Monster from Lake Tota
The monster from Lake Tota is said to be an animal living in Lake Tota ( Colombia ), which is referred to in the sources as "Diabloballena" or "Devil's Whale".
The indigenous people of this region say that the monster was first seen by the conqueror Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada. He described the monster as "a fish with a black head like a cow and bigger than a whale" (Lucas Fernandez de Piedrahita, 1676 and Antonio de Alcedo, 1788). In other sources, it is also referred to as the monstrous fish , black monster, and dragon and divine archetypal beast .
description
The description of the monster is limited to historical reports, one of them from 1652 and the studies of the Muisca mythology.
The legend of Lake Tota is similar to other legends such as the Loch Ness (Nessie) monster in Scotland, the monster of Lake Nahuel Huapi in Argentina or the " El Cuero " ("The Leather") of the Mapuche mythology in Argentina and Chile (the monster is described there as a kind of snake with leather from various animals). As there, it was analyzed with the help of cryptozoology and pseudoscience .
Historical background
17th century
Lucas Fernandez de Piedrahíta
On August 12, 1676, the Colombian priest and historian Lucas Fernandez Piedrahíta , as instructed by the Bishop of Santa Marta, published the General History of the Conquest of the New Kingdom of Granada , in Chapter 1, Paragraph 13, the following excerpt about a monstrous one Creature appears in Lago de Tota:
" Refer to it (= the lagoon , but actually Lake Tota) as a place where a fish with a black head like a cow and larger than a whale has been sighted ."
“ Quesada says that in his day trustworthy people and the indigenous people confirmed that the monster was the devil ; and in the year sixteen fifty-two (1652) , when I was in this place, Doña Andrea Vargas, the mistress of this land, spoke of having seen it . "
19th century
Gaspard Théodore Mollien
The French explorer and diplomat Gaspard Théodore Mollien wrote in his book The Travels of Gaspard Théodore Mollien to the Republic of Colombia in 1823 :
“ When I drove to Iza, I made the decision to go to Lake Tota, which is a bit higher, but in the same direction . I left Iza just before dawn; (…) The superstition about terrible miracles has not left these places: in fact, the rural appearance of the region; the still waters, so to speak, at such a height where you can always feel the stormy wind from the Toxillo, the heather that lies over the lake; slimy consistency and full of water, which is also found in the sand of the beaches of the lake, everything tends to arouse a feeling of weirdness. The people here say that the lake cannot be navigated by ships; Malicious figures live in the depths of the lake, you can, the inhabitants say, see the gates to their abode when you move away from the bank into the middle of the lake, and suddenly you can only see a monstrous out of the abysses for a short moment See fish .
The lake forms an arc, oriented to the northwest and southeast; the climate is very humid and cold; the water is blue, dense and uncomfortable and cannot be drunk and, like in the sea, the water is constantly choppy because of the storms that form in the Toxillo. In the middle of the lake there are some islands that have so far only been entered by a man, the belief that the lake is enchanted prevents others from visiting the islands: the bottom of the lake looks like it is full of pebbles . The mountains that enclose the lake are like walls of solid stone, cemented so firmly that they defy water filtration; nevertheless one would suspect that the hot springs in Paipa and Iza arise from this huge water reservoir, which is a little higher than that . "
Manuel Ancízar
In 1852, the Colombian writer, politician, professor and journalist Manuel Ancízar made a statement about the "Monster Diabloballena from Lake Tota " in his book The Pilgrimages of Alpha to the Northern Provinces of New Granada in 1850-1851 (Alpha was a pseudonym for Ancízar) “Quoting Piedrahíta's book The General Story of the Conquest of the New Kingdom of Granada in Chapter 14, Paragraph 5:
“ People believed this humbug of the monster in fresh water. (based on the "Diabloballena" quoted by Piedrahíta), so that no one had the courage to explore the lake and its small islands, which were supposed to harbor worse creatures than that of Piedrahíta, until an Englishman recently arrived there and was only slightly afraid of it Monster, built a raft out of reeds, boarded the largest island and waged a bloody battle with ... shy deer who peacefully inhabited the island. Following the example of the Englishman, other men sailed to the island in rafts or canoes, populated it and disenchanted the lake. Nowadays there are no more dangers than the storms that come from the Toquilla highlands when the three square miles of water are set in motion by the storm. "
At the end of this paragraph, Ancízar expressed his doubts, but without providing any evidence, in order not to discredit Piedrahíta and the monster he described, and began his initiative to build drains for Lake Tota in order to increase the arable land , and ended the paragraph in question as follows:
" Half-drains that repeatedly deepen the Upía river bed are the only measure that can bring success to those who need land to cultivate, not treasures that seem as certain to them as the monster Diabloballena of Piedrahíta ."
José Jerónimo Triana
The botanist, researcher and physicist José Jerónimo Triana , member of the Corográfica Commission, also expressed his opinion after summarizing the book Myths, Legends, Traditions and Folklores of Lake Tota (Lilia Montaña de Silva, La Rana y El Águila edition, UPTC Tunja, 1970, P. 46–47):
“[What he wants to say - comments Triana, with respect for the lakes and lagoons, which were the first temples of the indigenous people -] (…) that those lagoons housed an extraordinary deity, and the sensitive indigenous people saw in this magic and riddle . "
“ The idea of today's farmer that there are sleeping monsters in the lake, who can wake up from their screams and who answer the rocks that surround the lake in their hole as if they had the voice of an oracle, gives the involuntary impression that the waters are sacred. "
“[In 1880 there was still the belief among the inhabitants of the area around Lake Tota, in the village of Cuitiva - indicated in the above-mentioned book by Lilia Montaña de Silva, probably through underlying historical commentaries by Triana -], (…) that there was a black monster in the haunted waters of the lake . "
View of the indigenous Muisca
From the language of the Muisca
Mariana Escribana, PhD student in literature , history and semiotics at the University of Paris-Sorbonne , linguist and expert in the language of the Muisca , confirmed:
"(...) about the monster of Lake Tota (...). The monster is nothing less than the MUYSO AKYQAKE - the dragon, it has the components MUYSO and QAKE, in Cundinamarca is the forest of the dragon, which is sanctified for this archetypal, sacred animal, it is the forest TCHIQAKE. "
This means that the monster could be an archetypal deity that has been mistaken for a dragon .
In the mythical origin of Lake Tota
Reports on the mythical origins of Lake Tota tell of a moment when “Monetá”, an old and wise indigenous priest, prepared the “already expanding and powerful empire of Muisca” for “evil, the evil Busiraco” into the cavity , which now forms Lake Tota, it left the hint of a monster living in the lake:
“ And there in this huge natural cavity of our history full of dust and earth, which has been brittle by the sun, lived a huge black snake with sparkling eyes, which moved maliciously and ominously to the entrance of the great grotto, stopped and there again waiting for the ball of fire that returned every night until today. At that moment, before plunging into the depths of the earth, Busiraco let out high-pitched laughter of triumph that echoed ironically at the farthest ends, frightening the naive hearts of the Chibchas. "
The summoning ceremony against Busiraco led to combat the suffering caused by the summer and the shortage of water, which culminated in the creation of Lake Tota; this snake-shaped monster is also named when it was fatally attacked:
" Siramena [to whom Monetá refers as the" great dancer "] , who had always danced with graceful and sweeping movements and made ever faster turns, suddenly stood motionless in front of the large painted stone - the altar of the goddess of water. She raised her head and took out a shiny disc of gold from under her clothes, first offered it to the goddess and then let it shimmer for a moment in the sun; she hurled the disc with tremendous force at the snake into which the sharp edges fit cut deep, then the disc disappeared into the black scales of the reptile. The snake was fatally injured. Her repulsive movements were twitching and although she tried to attack one last time, she lacked the strength. It lifted its tail and let it fall with a crack on the dusty floor, after which it fell lengthways and the body remained lifeless. "
He finishes the report on the "black snake" at the moment the lake is formed:
“ Monetá took a gem from his breast pocket. He looked at it for a while. A tear rolled down his cheek and encircled the gemstone like a green case of an immeasurable emerald encompassing a diamond [reserved for the highest priest of Muisca, originally presented by the prophet "Bochica" when he established the priesthood]. Then he lifted it with his right hand and threw it with all his might into the abyss. The jewel sparkled in the sun like embers of green sparks. The crowd watched in amazement without understanding it; the precious stone had fallen exactly on the black snake, which was now dead. And then ... what a miracle! The stone had lost its natural hardness. The miracle proclaimed became real, and the green and pure waves grew bigger and bigger. And this immeasurable abyss was filled with pure water lined with white foam. The people, amazed, failed to understand what they were seeing. "
Web links
- Monstruo del Lago de Tota at the NGO Fundación Montecito
- Monstruo (diabloballena) en Lago de Tota (¿?) , On the Memoria de la Causa-Tota blog by Causa Tota , in the context of the recreation and protection of Lake Tota and its basins and the connection to the Loch Ness monster
- The Weird in Sugamuxi brings together various strange aspects of the province of Sugamuxi (Colombia), among them the monster from Lake Tota.
- Interviews on W Radio (Colombia); Broadcast W Fin de Semana on October 28, 2012:
- Interviewed: Adrian Shine, in Escocia, on the subject of Nessie the Loch Ness Monster
- Interviewed: Felipe Andrés Velasco from the Fundación Montecito, in Colombia, on the subject of “ diabloballena ” or the monster from Lake Tota
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Ancízar, Manuel; 1852 (Biblioteca Virtual, Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango); cap. XXIV .
- ↑ a b c d Fernández de Piedrahíta, Lucas; 1676 (Biblioteca Virtual, Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango); libro Primero, cap. Primero, parr. 13 ( Memento of the original from December 18, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .
- ↑ Lucas Fernández de Piedrahíta; August 12, 1676 (Biblioteca Virtual, Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango); Book 1, Chapter 1 Historia General de las Conquistas del Nuevo Reino de Granada: a las SCRM de d. Cárlos Segundo Rey de las Españas y de las Indias ( Memento of the original from December 18, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Quote = pez negro , (Spanish)
- ↑ Antonio Alcedo, 1789, Diccionario geográfico-histórico de las Indias Occidentales ó América , Tomo V, p. 187, quotation = pez grande , (Spanish)
- ↑ a b Gaspard-Théodore Mollien, 1823 (Biblioteca Virtual, Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango) El viaje de Gaspard-Théodore Mollien por la República de Colombia en 1823 , quotation = pez monstruoso
- ↑ a b c d Triana, José Jerónimo; 1880 ( Mitos, Leyendas y Folclor del Lago de Tota , Lilia Montaña, UPTC; 1970 - in the book Mitos y Leyendas de Colombia , Eugenia Villa Posse; Ed.IADAP, 1993; p. 204)
- ↑ a b c Email from Mariana Escribano (PhD in literature and semiotics - University of Paris-Sorbonne / Paris VI -, París, linguist who has researched the language of the Muisca since 1970); sent to the Fundación Montecito, Oct 27, 2012 .
- ↑ a b Escribano, Mariana; 2009 (First known scientist of the Muisca language, Boyacá; June / 2009) .
- ↑ a b c d e f g Mitos y Leyendas de Colombia by Eugenia Villa Posse, vol. II, 1993, Ed. IADAP; Part II, Leyendas y Cuentos del Folclor , num. 23 “Mitos, Leyendas y Tradiciones”, “El origen mítico del Lago de Tota” by Lilia Montaña, pp. 192–206, from “Mitos, leyendas y tradiciones del folclor del Lago de Tota”, UPTC in Tunja, Ed. La Rana y El Águila, Tunja; 1970, (pp. 29-90).
- ↑ Ancízar, Manuel; 1852 (Biblioteca Virtual, Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango); cap. XXIV, Historia General de las Conquistas del Nuevo Reino de Granada: a las SCRM de d. Cárlos Segundo Rey de las Españas y de las Indias , quote = diabloballena, (Spanish)
