Hainuwele

Hainuwele
Deity that gave origin to the main vegetable crops
Hainuwele defecating valuable objects.
Affiliation	Origin myths, Phosop
Abode	Seram
Symbol	Coconut flower
Consort	none
Parents	Ameta (created - father) Satene (maybe sister or mother)
Siblings	none maybe satene
Children	none
Mount	none

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.

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.