Qat

Qat is the culture hero of the Banks Islands, a vui or spirit-being who makes the first people, day, and much else, working against the constant interference of eleven brothers who share his name.

Qat belongs to the Banks Islands in northern Vanuatu and is the central figure of a substantial body of Melanesian narrative. He is a vui — a being of the spirit order rather than a god in a pantheon sense — and he is credited with making the first human beings by carving them from wood and animating them, with obtaining night from a distant source so that the world could have alternation instead of perpetual daylight, and with a range of other establishing acts.

His stories are structured by opposition from within the family. He has eleven brothers, all bearing his name with a distinguishing addition, and they spend the cycle attempting to kill him out of envy — trapping him, felling trees on him, luring him into holes — and being outwitted each time. A separate strand pits him against a formidable adversary sometimes given as another vui, whom he defeats by trickery. The narratives are episodic and their order varies between recorded versions.

Qat is not straightforwardly benevolent, and the material is more interesting for that. He experiments — his first attempt at making people, in some versions, does not go as intended — and his acquisition of night comes with the invention of the means to cut it short. He eventually departs the islands by canoe, taking with him the best of the things there, and the tradition preserves an expectation of return.

[Generated Content] Read as a personality, Qat comes across as inventive and good-humoured under constant pressure — a maker who solves problems by going and getting what is needed, and who deals with repeated attempts on his life more by cleverness than by anger. The brothers' envy never seems to provoke retaliation in kind, which suggests something either generous or supremely unbothered. His departure with the best of everything gives him a streak that is harder to like, and the tradition does not appear troubled by it.