The principal gods of the Yeche-Hani

In the complex spiritual world of the Yeche there are three gods whose importance is superior to that of other minor deities. There are the following ones:

Momi

He is the god of the sky, who always lives in his palace of the sky, looking at the world of the persons. It is said that it goes out of trip generally at the end of summer and autumn beginning. It has to be able to decide on the life and the death of the persons, and the Yeche believe that it grants the happiness to the good ones and the misfortune to the villains. They consider to be evil the persons who have infringed some of his three orders:

- to respect the elders.

- not to cheat nor to steal.

- not to support sexual relations with consanguineous persons.

Mishuo

She is the goddess of the ground. She is a Momi daughter, and following his instructions, she separates of him to live in every village. There it rewards the kind persons with peace and prosperity, takes the heat to the village, the smile to the children, his dear one allows to the young people to find, and to the elders to avoid the illnesses. She is a beautiful and kind goddess for whom every year a pig sacrifices himself in spring or summer, whose meat all the inhabitants of the village distribute equally between, and she even takes a little to house to share with the ancestors and the absent persons. Since one believes that, on having eaten this sacred meat, the soul receives the Mishou protection and in the whole year there will be neither illness nor pain.
If this pig is not offered, she will go away of the village and the people will suffer illnesses and calamities. The grain for his part, will not prosper. Then the people foresee with chicken bones a propitious date to celebrate a new ritual, which begins with the sacrifice of a chicken and a pig, and later under the din of the sound of drums and cymbals, the men will go out to the way with a horse, calling the goddess aloud. How it is supposed that she will return mounted in the horse, it is considered that if the horse is sweating to half of way, it means that the goddess returns already. If not, the fact is that it has left the area and is necessary to choose a propitious day again to celebrate again this ceremony. This way, until the horse returns sweating.

This goddess is possibly the most important deity for the Yeche.

Pumaepo

The god of the forest lives in a forest near to the village. He is an elder of white beards who protects the people of the same one, as well as to his arts and to his cattle, facilitating his multiplication and the growth of the cultivation. The ceremonies that are realized in his honor are very similar to those who are realized in honor of the goddess, but also one enters his sacred forest. Some authors call this god like the tree dragon and his cult like the cult of the dragon, although in fact it does not have a relation with the dragon. It is thought that his cult is a heredity of the cult to the nature of the nomadic cattle ancestors. It reflects also the step of the society matrilineal to the patriarchal one in his ancestors. His origin is very later to that of the principal gods of the Yeche.

Nevertheless this god is also very important, since formerly the forest had an essential role for the life of the ancestors of the Yeche, since it was protecting his villages of winds and rains, it was preserving to the animals in his interior and was a source for the plants compilation.

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