Chibchacum

In the principal surviving account, Chibchacum rebelled against the culture-hero Bochica. The rebellion became associated with social disorder—pride, lying and civil strife—and in the course of plotting revenge Chibchacum spoke an evil incantation that produced a great flood. Bochica countered the deluge by creating a great waterfall to wash away the floodwaters and punished Chibchacum by forcing him to carry Mother Earth on his back; this mythic punishment is given as the cosmological rationale for contemporary earthquakes.

Extant sources do not provide a physical or detailed anthropomorphic description of Chibchacum. Accounts emphasize his functions—control of rain and thunder, the capacity to cause floods by incantation, and the mythic image of him bearing the Earth—rather than a standardized iconography or corporeal traits.

Chibchacum controls heavy rains and thunder and, in the flood narrative, produced catastrophic floods by means of an "evil incantation." His actions serve both as meteorological agency (sending storms that destroy crops and houses) and as a moral agent whose anger causes social and environmental calamity. After his defeat in the myth, his punitive burden—carrying Mother Earth—creates ongoing seismic activity when he shifts his load.