André Thevet not only described the succarath in Patagonia, he also mentioned a horned creature in the River Plate region in his book La Cosmographie universelle, published in 1575.
In it, he inserted it as a comment while mentioning the Island of Cadamoth on the Red Sea and unicorns, probably recalling his adventures in Brazil. The marginalia printed by the entry reads, “Pyrassouppi, beast as large as a mule.”
As you can see in the image below, it has sharp and straight horns and curly, long hair.
The image shown above accompanied his description. It depicts a South American native with a “bola perdida” type of boleadora hunting one of these creatures.
The "Bola Perdida" was a type of boleadora was used as a mace in a melee, to strike the opponent or prey, and as a throwing weapon, like a slingshot, it could kill or maim the target up to 100 m (300 ft.) away. "Boleadoras" on the other hand, had multiple "balls". The name boleadora derives from the Spanish word bola (ball). These were stone balls sheathed with leather and attached to strong tendon straps that were whirled above the head of the hunter to gain momentum and then thrown to entangle around the hunted animals’ legs.
In the image, a pyrassouppi is being flayed in the background. The natives are clad in skins, like the Patagons.
Thevet wrote:
In the province, which is along the river Plate, there is a beast that the savages call Pyrassouppi, as big as a mule, and its head almost similar, hairy in the shape of a bear, a little more colored, tending towards the tawny, and having cloven feet like a deer. This Pyrassouppi has two very long horns, without antlers, very high and which approach those unicorns so esteemed … The portrait of which I have been kind enough to represent to you here in the natural state, and the manner in which these barbarians use to kill it, namely with large iron balls, weighing ten to twelve pounds, attached with sinews of other wild beasts at one end and the other to their arm. Of which they also eat the marvelously good flesh.
The beast has a Tupi-Guaraní-sounding name and resembles a cross between an antelope and a guanaco. Antelopes are bovids, and they are mostly found in Eurasia and Africa, with one extant species in the Americas, the North American pronghorn.
None live or seem to have lived in South America.
There is a myth among the Inca and Andean people, the Llastay (or yastay, also called coquena), son of Mother Earth (Pachamama), described as an old man with a long beard and horns. He is the guardian of wild animals, especially guanacos and vicuñas; he is the god of hunting, and lives in a shack built with “guanaco bones covered with their horns.”
But guanacos don’t have horns! Even though their distant relatives, the protoceratids, an extinct group of North American antelope-like herbivores that lived during the Eocene to Pliocene epochs (46–4.9 Ma.) had bony horns.
There is a horned guanaco-like creature, but without the woolly fur. A South American type of deer, the brocket, of the genus Mazama. They are relatively small and include around ten species, some of which are found in Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina in the “monte,” a region with scrubland and open forests at the edge of the prairies. Their unbranched antlers are small and resemble spikes. In appearance they are more deer-like than the guanaco camelids.
See the original text and image here: Thevet, A., (1575). La Cosmographie universelle, Paris. P 304.
Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall ©
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