Haburi, Inventor of the Canoe
Warao · demigod · Warao traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Haburi is the great culture-hero of the Warao, the inventor of the dugout canoe and the paddle, who taught his people the arts of canoe-making and paddling that sustain their life as 'canoe people' of the delta. His myth, first recorded by Walter Roth in British Guiana and analysed in detail by Levi-Strauss, tells how he was born to one of two sisters, reared by the toad-woman Wau-uta, and after escaping her took up his dwelling on the mountain of Naparima. Levi-Strauss styles him the 'father of inventions' whose canoe-craft marks the threshold of human civilisation.
Domains
- invention and craft
- canoe and navigation
Powers
- to invent the dugout canoe and the paddle and teach their use
- to escape from the toad-woman who fostered him
Epithets
- AboreWalter E. Roth, An Inquiry into the Animism and Folk-Lore of the Guiana Indians (30th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1915). (secondary)
Relations
- fostered by: Wau-uta, the Toad-WomanHaburi is reared by the toad-woman Wau-uta, from whom he later escapes.Claude Levi-Strauss, From Honey to Ashes (Mythologiques II), trans. J. and D. Weightman (Harper & Row, 1973; orig. 1966). (secondary)
Sources
- Haburi (also Abore) is the Warao culture-hero who invented the dugout canoe and the paddle and was reared by, then escaped, the toad-woman Wau-uta.: Walter E. Roth, An Inquiry into the Animism and Folk-Lore of the Guiana Indians (30th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1915). (secondary); Claude Levi-Strauss, From Honey to Ashes (Mythologiques II), trans. J. and D. Weightman (Harper & Row, 1973; orig. Du miel aux cendres, 1966). (secondary)