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Overview
Kapikoa is a great chief who eats the substance of betel nuts while giving servants only husks. During a canoe journey westward, they muddy a stream so he must walk to its source for drinking water. They launch the canoe while he is away and leave him with his bag. Their refusal to return explicitly answers his earlier treatment.
He enters the bush and climbs a fig tree. Scratching designs on figs and dropping them attracts a woman carrying water; she recognises the deliberate marks and calls him down. They marry, but she knows only sun-warmed food. Kapikoa makes fire by rubbing wood, reassures her when flames frighten her and teaches cooking. Ker identifies him as a black cockatoo throughout, without supplying a separate human transformation or a modern species determination.
Origins & earliest records
Annie Ker, Papuan Fairy Tales (London: Macmillan, 1910), Kapikoa, the Black Cockatoo, pp. 97–99. Individual narrator unnamed.
Records & interpretation
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Selected bibliography
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- 01
Papuan Fairy Tales: Kapikoa, the Black Cockatoo, pp. 97–99
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Family & connections
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References
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- Primary collected textKer1910: Kapikoa, the Black Cockatoo, pp. 97–99Research access: 2026-10-05
Image credits
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