Atabey (the Woman of Caguana)
Atabey is the mother of the Taíno supreme being in the account Ramón Pané wrote in the 1490s, a mother with five names. Many Taíno today see her in La Mujer de Caguana, a frog-legged woman carved on a stone at the Caguana ceremonial park in Puerto Rico.
Meaning
Pané was told that the highest being is immortal in the heavens and unseen, and has a mother, whom the Taíno called Atabei, Iermaoguacar, Apito and Zuimaco, “which are five names”; Peter Martyr gives them as Attabeira, Mamona, Guacarapita, Iiella and Guimazoa. The Kislak Collection at Miami Dade College calls Atabey the goddess of fresh water and human fertility, to whom women prayed for safe childbirth. Carlos Rivera Santana, writing for the Smithsonian Latino Center, finds femininity, fertility and water bound up in her in the stories Pané collected. For many Taíno today, American Indian magazine reports, Atabey (“Mother Earth consciousness”) is the figure carved as La Mujer de Caguana, though the carving is read in more than one way.
Origin and history
Pané wrote his account for Columbus during the second voyage (1493–96), and his list of her names is the oldest. Her son is the supreme being whom Pané calls Iocahuuague Maorocon, the Yúcahu of later writers; the Kislak Collection names the two as the supreme deities, Yúcahu lord of cassava and the sea, and Atabey his mother. Rivera Santana reads Taíno origin stories as a two-way conversation between Atabey and her sons, Yúcahu and Guacar.
The carving at Caguana
La Mujer de Caguana is a petroglyph at the Caguana Indigenous Ceremonial Park in Utuado, Puerto Rico: a woman with a round face and large ear discs, her legs drawn up and splayed like a frog’s. Our drawing follows the carving. In the Puerto Rican artist Samuel Lind’s installation Tierra Mujer (2011), the National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture notes, the goddess’s pose resembles “the Atabeyra petroglyph found in Utuado”, which it calls the Taíno people’s goddess of fertility. The stone stands among the petroglyphs of Caguana.
Frog legs and fertility
The frog-like limbs are part of the reading. The archaeologist Joanna Ostapkowicz, as cited in eLife, connects frog-like hands in Taíno imagery with femaleness and the calls of the coquí with female fertility and children. The Kislak Collection has a small mother and child carved from cave stone, which it suggests may be a fertility deity related to Atabey and to her dwelling in a cave.
Atabey in the Taíno movement
In the Taíno movement Atabey is The Mother. The Afro-Taíno Dominican storyteller Nasha Holguín calls her “the great mother of the natural world… And she is calling us back home”, and Christina M. González ends her account of the movement with “the future is Atabey”. American Indian magazine notes that the Caguana figure is becoming more visible across the Caribbean, in work from contemporary art to tattoos. González also counts Guabancex, the storm, among Atabey’s manifestations.
Read next
- Next in Taíno symbolsGuabancex (the hurricane)Guabancex is the cemí of wind and storm in Ramón Pané’s account of the 1490s: a woman of stone who, when angry, raises the wind and rain and throws down houses. A round face with two spiralling arms, on a ceramic from eastern Cuba, is widely drawn today as her hurricane.
- The same shape in Adinkra symbolsBese SakaBese Saka, a bunch of kola nuts, is the adinkra symbol of affluence, abundance and unity.
See also
Coquí (the frog), Caguana petroglyphs, Taíno sun (Sol de Jayuya), Zemí (cemí), Turtle, Bat (opía, the spirits of the dead).
Sources
- Ramón Pané, An Account of the Antiquities of the Indians, c. 1498 (Bourne’s translation, 1906), Edward Gaylord Bourne, “Columbus, Ramon Pane and the Beginnings of American Anthropology”, Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, 1906: Pané’s account translated from Ulloa’s Italian text of 1571, with Eden’s 1555 English of Peter Martyr, American Antiquarian Society (Internet Archive), Bourne’s introduction; chapter I, and Peter Martyr in Eden’s English (1555)
- La Mujer de Caguana, photograph and caption (American Indian magazine), American Indian magazine (NMAI), photograph by Christina M. González with caption, 2018, American Indian magazine (NMAI), photograph caption
- Abuelas, Ancestors and Atabey: The Spirit of Taíno Resurgence (Christina M. González), Christina M. González, “Abuelas, Ancestors and Atabey: The Spirit of Taíno Resurgence”, American Indian magazine (National Museum of the American Indian), 2018, American Indian magazine (NMAI), article text
- We Are Still Here: The First Taíno Movement Exhibition (Carlos Rivera Santana), Carlos Rivera Santana, “We Are Still Here: The First Taíno Movement Exhibition”, Smithsonian Voices (Smithsonian Latino Center), 15 October 2019, Smithsonian Latino Center, article text
- Mother and Child, Taíno/Arawak (MOAD, Miami Dade College), Museum of Art and Design at Miami Dade College, Jay I. Kislak Collection, Museum of Art and Design, Miami Dade College, object description
- Tierra Mujer, Samuel Lind (National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture), National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture, Chicago: Samuel Lind, Tierra Mujer (2011), on Google Arts & Culture, National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture, object description
- The big potential of the small frog Eleutherodactylus coqui (eLife, 2022), Sarah E. Westrick, Mara Laslo and Eva K. Fischer, “The Natural History of Model Organisms: The big potential of the small frog Eleutherodactylus coqui”, eLife 11 (2022), e73401, eLife, figure 1 caption
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from circles or curves and waves.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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