Hainuwele facts for kids

Coconut flower

Hainuwele, "The Coconut Girl", is a figure from the Wemale and Alune folklore of the island of Seram in the Maluku Islands, Indonesia. Her story is an origin myth.

The myth of Hainuwele was recorded by German ethnologist Adolf E. Jensen following the Frobenius Institute's 1937–8 expedition to the Maluku Islands. The study of this myth during his research on religious sacrifice led Jensen to the introduction of the concept of Dema Deity in ethnology.

Joseph Campbell first narrated the Hainuwele legend to an English-speaking audience in his work The Masks of God.

Myth

While hunting one day a man named Ameta found a coconut, something never before seen on Seram, that had been caught in the tusk of a wild boar. Ameta, who was part of one of the original nine families of the West Ceram people who had emerged from bananas, took the coconut home. That night, a figure appeared in a dream and instructed him to plant the coconut. Ameta did so, and in just a few days the coconut grew into a tall tree and bloomed. Ameta climbed the tree to cut the flowers to collect the sap, but in the process slashed his finger and the blood dropped onto a blossom.

Nine days later, Ameta found in the place of this blossom a girl whom he named Hainuwele, meaning "Coconut Branch". He wrapped her in a sarong and brought her home. She grew to maturity with astonishing rapidity. Hainuwele had a remarkable talent: when she defecated she excreted valuable items. Thanks to these, Ameta became very rich.

Hainuwele attended a dance that was to last for nine nights at a place known as Tamene Siwa. In this dance, it was traditional for girls to distribute areca nuts to the men. Hainuwele did so, but when the men asked her for areca nuts, she gave them instead the valuable things which she was able to excrete.

Each day she gave them something bigger and more valuable: golden earrings, coral, porcelain dishes, bush-knives, copper boxes, and gongs. The men were happy at first, but gradually they decided that what Hainuwele was doing was uncanny and, driven by jealousy, they decided to kill her on the ninth night.

In the successive dances, the men circled around the women at the center of the dance ground, Hainuwele amongst them, who handed out gifts. Before the ninth night, the men dug a pit in the center of the dance ground and, singling out Hainuwele, in the course of the dance they pushed her further and further inward until she was pushed right into the pit. The men quickly heaped earth over the girl, covering her cries with their song. Thus Hainuwele was buried alive, while the men kept dancing on the dirt stomping it firmly down.

Ameta, missing Hainuwele, went in search for her. Through an oracle he found out what had happened, then he exhumed her corpse and cut it into pieces which he then re-buried around the village. These pieces grew into various new useful plants, including tubers, giving origin to the principal foods the people of Indonesia have enjoyed ever since.

Ameta brought Hainuwele's cut arms to mulua Satene, the ruling deity over humans. With them, she built for him a gate in spiral shape through which all men should pass. Those who would be able to step across the gate would remain human beings, although henceforward mortal, becoming divided into Patalima (Men of the five) and Patasiwa (Men of the nine). Those unable to pass through the threshold became new kinds of animals or ghosts. Satene herself left the Earth and became ruler over the realm of the dead.

Patasiwa is the group to which both the Wemale and the Alune people belong.

See also

In Spanish: Hainuwele para niños