Atabey

In early ethnohistorical accounts consolidated in later summaries, Atabey is presented as a primordial maternal principle and one of the two supreme ancestral spirits of the Taíno world. She is described as mother of Yúcahu (the principal spirit associated with cassava fertility) and as married to Yaya; sources preserve a narrative fragment in which she had a child, Yayael, who was later killed after attempting to harm Yaya. The recorded variant names and lists of names (as in Pané's Relación transmissions) reflect Latinization and orthographic fluctuation in colonial texts rather than a single fixed original orthography.

Sources do not preserve a systematic humanoid description of Atabey. She is identified principally as a zemi — a spiritual being that was also represented materially by carved icons or fetishes (most often from rock). Thus ritual and visual presence of Atabey in Taíno practice is attested through zemi objects and the variant recorded names that appear across early colonial transmissions.

Sources describe Atabey as the female entity who represents the spirit of all horizontal water (lakes, streams, the sea, and the marine tides) and as associated with fertility and with what some summaries render as 'prime matter' or all that is tangible and material. She is recorded as mother of Yúcahu and thus linked to the fertility of cassava via that familial relation. The literature also records that Atabey has several named manifestations — a nurturing maternal figure, Caguana (spirit of love), and Guabancex (Gua Ban Ceh), the violent mother of storms, volcanoes, and earthquakes — indicating a behavioral polarity from benevolent provisioning to fierce natural force.