Ngariman- Aboriginal Australian SpiritSpirit

The Cat-Man

Ngariman was a cat-man, a being of considerable power among the Dreamtime figures of the Karadjeri people in the Kimberley. He lived in the same country as the Bagadjimbiri, the twin creator brothers who had emerged from the ground as dingoes, grown into giants, and filled the land with waterholes and sacred law. The twins were boisterous, their playful laughter loud and carrying across the country. Ngariman found it intolerable.

He did not act alone. Enraged by the noise that would not stop, Ngariman gathered his relatives and allies, and together they attacked the giant brothers, driving spears into them until both lay dead. Before this moment, the Dreamtime beings had not known death. Ngariman's spears were the first killing.

The Flood That Followed

The killing brought its own answer. When word reached Dilga, the earth goddess and the twins' mother, milk began to flow from her breasts in a torrent that spread across the land. The rising flood drowned Ngariman and all his allies. But Dilga's milk did not merely destroy. When it reached the bodies of the Bagadjimbiri, the same force that killed the murderers revived the murdered. The twins' physical forms transformed into water snakes, bound to the rivers and waterholes they had created, while their spirits ascended to the sky.

Ngariman remained drowned. He was the only figure in the story whose death was permanent and without transformation. The twins became water snakes and stars. Dilga's power endured in the earth. But the death Ngariman introduced could not be taken back. From that first killing forward, all living things would die.