Bochica

He came walking out of the east, an old man with a beard that fell to his waist, his hair long and his shoulders wrapped in a mantle, and to a people who did not grow beards this alone marked him as something other. The highland air around the future site of Bogotá is thin and cold, the light hard at altitude, and into that bright sharp country he arrived on foot with nothing but what he knew. He did not conquer anyone. He sat down among them and began to teach.

What he taught was the difference between a scattered people and a society. He showed the Muisca how to break and plant the earth, how to draw thread from raw fiber and work it on the loom, how to dye and paint cloth so that a length of cotton became a thing of pattern and meaning. Spinning, weaving, painting, the shaping of fields: the unglamorous skills that a civilization actually stands on. Alongside the crafts he laid down conduct, the moral norms by which neighbors live without ruin, and he gave them the shape of their government, two seats of power rather than one, a spiritual authority beside a secular lord. Goldsmiths took him for their patron, and worked gold was set out as his offering, the metal that caught the sun he was sometimes said to be.

The names gathered around him the way names do around something half understood. He was Chimizapagua, the messenger of Chiminigagua, the formless creator from whom light first came. He was Nemqueteba. He was Xué, which meant sun, and another of his titles meant the disappearing one, which would prove apt. Early Spanish chroniclers, writing down what they could gather, could not even agree on when he had walked the earth, placing his coming at wildly different mythical distances in the past. The accounts blur and contradict. The shape that survives all of them is the same: a stranger who arrived, gave the people everything that made them a people, and then was gone.

His most remembered act was a rescue. The stories differ on who brought the disaster. In one telling the god Chibchacum, enraged, flooded the savanna of Bogotá until the plateau became an inland sea and the Muisca clung to the high ground watching their fields drown. In another the cause was a goddess, a beautiful figure who had taught the people pleasure, dancing, and abandon, the precise inverse of everything Bochica stood for. Either way the water rose, and the people called for him. He appeared on a rainbow above the flood. With a golden staff he struck the rock at the plateau’s southern rim, and the mountain split. Through the wound he had opened, the trapped water poured off the highland and fell, and that fall is the Tequendama, the great cataract that still drops off the edge of the Bogotá plain.

Then he turned to the one who had caused it. He cursed Chibchacum to carry the earth on his back, a weight the god can never set down, only shift from shoulder to shoulder. When the ground trembles in the Colombian highlands, that is Chibchacum adjusting his burden. The goddess who taught the dancing was dealt with differently. Bochica changed her into the moon, or some say into an owl, and in the lunar version she was permitted to shine only at night, the wife of the sun condemned to the opposite half of the sky.

He did not stay. Traveling west across the Muisca country and then turning east again, he came at last to Sogamoso on the eastern edge of their territory, and there the stories let go of him in three directions at once. He died. He vanished. He became the sun. A temple of the sun stood at Sogamoso when the Spanish came, and one tradition held that the world itself had been made there. A god who is also the sun and also a teacher who walked away does not need a single ending, and the Muisca gave him several.

His powers run straight out of what he was. As a solar and civilizing figure he commanded the rainbow and the breaking of storms, and the golden staff that shattered a mountain was the tool of a being aligned with the sun and with worked metal both. He could remake the disobedient into other forms, a goddess into the moon, a god into the bearer of the world. What he did not do is as telling as what he did. He never ruled. He took no throne, fathered no dynasty, raised no army. His authority was entirely the authority of someone who knows useful things and is willing to teach them, and the moment the teaching was finished he left. The disappearing one disappeared, as the name had always promised, and what he left behind was a people who knew how to feed and clothe and govern themselves, which was the whole point.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Bochica?

Bochica is a civilizing deity of the Muisca (Chibcha) people of the highlands around Bogotá, Colombia. He appeared as a bearded old man from the east and taught the Muisca agriculture, weaving, crafts, moral law, and how to organize their society. He was also identified with the sun and served as patron of chieftains and goldsmiths.

What did Bochica do at Tequendama Falls?

Bochica created the Tequendama Falls while rescuing the Muisca from a great flood. When the savanna of Bogotá was drowned, he appeared on a rainbow and struck the rock at the plateau’s edge with a golden staff, splitting the mountain so the trapped floodwaters could pour off the highland. That outpouring became the Tequendama cataract.

How did Bochica punish Chibchacum?

After the god Chibchacum caused the flood that drowned the Bogotá plain, Bochica condemned him to carry the earth on his back forever. Chibchacum can never set the weight down, only shift it from one shoulder to the other, and the Muisca explained earthquakes as the tremors caused by him adjusting his burden.

What other names is Bochica known by?

Bochica was known by several names and titles, including Chimizapagua, meaning messenger of the creator Chiminigagua, as well as Nemqueteba and Xué, a name meaning sun. One of his titles meant the disappearing one, reflecting the tradition that he eventually vanished or departed after completing his work among the Muisca.

What happened to Bochica in the end?

After teaching the Muisca and saving them from the flood, Bochica traveled to Sogamoso on the eastern border of their territory, where accounts of his fate diverge. Some say he died there, others that he disappeared, and others that he became the sun. A temple of the sun stood at Sogamoso at the time of the Spanish conquest.

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Chiminigagua, Viracocha, Quetzalcoatl, Kukulkan, Inti, Pachamama, Illapa