Cryptid Snakes, an Andean myth imported into Patagonia

 

My last few entries have focused on the “Culebrón” (big snake) and the “guruvilu” (fox snake) and the "Piwichén" (flying snake). Today I will post about the importance of snakes in the South American Andean cultures (pre-inca, Inca and pre-hispanic Chilean natives).

This “snake-cult” could explain the “Culebrón” , the Piwichén , the “guruvilu” and perhaps the Water Tiger.

Snakes and their relationship with the Inca God-kings

Felipe Huamán Poma de Ayala ca. 1585 compiled the "Legend of Manco Capac", the first Inca king (Inca besides being the name of these people, was also the name of the Monarch, thus Manco Capac was the Inca’s Inca).

Inca kings, like the absolutist monarchs of Modern Age Europe, were born kings by divine intervention, better still, they were gods themselves.

This legend tells how the first Inca (king) was an "amaro serpent" where Amaro is the Quechua language word for dragon or, serpent.[1]

There is another story in which this king, who was known as Manco Capac Amaro slayed a horrible beast and then added the word Amaro (or Amaru) to his name to commemorate the event:

he killed in a mountain a serpent so fierce and terrible (…) so big as the biggest animal on Earth, it had wings like those of a bat, the arms short and very thick, with great claws (...) it gave tempestive hisses (…) its body was covered with hard scales. [2]

In Quechua, a boa or an anaconda are known as Amarun, a similar sounding name to Amaro or Amaru the monster snake.

Notice that this snake has legs, claws, bat wings and hisses exactly like the Piwichén. Coincidence? or cultural flow (i.e. myth adoption) between two different people, the Patagonian Mapuche and the Peruvian Inca.

The king later placed the snake in his royal arms and shield.

After the Spanish conquest, the "Inca Garcilaso de la Vega", who had royal Inca blood [*] included the Amaru in his own coat of arms. It was published in his Comentarios Reales (1609). He designed it himself and included the arms of his Spanish family (Pérez de Vargas, Figueroa, Sotomayor and Mendoza da la Vega) on the left, and on the right, the Inca symbols: sun, moon, and on the lower part, two interwined Amaros

[*] He was the illegitimate son of Spanish conquistador Sebastián Garcilaso de la Vega y Vargas and an Inca princess Palla Chimpu Ocllo.

Coat of Arms of Inca Garcilaso de la Vega. The Amaru snakes are on the lower right side.

The inca and pre-incaic cultures

Snakes were important in Peru long before the Inca became the predominant regional power.

I have found an image on the internet which is said to show a Chavin culture snake temple dated ca. 1000 BC. it depicts four snakes carved in stone:

Chavin snake temple ca. 1000 BC. From [3].

I also found a piece of pottery from the Mochica culture dated between 0 and 700 AD. It shows a “dragon” with a snake tail holding a human head. It is mounted on a base decorated with snakes. Notice that the snakes have ears a combination of mammal and reptile features in one creature. This is reminiscent of the Mapuche's Hairy snake

Ceramic Dragon (Mochica culture Peru) ca. 0 - 700 AD.
Amaru snakes are on the lower right side. From [6].

Another Mochica fresco (below) shows a jaguar (?) headed snake.

Mochica fresco "jaguar headed snake".

Moche or Mochica ceramics often had a two-headed snake.[1] The later Chimu people had a similar motif on their pottery and adobe friezes at the “Dragon Huaca (Castle)”: a double-headed “rainbow” snake (curved like an arch).[7]

Rainbow double headed snake motif. Dragon Huaca.From [8] .

The anaconda and the boa were demanded as tribute by the Inca kings from their Amazonian subjects. They were kept at the imperial capital of Cuzco where they were fed prisioners (those who survived in the cage with them for three days earned their freedom).[9]

The rainbow serpent was also employed in colonial period (after the Spanish conquest) representations of the ancient Inca.[10]

The snake had “aquatic” connotations. Being two-headed it took water from one place and passing it through its body it placed it somewhere else. [10]

Snakes therefore were associated with springs, rivers and lakes. Lake Titicaca (shared by Peru and Bolivia) was said to have been guarded by a big snake.
More recently there is a moder story (Jauja and Huamanga, Peru) about a snake with two llama heads, it lived in a lake.[10]

The Water Tiger connection

The interesting thing is that jaguars or pumas, mythical magical felines for the Andean cultures which are grouped under the term Leones (lions), were closely associated with the Amaru and “contemporary Quechua speakers often refer to a composite being León-Amaru”.[10]

This could account for the Mapuche myths regarding the "water tiger" which was aquatic (a snake -Amaru- feature) and jaguar (tiger) and therefore magic or supernatural. It was a creature that was not found in Chile, which means that the myth was imported there (though in Patagonia there may have been jaguars, so I am not sure about it being a foreign myth within that area)

The Inca Empire and Chile.

The Inca Tupac Yupanqui in the 1440s invaded Chile from its territories in what is now Argentina, through Copiapo. They advanced southwards and over a period of about six years occupied the Central regions.

They face the constant opposition of the local natives and finally established their southern border along the Bio-Bio river, Patagonia's northern border.
However, increased hostilities forced them around 1520 to retreat and move the border northwards to the Maule River. [4]

During the period that they dominated Chile, they built roads connecting it to the empire, through Atacama to Cuzco and across the Andes into Argentina's western region, and from there through Bolivia into Peru.

They relocated Inca settlers from Peru and thus their culture, traditions and lore was brought into Chile and from there, it permeated into the local natives.

Northern and Central Chile (from Atacama to Santiago) was the area where the inca influnce was felt most.[5]

The inca called the non-conquered native Chileans "purum aucca" which in Quechua meant "non subdued enemies". The Spaniards, after the conquest, adopted the name without knowing its meaning, and called all natives south of Santiago "promaucaes". These were the non-subdued Mapuche people.

On the Argentine side of the Andes, just across from Coquimbo and northern central Chile, were several Andean farming cultures, such as the Diaguita. They too were conquered by the Inca: and, unsurprisingly, they also had "two-headed snakes" in their culture.

I suggest that you read this very interesting article (in Spanish) and take a look at the images depicting the snake-like inscriptions that can be found in the Aguada Culture's (Diaguita people) pottery from Argentina.

Getting back to Chile, between 1535 and 1537 Diego de Almagro explored the central parts of Chile from Copiapo to the Itata River but after a battle there with the Mapuche, he retreated to Peru. It would not be until 1541 that the Spaniards under Valdivia would enter Chile again.

This time they would conquer most of it. But the area south of the Bio Bio River would be contested during centuries in a long war that began in 1546 and finally ended with the defeat of the Mapuche people in 1881.

Discussion.

Doesn't it make sense that in the area where the Inca had a strong foot-hold, their myths were stronger? Such as in Coquimbo, Ovalle, La Serena, Santiago and other northern and central Chilean districts. Wouldn't their "snake" Amaru myths have been absorbed by the locals? If so, Culebrón and the other snake related myths (i.e. the "flying snake" or Piwichen) can be traced back to Peru (Inca, Mochica, Chavin cultures).

They would also tend to be weaker or diluted to the south of the Bio-Bio border, where the Inca had less time to interact with the Mapuche before withdrawing to the safer central Chilean valleys. Here they would have originated the filu myths among the Mapuche.

This would mean that flying snakes and Culebrones are a second hand memory of the Amazonian Anacondas and Boas, taken to Chile by the Inca conquerors.

So we can't expect to find evidence of Patagonian cryptids in these mythical beings.

Bibliography.

[1] Guaman Poma. (1615). Nueva corónica y buen gobierno. pp. 82
[2] Anello Oliva, (1895). [1598] Historia del Reino y Provincias del Peru. pp. 42,43.
[3] Hugh Fox. Gods of the Cataclysm
[4] Diego Barros Arana. (1999) Historia general de Chile. vol 1. Santiago: Editorial Universitaria. pp. 56+.
[5] Ibid. pp. 63.
[6] ArteHistoria
[7] Li Ning Anticona, J., (2000). El gollete estribo de la cerámica precolombina peruana: interpretación estética UNMSM. pp. 33 and 81.
[8] Avent Peru http://www.aventperu.com/trujillo2.html
[9] Betanzos, Juan de, (ca. 1551). Suma y narración de los Incas.
[10] Paul Richard Steele. (2004). Handbook of Inca mythology. ABC-CLIO. pp. 95-97.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia

2010 International Year of Biodiversity

Copyright 2009-2010 by Austin Whittall ©

The Flying snake of the Mapuche "Piwichen"

 

Today's "everything you ever wanted to know about..." is dedicated to the flying snake, a strange creature that has many different appearances, and whose myth is spread all over Chile.

First references to a Flying Snake

Luis de Valdivia, wrote the first Mapuche Language Grammar book and dictionary in 1684, though he does not mention the piwichen [*], he has an entry for “culebra” or non-venomous snake under “bilu” and another for “serpent” as “yhuai”.[1]

[*] Like most words of a non-written language, each author chose his own phonetic system to write them. As we can see below, the name is spelt in a similar, but at the same time different manner by each of the sources that I have used in this post:

Pihuichen (Havestadt)
Pihuchen (Hernández)
Pimuychen (Febrés)
Piguchén (Molina)
Piwichen (Augusta)
Pinuychén (Barbará)
piguchén (Latcham)
Piuchén (Guevara)

Pihuichen. From [7].

In 1765, Father Andrés Febrés, wrote another “Grammar” in which we can find the first printed references to the flying snake, the 1846 edition that I have read, has the following entries:

SERPENT: Vilú: another they say it flies, pihuchen.

[Non-poisonous] SNAKE: Vilu: that they say flies and hisses, pihuchen. [2]

Rodolfo Lenz, in his Estudios Araucanos[3], states that Febrés original edition (1765) called the creature pimuychen and wrote that it was “a snake that they say flies when it hisses, and he who sees it, dies”.
In the later edition, quoted above, Hernández corrected the entry and changed the name to pihuchen.

Another missionary, Havestadt, is cited by Lenz [3] ; he wrote a Grammar dated 1777, in Latin, and repeated Febrés entry but called the animal pihuichen:

pihuichen, coluber, angujs, serpens volatilis, quem quie videt, vel audit sibilare, moritur: addo et qui non videt; uti visus est nemini

Snake or mammal?

In the early 1800s the first Chilean naturalist, father Molina in his treaty on the Natural history of Chile, mentioned it in a biological context as follows:

Piguchén, four footed winged or species of great bat, which -if its existence were real- would form one of the links that join birds and mammals. This animal, according to what they say, has the body and size of a domestic rabbit and is covered with a fine cinnamon colored fur: it has a pointed muzzle, large eyes round and shiny, ears barely visible, membranous wings, short five toed legs, a tail that starts round and is then long, similar to that of fish; it hisses like the snakes and flies like a partridge; it lives in the hollows of the trees, which it only leaves at night; it does no harm, only to insects, which it eats. [4]

Molina’s description is quite unlike the previous ones: this is not a flying snake, it is a hairy, four footed beast. Some kind of long tailed bat. A harmless night creature.

The myth, like most Mapuche traditions extended with their language across the Andes into northern Patagonia, where the Puelche people spread it across the Pampas.

The Puelche were a group of Northern Tehuelche natives (also known as “Pampas”) that adopted the Mapuche language and became “Araucanized” in the mid 1700s.

At the military frontier with the Puelche, Argentine commander, Federico Barbará recorded a Puelche vocabulary, and published it in his 1879 dictionary. He mentions the beast as a Flying snake: Pinuychen and included a footnote that echoes Febrés comment:

The Indians say that he who sees this snake when it flies, falls dead: that is why, when they see it coming, they take off or throw themselves on the ground face down. Despite their explanation, it does not exist. It is a legend of the machis (witches). [5]

XX^th century

Father Augusta: a Vampire

In 1916, Father Félix de Augusta included the following entry in his Spanish-Mapuche dictionary:

piwichen. Probabl[y] comp[osed] of piwn and ché imaginary animal which is described as follows “Its body has the shape of a elongated cylinder, like a snake. As time goes by, it grows wings and flies, but it lacks feathers. It sucks the blood of people and animals drying the body of its victims. Its hissing, that sounds ‘piurüt piurüt’ announces a sure death if the person that is being approached by the perverse creature does not have a chance to see it before being seen by it. When it infests a house, all of its residents will have to die, their only means of escape is to move to the other side of a stream. There are some who pretend to have caught it in a bowl with wine. It also has an important role in the visions and superstitions of the macis”. It is believed that the vampire bat, that exists in Chile may have originated the myth. – Death of cattle is attributed to it. [6]

To clarify the origin of the name, his entry for piwun is to dry, to parch. While ché is person. So this creature’s name means: “to dry, to parch a person”, surely from its habit of sucking its victims dry.[2]

According to Augusta it is a vampire-like winged snake.

The real vampire (Desmodus rotundus) a bat which feeds on the blood it sucks from cattle, is found all over South America, including Chile but this creature is too small to be the rabbit-sized Piguchén as it is barely 10 cm (4 in.) long and weighs not more than 50 g (1.8 ounces); it also lacks a tail.

Latcham. Also a vampire.

Latcham (1924) mentions the myth [99] as the “most common [myth] among the Chilean peasants, it is a fabulous animal, whose shape changes from region to region. This myth is known all across Chile, it is very ancient and of undoubted Indian origin”.

But is it a Mapuche myth? I does not seem so. Mapuche people did not live in northern Chile.

He adds that the piguchén is depicted as a “ feathered culebrón [big snake], sometimes with wings, mostly without. Frequently it lacks feathers and in those cases it carries a row of bristles along its back”.

But most frequently it is depicted as a winged snake (with or without feathers). A blood sucking vampire.

Vicuña Cifuentes. Bird features

Vicuña Cifuentes, in his 1915 book on Chilean myths recorded this creature as being spread throughout Chile: [8]

At Talagante (in the metropolitan area of Santiago, Chile's capital city) “it is a snake that after a certain period of time, transformed itself into a kind of big sized frog, covered with very fine and short hair with short and wide wings that let it take short flights”.

At Melipilla (also by Santiago) it is a snake that when it grows old turns into a bird the size of a young turkey. It hides in the trees during the day and its red excrement can be seen on the tree trunks.

At Coinco (34°16’S, 70°57’W) it is a “bird the size of a hen whose head ends in a long and thin beak, its eyes are big and of a very pale grey color, it has very small wings, almost rudimentary and rough and strong bristles along its spine” it sucks the blood of mules.

At Vichuquén (112 km - 70 mi. west of Coinco) it is a snake with wings “perfectly covered with feathers”.

In my opinion, a feathered flying creature is a bird. Feathers spell bird. Flying if feathered is a bird. So the myth points at a bird.

Guevara. Vampire but bird-like.

Tomás Guevara, [7] noted in 1908 its blood thirsty qualities:

on the days of great heat it sticks to the tree’s bark and leaves there a track of blood.

After repeating the see it and die myth and its vampire features, he mentions that “ in its old age it turns into a bird the size of a cock, that causes the same damages as it did in its original shape”.

He also mentions it in the region of Ovalle (1904) close to the cities of Coquimbo and –La Serena: “ Piuchén has the wings and beak of a parrot, the body like a toad and the tail of a big snake.”

Vicuña Cifuentes quotes Guevara (History, I, 231): “Pihuichen was also recognized by the ancient indians , it represents another shady and fearful monster, shaped like a winged snake .”

So it seems to be an old pre-hispanic myth.

Ricardo Latcham in 1923 wrote that “it is a hybrid […] frequently a bird the size of a chickenbut always with some particularity that distinguishes it from the other birds, like bat wings, bristles along it spine, etc.”. [9]

He adds that at Coquimbo (northern Chile) the farmers make it out as a “winged snake with a head at each tip” motif which he notes is found in the ancient pottery found in the area. [10]

See my entry on the Culebrón which also mentions a big (though non-flying) snake that was found in the Diaguita native’s culture.

Latcham noted that despite the different representations of the beast, all agreed on the fact that it feeds by sucking human or animal blood.

Latcham and a merging of the Culebrón and Piwichén myths

Latcham wrote that despite the fact that its most common name is piguchén, which is written in many different ways,

it is nevertheless known in some places with another name. That is why in the northern provinces it is known as culebrón; in Chiloé it is called chiued or raiquén.[9]

Cavada, [11] calls it Puchén or Piguchén. mentions it in Chiloé as follows:

The meaning of that word [Piuchén] in Chiloé is that of a metamorphosis or phisical degeneration of a being […] that is why when a red cock lays a small egg from which the Basilisk is born, it remains Piguchén , a new and strange being […] all Piguchén reach an extraordinary longevity and some never die like a phoenix.

Discussion. Piwichen is not a Patagonian myth.

However, I tend to disagree with Latcham, because, as Cavada notes, the meaning of the word Piguchén in Chiloé is different. It does not refer to a flying snake but to a bizarre or odd event. Furthermore, the raiquén is a bird (most likely an owl) not a bat or a flying snake.

Perhaps the Flying snake myth originated in the northern Andean cultures (i.e. Inca, or even in the Western Argentine natives such as the Diaguita) and was adopted in Northern and Central Chile before (or after) the Inca occupation of Chile (1450-1540). The Mapuche at their northernmost reaches may have been in contact with this myth, and took it south into the Arauco region during the Spanish conquest, while they retreated and entrenched there.

It permeated in a deformed manner south into Chiloé island and into the Pampas as we can see in the following map:

Pihuichen distribution of the myth. Copyright © 2010 by Austin Whittall.

In the map above, you can see the homeland of the Mapuche (in Chile which is centered around Santiago, Chile) and the area which the "Araucanized" Puelche, Pehuenche, Huilliche groups occupied from Mar del Plata on the Atlantic, to Chiloé Island in southern Chile.

The Inca empire is shown in green.

It can be clearly seen that at the area where Mapuche homeland and Inca empire overlap, is the where the "flying snake" myth is most mentioned.

The only two outstanding "points" on the map (one in the Pampas a myth imported by the Puelche from Chile and the other in Chiloé where it has a completely different meaning) are quite distant from the point of origin of the myth (around Santiago) and from other non-Mapuche areas (Coquimbo and Ovalle) closer to the source of the myth either in the Inca empire or the land of the Diaguita (around Tucumán and Salta).

See my next post on the possible Inca origin of Chile's "snake" myths .

Summary: One thing is for sure it is not an aquatic reptile and therefore cannot be used to explain cryptids like Nahuelito.

In my opinion it does not refer to any Patagonian lake monster or cryptid it is a myth referring to a bird.

Bibliography.

[1] Valdivia, Luis de, (1684). Arte y gramatica general de la lengua que corre en todo el Reyno de Chile. Sevilla : Thomás López de Haro.
[2] Febrés, Andrés (1846). Revised by Antonio Hernández, Santiago Impr. del Progreso, 1846 pp 25 and 93.
[3] Lenz, R. Op. Cit. pp. 436
[4] Molina. Op. Cit. pp. 264
[5] Barbará F., Op. Cit. pp. 56
[6] Augusta, F. Op. Cit. pp.184.
[7] Guevara, T., (1908). Psicolojía del Pueblo Araucano. Impr. Cervantes. pp. 321-322.
[8] Vicuñ Cifuentes, J, (1915) Op. Cit. pp. 80-82 and 339.
[9] Latcham, R., (1923). La Historia Natural en los mitos Araucanos . Revista Chilena de Historia Natural. v.27. pp. 132. Online:

[10] Latcham, R. Op. Cit. (1924). pp. 571-573.
[11] Cavada, F., (1914). Chiloé y los Chilotes. Impr. Universitaria. pp. 102-103.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia

2010 International Year of Biodiversity
 
Copyright 2009-2010 by Austin Whittall ©
 

Hairy Snake

 

In a previous post on we mentioned hairy snakes, today I will give more details.

calchá filu, the hairy snake

Argentine military Commander Federico Barbará (1828-1893) who lived many years in the mid 1800s on Patagonia’s northern frontier, fighting against the Puelche natives (a Mapuche/Tehuelche group), recorded their vocabulary and wrote a Puelche-Spanish dictionary. In it he included the name of a lake which the Puelche called “Calchá-filu”. The Spanish meaning of these two words is “hairy snake”,[1]

Gradually, during the XVII^th century the northernmost Tehuelche natives expanded out of Patagonia, across the Negro and Colorado rivers and into the Pampas where they replaced the original natives of Buenos Aires province and became known as the “Pampas” or “Puelche” (the latter, in Mapudungun, the language of the Mapuche, means “Eastern people”).

The Puelche quickly came into contact with the Mapuche tribes living on the eastern foot-hills of the Andes in what is now Neuquén, and they became “Araucanized”, adopting their very convenient language (Mapudungun). The Puelche and Mapuche interacted through war, trade and cattle rustling until they were overtaken by “Western” civilization in the wars of 1879-1883 during which the Argentine government took control of eastern Patagonia (a similar process happened in Chile at the same time).

This explains why the Puelche used a Mapuche word to name a lake in their territory. Perhaps, just like the Mapuche, they also believed that “hairy snakes” were evil creatures.

Mapuche hairy snake

Mapuche oral tradition also mentions these creatures. “Kalfulemu, El Mapuche sin Sombra” was a story told by Abel Kuruuinca to Argentine folklorist Mrs. Bertha Koessler in 1962. In this tale, a native details his experience at the cave of the “salamanqueros” or witches cave, where orgies and debauchery take place.

In the tale, the native says that they lay him down and a “hairy snake coiled up on my chest and did not want to be removed” it kept an eye on him so that he did not escape.[2]

In another story about “Renpulli, la salamanca del lago Lacar”, Kuruuinca gave more details:

“Then a snake, fat as an arm and full of scales and hairy, pounced on his chest trying to suffocate him […] the creature coiled around his neck and hissed and put its toung in his mouth…”[2]

Chiñi filu

The hairy snake is also named “chiñi filu”, which is the “hairy snake of the seas, lakes and rivers”.[3]

Interestingly, this word chiñi is the common Chilean name for skunk (Mephitis chilensis), also spelt "chingue".

Chingue, stamp. Chile (1948). From [4].

We find the same word, (chiñi) in Quechua language. Quechua is a Native American language which is spoken in the Andean region of South America (Perú, Bolivia, Northern Argentina, Chile and Ecuador). It may have found its way into the Mapuche myths because the Inca invaded their territory in the mid 1400s.

The meaning of chiñi in Quechua is “Bat”.

So wether a bat-snake or a skunk-snake, we have a hairy reptile myth spanning the Puelche and Mapuche cultures. What can it be?

Note: there is a widespread myth in Chile about a Flying snake it is described mostly like a snake - bird, with or without feathers, but sometimes it is described as having tough bristles running along its back and no feathers. Is this Piwichén another representation of the hairy snake? or is the flying snake just a myth about strange birds?

Are hairy snakes real?

A hairy reptile is not as improbable as one may expect.

Hair is made from a protein called keratin. Researches checked reptiles and birds trying to see if they had genes that code this protein. And they found that these genes “are not restricted to mammals” because they also code proteins used to form the skin and claws. These keratin genes appeared in a common ancestor to amniotes about 300 million years ago. Amniotes are four legged vertebrates that include mammals, birds and reptiles.[5]

However only mammals have hair follicles and are able to grow hairs. If a reptile acquired that capability, it would be a hairy reptile. But that would require complex mutations. It is quite improbable.

So, my best guess is that the Patagonian hairy snake is not a reptile but a long, slim, svelte mammal such as a Huillín (Lontra provocax), the Patagonian otter. The following image shows one swimming; notice its snake-like appearance which is enhanced by its long tail.

Huillín (Patagonian River Otter). By Fabián Bugnest. From [6].

Endangered Patagonian otters

Huillín is an endangered species and both Argentina and Chile are taking action to prevent its extinction.

For a summary on the current status of Argentine huillín, click Here (in English).

For similar information regarding Chile, click Here, it is the blog (in Spanish) of CODEFF (Comite Nacional Pro Defensa de la Fauna y Flora), a Chilean NGO who is fighting to save the Patagonian Otter.

Lakes and Rivers are not only water, lets save the Huillín (Logo). © CODEFF.

Bibliography.

[1] Barbará, F., (2000). Manual de la lengua pampa. B. Aires: Emece. pp. 124.
[3] Fernández, C.,(1995). Cuentan Los Mapuches. B. Aires: Ed.Nuevo Siglo. pp. 53 and 38
[3] Bárcena, R., [Ed]. (1990). Culturas indígenas de la Patagonia. Turner. pp.236
[4] Chilean stamp (1948) - Sociedad Filatélica de Chile.
[5] The Evolutionary Origin of Mammals’ Hair Is Found in Reptile Claws. Discover.
[6] Huillín (Patagonian River Otter). SIB.


Copyright 2009 by Austin Whittall ©

Patagonian Monsters