knees she emerges already engaged in women's work, twisting a bag of tucum palm fibre, so that she and her sister embody the beginnings of feminine craft as the brothers embody hunting and fishing. Though she plays a lesser narrative role than the hero-brothers, her presence at the four-fold birth is integral to the balanced pairing of the sexes at the origin of the Tikuna world, and her name recurs in the ritual songs of the girls' puberty festival.
Parentage
- parent: Ngutapaborn from the right knee with YoiInstituto Socioambiental, 'Ticuna: A origem dos Ticuna', Povos Indigenas no Brasil, pib.socioambiental.org. (secondary)
Domains
- craft
Powers
- weaves a carrying-bag of tucum fibre
Relations
- parent: Ngutapaborn from the right knee with YoiInstituto Socioambiental, 'Ticuna: A origem dos Ticuna', Povos Indigenas no Brasil, pib.socioambiental.org. (secondary)
- sibling: YoiInstituto Socioambiental, 'Ticuna: A origem dos Ticuna', Povos Indigenas no Brasil, pib.socioambiental.org. (secondary)
- sibling: IpiInstituto Socioambiental, 'Ticuna: A origem dos Ticuna', Povos Indigenas no Brasil, pib.socioambiental.org. (secondary)
- sibling: AicünaInstituto Socioambiental, 'Ticuna: A origem dos Ticuna', Povos Indigenas no Brasil, pib.socioambiental.org. (secondary)
Sources
- Mowatcha is one of the two primordial sisters, born from Ngutapa's right knee together with Yoi and depicted weaving tucum fibre at the moment of her birth.: Curt Nimuendaju, The Tukuna, ed. Robert H. Lowie (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1952). (primary); Instituto Socioambiental, 'Ticuna: A origem dos Ticuna e a festa da moca nova', Povos Indigenas no Brasil, pib.socioambiental.org. (secondary)