Ccoa

Also Known As: Quechua; also written Qoa, Qhoa and K’oa; the hail cat of the mountain spirits in the Cuzco highlands of Peru
Region/Culture: South America
Mythos: Andes Mythology, Incan Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Fairy Folk and Spirit Beings
Mythical Attributes: The Ccoa is a grey striped cat spirit that rises out of highland springs as cloud and throws hail and lightning from the sky.
Role in Mythos: It is the cat of the apus, the mountain lords of the southern Peruvian Andes, and the most active and most feared of the spirits that serve them.
Relation to Humans: It ruins the crops of farmers who do not pay it, sends sickness, and makes sorcerers by striking them with lightning. Villagers burn offerings to it on high ground through the growing season to keep the hail off their fields.

The potato fields above Kauri are small, steep and almost ready. It is late in the wet season. A cloud comes up from behind the ridge where the spring is, darker underneath than a rain cloud ought to be, and the air goes suddenly cold. Somebody on the slope starts to run for the high ground with a bundle under one arm. They know what is in the cloud. It has stripes.

The Ccoa is a cat. That is the first surprise, because the thing it does is so large. It is the spirit that brings hail and lightning to the farms of the Cuzco highlands, and it is not a puma the size of a hillside. The people of Kauri described it with a farmer’s eye for livestock: about two feet from nose to rump, a little more than a foot high at the shoulder, with a tail a foot long and as thick as a thumb. It is grey, with dark stripes running the length of its body. The head is bigger than the body deserves. The eyes shine in the dark like something rotten in a wet forest, and hail runs steadily out of them, and out of its ears as well. Now and then it is seen in a different body altogether, a bull with something of the cat about it and eyes the colour of blood.

That description was written down in the 1930s by the American anthropologist Bernard Mishkin, who lived in Kauri, a Quechua village in sight of the great snow peak Ausangate, and published what he heard in 1946. His account is the main record of the Ccoa under that name. It is a modern farmer’s spirit, described by living people, and it should not be mistaken for a figure out of an Inca chronicle.

It does have a master. The Andes are governed, in village thinking, by the apus, the lords who are the high mountains, and by lesser spirits called aukis who look after the worked land. Each great apu keeps something like an estate inside his mountain, with herds and servants. The Ccoa is the estate’s cat. Its home is on Ausangate, and of all the spirits in the mountain’s service it is the one that comes out most often and in the worst temper.

It comes out by way of water. In the rainy months it rises from the springs of the high country as a cloud, drifts over the valleys, and looks at what is growing there. What it wants is the harvest, and it takes it the only way a storm can. Hail strips the plants. The long tail sweeps the clouds along, and where it whips, lightning comes down. A field of ripening barley can be flat and white inside a quarter of an hour, with the smell of crushed green stalks hanging over it and the ice already melting between the rows.

It does not fall on everyone alike. The villagers Mishkin spoke to were plain about this. The fields of the rich are left standing, and the fields of the poor are beaten into the mud. Their reasoning was practical. A wealthy family can afford a good sorcerer and proper gifts, and the Ccoa is a spirit that expects to be paid. So the hail, in Kauri, was understood as a kind of rent collector.

Payment is made in smoke. Through the growing season, on a rise of ground above the fields, the right things are gathered and burnt: incense, a little wine, scraps of gold and silver tinsel, llama fat, grains of cañihua, and the hard red and black seeds called huairuro. The fat spits. The smoke goes up thick and sweet towards the snow line, and with luck the cloud goes somewhere else. The spirit’s name is close kin to this custom. Across the southern Andes the word k’oa also means a scented highland plant burnt for the spirits and the smoke that rises from it, and a study of old graves at Arica in northern Chile, published in 2018, treats the plant, the smoke and the winged storm cat as faces of a single idea tied to rain and growth.

Its other dealings with people are with sorcerers. The Ccoa makes them. A man or woman struck by its lightning who lives is held to have been chosen, and carries power afterwards. Such people work for the spirit, feed it, and can speak to it on a village’s behalf. When they skimp on what they owe, the Ccoa takes it out on the valley.

Two more things rouse it. One is the burial of a child who died unbaptised. Such a child’s soul is said to become a duende, a small unquiet spirit in the Ccoa’s service, and the Ccoa will send lightning to the grave to collect the body for Ausangate. The other is defiance. People who try to fight the hail off are remembered by it.

So its powers are the weather’s. It can freeze a crop, burn a house, bring sickness, kill with a bolt, and decide who becomes a sorcerer. Its limits are those of a servant with a price. It answers to the mountain. It can be bought off, by people who have something to buy with. It can only reach the fields from above, and only in the wet months when the springs give off cloud. Nobody claims to have killed one, and nobody seems to have tried twice.

In some villages the hail and lightning have been handed over to Santiago, Saint James, who rode into the Andes with the Spaniards and took up thunder there. He is thought an even-handed patron, which the cat never was. Older links have been proposed as well. The Inca sky held a fierce cat called Choquechinchay, a star with brilliant eyes, and some writers look further back to the fanged cats carved at Chavín. The stories from Kauri do not say where the Ccoa came from. They are more interested in where it is going.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Ccoa?

The Ccoa is a cat spirit of the Peruvian Andes that brings hail and lightning. It serves the apus, the mountain lords, and lives on the snow peak Ausangate near Cuzco. Quechua farmers in the village of Kauri described it to the anthropologist Bernard Mishkin, who published the account in 1946.

What does the Ccoa look like?

The Ccoa is a grey cat with dark stripes down its body, about two feet long and a little over a foot tall, with a foot-long tail. Its head is large for its body and its eyes glow. Hail runs out of its eyes and ears, and it sometimes appears as a catlike bull with blood-red eyes.

How does the Ccoa destroy crops?

In the rainy season the Ccoa rises from highland springs as a cloud and drifts over the fields. It strips the crops with hail, and its tail sweeps the clouds and brings lightning. The villagers of Kauri said it spares the fields of the rich and ruins those of the poor.

How do people protect their fields from the Ccoa?

People burn offerings to the Ccoa on high ground during the growing season. The offerings include incense, wine, gold and silver tinsel, llama fat, cañihua grain and huairuro seeds. Sorcerers who serve the Ccoa make these payments, and it punishes the valley when they fall short.

Is the Ccoa an Inca god?

The Ccoa is not named as a god in the Inca chronicles. It is a spirit of modern Quechua farmers, recorded in the twentieth century. Some writers connect it with Choquechinchay, a fierce cat in the Inca sky, and with the older cat carvings of Chavín, but the Kauri stories give it no origin.