Warao · deity · Warao traditional religion; continuing · deity
Wau-uta is the toad- or tree-frog woman of Warao oral literature, best known as the foster-mother of the canoe-hero Haburi. By a trick she obtains the infant and rears him to manhood; when at last he and his true mother escape her by canoe she is left behind, and in the telling she becomes the tree-frog whose night-call is heard as her voice. First recorded among the Warao and neighbouring Guiana peoples by Walter Roth, her story is a centrepiece of Levi-Strauss's analysis of the canoe-origin myth in the second volume of the Mythologiques.
Domains
forest and amphibian theophany
fostering and trickery
Powers
to claim and rear the infant culture-hero by guile
to turn into the tree-frog whose call carries her name