Anchimallén

A light is moving along the cart track a few feet above the ground, too low for a star and too steady for a lantern. The sheep in the corral press together. Somewhere a dog has stopped barking. In a house beside the road the family has begun to argue in low voices about what it is, because a light like that could be one of several things in the Araucanía, and none of the choices is good.

If it is an anchimallén, it belongs to someone. That is the first thing to know about it. The Mapuche of southern Chile and neighbouring Argentina have told of it for at least three centuries, and in almost every telling it is a servant: made by a kalku, owned by a family, fed by that family, and dangerous to everyone in reach, the owners included.

It did not start out as a monster. Eighteenth-century Spanish and creole historians knew a being called Anchimalguén as something close to a household blessing. The Jesuit Juan Ignacio Molina, writing in the late eighteenth century, described female spirits called amchi-malghen who did for the Araucanians what the lares did for the Romans, and said there was hardly a man who did not believe he had one working for him. When a venture went well, the saying was “I still have my nymph.” Other colonial writers quoted by the folklorist Tomás Guevara in 1908 said these spirits warned of misfortune so it could be avoided and announced good fortune so it could be celebrated, and one described the Anchimalguén as a young lady, as beautiful and well-dressed as she was kind, called the wife of the sun. Guevara broke the name into anchü, sun, and malguen, woman, and decided she had been the moon. That is his reading, and it has travelled a long way on his authority.

By the time the name turns up in court, the lady has changed company. In 1693, during a witchcraft trial at Chillán, an indigenous witness described a sorcerers’ cave where, besides the imbunches, there were “other fictions they called Anchimalguén,” which made whirlwinds in the air and looked like birds. In a second Chillán trial in 1749, the historian Holdenis Casanova Guarda found a woman named Agustina Aillanca describing a cave in a small stony hill, guarded by a very small woman called Anchimalguén. Her testimony and another from the same proceedings say the cave was gilded, with four gold rooms and seats that shone, and that the tiny Anchimalguén went round pouring chicha from a gourd and a jug that never ran dry. The vicar, one of the accused women added, had been arresting everyone who went into the two caves as witches.

Guevara found the modern creature fully formed when he collected stories among Mapuche communities in the early 1900s. The name had worn down to Anchimallén and now belonged to a dwarf no taller or thicker than a baby a few months old, able to turn into a faint, fleeting fire or into small reptiles. It looked after the animals of whoever took it into service, backed its master’s revenges, and brought wealth and health. The price was blood. The owner had to hand over a member of the family, from time to time, to quench its thirst. Among the Mapuche, Guevara wrote, there were a thousand stories of people who had lost their relatives one after another this way.

The anthropologist Louis Faron, working in Mapuche reservations in 1952 to 1954, heard where the thing came from. An anchimallén is the ghost of a dead child, as the larger witranalwe is the ghost of a dead adult, and both are taken from the burial ground by a kalku. Some of Faron’s hosts said the witch needed only the little finger of the child, which could be seen glowing on the road like a lit cigarette or a firefly. Others said all the bones were used, so the whole small skeleton shone, giving off a diffuse light that looked like a white garment. Because an improperly conducted funeral left a corpse open to theft, infants were buried close to the house, and a child who died before its naming ceremony was a particular worry. One man told Faron that his father, a machi’s helper, had once been called to examine a dead boy, still unnamed, whose family feared exactly this. The blunt version is simple enough: a Mapuche witch makes a servant out of somebody’s baby.

Guevara’s collected tales show the servant at work. At Lonquitue a girl called Hueilcao lay awake one dark night and watched her father get up to check the animals in the corral. Her mother said, “Take your companion.” Nobody else was in the room. Then a little light rose, lit up the whole inside of the house, and went out after him.

Another tale is harder. A rich man took his daughter on a visit to friends in the south, where a machi who dealt in sorcery offered to sell the girl a huitranalhue and an anchimallén so that she could punish her enemies. She paid two horses, a headband and a silver medal. When they reached home, the two creatures asked to be fed. She offered to have a cow killed. They answered that they did not eat meat, they ate human blood, and she would give them one of her relatives or they would eat her. She chose the most distant relative she could, the son of a first cousin. A wind came up out of nowhere, knocked the boy down, and his body turned black.

Outside the house it keeps to the byways. Near Cholchol a herder saw a little man made of fire step in front of his horse, which reared and turned back; he crossed a stream and the thing was waiting on the other side. He left the horse, fled on foot to a neighbour’s house and slept there, and only later learned it belonged to a sorcerer’s family. He fell badly ill, and his aunt, a good machi, treated him and told him to leave that district. He went to Argentina and never came back. Faron was told that when the anchimallén passes a house it breathes fire from its mouth, which is why households could quarrel for a long time over whether they had just seen an anchimallén or a cherufe. The Mapuche author Martín Alonqueo described it spinning along like a whirlwind from the light pouring out of its mouth, and by day showing itself as a small whirlwind. Sister Inez Hilger, collecting on the Argentine side in the 1940s and early 1950s, heard a gentler version: little beings that seemed to be made of fire, did no harm, and left tiny footprints in the ashes round the hearth, which frightened people all the same.

Its powers are its owner’s advantages. It can go invisible, change into other kinds of wekufe, guard stock through the night, and kill with a sudden wind out of a clear sky. One modern informant quoted by the anthropologist Yosuke Kuramochi said that anyone who kept an anchimallén would be respected, and strangers would fear it as it went about at night, lit up, as if playing. By day, the informant said, it cannot be seen.

Its weakness is its appetite. Faron recorded that it wants human and animal blood every day, though it will also take alcohol and ordinary food, and that it can kill its own mistress if she is not strong enough to keep it fed. A person whose sight has been properly cured, Guevara was told, can tell which kalku keeps an anchimallén and which a huitranalhue, and it can be driven off. A man of about fifty-five told Faron that years earlier, while he lay ill, he saw one standing in the corner of the room, no more than two feet high and very ugly, with long hair and a coffee-coloured chamal wrapped around it. His father wanted to call back the machi. The family moved him to his uncle’s house and waited for the priest instead, who came the next day with a cross and a Bible, and he never saw it again.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an Anchimallén in Mapuche belief?

An Anchimallén is a small servant spirit of Mapuche tradition in Chile and Argentina, usually said to be made by a kalku, or sorcerer. It guards its owner’s animals and property and carries out the owner’s revenge, but it has to be fed with blood, often the blood of the owner’s own family.

What does an Anchimallén look like?

The Anchimallén is described as a being the size of a small child that glows wholly or in part, often dressed in white. It can also appear as a floating light, a small figure made of fire, a small reptile or a whirlwind. One man who saw it by his sickbed described it as about two feet tall and very ugly, with long hair and a coffee-coloured wrap.

How is an Anchimallén made?

According to the anthropologist Louis Faron, the Anchimallén is the ghost of a dead child taken from the burial ground by a kalku. Some Mapuche told him only the child’s little finger was used, which glows like a cigarette end or a firefly, while others said the whole skeleton was used. For this reason infants were buried close to the house.

Was the Anchimallén always evil?

No. Eighteenth-century writers, including the Jesuit Juan Ignacio Molina, described earlier Anchimalguén spirits as helpful female household spirits, and one called her the wife of the sun. By the colonial witchcraft trials at Chillán in 1693 and 1749 the name was attached to sorcerers’ caves, and by the early twentieth century the Anchimallén was a blood-drinking servant of witches.

How do you get rid of an Anchimallén?

In Mapuche tradition a machi, the ritual healer, treats people harmed by an Anchimallén and can tell them how to escape it. In one account recorded in the 1950s, a family waited for a priest, who drove the Anchimallén away with a cross and a Bible. Owners who fail to feed it risk being killed by it themselves.

Related Entries

Wekufe, Cherufe, Machi, Imbunche, Chonchon, Kueyen, Antü, Pillan, Ngenechen, Colo Colo, Peuchen, Ngen, Caipora, Will-o’-the-Wisp, Tokoloshe