Cañari (ethnonym; associated mythic figures)

The ethnonym Cañari (Kichwa: Kañari) is reported in available sources to derive from kan (“snake”) and ara (“macaw”), explanations that either read the name literally as indicating ancestral identity with those animals or indicate that snakes and macaws were considered sacred and emblematic in Cañari material culture and stories. Separately, Cañari oral tradition as recorded in secondary summaries contains a flood myth: after a great deluge two brothers survived on a high mountain; later their repaired hut was found provisioned each day by two female beings with macaw faces, and one brother married the younger of these macaw‑faced women, whose offspring repopulated the world. The sources treat the macaw‑faced women as figures within Cañari myth rather than equating the ethnonym itself with a single named spirit (Wikipedia: "Cañari"; Cañari language entry).

The only explicit mythic appearance attested in the provided sources is that of two female beings described as having macaw faces while otherwise acting in human‑like ways (preparing food, repairing a hut, entering into marriage with a human). Beyond this episode, the corpus contains no consistent iconography or morphological description of a singular supernatural being called "Cañari," and no other consistent physical traits are recorded in the supplied materials (Wikipedia: "Cañari").

Within the flood myth episode preserved in secondary summaries, the macaw‑faced female beings repaired the brothers' hut and stocked it with prepared food each day, enabling survival; one such being married a human survivor, and their progeny repopulated the world. No wider catalogue of powers, recurring behaviors, magical capacities, or standardized interactions for an entity named "Cañari" is attested in the provided sources.