Twice ToldMateo Coñuecar's declaration of 26 March 1880: the Quicaví cave and the Ibunche, as printed in 1908
- Language
- Spanish
- Reading
- transcribed from the page image
- Translation
- ours
- Retrieved
- 10 October 2026
Spelling as printed. Line breaks are not kept; page breaks are marked. Italics in the original (on “Cueva de Quicavi”, “Ibunchi”, “Chibato”, “Traiguenes”, “Picochihuim”, “picochihuin”) are not marked. The extract starts in the middle of the declaration and stops at the end of the paragraph on p. 21 that describes how the two men were kept; the text continues on p. 22. Words in the OCR layer of the PDF were wrong in many places, so each was checked against the page image.
[p. 19] En el mismo Quicaví los indíjenas desde un tiempo mui remoto, pero que debe guardar cierta conformidad con la llegada de la Chillpila a Quicaví, contruyeron una casa subterránea que todos la denominan con el nombre de la «Cueva de Quicavi.»
Esta cueva se halla situada en una quebrada inmediata a la casa en que vivió el finado José Merimañ, de donde hai un camino para llegar a ella. De la casa donde vive Aurora Quinchem también
[p. 20] parte otro camino que deja la cueva a la derecha como a distancia de cuarenta metros.
Esa habitacion adentro está enmaderada, tiene una mesa, cuatro sillas principales i tres bancos de madera. Ahora veinte años i cuando era Rei José Merimañ, se le ordenó fuera a dicha cueva para llevarle carne a unos animales que habian dentro de ella. Cumplió la órden, llevándoles carne de un cabrito que degolló.
Merimañ lo acompañó i al llegar a la cueva, éste comenzó a dar unos saltos que acostumbran los brujos i en seguida abrió la puerta. Esta se hallaba cubierta con una capa de tierra i césped con pasto para ocultarla; despues se encontraba una chapa que tenia llave de alquimia.
Se valió de esta para abrirla i luego vinieron de adentro dos seres completamente desfigurados que se parecía el uno a un chibato (porque tambien se arrastraba), el otro era un hombre desnudo i con barba i el pelo que le llegaba a la mitad del cuerpo era completamente blanco. A este último lo conocian con el nombre de «Ibunchi» i a aquel con el de «Chibato». Este tambien tenia el pelo i la barba blancas i mui largas, i su cuerpo lo
[p. 21] tenia cubierto de una especie de cerda que le habian hecho salir con la yerba Picochihuim que se halla en los «Traiguenes» o saltos de agua, con la cual le hacían fricciones i tambien se la hacian beber, sacándole el zumo de las hojas. Ambos entónces aparentaban tener como cincuenta años, i desde la fundacion de la cueva existian esos individuos, reemplazándolos por otros cuando ellos morian.
El medio como los adquirian era: se reunia el consejo i determinaban las personas que debian ser Ibunche i Chibato i aun cuando ellos no quisieran, los tomaban por la fuerza i los encerraban en la cueva. Ahí los acostumbraban a vivir como era la costumbre, sin permitir que salieran a ninguna parte i manteniéndolos con carne de chibato, de cabrito o de niños difuntos que robaban en el panteon para llevarles continuamente. La bebida que les daban era agua de picochihuin. Así acostumbraban a esos individuos a desempeñar el papel que quisieran i les enseñaban a hacer unos saltos o brincos.
Translation
Ours.
[p. 19] At Quicaví itself, the Indigenous people built, a very long time ago (it must be about the time Chillpila came to Quicaví), an underground house that everyone calls the “Cave of Quicavi”.
This cave is in a gully next to the house where the late José Merimañ lived, and there is a path from there to reach it. From the house where Aurora Quinchem lives another
[p. 20] path also leaves, which passes the cave on the right at a distance of about forty metres.
Inside, the room is lined with timber, and has a table, four main chairs and three wooden benches. Twenty years ago, when José Merimañ was King, the speaker was ordered to go to that cave to take meat to some animals that were inside. He carried out the order, taking them the meat of a kid he slaughtered.
Merimañ went with him, and on reaching the cave he began to make the leaps that the brujos are in the habit of making, and then opened the door. It was covered with a layer of earth and turf with grass to hide it; then there was a lock that took a brass key (“llave de alquimia”).
He used the key to open it, and then two completely disfigured beings came out from inside, one of which looked like a billy-goat (because it also dragged itself along), and the other was a naked man with a beard, and the hair that reached to the middle of his body was completely white. This last one they knew by the name “Ibunchi” and the other as “Chibato”. The Chibato also had very long white hair and beard, and his body was
[p. 21] covered with a kind of bristle that they had made grow on him with the herb Picochihuim, which is found at the “Traiguenes”, or waterfalls; they rubbed him with it and also made him drink it, squeezing the juice from the leaves. Both then looked about fifty years old, and these individuals had existed since the cave was founded, and were replaced by others when they died.
The way they obtained them was this: the council met and decided which persons were to be Ibunche and Chibato, and even if they did not want to, they took them by force and shut them in the cave. There they got them used to living as was the custom, not letting them go out anywhere and keeping them on the meat of billy-goat, kid, or dead children whom they stole from the graveyard to bring them continually. The drink they gave them was picochihuin water. In this way they got these individuals used to playing whatever part they wanted, and taught them to make leaps or bounds.
Notes
What it is. Part of the declaration made before the judge in Ancud on 26 March 1880 by Mateo Coñuecar, a 70-year-old farmer from Tenaun who, by his own account, was a counsellor and later a “Rei” of the Recta Provincia. The 1908 pamphlet prints it as the longest of the file’s declarations. Ramón Espech’s copy of the same declaration, printed by Osorio in 1960, runs over his p. 128 and agrees on the details above; the Osorio OCR was readable but not checked line by line against the pamphlet.
What to notice. The “Ibunche” here is a naked, bearded, white-haired man kept in a cave with a second being, the “Chibato”. Coñuecar says he took meat to them only twice and saw them on one other occasion, at a council held in the cave (p. 22); the first visit he places “twenty years” before the declaration. He says the council chose such men and shut them in by force. He does not say the Ibunche was a child, deformed, or had a leg fixed to its back; that form appears in Cavada (1914, pp. 99 to 100).
How far to trust it. It is one man’s account to a judge, taken while he was in jail and under accusation, and two other defendants we read do not describe the cave from experience: Aurora Quinchem (27 March 1880) says she never went there, and Miguel Raicahuin (22 April 1880) denies being sent to open it. Coñuecar says himself that the door was found barred from inside and the key melted in a fire. No document we read records that anyone found the cave.
Readings we are unsure of: none in the passage; “Ibunchi” in the sentence that names the beings is the printed spelling, and “Ibunche” appears two paragraphs later.