Kwoiam

Kwoiam (Kuiam) is the great warrior-hero of Mabuiag in the western Torres Strait. Traditions make him an outsider — a man of the Cape York mainland — who came to the island and rose to be its most formidable fighter. In a fit of rage he killed his own mother and other kin, and thereafter embarked on a career of head-taking raids through the western and central islands, painted in red ochre and armed with club and spear. His exploits are commemorated in a cycle of songs and in the war-dance called after him, and the sacred island of Pulu, off Mabuiag, preserved his cult: there the skulls of the slain were kept and rites performed at stone arrangements associated with the hero. Haddon devoted much of the fifth volume of the Cambridge Expedition reports to Kwoiam, and Wolfgang Laade later gathered further versions of the legend.

Domains

• war
• head hunting and warfare

Powers

• leads head-taking raids through the islands

Epithets

• Kwoiam Pulu — Kwoiam of Pulu, the sacred island of his cultHaddon, A.C. (ed.) 1904. Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, Vol. V. Cambridge University Press. (primary)

Sources

• Kwoiam was a mainland Aborigine who became the warrior-hero of Mabuiag, killing kin in a rage and raiding through the western islands; his cult was kept on the sacred island of Pulu, where skulls of the slain were held.: Haddon, A.C. (ed.) 1904. Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, Vol. V. Cambridge University Press. (primary); Laade, Wolfgang. 1969. 'Further Material on Kuiam, Legendary Hero of Mabuiag.' Ethnos 34(1-4). (secondary)