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Overview

Nahakoboni enters Roth's Warao story of Nohi-abassi as an enormous woman walking up a creek. Each time she reaches into the water, she draws out two fish, eats one and saves the other in her basket. She wears an upside-down calabash on her head and periodically spins it on the water. Watching from a tree, the hunter Nohi-abassi later brings his younger brother, warning him not to laugh. Nahakoboni mistakes the younger man's reflection for something she can catch; his laughter reveals both watchers. She sends biting ants into the trees to force them down, eats the younger brother and carries Nohi-abassi home in a tightly closed basket. Her daughters open it against her instructions, and the younger daughter takes the hunter as her husband. Nahakoboni permits the marriage only if he supplies food without fail.

Nohi-abassi's daily loads of fish scarcely satisfy her: she eats all but two. He and his wife decide to escape. On his final delivery he anchors the canoe in deep water and arranges for a shark to wait beneath it. Nahakoboni wades out to fetch the catch and is eaten; Roth also records a Warao version with a fish trap and an alligator. Her older daughter discovers the death, sharpens a cutlass and pursues the couple. As they climb a tree, she cuts away part of Nohi-abassi's leg. The severed piece becomes the spirit or mother of the maam bird, whose call it makes and which may fall on hunters. The tale ends by placing the wife, husband and leg in the sky, identified in Roth's astronomical glosses as the Pleiades, Hyades and Orion's Belt. Nahakoboni herself has already died before this celestial ending.

Giant woman carrying a basket and spinning calabashCatches two fish at once and consumes extraordinary quantitiesUses biting ants to dislodge hunters; requires endless provisioning from a captive son-in-law
01

Origins & earliest records

Roth's directly inspected witness is section 210, pages 263–265, of his 1915 inquiry. He explicitly identifies the female Nahakoboni as a Hebu and distinguishes her from an old man with the same name in another tale. The oral narrative is undated; the collector's constellation identifications should not be turned into a chronology.

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Records & interpretation

The full story and its alligator variant footnote were read, including the pursuit after Nahakoboni's death. Her identity is not inferred solely from giant size: Roth's note calls her a forest spirit. The narrative's maam-spirit leg and star ending are retained as source-specific transformations, rather than biological descriptions of birds or literal maps of their ancestry.

In the literature

“the shark seized and devoured her”
Walter Edmund Roth · An Inquiry into the Animism and Folk-lore of the Guiana Indians
Section210, printed p.264

Main narrative’s death; separate footnote alligator variant not conflated.

Selected bibliography

Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.

  1. 01

    An inquiry into the animism and folk-lore of the Guiana Indians

    Walter E. Roth · 1915

    Chapter XIII, section 210, pp. 263–265; complete Nohi-abassi narrative and alternate alligator-trap footnote.

Family, evolution & connections

The female Nahakoboni’s daughters in Roth §210

Roth’s 1915 §210 tale, pp. 263–265, female Bush Spirit/Hebu explicitly distinguished in a footnote from the same-named old man of §19.

The narrative expressly identifies two daughters and differentiates elder and younger. No father or personal names of daughters are supplied. The younger daughter marries Nohi-abassi; a branching parent–child tree does not draw that marriage as descent. The female witness is not conflated with the unrelated same-named old man. This is a historical collected narrative, not biological phylogeny or a universal community genealogy.

Roth, An Inquiry into the Animism and Folk-lore of the Guiana Indians (1915), §210, pp. 263–265

Located primary passages

Specific passages supporting details in this entry, grouped by their published witness.

An inquiry into the animism and folk-lore of the Guiana Indians

Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office,1915; selected Cornell scan. Catalogue year independently checked; field preface dated Pomeroon,June1913.

  1. The large female Hebu fishes in pairs and mistakes a hunter’s shadow for substance. When his younger brother laughs, she drives him down with biting ants and eats him; she captures Nohi-abassi in a basket. Her two daughters release him, and the younger marries him under their mother’s condition that he supply food.

    Section210, printed pp.263–264; Nohi-abassi capture and marriage

  2. Nohi-abassi and his wife arrange Nahakoboni’s death by a lurking shark. Her elder daughter pursues them, cutting off part of his leg as they climb a tree. The narrative identifies the wife with the Pleiades, husband with the Hyades and severed leg with Orion’s Belt and the maam spirit. An alligator/cage-trap death is separately reported as another version.

    Section210, printed pp.264–265; complete escape and constellation ending, plus footnote

Footnotep263 explicitly separates her from the same-named old man insection19; no invented daughters’ names. Shark and alligator endings remain alternatives; astronomical narration is not empirical history. The maam’s male leg here differs from the female leg inArawaksection98.

References

Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.

  1. ResearchRoth 1915: Nahakoboni in the Nohi-abassi story, section 210Research access: 2026-10-05

Image credits

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