The structural fact about Ape-huci Kamuy is that she is the channel. A prayer or an offering intended for the kamuy of the mountains, of the sea or of a particular place is not sent directly; it is given to the fire, and she conveys it. The first portion of drink and of food goes to her before it goes anywhere else, and offerings addressed elsewhere are placed at or passed through the hearth.
That makes her the busiest deity in the system and the least ceremonious. She is the one an ordinary person actually deals with, several times a day, in the middle of doing something else, and the great ceremonies that involve other kamuy pass through her as a matter of routing rather than of honour. A tradition without a priesthood needs a mechanism by which an ordinary household can reach the whole kamuy world from its own floor, and she is it.
The inaw, the shaved willow stick that serves as offering, message and marker at once, stands at the fireside as it stands at the eastern window and at the sacred place outside. The fireside inaw is the household's standing line of communication.
Missionary and ethnographic observers noticed her early, because she is impossible to miss in a house, and she is one of the best documented figures in the recorded material. The atlas describes her position and the shape of the practice, and does not set out the words used, which belong to the households and communities that use them.