The Mythology of All Races, Vol. 11: Latin-American

by Hartley Burr Alexander

III. THE ARAUCANIANS

The Araucanian, or Auca, tribes—of which the Mapuche, Pehuenche, and Huiliche are the more important divisions, while the southerly Chono and Chiloe are remote branches—are the aborigines of the southern Andean region, inhabiting both slopes of the mountains, extending to the sea on the Pacific side and out into the Patagonian plains on the Atlantic side. Of all the extreme austral Indians they represent from pre-Columbian times the highest culture, though it is evident that the process of acculturation was recent when the whites first appeared, resulting from contact with Inca and Calchaqui civilizations. The whole group of Araucanians proper was organized into a confederacy, with four principal divisions, uniting for common defence,—an organization very similar to that of the Iroquois Confederacy in North America, and equally effective; for the Araucanians not only put a stop to the southerly aggressions of the Incas, but they also successfully resisted the Spaniards, establishing for themselves a unique place in the history of American aborigines in contact with the white race. In manner of life the Araucanians were originally little if any in advance of their Patagonian neighbours; but as a result of their contact with the northerly Andean peoples, their own northern branches had acquired, when the Spaniards first came, a rudimentary agriculture, the potter's and the weaver's arts, some skill with gold and silver, and the habit of domesticating the guanaco,—and this culture was gradually extending to the south. As a whole, however, Araucanian culture represents a sharp descent, marked by the boundaries of the Incaic empire.

The romantic history of the Araucanians, and especially their heroic wars with the Spaniards, have naturally attracted to them an unusual measure of historical and anthropological investigation, so the literature is copious. Molina's History, written in the middle of the eighteenth century, is the best-known work in the field, and is, in a sense, the classic exposition of Araucanian institutions, though both for extent and accuracy it has been superseded by later works, pre-eminently those of José Medina and Tomás Guevara.[207] The first volume of the latter's great Historia de la Civilización de Araucania is devoted to "Antropolojía Araucana," and in it is given a summary of the native pantheon.

First of the gods is Pillan, often regarded as the Araucanian equivalent of the Tupan of the forest regions of Brazil, god of thunder and spirit of fire. "This conception represents a survival of the prehistoric idea which considers fire as the life-principle, carried to the point of adoring it as an invisible and personal power ... forces of nature, such as this, being personified in the mind of the barbarian." Pillan, however, while a personal, is also a collective power: caciques at their death and warriors who fall in battle pass into the category of Pilli, some being converted into volcanic forces, others ascending to the clouds. "From this source," says Guevara, "is due the belief, conserved almost to this time, that a tempest is a battle between their ancestors and their enemies, and the custom of encouraging their own and imprecating the others according to the turn of the battle: if the clouds move toward the south victory pertains to those of their race; if to the north—the country of the Spaniards—they suppose the latter to be victorious."... Inevitably one recalls the bodeful thunder-storm in Julius Caesar,—

"Fierce fiery warriors fought upon the clouds,
In ranks and squadrons and right form of war,
Which drizzled blood upon the Capitol;
The noise of battle hurtled in the air,
Horses did neigh, and dying men did groan,
And ghosts did shriek and squeal about the streets."

Pillan, as the supreme god of a warlike people, was naturally regarded as the god of war. "They made his habitation," says our author, "in all those parts whence breaks the thunder: on the crest of high mountains, in the clouds, and in the volcanoes, whose eruptions are so often accompanied by electrical phenomena." The deity's name is, as a matter of fact, preserved in the names of various peaks.

Molina[208] states that the word Pillan is derived from pilli, meaning "soul," and that the god has various attributive designations, such as Spirit-of-Heaven (Guenu-pillan), the Great Being, the Thunderer; and along with these, suspiciously European, such epithets as the Creator, the Omnipotent, the Eternal. On the whole, it is not unreasonable to assume that the true aboriginal meaning of the word is "mysterious power" and that the idea itself belongs with the group of conceptions of a semi-pantheistic nature power, of which Wakanda and Manito are the best-known names.

That Pillan stands at the head of a hierarchy of nature powers is the unanimous testimony of authorities. Molina believes that the government of Pillan is modelled on that of the Araucanian confederacy. He is the great chief of the invisible world, having under him his high-chiefs and under-chiefs to conduct cosmic affairs. As with most primitive folk, the great majority of these lesser deities are considered as malignant, or at least as dangerous, rather than as beneficent powers. The Huecuvu (Guecubu, in Molina) are a group of daemones capable of assuming animal and human forms. The Indians "attribute natural phenomena to the implacable hatred of these agents of Pillan. They sow the fields with caterpillars, weaken animals with disease, quake the earth, and devour the fish in rivers and lakes. The Huecuvu corresponds with great exactness to the idea of demon." Evil also is Epunamun (whom Molina regarded as a war-god, apparently on the strength of the Padre Olivares's statement that he presided at councils of war, where "though they have no confidence in his councils, they frequently follow them, rather than offend through disobedience"). Epunamun is represented as having deformed legs, and he probably belongs to that extraordinary group of South American monster-bogeys having feet reversed or knees that bend backward. The Cherruve are the spirits or senders of shooting-stars and comets, figured (quite to the taste of the Mediaeval European) as man-headed serpents. Similar is the Ihuaivilu, a seven-headed fire-monster, inhabiting volcanic neighbourhoods. Meulen appears to be anything but the benevolent deity that Molina deemed it; he is the spirit of the whirlwind, disappearing in the ground in the form of a lizard when the whirlwind is dissipated; in modern folklore he appears as El Destolanado, devouring all children who cross his path.

The category of demonic beings is by no means exhausted with these wind and fire powers. The old Chilean mythic lore is filled with composite and metamorphosing beast-bogeys and witch-beings, many of which have been handed on to the modern peasantry; so that it is now often impossible to tell what elements are native and what communicated. Many still bear native names. Perimontum is a phantom appearing from the other world to announce some extraordinary event. The Am is the ghost of a murdered man; the Alhue is a mischievous sprite whose sport is to frighten men. Colocolo is a small, invisible or subterranean animal or bird, whose cry, colo colo! is sometimes heard; anyone drinking its saliva will die. Negúruvilu, or Guirivilo, is a cat-like monster armed with a claw-pointed tail; it lives in the depths of the waters, whence it sallies forth to kill men and animals, assuming a serpentine form as it envelops them. There are numerous other water-monsters, some marine, some amphibians, their most various forms being naturally found among the Chiletes of the southern archipelago. El Caleuche, the witch-boat, is interesting for the fact that here, in the far Pacific south, it represents what might almost be called an outcropping of the similar conceptions found among the Eskimo and the pelagic tribes of the North-West Coast. The witch-boat is seen at night, illuminated, and it carries fishermen down to the treasure-houses at the bottom of the sea. Another monster of this region is Camahueto, capable of wrecking large boats; while Cuero, known to the Araucanians as Trelquehuecuve, is a sort of huge octopus, whose arms end in claws and whose ears are covered with eyes; it has great powers of dilation and contraction, and seizes and slays all that fall within its reach; when it goes ashore to sun itself and wishes to return to its element, it raises a gale which pushes it into the water. Huaillepeñ, or Guallipén, is in the form of a calf-headed sheep, with deformed legs; it issues from streams and pools on misty mornings and frightens pregnant women, causing their children to be born deformed. The Imbunche are monsters into which babes stolen by witches have been transformed; the Trauco is an old witch appearing in the form of a child and having the habits of an incubus; the Pihuicheñ, or Piguchén, is a vampire-like serpent that can transform itself into a frog, a blood-sucker and death-bringer, while the Chonchoñ, a vampire having the form of a human head whose huge ears serve as wings for its nocturnal flights, is reminiscent of the travelling heads which form so important a group of bogeys on the North American continent.

With such an array of demons surrounding them, it is small marvel that for the Chilean peasant of today the devil is not an interesting person in popular mythology, as Señor Vicuña Cifuentes tells us,[209] playing a rôle altogether inferior to those of the local demons. Beneficent powers are rare in the Araucanian pantheon. Pillan may be regarded in this light, as also Ngúnemapun, a higher power recognized by the Araucans of today, says Guevara, although not mentioned in the older chronicles. He seems to be a doublet of Pillan, and may represent an epithet of this god, or even a still higher power to whom invocations were formerly addressed which the Spaniards supposed to be addressed to Pillan. Like the latter, Ngúnemapun dwells on high mountains, has the power of rendering himself invisible, and is given the customary form of a warrior. Beneficent also is Huitranalhue, friend of strangers and the protector of herds from thieves.